Rigidity of the two extremes

 

      The reason that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was created human was for us to emulate him in everything we do and understand what perfection in a human being looks like.

             

              

The Charlie Hebdo magazine killings have had an immediate fallout and promise to make many serious and enduring changes, none of which will be positive for anyone. I remember the time that the Satanic Verses came out and how deeply hurt and offended I was. A liberal Muslim friend, in full condescension and pity mode, told me to read the Satanic Verses for I would realise how much “a work of art” the book was. I politely declined; reading the excerpts in my local paper was enough to make my stomach turn. Trash cannot be a work of art and I was not contributing to Rushdie’s millions.

And then came the Danish cartoons. I protested by writing a letter to the editor of The Toledo Blade and explained how Muslims love God and Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) more than their parents. And satirizing Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is like slugging someone in the solar plexus, and worse. Non-Muslim US friends appreciated the elucidation and empathised with my distress. I am certain I was a whole lot more effective with that one letter than the many threats that I could have sent to Jyllands-Posten. People respond to persuasion, not intimidation.

Muslims on the extreme right as well as the ignorant ones forget that respect for God and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is enjoined upon Muslims. Non-Muslims are free to do what they desire: “There is no compulsion in religion” (Quran 2:256). But we got provoked and instead of Rushdie and the Danish cartoons dying their natural deaths, they rocketed to persistent fame. The reason that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was created human was for us to emulate him in everything we do and understand what perfection in a human being looks like. In every arena of living, especially in difficult times, Muslims should pause, reflect and use Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) life and sayings as a guide. “What would Muhammad (PBUH) have done?” is a vital question that we must articulate within and it is amazing how the answer is immediate, unequivocal and deeply comforting.

We must also go with stories of Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) life that have a strong chain of narration. Even the ones that we grew up with that are well established. How the old lady would throw garbage on him every day and when, one day, there was no garbage he went to find out what had happened and found her ill. His kindness totally won her over. He could have killed her on day one. Or the story of the man who decided to urinate in the mosque. The companions of the Prophet (PBUH) rushed toward the man but Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) stopped them and advised them to let him finish. He then, without cursing or scolding the man, told him that the mosque was a place for the remembrance of God and asked his companions to clean the area the man had defiled.

Justice and its accurate dispensation are vital concepts in Islam. Evidence is mandated in all contentious issues. Vigilantism and unilaterally taking the law into one’s hands is not accepted. Undoubtedly, Charlie Hebdo crossed many lines and offended Muslims, Christians, Jews and pretty much anyone whenever they wanted to. However, Muslims should have taken the “dogs bark and the caravan moves on” tack. Prior to the killing of the 17 people at Charlie Hebdo, the magazine had a circulation of 30,000. In the printing after the attack, five million copies of the magazine were printed and swooped up the same day. People who might have been neutral or inclined towards Muslims previously, despise us now.

The most tragic part is that, again, Islam has been pulled into a situation that has little to do with it. Columnist Gwynne Dyer writes that the Charlie Hebdo killings are representative of a larger Muslim civil war. Thirsting for power, political extremists who call themselves Muslim, mess with the hearts and minds of economically and socially marginalised Muslims, get them to injure, kill and maim, and fool them into believing that this madness is mandated by Islam. Destabilising Muslim governments and gaining power is their aim. This is borne out by the fact that most victims of this kind of terrorism have been Muslim.

Columnist Robert Fisk also has a captivating take on this. The French colonisation of Algeria and the subsequent massacre of protesting Algerians have bred a seething anger in French-Algerians, whose lot is worsened by their economic situation. The French prime minister alluded to this when he said that there was social, economic and ethnic apartheid in France. Young people marginalised this way are fertile breeding grounds for the planting of extremist ideology and hanging it on Islam.

All this is not to say that the sickening disrespect by the Charlie Hebdo magazine is condoned. What I found even more offensive was the printing of a front-page cartoon after the killings. And this displays the madness of the ultra-liberals. As though satire toward the sacred personalities of all major religions was like oxygen to them and without these hits in very poor taste, the satirists could not go on. The Pope encouraged respect toward all religions and alluded to the sentiment of Muslims who love Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) more than their parents: “If my assistant curses my mother, he can expect a punch in return.”

The loss of one million Iraqi civilians in a war that found no weapons of mass destruction and the decimation of Baghdad, the seat of Islamic civilization, most certainly fuel deep resentment in the Muslim psyche. But more violence is not vindication.

The innocents between the two extremes take the brunt from both sides. Muslims all over the world have to apologise for what they have nothing to do with and reiterate that satire does not deserve death. If Muslims unequivocally condemn the killings per their understanding of Islam, they risk being targeted by the handlers of the Kouachi brothers. Charlie Hebdo remains undeterred by the killings and will serve insult after insult, and the Kouachi types will continue to kill. No wonder Islam promotes taking the middle path and avoiding extremes (Quran 2:143). Whenever a discussion became contentious or futile, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) would leave it and say “Wa khairun salama” (Upon you be the best of peace). I am certain he would have treated all of this in the same manner.

The impetus of shock and sorrow

Children are the Achilles’ heel of nations. Like parents, countries deal with tragedy but if it involves children, the issue becomes a catastrophe. And so it is for Pakistan and the loss of the 134 children killed by the savage Taliban in the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar.

 

The government was busy conferring with the Taliban and detangling the good from the bad  when there was an audacious attack on the cargo terminal of Karachi airport on June 8, 2014. Embarrassed the government began Operation Zarb-e-Azb and to date 1800 terrorists have been killed and many of their hideouts in North Waziristan destroyed. The Taliban had repeatedly vowed revenge; perhaps its brutality and its young, innocent victims were not something regular folk could have anticipated.

 

 A young mother lost all of her four children that day. One of the victims didn’t want to go to school for he had knee pain; his mother convinced him to go and not skip school for small reasons. My heart aches for her torment. One of the students describes being in the auditorium and seeing children running in the hallway; one of them had been shot in the face.

 

16-year old Shahrukh Khan recounted: “One of them shouted: ‘There are so many children beneath the desks go and get them’”. Shahrukh said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs. He decided to play dead: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream. The man with the big boots kept on looking for students and killing them. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again. I will never forget the black boots approaching me – I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

 

The carnage is beyond comprehension. The school walls look like sieves from the spray of bullets. Broken glass and pools of blood belie that this was once a school. A couple students’ notes are heart-rending. Finished homework has the words “THE END” written in large all caps. Another student wrote: “hum rahein na rahein, yeh gulshan salamat rahey ga” (whether we live or not this world will live on).

 

Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said: “The smaller the coffin, the heavier it is to carry it. And we’ve been carrying smaller coffins today, more than a hundred small coffins.”

 

The outrage in Pakistan and internationally has been deep. During a prayer vigil prominent civil rights lawyer Asma Jahangir said “those who refer to the Taliban as brothers are one of the Taliban”. She has cause to say this. For decades various governments have waffled in their approach to the Taliban lending a blind-eye to numerous attacks solely to shore up their own power bases. 

 

Pakistan has paid a heavy price for participating on the war on terror: at least 50,000 Pakistanis, civilian and military have been killed since 2001.  Pakistan’s army is one of the most competent in the world but fighting an invisible or chameleonic enemy is very difficult. Terrorist attacks at airports and military institutions require a good deal of inside information, and that was evident in essentially all the high-profile attacks of the Taliban.

 

There are numerous political and religious hues in Pakistan with a very troubling radicalization of a segment of the population. Economic disenfranchisement, anti-Americanism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the killing of one million Iraqi civilians in the war on terror, the WMD propaganda and brain-washing all contribute to this turn to extremism. This radicalized segment orchestrates terrorist attacks or carries them out. Their relative anonymity makes their identification difficult if not impossible.

 

The sit-ins of Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri were perfect crucibles for a terrorist attack and I remember the sick feeling that I would get worrying about the destruction that could be wreaked. The fact that this did not occur shows that a vigilant population can be a very effective preventive force. If you have new neighbors that seem to be hoarding weapons, please alert the authorities. If foreigners are willing to rent your house for an outlandish amount of money, be on your guard.

 

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought the Kalashnikov and heroin culture to Pakistan. The easy availability of guns and a series of corrupt governments have armed and addicted a population. De-weaponization of the population, proper gun licensing and a money-for-guns exchange program should be an immediate priority of the government. A few minutes must be devoted in each Friday sermon to condemn terrorism and remind people that suicide is a ticket to hell and taking someone with you a confirmed reservation.

 

Catastrophic events can serve ironic purposes. All the political parties finally see that terrorism is Pakistan’s arch enemy. Imran Khan has decided to terminate the sit-ins. He was rapidly backing into a wall and shutting down Karachi was bad enough for him to lose credibility; closing Pakistan down would have destroyed it.

 

In 2008 Zardari had introduced a moratorium on the death penalty for terror-related cases. After the Peshawar massacre Nawaz Sharif has lifted this moratorium and also announced that they will not be differentiating between the good and the bad Taliban. I have been personally opposed to the death penalty due to numerous wrong convictions. But in the state that Pakistan is, we need speedy trials and convictions and the institution of the death penalty for enabling, orchestrating and committing terrorist acts. I am certain there will be a sharp decline in terrorism in Pakistan. Death by hanging can send out a chilling reverberant message.

 

December 16, 1971 was a dramatic point in Pakistan’s history when its army signed the instrument of surrender and East Pakistan ceased to be. December 16, 2014 has shocked and numbed all of Pakistan and if 180 million people unite in the fight against terrorism, we can create unprecedented peace in a nation full of potential and promise. We owe this to the blood of 145 innocents.

A crash course on civil rights

Black lives don’t matter. That seems to be the message that the grand jury verdict in Ferguson, Missouri gives.

Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Legal and police experts concur that Prosecutor Robert McCulloch could have decided on his own authority to prosecute Officer Wilson. But he decided to punt it to a grand jury. Had the races of aggressor and victim been transposed and a black police officer had killed a white teenager, I think he would be awaiting trial. This is borne out by an incident in July 2014 in the same county. The same prosecutor Robert McCulloch pressed felonious assault charges on black police officer Dawon Gore for striking a white light-rail passenger with a baton after an argument. He was jailed on a $3500 cash-only bond.

Sadder yet is the composition of the grand jury. St. Louis County has a population of 21,000 and is 67% African-American and 29% white. The grand jury was made up of nine whites and three blacks of supposedly randomly picked citizens. All they needed to decide was whether there was probable cause to indict Officer Wilson and send the case to trial. Nine votes were needed to indict him.

Like it or not there is a hierarchy of color in our country. Highest on this list is a white child. And going downwards come brown people and lowest are young black males. The country was convulsed with grief with the Connecticut school shootings in which the victims were largely white children. But no one really talks about the daily victims of gun violence in Chicago; the majority is impoverished black children.

Michael Brown had stolen a bunch of cigarellos from a store in Ferguson and when challenged by Officer Wilson was, according to Officer Wilson’s testimony, aggressive and full of expletives. Wilson testified that he tried to move Brown’s arm and felt that he was like “a five-year old holding onto Hulk Hogan”. Wilson shot Michael Brown twice while he was pushing into the police car with his body. Brown then started to run and Wilson gave chase. When Brown turned around Officer Wilson fatally shot him in the head, well aware that he was not armed. Why would a police officer escalate a theft to shooting an unarmed person? Whatever happened to disabling a felon by shooting at an extremity rather than the trunk? Are cigarellos cocaine?

Unfortunately this situation is a very tangled web. Every 28 hours a black person is killed in the United States either by a police officer or a vigilante. As a doctor, I understand this frequency to qualify for what we define as an epidemic. This is not a new statistic. Young black males have been on our endangered species list for decades. But being on the bottom of that hierarchy, racked with poverty, addiction and crime, society seems to be smug that young black felons are self-selecting out.

Police and legal experts also report a symbiotic relationship between police and prosecutors. Prosecutors protect police witnesses in court and the police influence the prosecutor’s decisions. It is true that situations such as the Wilson-Brown incident happen very fast and hindsight is always 20/20. But we have not enshrined accountability in police culture, and thus granted them impunity. The parents of Michael Brown want the Michael Brown Law passed in which police officers would wear body cameras. There is a move toward this in some police departments already.

It is also an entire mindset that we must change: from individuals and families recognizing that all of us are created equal, to communities and the nation being color-blind in their protection.

Racism is rife in the Greater Toledo area as well. In a previous office location in Perrysburg, one of my middle aged African-American patients decided to bide his waiting time and enjoy the sunny day by sitting in a chair next to his car and working on his phone. Suddenly the police showed up, wondering whose new Chrysler he was sitting next to. “It’s my car” he said. Unable to charge him with anything, the police left. I remember I was more outraged than he was.

Ferguson businesses have been burned to the ground, and protests are picking up all across the nation and internationally.  Prosecutor McCulloch has deeply undermined our justice system and brought segregation in our country into sharp focus. Officer Wilson should have been charged and gone through an open public trial. It would have been wise and visionary to let justice take its course and to have learned from the Rodney King and Trayvon Martin cases. And suddenly the entire nation is being given a crash course on civil rights.  

 

The tipping point in Pakistan

Pakistan owes its creation to the vision of Allama Iqbal, the tenacity of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the blood, sweat and tears of the muhajir .

The Sharif coterie is suddenly irrelevant. Khatir Ghaznavi wrote so famously: go zara si baat par barsoan ke yaraaney gaye laykin itna to hua kuch loag pehchaney gaye: years of friendship dissolved over a minor incident but served to expose some people. Dragging on this disrepute for another three and a half years does not seem possible; the nation’s contempt for the Sharifs is almost palpable.  

Interestingly freedom of the press was given to Pakistan by a dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Freedom of the press is an integral part of a democracy. Despite all the indignant claims of safe-guarding of democracy by the Islamabad menagerie, also known as the Parliament, the Sharif government has swooped down on freedom of the press by closure of the ARY television channel. The blame is passed around; the Lahore High Court did not order ARY’s closure, PEMRA ordered it but PEMRA  does not have a legitimate chief etc., but the fact remains that ARY remains closed in Pakistan. Various television anchors tend to pull down their employers. And when the conversation gets very pointed, Hamid Mir is attacked and GEO is shut down. If Mubashir Lucman goes overboard, which he does more often than not, ARY is reduced to television snow.  

And this is what exposes the self-serving Sharifs. If patriotism was paramount, or democracy dear, why would they strangle the press? But how many fires can they put out? If I get vicarious for a few minutes, their paralysis gives me a panic attack. 

Zardari and the Sharifs excel in verbal embellishments of their intentions and accomplishments. While history will record their pillage of Pakistan as their primary “achievements”, their secret pact for political musical chairs, with power alternating between them, lies exposed and tattered. Bilawal Zardari can be credited for improving his Urdu and introducing transparent tele-prompters to Pakistan. His speech seemed extemporaneous but was read right through. Which in and of itself is not a problem; except for its disastrous content.  

Pakistan owes its creation to the vision of Allama Iqbal, the tenacity of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the blood, sweat and tears of the muhajir (immigrants from India). An Aligarh University graduate, my father would speak of Quaid-e-Azam’s speeches and how they followed all he said to a tee. An Indian Civil Service officer, my father migrated to Pakistan by train, his belongings in a wagon that was completely looted en route. Millions of others were not that lucky, entire trains full of muhajir were massacred. Pakistan was largely a rural society with little infrastructure and the looting and burning had left it without even pen and paper in offices.  

My father joined the Civil Service of Pakistan; and it was the education, talent and hard work of muhajir like him that put together a Pakistan that slowly but surely became viable. He loved to recount how Jawaharlal Nehru had claimed that Pakistan would last five years.  

67 years later Kursheed Shah calling the word muhajir a slur is so egregious and overwhelming that it shouldn’t be dignified with comment.  

As though Khursheed Shah’s inflammatory statement were not enough, Bilawal’s un-parliamentary attack on Altaf Hussain caused a fall-out of MQM resignations from parliament and provincial assemblies. Zardari, the king of secret pacts, had one going with the MQM as well, and just like the fake PPP condemnations by the PML-N and vice versa, Altaf Hussain would also engage in frothing-at-the mouth lambasting of the PPP, but within all was well. Bilawal’s thunder seems to have changed all that and Zardari will need to go on overdrive to fix this one.  

The end of seventy days of a sit-in by Dr. Tahirul Qadri appears overtly to have been for naught, but it must be acknowledged that in a very short time, Tahirul Qadri and Imran Khan have achieved a dramatic change in the mindset of Pakistanis. And this change is what will carry Pakistan. Not just in the removal of the Sharif government but in resetting Pakistan’s compass. In making corruption, self-aggrandizement and usurping others’ rights criminal. And justice, employment, education and a progressive economy a given.  

The Sharifs seemed to be the only ones that calculated the power of Tahirul Qadri accurately. Their high anxiety caused the Model Town massacre and containers all over Lahore. Like many Pakistanis I was deeply skeptical of the “crazy cleric” but with his tenacious sit-in I too realized the vitality of the PAT. How organized and disciplined it is and how it has educated the underserved for decades. It has now transformed from a religious organization into a political party with a very impressive following. The persona of Allama Tahirul Qadri is a notable one. He is schooled in religion as well as constitutional law. On 2 March 2010, Tahirul Qadri issued a 600-page Fatwa on Terrorism in which he said that "Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it”. This is in stark contrast to the various maulanas and moulvis in the JUI and other religious parties who, overtly and covertly, support terrorism and view the US and the yahood-hunood (Jews and Hindus) as enemies, rather than the Al-Qaeda and Taliban that have destroyed Pakistan in so many ways.  

Post the Pakistan Awakening forged by Tahirul Qadri and Imran Khan, especially with the concepts of economic justice and banishment of corruption, the lifestyle simplicity of Tahirul Qadri must be noted. The royalties of the many books that he has authored go to Minhajul Quran. He does not live extravagantly, tinker with billions, and enjoy gourmet foods, palatial homes or four wives.  He does not banish the females of the PAT behind several partitions; in fact the participation of women in his sit-in is beyond impressive. Pakistan is in desperate need of politicians and governance that has individual and institutional integrity. Much to my own surprise I must say that Tahirul Qadri may well be the one that fits that bill.  

The crowds galvanized by PTI and PAT only grow larger. The aerial view of the rallies is awe-inspiring. And they promise more and more. Novel cases of individual courage are seen in Arjumand Husain and his co-passengers preventing Rehman Malik and Ramesh Kumar from boarding the PIA flight and tolerating the repercussions of employment termination. The movement of the Sharif family is severely curtailed by that annoying “go Nawaz go” chant. The moral pressure of the millions in PAT and PTI rallies could steamroll the Sharifs. But before that something trivial may well become the tipping point. Go zara si baat par could make Nawaz history.

 

The polio and jalsa viruses in Pakistan

Not only have the polio and jalsa viruses paralyzed Pakistan, there are no credible plans to control them.

 

Pakistan has this curious penchant to get chalked up in the various lists of infamy. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was started in 1988 and was based on vaccination and surveillance. Progress was tracked through surveillance of cases of acute flaccid paralysis with testing of stool samples and sewage for the polio virus in the area of the acute case. The results have been dramatic. In 1988 polio was endemic in 125 countries and paralyzed 350,000 children every year. By 2011 the number of polio cases had been reduced to 650. By 2012 only three countries remained where the polio virus had not been interrupted: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. And Pakistan is the only country showing an increase in the number of detected cases.

 

The polio virus is transmitted through fecal-hand-oral contamination. It can result in weakness of the leg muscles or quadriplegia, respiratory failure and death. There are no effective treatments for the paralysis caused by polio, so the mainstay is immunization. The protection from immunization with the injectable and the oral polio vaccines is around 90%.

 

Pakistan had almost eradicated the polio virus in 2012 but the fake CIA hepatitis immunization program to gain information about Osama bin Laden brought efforts to a screeching halt. The Taliban banned all immunizations as they felt that immunization programs were being used for spying. Some radicals also believe that immunization programs will be used as a cover for sterilization of Muslim children. Since 2012 at least 40 health workers have been killed because of their participation in immunization programs.

 

The highest incidence of polio was in Taliban controlled areas in North and South Waziristan. With Operation Zarb-e-Azb there have been fears that polio would spread across Pakistan with the exodus of IDPs. But we can use this as an opportunity to immunize; about 100,000 IDP children had been immunized  by June 2014; the aim is to vaccinate 200,000 children.

 

But the bad news has not stopped. In September 2014 the polio virus was detected in the sewage of some major cities: Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Hyderabad, Quetta and Jacobabad. Very surprisingly Islamabad and Peshawar sewage samples tested negative for the polio virus.

 

Instead of spending from the public treasury to protect, actually over-protect, the prime minister, the president, the cabinet, parliamentarians as well as children of former prime ministers, we need to provide fool-proof security to immunization health workers. Bullet proof vests, traveling with a cordon of soldiers and security of their homes are a compelling need. And if nothing else matters, perhaps we should be ashamed that India has eradicated polio; and most certainly, if India can, so can we.

 

A massive health education program needs to be initiated as well as infomercials repeated over all television stations, highlighting the importance of hygiene, immunization and population control. Unlike India and Bangladesh, Pakistan has no population control programs in place and a good amount of its misery is the population rapidly outstripping its already meager resources.

 

Dharnas (sit-ins) are more difficult to continue and make a success of, compared to jalsas (large public gatherings). Tired of the stalemate with his D-Chowk dharna, Imran Khan figured he’d branch out into the jalsa business. Karachi was treated to a mammoth jalsa as were Lahore and Mianwali. Noticing his dharna had gotten a bit old, Tahirul Qadri has planned a jalsa. And like the polio virus the jalsa virus is spreading. Bilawal Bhutto has taken some intensive Urdu lessons so he can scream at the Karachi PPP jalsa soon. Bilawal still needs to work on his genders, something his mother also struggled with. And the MQM need never worry; they have the corner on the market on jalsas. It never fails to amaze me that people from all walks of life sit for hours listening to alternately roaring and hissing Altaf Hussain, manic or somnolent, singing, reprimanding, praising or blackmailing a sea of his supporters.

 

As though high unemployment, hunger and disease were not enough to paralyze Pakistan, Eid brings five days of leave from work. Political leaders call for Day of Sorrow or Day of Fury type strikes for a minimum of two days and Pakistan seems to be a nation on a perpetual vacation.

 

I was in Karachi when Benazir Bhutto was killed. The city’s paralysis defied the mind. Many citizens get groceries on a daily basis and they suddenly faced hunger for days. The Islamabad dharnas have paralyzed governmental functioning and Pakistan is losing billions of rupees in numerous ways. The jalsas in various cities compromise the functioning of an already oppressed population even more. Opposition parties always do what they do best: oppose. The responsibility for government lies with the party in power. And the onus of resolution for the sake of the nation also lies with the ruling party.

 

Prime ministers and presidents sometimes begin to live in a severe and serious state of disconnect with the people. It appears that the Sharifs are deaf and blind, evidenced by the statements of the brothers as well as the tweets of Maryam Nawaz. For her to tweet that security has been ordered to beat citizens who shout “go Nawaz go” is as ridiculous as Queen Marie Antoinette allegedly saying “let them eat cake” when she was told that the French people did not even have bread to eat.

 

Enough is really enough. The Sharifs should try to resolve this, not just for the sake of Pakistan or the PMLN but primarily for themselves. An interim government, a thorough and rapid election investigation as well as mid-term elections are compelling needs. The backlash against VIP culture and the steadily rising frustration and fury of the people might be a trailer for bloody civil disorder. We must avoid that at all costs. Even the cost of the crown.