President Obama performed beyond the expectations of his supporters; like a faithful wind-up toy. ‘Tis the season to be afraid of the reach and retribution of the Israeli lobby; after all the presidential election is right around the corner. Jewish writers have pointed out that Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, could not have done better. And like the consummate politician, Obama is counting on public memory to be ultra-short and forget his famous Cairo speech and others of the same content, in which he spoke convincingly of a two-state solution in the Middle East. Maybe he doesn’t expect the world to forget, as long as he’s re-elected, for integrity and justice don’t hold the key to victory; AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, does. Obama threatened to veto the bid for Palestinian statehood if it came to the UN Security Council.
America worked feverishly to prevent Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ presentation of the statehood bid to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, with threats of aid cuts and more taxes by Israel.
In his speech afterward to the UN General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas got a hero’s welcome. Repeated applause and wolf-whistles permeated the otherwise formal air, crowned with a standing ovation when he referenced a copy of the statehood bid. The American delegation looked grim and uncomfortable.
After Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to an eerily silent hall and called the UN a “theater of the absurd”. The Israeli delegation tried hard to applaud loudly, but had a solo run.
That only the United States, Canada, Israel and Botswana were against and 189 countries for Palestinian statehood, matters little to a self-steeped sole super-power and the always-arrogant Netanyahu.
Obama parroted Netanyahu in demanding that the Palestinians negotiate with Israel instead of going to the UN for a statehood bid. In protesting to him, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan read back to Obama, Obama’s own address to the UN a year previously in which he spoke of Palestinian statehood.
Negotiations between Israel and Palestine had broken off in 2010 as Jewish settlements had continued. Netanyahu’s demand now is that Israel be recognized by the Palestinians. The fact that in a two-state solution recognition is implicit shows the mala-fide that this is based on.
Mahmoud Abbas got a wonderful welcome on his return to Palestine even though some do not subscribe to the two-state solution and Hamas felt that the 1967 borders were not the acceptable bargaining limits. BDS or Boycott, Divest and Sanctions is a campaign that began in 2005 against Israel’s apartheid. It aims for a one-state solution in which Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel have full equality, ending of the occupation of all Arab land and dismantling of the Wall, and promoting the return of Palestinian refugees as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
It is not just the hegemony of Zionism but the steadily changing demographics in Israel that seriously threaten it, that make BDS more of a pipe-dream than ever. ABC’s Ben Knight in an article “Make no mistake, Israel’s existence is under threat” writes of how secular Jews pay taxes, serve in the army and have an average of two children per couple, while the ultra-orthodox don’t pay taxes, don’t defend Israel and have an average of eight children per couple. Ben Knight reports that there are three types of state-funded schools in Israel: regular schools, Arab-Israeli schools and ultra-orthodox religious schools. In 1960, Knight writes, only around 15 per cent of Israeli children were enrolled in religious or Arab schools. That figure is now around 50 per cent. In 30 years, it will be almost 80 per cent. That is a frightening statistic for the nation of Israel, he says.
Additionally, Ben Knight reports that the ultra-orthodox study the Bible all day, every day; no math or science. Funny that the report that some madrassahs in Pakistan do not teach math and science causes the West to go into self-righteous convulsions.
Ben Knight sums it up thus: “if the figures are to be believed, in less than 30 years, Israel will have a population where the majority either can't, or won't join the workforce – putting an increasing, and impossible burden on the secular minority to pay the taxes and serve in the army.” Knight claims that the Palestinian issue aside, “Israel's demographic time bomb is still ticking away.”
However much of a blind eye the Israeli government may have turned to this ticking demographic time bomb, it is entirely impossible that it will entertain a one-state solution.
However divided the opinion maybe regarding the best solution for the Palestinians, this much crystallized in the recent UN General Assembly session. That America’s first black president disrespected the blood, sweat and tears of his people, just sixty years ago, and unleashed apartheid on another. Though isolated, arrogant and blatantly unjust, Israel and its Zionist diaspora hold US presidential hopefuls, congressmen, politicians and the media in a death grip. That the Palestinians don’t get statehood or equal rights within the state of Israel; it is the typical heads I win, tails you lose philosophy.
A nation that was dehumanized by a Christian army in the horrors of the Holocaust, routinely murders and maims with American taxpayer funded Apache helicopters and Caterpillar bulldozers. No one “negotiated” with the Palestinians when they walked into their land and took it as their own. With the pathetic Republican presidential candidates on offer, Obama might win a second term. On the backs of Palestinians, not that he could care.
One day, some day there will be a land for the Palestinians. It takes time and wreaks havoc on the way, but justice like inevitability, surfaces.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Owning Quran and the Hereafter
The mania and grandiosity of our politicians have hit heretofore unknown proportions. The power surge that they got from incredible wealth and owning armies of servants was bad enough; they seem to have transcended into the arrogance of owning religion.
Former Sind Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza does tell-all in and of itself was inflammatory; the repeated placement of the Quran on his head became a show-stopper. In the many anecdotal surveys since, he appears to have achieved his objective in that most people appear to accept the veracity of his claims.
During the press conference however I remember watching the Quran’s repeated trips from tabletop to head with alternating shock and chagrin. While God says in Surah Hashr (59:21): “If We had sent down this Qur'an upon a mountain, you would have seen it humbled and cleaved asunder from fear of Allah. And these examples We present to the people that perhaps they will give thought”, Zulfiqar Mirza, fire in his eyes, would raise it and lower it as though it were just about any old book. So caught up in his invective was he that many a time his left hand would do.
I am certain that it was not the Urdu or English translation that Zulfiqar Mirza was swearing upon but the Glorious Quran itself. God speaks repeatedly of its stature to the extent that in Surah Waqiah (56:77-82) He says: Indeed, it is a Quran, most honorable, in a Book well guarded, which none shall touch but those who are clean, a Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds, is it such a message that you would hold in light esteem?”
And from Zulfi-Leaks it was downhill all the way. After a two-week reprieve MQM’s Altaf Husain presented the “Many moods of Altaf Bhai” video-conference from London. My shock turned to horror as I saw the Quran, carelessly opened, waved in the air, its pages flying about and then plopped on his head despite claims that the Quran is not meant to be sworn on but read. One wonders whether Altaf Husain has read the Quran and how God describes its sanctity in it repeatedly.
The disrespect reached such serious levels that in the same press conference the man broke out into song and simulated dance, with our Holy Book lying in front of him. Does political self-defense make people entirely insane? What is that Urdu saying about drowning oneself in a handful of water? Any person in their right mind watching a replay of that video and seeing themselves behaving so shamefully and disrespectfully with the Quran lying carelessly in front of them should consider cyanide or the closest window.
As far as swearing on the Quran is concerned, scholars liken giving false testimony as one of the major sins in Islam akin to polytheism. This opinion is based on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) stating that “testifying falsely is tantamount to polytheism” and quoting Surah Hajj (22:60) “therefore avoid the uncleanness of the idols and avoid false words” three times to support his statement.
In everything in life there is an initial reluctance, a breaking-in if you will. And after that you’re on oiled wheels as it were. And so it was with Zulfiqar Mirza. In television talk show after talk show, his inevitable companion was the Quran which did its usual head-to-table trips. So consumed was he with this new currency that he first persuaded and then almost physically insisted that the poor talk-show host place the Quran on his own head. If Pakistani cardiologists are not good enough for President Zardari, Zulfiqar Mirza has every rationale for rest, recreation and a psychiatric check at Brompton Hospital in England.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik bore Zulfiqar Mirza’s target practice with fortitude, that much must be said. And yet in all things Pakistani we never really reach rock bottom-the worst is always waiting. In a harried interview with reporters all around him Rehman Malik mightily claimed that he had not ordered the release of a single target killer. And if he had he said “may I not be able to recite the kalma at my death”. Whoa! Bargaining our eternity are we?
It is general Muslim belief, or fear, that faith can be so tenuous and Satan so ever-present that despite a righteous life, at the very end one could die a non-Muslim. Tomes and poems have been written on this fear, however irrational it may appear to the calm and spiritually placid. Belief in the Hereafter is an integral part of being Muslim (Surah Baqarah 2:62). To speak of its compromise with Rehman Malik’s casualness is also a mind jolt.
It has to be the corruption of absolute power. In a nation of mind-boggling poverty BMWs and Mercedes’ are used as official cars. It’s only the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor in Pakistan and more so between the power-intoxicated politicians and the starving millions that make them look and sound psychotic.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Former Sind Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza does tell-all in and of itself was inflammatory; the repeated placement of the Quran on his head became a show-stopper. In the many anecdotal surveys since, he appears to have achieved his objective in that most people appear to accept the veracity of his claims.
During the press conference however I remember watching the Quran’s repeated trips from tabletop to head with alternating shock and chagrin. While God says in Surah Hashr (59:21): “If We had sent down this Qur'an upon a mountain, you would have seen it humbled and cleaved asunder from fear of Allah. And these examples We present to the people that perhaps they will give thought”, Zulfiqar Mirza, fire in his eyes, would raise it and lower it as though it were just about any old book. So caught up in his invective was he that many a time his left hand would do.
I am certain that it was not the Urdu or English translation that Zulfiqar Mirza was swearing upon but the Glorious Quran itself. God speaks repeatedly of its stature to the extent that in Surah Waqiah (56:77-82) He says: Indeed, it is a Quran, most honorable, in a Book well guarded, which none shall touch but those who are clean, a Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds, is it such a message that you would hold in light esteem?”
And from Zulfi-Leaks it was downhill all the way. After a two-week reprieve MQM’s Altaf Husain presented the “Many moods of Altaf Bhai” video-conference from London. My shock turned to horror as I saw the Quran, carelessly opened, waved in the air, its pages flying about and then plopped on his head despite claims that the Quran is not meant to be sworn on but read. One wonders whether Altaf Husain has read the Quran and how God describes its sanctity in it repeatedly.
The disrespect reached such serious levels that in the same press conference the man broke out into song and simulated dance, with our Holy Book lying in front of him. Does political self-defense make people entirely insane? What is that Urdu saying about drowning oneself in a handful of water? Any person in their right mind watching a replay of that video and seeing themselves behaving so shamefully and disrespectfully with the Quran lying carelessly in front of them should consider cyanide or the closest window.
As far as swearing on the Quran is concerned, scholars liken giving false testimony as one of the major sins in Islam akin to polytheism. This opinion is based on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) stating that “testifying falsely is tantamount to polytheism” and quoting Surah Hajj (22:60) “therefore avoid the uncleanness of the idols and avoid false words” three times to support his statement.
In everything in life there is an initial reluctance, a breaking-in if you will. And after that you’re on oiled wheels as it were. And so it was with Zulfiqar Mirza. In television talk show after talk show, his inevitable companion was the Quran which did its usual head-to-table trips. So consumed was he with this new currency that he first persuaded and then almost physically insisted that the poor talk-show host place the Quran on his own head. If Pakistani cardiologists are not good enough for President Zardari, Zulfiqar Mirza has every rationale for rest, recreation and a psychiatric check at Brompton Hospital in England.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik bore Zulfiqar Mirza’s target practice with fortitude, that much must be said. And yet in all things Pakistani we never really reach rock bottom-the worst is always waiting. In a harried interview with reporters all around him Rehman Malik mightily claimed that he had not ordered the release of a single target killer. And if he had he said “may I not be able to recite the kalma at my death”. Whoa! Bargaining our eternity are we?
It is general Muslim belief, or fear, that faith can be so tenuous and Satan so ever-present that despite a righteous life, at the very end one could die a non-Muslim. Tomes and poems have been written on this fear, however irrational it may appear to the calm and spiritually placid. Belief in the Hereafter is an integral part of being Muslim (Surah Baqarah 2:62). To speak of its compromise with Rehman Malik’s casualness is also a mind jolt.
It has to be the corruption of absolute power. In a nation of mind-boggling poverty BMWs and Mercedes’ are used as official cars. It’s only the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor in Pakistan and more so between the power-intoxicated politicians and the starving millions that make them look and sound psychotic.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Poor parenting and national looting
Reeling from the massive violence across Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron blamed pockets of society that had not only broken down but were “sick” and that “poor parenting” was responsible for the looting.
His diagnosis is painfully accurate; unfortunately the treatment cannot be surgically swift. For children are products of circumstance and training both in turn heavily dependent on economics and religion. And parents today are faced with infinitely greater challenges than their parents and grandparents were.
It was entirely liberating to realize that I was not the only one that grew up with visual discipline; robot-like I lived in fear of imploding as I followed the eye-bulging, frowning, or eye-brow raising of my mother. Essentially all of my generation has been on cruise control! And all my cohorts agree that this visual discipline is now an act of the past.
With parental commands or requests ours was a culture of yes. In families of today a parental request cannot be simple, it must be rationalized and negotiated and the response is also not simple but a debate. And somewhere along the way the hierarchy in the family unit has been lost. For reasons unclear to me the youth of today has tilted the balance of power in its favor, and bewildered parents struggle with varying grades of rebellion. How are robots supposed to deal with temper tantrums? Or with children demanding apologies from parents, or threatening to call the authorities with tales of abuse?
The Ten Commandments urge believers to “honor thy parents”. In Islam disobedience to parents falls in the category of a major sin, just under shirk or associating anyone with God and akin to murder and adultery.
The family is the basic structural unit of society and its cohesion and well-being is vital to society’s benefit at large. The violence in Britain has strong economic reasons as well: the deprivation of a particular segment of society has simmered for a long time and has now reached an explosive point.
The video footage of the looting really does tell the story of societal breakdown. One sees an injured youth bleeding profusely and two other young men coming to his aid. And as they purportedly help him they steal his wallet and other items from his backpack. Endless stories of shops emptied out and videos of gleeful youth parading the loot are shocking.
While poverty can be a game-changer, we are generally ambassadors of our families. And as far as looting goes we either saw our parents do it or did not listen to them when they tried to teach us good moral values. The plunder of Pakistan’s exchequer falls under the same premise-familial looting or personal failure.
Various methods are used to teach integrity and I remember a heart-warming story as a child that was repeated on many an occasion. Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani was leaving home and was given a vest lined with gold coins by his mother with the express advice to tell the truth under any and all circumstance. Sure enough he was held up by robbers and when asked about money duly reported the gold coins. Shocked by his candor the robbers spared his life and his coins.
Preserving the family unit and imbuing good moral values is heavily dependent on creation and maintenance of the hierarchy within the family. While Islam promotes shoora (consultation), democracy is a great idea and discussion is vital to the healthy resolution of issues, parents must be treated as parents and not buddies or worse, servants.
Whatever the packaging the bond of love between parents, especially mothers, and children cannot be negated. God takes the name Al-Rahman (The Beneficent) from rahm or the mother’s womb, underscoring the love that a mother feels so naturally for her child. There is a slow but steady erosion of this premise among Muslim families especially when points of contention or issues of discipline arise. The growing tendency to tie actions or history to this love makes discipline very problematic. For all the parent is trying to practice is the concept of “tough love” to institute sanity in chaos.
And where one wonders is the kind of love that Owais Qarni, one of the Prophet’s (PBUH) companion’s, felt for his mother? She asked him for water but by the time he got it she fell asleep; he stood by her bedside all night in case she awoke looking for it again. His treatment is the ultimate; the Quran recommends the basic in Al Isra (17:23) “Your Lord has decreed good treatment to parents, whether one or both of them reach old age with you, say not to them any word of contempt or repel them and address them in kind words”
Society cannot count on the chance that parents and children will get along. The larger onus, at least in Muslim societies lies with children and understanding the very distinct orders laid down in Islam. Regardless of the age of parents or the child, irrespective of the education of the parents, mindless of the wealth of the parents or the lack thereof, at the end of every issue parents enjoy a higher stature and must be obeyed.
The Imam of my mosque said it well: included in sabr-fi-ta’a (patience in religious practice) is patience with parents and remembering that after worshipping God is the treatment of parents.
If we want to avoid societal failure as seen in London then the current trend of contempt toward and equality with parents must stop and change to a culture of cohesion, an attitude of yes and a posture of humility.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
His diagnosis is painfully accurate; unfortunately the treatment cannot be surgically swift. For children are products of circumstance and training both in turn heavily dependent on economics and religion. And parents today are faced with infinitely greater challenges than their parents and grandparents were.
It was entirely liberating to realize that I was not the only one that grew up with visual discipline; robot-like I lived in fear of imploding as I followed the eye-bulging, frowning, or eye-brow raising of my mother. Essentially all of my generation has been on cruise control! And all my cohorts agree that this visual discipline is now an act of the past.
With parental commands or requests ours was a culture of yes. In families of today a parental request cannot be simple, it must be rationalized and negotiated and the response is also not simple but a debate. And somewhere along the way the hierarchy in the family unit has been lost. For reasons unclear to me the youth of today has tilted the balance of power in its favor, and bewildered parents struggle with varying grades of rebellion. How are robots supposed to deal with temper tantrums? Or with children demanding apologies from parents, or threatening to call the authorities with tales of abuse?
The Ten Commandments urge believers to “honor thy parents”. In Islam disobedience to parents falls in the category of a major sin, just under shirk or associating anyone with God and akin to murder and adultery.
The family is the basic structural unit of society and its cohesion and well-being is vital to society’s benefit at large. The violence in Britain has strong economic reasons as well: the deprivation of a particular segment of society has simmered for a long time and has now reached an explosive point.
The video footage of the looting really does tell the story of societal breakdown. One sees an injured youth bleeding profusely and two other young men coming to his aid. And as they purportedly help him they steal his wallet and other items from his backpack. Endless stories of shops emptied out and videos of gleeful youth parading the loot are shocking.
While poverty can be a game-changer, we are generally ambassadors of our families. And as far as looting goes we either saw our parents do it or did not listen to them when they tried to teach us good moral values. The plunder of Pakistan’s exchequer falls under the same premise-familial looting or personal failure.
Various methods are used to teach integrity and I remember a heart-warming story as a child that was repeated on many an occasion. Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani was leaving home and was given a vest lined with gold coins by his mother with the express advice to tell the truth under any and all circumstance. Sure enough he was held up by robbers and when asked about money duly reported the gold coins. Shocked by his candor the robbers spared his life and his coins.
Preserving the family unit and imbuing good moral values is heavily dependent on creation and maintenance of the hierarchy within the family. While Islam promotes shoora (consultation), democracy is a great idea and discussion is vital to the healthy resolution of issues, parents must be treated as parents and not buddies or worse, servants.
Whatever the packaging the bond of love between parents, especially mothers, and children cannot be negated. God takes the name Al-Rahman (The Beneficent) from rahm or the mother’s womb, underscoring the love that a mother feels so naturally for her child. There is a slow but steady erosion of this premise among Muslim families especially when points of contention or issues of discipline arise. The growing tendency to tie actions or history to this love makes discipline very problematic. For all the parent is trying to practice is the concept of “tough love” to institute sanity in chaos.
And where one wonders is the kind of love that Owais Qarni, one of the Prophet’s (PBUH) companion’s, felt for his mother? She asked him for water but by the time he got it she fell asleep; he stood by her bedside all night in case she awoke looking for it again. His treatment is the ultimate; the Quran recommends the basic in Al Isra (17:23) “Your Lord has decreed good treatment to parents, whether one or both of them reach old age with you, say not to them any word of contempt or repel them and address them in kind words”
Society cannot count on the chance that parents and children will get along. The larger onus, at least in Muslim societies lies with children and understanding the very distinct orders laid down in Islam. Regardless of the age of parents or the child, irrespective of the education of the parents, mindless of the wealth of the parents or the lack thereof, at the end of every issue parents enjoy a higher stature and must be obeyed.
The Imam of my mosque said it well: included in sabr-fi-ta’a (patience in religious practice) is patience with parents and remembering that after worshipping God is the treatment of parents.
If we want to avoid societal failure as seen in London then the current trend of contempt toward and equality with parents must stop and change to a culture of cohesion, an attitude of yes and a posture of humility.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday, July 22, 2011
Grandiose paralysis
From individuals to institutions Pakistani credibility hangs near zero. One wonders whether the tall talk of its politicians, the disconnectedness of some media personalities and the false promises of its tailors have traveled to infect the parliament making it a democratic body in name, entirely paralyzed in action.
Karachi metamorphosed into a war-zone rapidly but Interior Minister Rahman Malik was all calm, smiles and praise for new Sind Home Minister Manzoor Hussain Wassan and former Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza. And insult to injury, went on to say that the authorities knew the identity of the criminals and would bring them to justice soon. When? Why the delay? Bob Dylan’s famous lines are searing: “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”
Gen. Musharraf was a great fan of image management and had no qualms owning up to it. He was a proponent of a shiny façade regardless of inner rot to the point that he wished for Mukhtaran Mai’s gang rape case to be hushed up as it cast Pakistan in a bad light!
A prominent television anchor says in a booming voice advertising his show: “Pakistan cannot collapse, because Pakistanis love education!” On the face of it, it sounds great that Pakistanis love education and may well be true. And yet the abysmal literacy rate and the declining allocation in the budget for education do not bolster that bombastic statement.
On May 14, 2011 the Pakistan parliament passed a unanimous resolution condemning US drones and demanding the attacks stop or else Pakistan would be forced to restrict the transit facility to NATO. The very next day a drone attack occurred and many have since. Recent in this series was on July 12 in which 37 militants were killed and another on July 21 when four casualties are reported. The Parliament remains blissfully ignorant of its own ire
In March 2011 a top Pakistan military commander Major-General Ghayyur Mahmood spoke to a group of Pakistani reporters on a rare trip to Miran Shah, the administrative center of North Waziristan. He said that in information gathered by the military, most of those killed by the drones were hard-core militants, and the number of innocents killed was relatively low. The damning Wikileaks disclosure that P President Zardari does not consider the drone deaths of innocents as even collateral damage and Prime Minister Gilani’s assurance to the Americans to proceed with impunity; he would do the necessary token protests, further shatters confidence in the government’s sincerity.
And yet the primary issue is not the legitimacy or otherwise of American drones violating Pakistani sovereignty. It is the conglomeration of clowns that the Pakistani parliament has made of itself and the great insult to democracy that it is. Before the entire chest-thumping and indignant mode that it went into and passed the unanimous resolution, why didn’t the Foreign Office urgently and definitively brief the legislators? Perhaps some of the fury could have been stemmed and a condemnation could have been issued and not a consequence that could and would never be carried out.
Dictators such as Musharraf ousted themselves with their reality disconnect, which is fine. But to a nation that has yearned and fought hard for democracy, the role of its foundation, the parliament, should be to strengthen itself and not make it the laughing stock of the world. Pakistan’s government officials and statements provide endless humor internationally; we did not need the parliament to have joined the jokesters.
Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar was interviewed about the $800 million US aid suspension to Pakistan and said that if the aid was cut, Pakistan would have to pull back in the Pak-Afghan border and this would undermine efforts against the Al-Qaida and Taliban. The US Congress debates the suspension of aid little moved by Mukhtar’s threat.
Another one in the same interview is about Zawahiri being in the tribal areas to which he quickly says that he hoped America would not repeat the mistakes that it made with the Osama bin Laden raid. Mistakes? America thinks it did the most heroic thing ever getting Terrorist #1 out of Kakul Military Academy’s backyard. An encore would be in the realm of probability.
This hollow grandiosity is part of our culture of corruption-a lackadaisical aap kal ajaiye-sub theek ho jaiye ga (please come tomorrow-everything will be alright) syndrome. Is it severe economic hardship and a jungle-mentality that reigns currently that has changed our cultural norm to self-preservation at all costs? Honesty, discipline and a work ethic are created and promoted in the family unit. Are our families starving or on the brink to the point that honesty is a luxury, hypocrisy a necessity and only the fittest survive? For clearly while people become increasingly desperate for food, gas, petrol, electricity, education and basic health care our rulers continue to state the stupid, commit the criminal and decimate the democracy that we desperately need to strengthen with processes and institution building.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Karachi metamorphosed into a war-zone rapidly but Interior Minister Rahman Malik was all calm, smiles and praise for new Sind Home Minister Manzoor Hussain Wassan and former Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza. And insult to injury, went on to say that the authorities knew the identity of the criminals and would bring them to justice soon. When? Why the delay? Bob Dylan’s famous lines are searing: “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”
Gen. Musharraf was a great fan of image management and had no qualms owning up to it. He was a proponent of a shiny façade regardless of inner rot to the point that he wished for Mukhtaran Mai’s gang rape case to be hushed up as it cast Pakistan in a bad light!
A prominent television anchor says in a booming voice advertising his show: “Pakistan cannot collapse, because Pakistanis love education!” On the face of it, it sounds great that Pakistanis love education and may well be true. And yet the abysmal literacy rate and the declining allocation in the budget for education do not bolster that bombastic statement.
On May 14, 2011 the Pakistan parliament passed a unanimous resolution condemning US drones and demanding the attacks stop or else Pakistan would be forced to restrict the transit facility to NATO. The very next day a drone attack occurred and many have since. Recent in this series was on July 12 in which 37 militants were killed and another on July 21 when four casualties are reported. The Parliament remains blissfully ignorant of its own ire
In March 2011 a top Pakistan military commander Major-General Ghayyur Mahmood spoke to a group of Pakistani reporters on a rare trip to Miran Shah, the administrative center of North Waziristan. He said that in information gathered by the military, most of those killed by the drones were hard-core militants, and the number of innocents killed was relatively low. The damning Wikileaks disclosure that P President Zardari does not consider the drone deaths of innocents as even collateral damage and Prime Minister Gilani’s assurance to the Americans to proceed with impunity; he would do the necessary token protests, further shatters confidence in the government’s sincerity.
And yet the primary issue is not the legitimacy or otherwise of American drones violating Pakistani sovereignty. It is the conglomeration of clowns that the Pakistani parliament has made of itself and the great insult to democracy that it is. Before the entire chest-thumping and indignant mode that it went into and passed the unanimous resolution, why didn’t the Foreign Office urgently and definitively brief the legislators? Perhaps some of the fury could have been stemmed and a condemnation could have been issued and not a consequence that could and would never be carried out.
Dictators such as Musharraf ousted themselves with their reality disconnect, which is fine. But to a nation that has yearned and fought hard for democracy, the role of its foundation, the parliament, should be to strengthen itself and not make it the laughing stock of the world. Pakistan’s government officials and statements provide endless humor internationally; we did not need the parliament to have joined the jokesters.
Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar was interviewed about the $800 million US aid suspension to Pakistan and said that if the aid was cut, Pakistan would have to pull back in the Pak-Afghan border and this would undermine efforts against the Al-Qaida and Taliban. The US Congress debates the suspension of aid little moved by Mukhtar’s threat.
Another one in the same interview is about Zawahiri being in the tribal areas to which he quickly says that he hoped America would not repeat the mistakes that it made with the Osama bin Laden raid. Mistakes? America thinks it did the most heroic thing ever getting Terrorist #1 out of Kakul Military Academy’s backyard. An encore would be in the realm of probability.
This hollow grandiosity is part of our culture of corruption-a lackadaisical aap kal ajaiye-sub theek ho jaiye ga (please come tomorrow-everything will be alright) syndrome. Is it severe economic hardship and a jungle-mentality that reigns currently that has changed our cultural norm to self-preservation at all costs? Honesty, discipline and a work ethic are created and promoted in the family unit. Are our families starving or on the brink to the point that honesty is a luxury, hypocrisy a necessity and only the fittest survive? For clearly while people become increasingly desperate for food, gas, petrol, electricity, education and basic health care our rulers continue to state the stupid, commit the criminal and decimate the democracy that we desperately need to strengthen with processes and institution building.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Profiling and personal fatwas
We’re an opinionated lot that much is certain. But when criticism rolls onto censure and soon enough into the personal fatwa machine, it becomes yet another poor prognostic sign for Pakistan.
Muslim-Americans fume at being profiled and singled out for scrutiny at airports but happily join the melee of labeling people based on appearances. A hijabi is purity incarnate and only the morally weak wear shorts don’t you know?
Prejudices are transmitted and bolstered by parents and families and a good number of unfortunate people go through life not examining the outlandish, leave alone that they sound like their grandmothers. I grew up at a time when PIA chose air-hostesses based on height, weight and good looks. And since Pakistani actresses were frankly obese, my glamour ideal was a PIA air-hostess. The family was looking for a match for my uncle and someone suggested a pretty girl. My grandfather’s words hiss in my ears till today “absolutely not, she is an air-hostess!” And out went my nurtured dream of flying the skies.
I knew intuitively then and know definitely now that PIA air-hostesses endure sexual harassment because of my grandfather’s type of mindset and not for other salacious reasons. But I examined the bias that was fed me with chapatis every night. Many swallow it whole.
With welled-up tears a divorced friend asked me why it was that Pakistani men, most of them married, hit on her all the time. I wondered if it was her sleeveless outfits cut low to reveal a well-endowed cleavage. My hypothesis was Greek to her.
Not only do we presume and profile, we churn out fatwas at whim. Who would have thought that one needed intense schooling in the Quran, the sunnah, the hadith and fiqh to be able to be a mufti. Our informality knows no bounds; we brand people casually at parties, to their face, behind their back, on national television or else a session of parliament.
I have this terrible luck of running into the moral police at parties where I happen to be wearing a sari. Somehow that puts them in the frothing-at-the-mouth mode, made worse by the fact that their husbands are engaged in animated conversation with me. About nothing other than…….religion! The situation is made worse by a deferential introduction by husband to wife and as her eyes bore deep into my bone marrow she demands to know whether I have read the Quran. Surprise! I have read Maudoodi’s translation, I say, thinking that that would be an olive branch, better than Muhammad Asad or Yusuf Ali. But she’s underwhelmed and as another disapproving once-over burns my sari and ignites my hair she condescends into whether I had heard of amar bil maroof wa nahin anal munkar (promoting the good and forbidding evil). Furious at this and continued inane volleys I told them that the tragedy of Muslims was that they insisted on converting Muslims to Islam when in the Quran God says that those that believed in Him, the Day of Judgment and did good deeds, their reward was secure with God and they need not grieve (2:62). Indignantly she refuted the verse. I was trying to persuade her to be kind and take it in perspective; she had slotted me as wholly ignorant of religion. And what was she wearing: hijab, jilbab (long coat) and her daughter had a niqab on for good measure.
At this and another event I was told quite seriously that we must practice what we learn from Islam. I immediately felt a heathen in a sari. For a religion that means peace and promotes justice, these were angry, vicious people. A veiled fatwa was issued right then and there and I know behind my back if words could kill you wouldn’t be reading this.
Crowds are roused to riot on national television by pseudo-scholars like Amir Liaquat Husain and fanatics murder Ahmedis in grisly madness. Rana Sanaullah slanders Babar Awan in a parliamentary session for bribing judges for the clients he represents and goes on to call him “wajibul qatl” (one that deserves to be killed)
The intelligentsia makes up less than 2% of the population but holds Pakistan’s destiny in its hands. Blinded by bias, shuttered by ignorance and endangered by whimsical fatwas we catalyse Pakistan’s abysmal descent.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and free-lance columnist. mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Muslim-Americans fume at being profiled and singled out for scrutiny at airports but happily join the melee of labeling people based on appearances. A hijabi is purity incarnate and only the morally weak wear shorts don’t you know?
Prejudices are transmitted and bolstered by parents and families and a good number of unfortunate people go through life not examining the outlandish, leave alone that they sound like their grandmothers. I grew up at a time when PIA chose air-hostesses based on height, weight and good looks. And since Pakistani actresses were frankly obese, my glamour ideal was a PIA air-hostess. The family was looking for a match for my uncle and someone suggested a pretty girl. My grandfather’s words hiss in my ears till today “absolutely not, she is an air-hostess!” And out went my nurtured dream of flying the skies.
I knew intuitively then and know definitely now that PIA air-hostesses endure sexual harassment because of my grandfather’s type of mindset and not for other salacious reasons. But I examined the bias that was fed me with chapatis every night. Many swallow it whole.
With welled-up tears a divorced friend asked me why it was that Pakistani men, most of them married, hit on her all the time. I wondered if it was her sleeveless outfits cut low to reveal a well-endowed cleavage. My hypothesis was Greek to her.
Not only do we presume and profile, we churn out fatwas at whim. Who would have thought that one needed intense schooling in the Quran, the sunnah, the hadith and fiqh to be able to be a mufti. Our informality knows no bounds; we brand people casually at parties, to their face, behind their back, on national television or else a session of parliament.
I have this terrible luck of running into the moral police at parties where I happen to be wearing a sari. Somehow that puts them in the frothing-at-the-mouth mode, made worse by the fact that their husbands are engaged in animated conversation with me. About nothing other than…….religion! The situation is made worse by a deferential introduction by husband to wife and as her eyes bore deep into my bone marrow she demands to know whether I have read the Quran. Surprise! I have read Maudoodi’s translation, I say, thinking that that would be an olive branch, better than Muhammad Asad or Yusuf Ali. But she’s underwhelmed and as another disapproving once-over burns my sari and ignites my hair she condescends into whether I had heard of amar bil maroof wa nahin anal munkar (promoting the good and forbidding evil). Furious at this and continued inane volleys I told them that the tragedy of Muslims was that they insisted on converting Muslims to Islam when in the Quran God says that those that believed in Him, the Day of Judgment and did good deeds, their reward was secure with God and they need not grieve (2:62). Indignantly she refuted the verse. I was trying to persuade her to be kind and take it in perspective; she had slotted me as wholly ignorant of religion. And what was she wearing: hijab, jilbab (long coat) and her daughter had a niqab on for good measure.
At this and another event I was told quite seriously that we must practice what we learn from Islam. I immediately felt a heathen in a sari. For a religion that means peace and promotes justice, these were angry, vicious people. A veiled fatwa was issued right then and there and I know behind my back if words could kill you wouldn’t be reading this.
Crowds are roused to riot on national television by pseudo-scholars like Amir Liaquat Husain and fanatics murder Ahmedis in grisly madness. Rana Sanaullah slanders Babar Awan in a parliamentary session for bribing judges for the clients he represents and goes on to call him “wajibul qatl” (one that deserves to be killed)
The intelligentsia makes up less than 2% of the population but holds Pakistan’s destiny in its hands. Blinded by bias, shuttered by ignorance and endangered by whimsical fatwas we catalyse Pakistan’s abysmal descent.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and free-lance columnist. mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Survival of the predators
The rapidly degenerating situation in Pakistan forces the mind to re-explore the reasons for its creation. While a tome could be written on opposing arguments there, Pakistan proves the Malthusian and Darwinian theories quite simply.
In the 1800s Rev. Thomas Malthus postulated that population growth eventually gets checked by famine and disease. Well before Pakistan eagerly joined the war on terror its health care was pathetic and it had no viable population control programs in place. Time was that Bangladesh’s population growth was the highest in the subcontinent but Pakistan holds that dubious distinction now. With that massive growth in population, the already poor infrastructure gave way further and what may have been enough to go around previously is grossly insufficient now. Interminable hours of load shedding and the shutting down of businesses lead to further economic hardship and skyrocketing infectious diseases in a land that was a-fester to start with.
It would not be cavalier to extrapolate that the multitude of cases of gastroenteritis and dehydration that may have survived in the past with broken resources will die with the absence of electricity, transportation and money.
Also in the 1800s Philosopher Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest” from the phrase “natural selection” used by Charles Darwin when he wrote “On the Origin Of Species”. He gave it an economic connotation, different from the biologic one that Darwin wrote about.
Genetic mutations through the ages and mechanisms to survive are concepts that apply at a jungle and thereafter very basic human level. But to see that current day Pakistan embodies the concept of survival of the predators is heartbreaking.
Somewhere almost as though a large brush just painted over Pakistan, the ambience changed. It is not just each man for himself; it is now a seething, violent mindset that does not just want to ensure its own security, it knows only to do so by preying on others.
With general economic hardship and severe personal insecurity a generation of Pakistanis is growing up under the national diagnosis of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Families don’t know if loved ones will return from work or school, every family has one or more graphic tales of kidnapping and armed robbery to tell all while the sun is merciless and the night suffocates, as load shedding seems the only constant.
Perhaps the cause is severe financial hardship, maybe it is radicalization, it’s possible that it is Pakistani corruption at its worst, but there is now an element of callous violence in one incident after another. Unarmed Chechens in Kharotabad were pumped with bullets by the Pakistan Rangers and Frontier Constabulary in mind-boggling savagery. I cried at the video footage of the young man riddled with Rangers bullets and then left to bleed to death in Karachi.
From the urban to the rural the story is the same. In the remote village of Neelor Bala of the Haripur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa middle aged Shahnaz bibi was stripped and paraded in the village for her son’s alleged affair with a neighbor’s wife. All by a jirga’s ruling. For days thereafter she lived, shamed, in the jungle, and though she is back she knows she shall forever be ostracized.
And in a veiled but worse murder of the millions by Pakistan’s super-elite is the padding of Swiss bank accounts, zero taxes to Pakistan, pandering for power and controlling the destiny of 185 million whose futures they have plundered. Is it me or has the political jockeying between Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif taken on a decidedly savage tone?
Saleem Shahzad and scores of other journalists paid with their lives for exposing the terrifying truth that perhaps our own in the armed forces have turned on Pakistan. The savagery that reigns in Pakistan today, despite the struggle for the supremacy of the law in the return of the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, cannot be expected to deal with the origin of the issue and the placement of processes. Like a wildly charging lion it is devouring all that come in its way.
The treatment of a disease or the solution of an issue is only possible if there is first acceptance that it exists. Recounting our national savagery is not being a prophet of doom; it is the first step toward working toward a solution in a situation that has gone awfully wrong. Not understanding and accepting our issues is much like:
‘falsafi ko behes key andar khuda milta nahin
doar ko suljha raha par sira milta nahin’ (the philosopher does not find God in debate, fruitlessly he tries to untangle a knotted string but can’t find its end).
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
In the 1800s Rev. Thomas Malthus postulated that population growth eventually gets checked by famine and disease. Well before Pakistan eagerly joined the war on terror its health care was pathetic and it had no viable population control programs in place. Time was that Bangladesh’s population growth was the highest in the subcontinent but Pakistan holds that dubious distinction now. With that massive growth in population, the already poor infrastructure gave way further and what may have been enough to go around previously is grossly insufficient now. Interminable hours of load shedding and the shutting down of businesses lead to further economic hardship and skyrocketing infectious diseases in a land that was a-fester to start with.
It would not be cavalier to extrapolate that the multitude of cases of gastroenteritis and dehydration that may have survived in the past with broken resources will die with the absence of electricity, transportation and money.
Also in the 1800s Philosopher Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest” from the phrase “natural selection” used by Charles Darwin when he wrote “On the Origin Of Species”. He gave it an economic connotation, different from the biologic one that Darwin wrote about.
Genetic mutations through the ages and mechanisms to survive are concepts that apply at a jungle and thereafter very basic human level. But to see that current day Pakistan embodies the concept of survival of the predators is heartbreaking.
Somewhere almost as though a large brush just painted over Pakistan, the ambience changed. It is not just each man for himself; it is now a seething, violent mindset that does not just want to ensure its own security, it knows only to do so by preying on others.
With general economic hardship and severe personal insecurity a generation of Pakistanis is growing up under the national diagnosis of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Families don’t know if loved ones will return from work or school, every family has one or more graphic tales of kidnapping and armed robbery to tell all while the sun is merciless and the night suffocates, as load shedding seems the only constant.
Perhaps the cause is severe financial hardship, maybe it is radicalization, it’s possible that it is Pakistani corruption at its worst, but there is now an element of callous violence in one incident after another. Unarmed Chechens in Kharotabad were pumped with bullets by the Pakistan Rangers and Frontier Constabulary in mind-boggling savagery. I cried at the video footage of the young man riddled with Rangers bullets and then left to bleed to death in Karachi.
From the urban to the rural the story is the same. In the remote village of Neelor Bala of the Haripur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa middle aged Shahnaz bibi was stripped and paraded in the village for her son’s alleged affair with a neighbor’s wife. All by a jirga’s ruling. For days thereafter she lived, shamed, in the jungle, and though she is back she knows she shall forever be ostracized.
And in a veiled but worse murder of the millions by Pakistan’s super-elite is the padding of Swiss bank accounts, zero taxes to Pakistan, pandering for power and controlling the destiny of 185 million whose futures they have plundered. Is it me or has the political jockeying between Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif taken on a decidedly savage tone?
Saleem Shahzad and scores of other journalists paid with their lives for exposing the terrifying truth that perhaps our own in the armed forces have turned on Pakistan. The savagery that reigns in Pakistan today, despite the struggle for the supremacy of the law in the return of the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, cannot be expected to deal with the origin of the issue and the placement of processes. Like a wildly charging lion it is devouring all that come in its way.
The treatment of a disease or the solution of an issue is only possible if there is first acceptance that it exists. Recounting our national savagery is not being a prophet of doom; it is the first step toward working toward a solution in a situation that has gone awfully wrong. Not understanding and accepting our issues is much like:
‘falsafi ko behes key andar khuda milta nahin
doar ko suljha raha par sira milta nahin’ (the philosopher does not find God in debate, fruitlessly he tries to untangle a knotted string but can’t find its end).
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday, June 3, 2011
Killing criticism
For the last few years the media has been the only effective opposition in Pakistan. The individuals that sit on the opposition benches in Parliament are corrupted and carry convoluted agendas raising their voices to wrest power rather than advance the democratic process.
The torture and death of the Asia Times Bureau Chief Syed Saleem Shahzad has cast what may be a mortal blow to the cachexia that is now Pakistan. Mainly for the murmurings that the ISI may be involved and an expose of the navy’s radicalisation. An unprecedented press release has been issued by the ISI which even threatens legal action against the media circus implicating it, but there is much that is troubling here and too much that stubbornly sticks.
Shahzad was an intrepid journalist and had written a searing first-part to a tell-all article and a book “Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban; beyond bin Laden and 9/11”. In October 2010 he wrote in Asia Times Online that Pakistan had freed an Afghan Taliban commander. According to an email sent to Human Rights Watch, Shahzad was summoned to an ISI office and told to retract the story or release his sources. When he refused a veiled threat emerged: the ISI had arrested a terrorist who carried a hit-list; the ISI would let him know whether or not his name was on it.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are certainly a bunch of gun-toting wild-eyed fanatics and zero ethics are expected from them. And if everything pointed perfectly in their direction it would rest controversy and the broken Pakistani system could somehow hobble along. But circumstantial evidence implicates the state, whose love for us is romanticized to be that of a mother. In his May 27th article “Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan airstrike” Shahzad writes about the PNS Mehran attack. Many parts of the article reveal his incredible courage for he seems to court the killers: “Asia Times Online contacts confirm that the attackers were from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the operational arm of al-Qaeda. Three attacks on navy buses in which at least nine people were killed last month were warning shots for navy officials to accept al-Qaeda's demands over the detained suspects.”
The article goes on to more whiplash: “The May 2 killing in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden spurred al-Qaeda groups into developing a consensus for the attack in Karachi, in part as revenge for the death of their leader and also to deal a blow to Pakistan's surveillance capacity against the Indian navy. The deeper underlying motive, though, was a reaction to massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates within the navy. Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi, the country's largest city and key port.”
More explosively a senior navy official spoke to Shahzad on condition of anonymity: “It was clear the militants were receiving good inside information as they always knew where the suspects were being detained, indicating sizeable al-Qaeda infiltration within the navy's ranks….Everybody present agreed, and it was decided to open a line of communication with al-Qaeda…..The detainees were allowed to speak to their families and were well treated, but officials were desperate to interrogate them fully to get an idea of the strength of al-Qaeda's penetration. The militants were told that once interrogation was completed, the men would be discharged from the service and freed. Al-Qaeda rejected these terms and expressed its displeasure with the attacks on the navy buses in April.
These incidents pointed to more than the one al-Qaeda cell intelligence had tracked in the navy……insiders at PNS Mehran provided maps, pictures of different exit and entry routes taken in daylight and at night, the location of hangers and details of likely reaction from external security forces. As a result, the militants were able to enter the heavily guarded facility where one group targeted the aircraft, a second group took on the first strike force and a third finally escaped with the others providing covering fire. Those who stayed behind were killed.”
Shahzad paid with his life for the drastic revelation that we don’t just have Taliban sympathizers in the armed forces, our navy appears to be laced with Al-Qaeda itself.
Pakistan ranks 151 out of 178 countries in the press freedom index and 15 journalists have been killed since early 2010.
In the most dangerous place in the world the first reflex is to hibernate in face of all the threats that journalists, bloggers and writers get. Regardless of city/state of residence the Internet is able to remotely generate chills down many spines. And the treasure trove of threats and vulgarity that come via the cyber-monster can recreate those goose-bumps for a bit.
It takes a vile minority to infiltrate and destroy Pakistan. But we need a resounding chorus of protest that does not just condemn this barbarity but outs the extremists from every walk of life. Many have been martyred for the motherland, dying fearlessly in the way of the truth: Governor Salman Taseer, Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, journalist Wali Khan Babar’s names come to mind and almost invariably the murderers have not been brought to justice.
Saleem Shahzad’s criticism got him killed. Yet could his murderers kill millions of Pakistanis that protest extremism? The stakes just keep getting higher. There must be protest and action from every street corner in Pakistan against extremism. For the next victim is not a young and healthy Saleem Shahzad. It’s another young though frail and almost comatose Pakistan.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
The torture and death of the Asia Times Bureau Chief Syed Saleem Shahzad has cast what may be a mortal blow to the cachexia that is now Pakistan. Mainly for the murmurings that the ISI may be involved and an expose of the navy’s radicalisation. An unprecedented press release has been issued by the ISI which even threatens legal action against the media circus implicating it, but there is much that is troubling here and too much that stubbornly sticks.
Shahzad was an intrepid journalist and had written a searing first-part to a tell-all article and a book “Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban; beyond bin Laden and 9/11”. In October 2010 he wrote in Asia Times Online that Pakistan had freed an Afghan Taliban commander. According to an email sent to Human Rights Watch, Shahzad was summoned to an ISI office and told to retract the story or release his sources. When he refused a veiled threat emerged: the ISI had arrested a terrorist who carried a hit-list; the ISI would let him know whether or not his name was on it.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are certainly a bunch of gun-toting wild-eyed fanatics and zero ethics are expected from them. And if everything pointed perfectly in their direction it would rest controversy and the broken Pakistani system could somehow hobble along. But circumstantial evidence implicates the state, whose love for us is romanticized to be that of a mother. In his May 27th article “Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan airstrike” Shahzad writes about the PNS Mehran attack. Many parts of the article reveal his incredible courage for he seems to court the killers: “Asia Times Online contacts confirm that the attackers were from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the operational arm of al-Qaeda. Three attacks on navy buses in which at least nine people were killed last month were warning shots for navy officials to accept al-Qaeda's demands over the detained suspects.”
The article goes on to more whiplash: “The May 2 killing in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden spurred al-Qaeda groups into developing a consensus for the attack in Karachi, in part as revenge for the death of their leader and also to deal a blow to Pakistan's surveillance capacity against the Indian navy. The deeper underlying motive, though, was a reaction to massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates within the navy. Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi, the country's largest city and key port.”
More explosively a senior navy official spoke to Shahzad on condition of anonymity: “It was clear the militants were receiving good inside information as they always knew where the suspects were being detained, indicating sizeable al-Qaeda infiltration within the navy's ranks….Everybody present agreed, and it was decided to open a line of communication with al-Qaeda…..The detainees were allowed to speak to their families and were well treated, but officials were desperate to interrogate them fully to get an idea of the strength of al-Qaeda's penetration. The militants were told that once interrogation was completed, the men would be discharged from the service and freed. Al-Qaeda rejected these terms and expressed its displeasure with the attacks on the navy buses in April.
These incidents pointed to more than the one al-Qaeda cell intelligence had tracked in the navy……insiders at PNS Mehran provided maps, pictures of different exit and entry routes taken in daylight and at night, the location of hangers and details of likely reaction from external security forces. As a result, the militants were able to enter the heavily guarded facility where one group targeted the aircraft, a second group took on the first strike force and a third finally escaped with the others providing covering fire. Those who stayed behind were killed.”
Shahzad paid with his life for the drastic revelation that we don’t just have Taliban sympathizers in the armed forces, our navy appears to be laced with Al-Qaeda itself.
Pakistan ranks 151 out of 178 countries in the press freedom index and 15 journalists have been killed since early 2010.
In the most dangerous place in the world the first reflex is to hibernate in face of all the threats that journalists, bloggers and writers get. Regardless of city/state of residence the Internet is able to remotely generate chills down many spines. And the treasure trove of threats and vulgarity that come via the cyber-monster can recreate those goose-bumps for a bit.
It takes a vile minority to infiltrate and destroy Pakistan. But we need a resounding chorus of protest that does not just condemn this barbarity but outs the extremists from every walk of life. Many have been martyred for the motherland, dying fearlessly in the way of the truth: Governor Salman Taseer, Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, journalist Wali Khan Babar’s names come to mind and almost invariably the murderers have not been brought to justice.
Saleem Shahzad’s criticism got him killed. Yet could his murderers kill millions of Pakistanis that protest extremism? The stakes just keep getting higher. There must be protest and action from every street corner in Pakistan against extremism. For the next victim is not a young and healthy Saleem Shahzad. It’s another young though frail and almost comatose Pakistan.
Mahjabeen Islam is an addictionist, family physician and columnist. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
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