The New International Airport in Delhi is very well-planned, the Metro underground train, although overcrowded, is cheap, clean and still expanding, the new roads are four lanes-wide and the flyovers are as good as any in the world, yet the road traffic is still as bad as ever and poverty can still be seen and felt on the Indian roadside. People on the streets are still talking about the IPL, the Commonwealth Games and the telecom financial scandals. Meanwhile, The Sunday Times, on November 28, 2010, carried this headline: ‘Delhi Court calls for FIR against Roy, Geelani’. For those who are not familiar with these two names, let one assure them that Roy and Geelani are not a mixed doubles pair for any tennis tournament but only Ms Arundhati Roy, the renowned writer and human rights activist, and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a Hurriyet leader of Kashmir. The Delhi Metropolitan Court magistrate ordered that a prima facie case for the sedition offence be made out. The magistrate said, “I have come to the conclusion that the complaint dated 28/10/10, lodged with the police, clearly discloses commission of cognisable offences. But the police have failed to register an FIR even though it is duty bound to register an FIR.” Roy and Geelani had participated along with the pro-Maoist leader Vara Rao in a seminar on Azadi where Roy said that Kashmir “has never been an integral part of India”.
Ms Roy, bold and outspoken as she always is, was reported by the aforesaid newspaper to have retorted to the magistrate’s decision by saying, “Perhaps, they should posthumously file a charge against Jawaharlal Nehru too,” and went on to quote 14 instances of the pledges made by the Nehru and subsequent governments from 1947 to 1967, acknowledging that Kashmir’s accession was subject to ratification by its people. The Sunday Times in particular quoted the speech of Pundit sahib made in 1952: “Kashmir is very close to our minds and hearts and if, by some decree or adverse fortune, ceases to be a part of India, it will be a wrench and a pain and torment for us. If, however, the people of Kashmir do not wish to remain with us, let them go by all means. We will not keep them against their will, however painful it may be to us. I want to stress that it is only the people of Kashmir who can decide the future of Kashmir.”
On November 30, 2010, the Times of India reported that the FIR had finally been lodged. Now this has happened despite the fact that the union home minister was not really interested in taking notice of the matter and had stated at the time of filing of the complaint in October 2010 that, “at times, taking no action is also an action”. Only time will tell what happens once the hearings start and a decision is arrived at. But it is most certainly an example of judicial independence that needs to be taken notice of by the legislators and politicians in Pakistan. The union minister’s disinterest in pursuing the matter or even taking notice of the complaint has not turned into media hype or political point scoring.
The objective of writing about this particular incident in detail is three-fold. One, to tell our very own democrats that there is a world beyond having a verbal fist fight on every occasion even if someone has allegedly made seditious statements. Two, the politicians must permit the judiciary to be seen to function as totally independent of the executive or legislature. The courts must pursue, howsoever they deem fit, the law and procedure and the police must remain answerable to the courts, independent of what the government may or may not desire. Three, the people at large, and that includes every politician regardless of his or her stature, must also follow the legal course for registering the complaint without taking the law into their own hands. This happens in every politically aware and mature society that sincerely believes in democratic norms and has shed the shackles of feudalistic behaviour totally.
Of course, there may have been other political considerations that the union minister took into account when making the statement of no action referred to above. Perhaps he was of the opinion that the national interests of India may not be served if alleged seditious statements were taken notice of. But the important thing to recognise here is that national interest has to be the supreme driving force at all times for politicians. No purpose may be served by a knee-jerk reaction and turning every differing viewpoint into an issue affecting the interests of the country. Yet an individual, who appears aggrieved, is free to take up the matter in accordance with legal procedure. This is mature democratic thinking and behaviour.
A number of us in Pakistan will, of course, offer the 31-year hiccupped road of democracy as a reason for lack of similar mature behaviour. We shall be told that we are still learning the ropes of democracy and we need more time to understand the significance of the same. Unfortunately, this argument has been doing the rounds for far too long. We have to start believing in national interest first and last. We have to create the right ambience for national interest to prevail in our thoughts, words and actions. This can only be done by those who rule the country and who are seen to be espousing its cause at the highest level within and outside. Thirty-one years is a very long time in anyone’s life, be it an individual or a nation. It certainly is sufficient time for the nationalistic spirit, so often exhibited in the arena of sports by the people at large if not the players in the game, to take root and be the only driving force. Perhaps the players in the political arena should now start showing this maturity.
The writer is a fellow and former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan. He also served as a member of the Federal Ad Hoc Public Accounts Committee
COMMENT: National interest —Mujahid Eshai - Thursday, December 02, 2010
COMMENT: Blasphemy laws: what does the Quran say? —Dr Mohammad Taqi - Thursday, December 02, 2010
“Haq jalwagar ze tarz-e-bayan-e-Mohammad [PBUH] hast,
Aaray kalam-e-Haq ba zuba-e-Mohammad [PBUH] hast,
Ghalib sana-e-Khwaja ba Yazdan guzashtaim,
K’aan zaat-e-Paak martaba-daan-e-Mohammad [PBUH] hast” — Ghalib.
“The Truth expresses its grace through Mohammad’s [PBUH] expression,
Indeed the Truth speaks through Mohammad’s [PBUH] word,
Ghalib, therefore, I leave Mohammad’s [PBUH] praise to God,
Almighty alone can understand the exalted status of Mohammad [PBUH].”
While the Lahore High Court (LHC) is restraining the president from pardoning Aasia Bibi in a blasphemy case and a federal minister has vowed to not allow any change in the blasphemy laws, why do I quote Ghalib’s praise for the Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)? For starters, Ghalib remains one of the foremost secularists that the Indian subcontinent has ever produced and this na’at (hymn) — perhaps amongst the finest written in any language — goes to show that it is perfectly alright for the secularists to occasionally talk about matters of faith, including their own faith. In fact, it is imperative to do so when a fog of confusion is deliberately created around faith by bigots of all shades.
Moreover, the Holy Quran and Sunnah, ostensibly, form the premise of Article 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and, without revisiting what they actually say about blasphemy, the only challenge that might be successful against this law would be to have its procedural aspects modified. The Quran and Sunnah indeed are the two material sources of the shariah law, but were eventually supplemented by a corpus of interpretation largely agreed upon by a majority of Muslim scholars (ijma) and deductive analogy (qiyas) to form the basis of Islamic jurisprudence.
In the first quoted verse, Ghalib is referring to the Holy Quran, which states: “That this (Quran) is indeed the speech of an illustrious messenger” (69:40). Ghalib’s last verse, of course, is the crux of a Sufi’s faith and, once again, alludes to the passages in the Quran where the Almighty showers praise on Mohammad (PBUH). I would point to one such verse: “Verily! We have seen the turning of your (Mohammad’s) face towards the heaven. Surely, We shall turn you to a Qiblah (prayer direction) that shall please you, so turn your face in the direction of Al-Masjid-al-Haram” (2:144). This is a unique verse; while the Quran and other holy books speak to what humans, including the prophets, must do to earn the pleasure (raza) of the Almighty, here Allah is doing something purely to earn the pleasure or raza of His Prophet (PBUH).
So is it possible then, that the Almighty, who has thus exalted the status of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), left us without any guidance on how to deal with speech or actions that attempt to disparage him? Could the Quran be silent on a matter of such grave importance? Have we been left to rely on the ijma and qiyas of the clerics who came some two centuries after the Prophet (PBUH)? Indeed not, but that is something that the ones after a poor woman’s scalp would have us believe. Let us consider Surah Al-Ahzab, verse 57:
“Lo! those who malign Allah and His messenger, Allah hath cursed them in the world and the Hereafter, and hath prepared for them the doom of the disdained.”
The Quran also mentions the most important case of blasphemy ever committed against Mohammad (PBUH). The Quran says in Surah Al-Massad:
“The power of Abu Lahab will perish, and he will perish. His wealth and gains will not exempt him. He will be plunged in flaming fire. And his wife, the wood-carrier, will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre.”
The common theme between the verses noted above is that, while the highest condemnation has been heaped on anyone reviling or attempting to revile the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and eternal damnation promised for the perpetrator, neither a direct order (amr) has been given to impart a punishment nor a set punishment prescribed — not even for Abu Lahab!
Let us also consider the Arabic terms used to describe blasphemy against God and the Prophet (PBUH). The Arabic words sabba (abuse, insult) and shatm (vilification) denote blasphemy and have been adopted in Persian and Urdu as well. It must be stated that the word shatm does not occur in the Quran at all while a derivative of sabba is used only in one verse and that too to proscribe the Muslims from hurling sabba on other people’s gods and deities (Chapter 6:108).
So where then are punishments like death or chopping limbs for blasphemy coming from? Usually, anecdotal reports are cited from the Hadith where the Prophet (PBUH) allegedly condoned the death or punishing of a blasphemer. However, for each such incident — usually reported on weak authority — there are two others where the Prophet (PBUH) tolerated and indeed pardoned insults against him. Not a single incident can be cited from the Sirah traditions where charges of blasphemy were filed, a trial held and the punishment meted out. Almost all proponents of severe or capital punishment for blasphemy, therefore, quote verse 33 of Surah Al-Maidah, in support of their argument:
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter.”
It is a travesty of justice that a verse dealing with war, sedition and rebellion is invoked to punish what may not even qualify as theocratic or religious dissent. In fact, Article 295 is not just a travesty of justice, it is an iftira (slander) against the Almighty and Prophet (PBUH) as it attributes to them what they never mandated. The presidential pardon is most commendable in the current case and procedural changes to the blasphemy laws would be welcome.
However, Article 295 is repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah and, as long as it remains on the books, it will be a direct negation of the verse “Wama arsalnaka illa Rehmatan-lil-alameen” (We sent thee not, but as a Mercy for all creatures — 21:107). By not prescribing harsh penalties, the Almighty prevented this exalted status of Mohammad (PBUH) from being undermined; Ghalib was spot-on.
The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com
New challenges for Pakistan - Tariq Fatemi - December 2, 2010
WE appear to be witnessing a period of unusual activity all around, with major powers engaged in diplomatic initiatives to reinforce old alliances, while crafting new ones. Islamabad, however, seems strangely unconcerned.
The most dramatic event in this context was President Obama`s visit to India which confirmed a mutual resolve to invest in a truly strategic relationship. Then there was the Nato summit in Lisbon where the alliance declared its intention to remain engaged in Afghan operations until 2014.
More importantly, Russian President Medvedev not only attended the summit he also offered cooperation in the alliance`s Afghan operations, including greater transit facilities for Nato equipment going to Afghanistan.
Earlier, the US midterm elections handed over control of the House to the Republicans, which can only mean greater pressure for Pakistan. The renewed skirmishes in the Korean Peninsula are also likely to add to the existing tension between China and the US. The icing on the cake came with WikiLeaks` disclosures portraying Pakistan in an unfavourable light, while highlighting the `trust deficit` between Washington and Islamabad.
These events demand urgent debate at home and consultation with friends abroad.
Obama`s visit to India confirmed the earlier impression that India-US relations should not be seen merely in terms of the dollar value of their agreements, nor in the context of the so-called `entities list`. Nor should they be perceived as confined to President Obama`s endorsement of India`s claim to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Most importantly, the visit cemented their mutual desire to so dovetail their cooperation as to mutually reinforce their common objectives.
But while Obama was reassuring his hosts that India had “already emerged” as a major power, neither country could have been unaware of the elephant (or was it the dragon?) hovering over the talks. It was, of course China, though there is a touch of irony in this, for Obama had begun his presidency determined to inject personal warmth into US-China relations.
Not too long ago, their cooperation led to murmurs of disquiet that they were establishing a G2 condominium to dominate the global economic agenda. The Beijing statement issued after Obama`s visit last year acknowledging China`s role in ensuring stability in the region was especially galling to India.
All that now appears in the distant past. What explains this? For one, the reaction to Obama`s initiative did not go down well with some of America`s traditional friends in the Pacific. The US too began to suspect that China was becoming increasingly oblivious to its interests.
The Chinese, on the other hand, accuse the American defence and intelligence agencies of having played a role in reversing Obama`s policy, while encouraging China`s neighbours to adopt a more belligerent attitude towards Beijing. Whatever the merits of their recriminations, there has been a perceptible rise in friction between China and its neighbours over several issues including trade, economy, security and territorial disputes.
The Pentagon`s report that China`s military strategists were increasing their investment in nuclear weapons and other sophisticated weapons systems have added to concern in the neighbourhood. This has brought Southeast Asian nations closer to the US, encouraging them to spend huge sums of money on building their military forces.
While Chinese officials have refrained from making inflammatory comments, their scholars have not shied away from accusing the US of trying to “nurture a coalition against China”, and “engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement and challenging China`s core interests”.
US officials respond that they are reacting to what they see as a surge of China`s triumphalism, though others admit that domestic political factors have contributed to the administration`s tougher posture, particularly with US legislators demonising China as a threat to American jobs.
David Shambaugh, a well-known China expert, reflected this sentiment when he warned that since China was proving to be “an increasingly narrow minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist and powerful country”, the administration should signal to Beijing that “the US has other closer, deeper friends in the region”.
There has also been a growing tendency on the part of the US, Australia, Japan, South Korea and India to encourage the perception that China`s economic power has made its diplomacy more assertive.
This does not mean that India will henceforth toe the US line on all issues. It is too big and too proud to ignore its own interests. Nevertheless, there is a growing similarity of views between the two and a remarkable convergence of interests that is going to have a profound influence on the region.
If this is aimed at `containing` China, should the need arise at some point, then such a policy can only usher in discord in the region. Moreover, if the US thinks that it can build `strategic` ties with India while ignoring Pakistan`s core interests, it is mistaken.
But what is even more fascinating is that after years of friction between Russia and the US, Moscow has begun responding positively to Obama`s desire to `reset` relations. President Medvedev`s presence at the Lisbon summit was not only a departure from past practice, it indicated a shift in the way Moscow wishes to conduct relations with its former adversary.
Admittedly, Obama has gone out of his way to accommodate the Russians, especially on the issue of missile placement in East Europe that was vociferously opposed by them. The two countries have also signed the new START treaty and an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation, while advancing the process of Russia`s accession to the World Trade Organisation.
The result is evident from Russia`s support for much firmer sanctions against Iran, as well as willingness to work with the US on Afghanistan. n
These are all important developments that are likely to pose major challenges for Pakistan which, as evident from the WikiLeaks disclosures, has lost the trust of some of its traditional allies. This calls for building a national consensus at home on critical aspects of our foreign policy and the pursuit of our core interests with skill, resolve and imagination.
The writer is a former ambassador.
VIEW: Lisbon Conference and regional peace in Asia —Amjad Ayub Mirza - Wednesday, December 01, 2010
With the recent claim made by General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Afghanistan that “special forces are taking out up to six Taliban targets a day”, the future of the Afghan war might seem to bring favourable results for the 47 nation-strong war coalition whose military personnel are wrestling to defeat the insurgents in an attempt to help the neocons install a fundamentalist (Friedmanic) market economy with its full ferocity.
In an exclusive interview given to the defence editor of The Times, a London-based daily, Deborah Haynes, who happens to be one of the few privileged corporate journalists who have access to the fortified headquarters of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, General Petraeus sounded more optimistic than one would normally expect of an army chief embattled for nine years whose enemy remains elusive, fecund and seemingly at one with the terrain.
This has left the general with only one option, namely, ‘targeted killing’ of the insurgents with the help of a wider net of local informers. The general, strangely but fancifully, refers to this as the ‘jackpot’ scored daily by his special forces. To draw a parallel between killing a human being and winning a jackpot at a fruit machine is typical of a colonial mentality where native population is considered belonging to a lesser sub-species than the invader.
As the desire of the western democracies to bring the fifth Afghan war to its conclusion intensifies, they tend to make military errors that might cost them close allies in the so-called ‘war on terror’. One such blunder came during the first week of October when, while chasing high-value targets, NATO entered the Pakistani territory and killed several Pakistan Army soldiers in what has been called an incident of ‘friendly fire’.
In Britain, the British National Party (BNP), the far right party, whose chairman Nicholas Griffin holds a European parliamentary seat, has launched a nationwide campaign demanding the immediate withdrawal of the British troops from a war he calls “unwinnable”. Stalls have mushroomed all over the country, even in remote towns such as Eastbourne on the south coast of England, where people queue to sign a petition to demand bringing of their ‘boys’ home.
The rise of the Right in Europe, especially the recent loss of the social democrats to the right-wing for a second time in Sweden, is being termed as a worrying sign for a West that is feeling the pain of the failure of the attempts to install neo-con capitalism through prosecuting wars from the banks of Tigris to the valleys of Bamiyan. Europe is faced with serious threats of renewed trade union and civil society resistance due to imminent heavy public spending cuts and so elites will have to pay more attention towards domestic unrest; accordingly, the war in Afghanistan will have to be brought to a ‘logical’ conclusion. The sooner the better. Hence the announcement at NATO’s Lisbon gathering by British Prime Minister David Cameron to end Britain’s combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 come what may!
Pakistan, whose own elites blithely have bartered its sovereignty for a slavish allegiance to NATO, is now faced with a dilemma of its own. If it pulls out as a war partner, the role it embraced as a front-line state, then the Indian lobby in that country will earn even greater influence since they are already involved in development projects on a large scale. On the other hand, if Pakistan, under the pretext of gaining strategic depth against India, decides to continues to play the role of front-line state against threats to the neo-con agenda in the region and in return for its allegiance desires to continue probing into Afghanistan for a pro-Pakistani Afghan government, then its dependence on the jihadist pawns in the war will increase. A lose-lose situation, then.
However, perhaps a more practical approach to this paradox would be to help Afghanistan build an army of able civil servants who could provide the much-needed civil administration personnel to run that country. It is in the interest of Pakistan that political unity in Kabul, comprising all ethnic and religious sections of Afghan society, is achieved at the earliest.
It would be a great, and probably the most valuable, achievement of the Zardari government to bring all concerned parties to the negotiating table to chalk out a peace plan, not only for Afghanistan but for the whole region. Of course, any such plan will have to be unconditionally inclusive. This, for Pakistan, means including ‘moderate’ sections of the warring Taliban, while for India it would mean to include the Kashmiri, for Iran, the Baloch and for Russia and China, the Central Asian nations and Muslim representatives from Xin Jiang. Only by big-thinking collective effort can the wild fires of discontent spreading across the region be extinguished. It is generally harder to wage the peace than to wage the war, but in the end, the rewards — for the people — are a thousand times greater.
The writer is a freelancer based in London. He can be reached on dr_amjad_mirza@hotmail.com
VIEW: Fever! —Dr Ali Madeeh Hashmi - Wednesday, December 01, 2010
“One finger cannot lift a pebble” — Native American saying.
It is fall in Lahore, a time when the air conditioners are turned off, mornings are chilly, evenings are pleasant and weddings are in full swing. It is also, apparently, a time of fever, dengue fever to be exact.
As is usually the case with public health issues in Lahore, the response of both Lahore’s citizens and its authorities is a strange mix of indifference and panic. Banners have sprouted up on most of Lahore’s main roads, ostensibly from the city district government, urging citizens not to panic and to seek treatment promptly. Private hospitals are advertising this or that ‘specialist’ in dengue fever at their clinics, never mind the fact that treatment for dengue (like the treatment for most viral illnesses) is basically rest, lots of water, liquids and paracetamol or other painkillers (but not aspirin or certain ‘non-steroidal’ drugs such as ibuprofen, which can worsen the risk of bleeding).
Lost in all this is the fact that, like many communicable (and entirely preventable) diseases, dengue fever is basically a public health problem. Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are acute febrile (fever causing) diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, which occur in the tropics, can be life-threatening and are caused by four closely related viruses. It was identified and named in 1779. It is also known as break-bone fever, since it can be extremely painful. Dengue is transmitted to humans by certain kinds of mosquitoes and the mosquitoes that spread dengue usually bite at dusk and dawn but may bite at any time during the day, especially indoors, in shady areas, or when the weather is cloudy.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 2.5 billion people — two fifths of the world’s population — are now at risk from dengue and that there may be 50 million cases of dengue infection worldwide every year. The disease is now endemic (meaning native to) in more than 100 countries. This year, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and the Philippines led the pack with the most cases.
So how is dengue fever a public health problem? While everyone is familiar with ‘health’, most people equate health with ‘my health’ or, at most, ‘our health’, by which they mean their family or the people they live with. Let us call this ‘individual health’. On the other hand, public health is “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts and informed choices of society, organisations — public and private — communities and individuals” (1920, CEA Winslow).
There are two distinct characteristics of public health:
It deals with preventive rather than curative aspects of health.
2. It deals with population-level, rather than individual-level health issues.
It should be obvious by now that anything that affects ‘communities and society’ is, by definition, outside the purview of any one individual, family or community. Thus the prevention and eradication of polio requires vaccination on a global scale since one patient can infect and re-infect dozens who can then spread it. The prevention and eradication of cholera or typhoid requires clean water and general sanitation to prevent the bacteria being shed by an infected person coming into contact with water or food that may be ingested by healthy people. It also requires controlling the spread of flies and other insects that can carry the germs from garbage to food. Since the primary agent of the spread of dengue fever is mosquitoes, it goes without saying that controlling their proliferation is the first step in controlling the illness.
In this case, one person, family or community, by spraying their locality with insecticides, cannot do the trick since the mosquitoes can easily migrate for a few days only to return later. Similarly, while informing oneself and one’s family of the need to avoid being outdoors uncovered at dawn or dusk (when mosquitoes are at their most active), not allowing stagnant pools of water to accumulate around one’s home or business etc is a good start, but without the active involvement and enforcement of the local government, not much can be accomplished.
Unfortunately, upon hearing this, our local leaders and politicians will invariably plead budgetary constraints to which there is a logical response. Treating dengue fever patients in public hospitals will be vastly more expensive and complicated than preventing the illness.
However, tertiary treatment, i.e. treatment of illnesses in their full blown phases has become the norm both in Pakistan and in the US. This is directly linked to the de-funding of those agencies tasked to ensure public health hand in hand with the rise of private, for-profit health clinics and hospitals that operate to maximise their owners and shareholders’ profits, not the health of the community.
While there is a place for private health, mainly as an add-on to basic, minimum public health services, for-profit health services can never replace public health for the simple reason that they are more expensive to deliver and cannot be accessed by a large proportion of the population. If poor people come into regular contact with those not so poor, disease transmission will occur since the dengue virus does not differentiate between victims based on their social class.
For all those who say we cannot ‘afford’ the basic services that exist in the West, the appropriate response is that as far as provision of clean water, basic sanitation and control of communicable diseases like dengue fever is concerned, these services are far more economical than hospital care. With a rising population, already having stressed energy, food and water resources and a war on our borders, it is high time we identified our true priorities and acted accordingly rather than eternally hoping for divine salvation.
The writer is a psychiatrist on staff at King Edward Medical University, Lahore. He can be reached at ahashmi39@gmail.com
WASHINGTON DIARY: Pakistan’s gurus of corruption: the US and India —Dr Manzur Ejaz - Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Oftentimes, when I am writing my weekly column about topics in Pakistan, I feel as if I am writing an obituary or a poem about a lost battle. After one has described the degenerated patterns of Pakistan’s ruling class as the root cause of the country’s intractable problems and disastrous situation, one looks for cures. Naturally, one looks at the region around Pakistan or the countries that are influencing the direction the country is taking, i.e. the US and other industrialised nations.
First, let us take the US, which is assumed to be the master of Pakistani political discourse. In following the master’s voice, the Pakistani elite are embodying the principles embodied by the US’s rich and powerful aristocratic class. Irrespective of the methods used - Pakistanis may be crude in their plundering - the ruling class of the superpower has increased its share of the national wealth from nine percent in the early 70s to 23 percent in 2010. The income gap between the rich and poor is unprecedented and has dwarfed the third world countries, which had notoriety in this field. Therefore, for the US, the Pakistani ruling elite is its faithful follower. If the purpose of the Republican victory in the mid-term election was to give tax cuts to the rich, why would they ask Pakistan’s top wealth holders to pay taxes?
Now let us take Pakistan’s next door neighbour, India, which claims to be an emerging world power. A world organisation recently reported that the Indian rich and powerful have siphoned off $ 1.5 trillion abroad, which is the highest amount in the world and double the amount of the total national foreign debt. This wealth, produced by the Indian people, was appropriated by the ruling elite and illegally transferred to banks outside the country. The Pakistani ruling class could not make it to even second position because the country is so small that it cannot compete with the Indian and Chinese ruling classes’ total plundering.
Just like the Pakistani ruling elite, the Indians have not missed any opportunity to use national crises - from Siachen to natural ones - for making money. State power has been used to transfer national wealth, just like in Pakistan, except that India has a much larger rentier class than Pakistan. Just look at the recent G2 scam or the Supreme Court’s declaration about the Allahabad High Court in which it said, “Something is rotten about the Allahabad High Court.” The Indian ruling class, unlike its counterparts in the entire world, are acting like Mughal emperors by constructing billion dollar houses: Mukesh Ambani has pioneered this trend. The emerging Indian super-rich have not even the traditional decency to remain discrete. On the contrary, they are keen to rub their wealth on the wounds of the world’s largest group of poor people, with greater numbers of poor in India than all of sub-Saharan Africa.
The US or India have not presented any good example of religious tolerance, peace and harmony. Racial and religious discrimination is a widespread phenomenon in the US and other European countries. India may not have publicised sectarian and religious violence like Pakistan, but more people may have died in Indian random violence breakouts. If one adds up the people killed on a few occasions - the Khalistan Movement, 10,000-17,000 Sikhs killed in Delhi, the Gujarat carnage, the killing of Christians, including 22 nuns, and the Mumbai riots - the total number may be much greater on a per capita basis.
India is also facing a much larger insurgency by Maoists than Pakistan’s Taliban. The immediate causes of both insurgencies may be very different but, ultimately, it is the corruption of the ruling classes that has given birth to such forces. While the Taliban are limited to the areas around the Pak-Afghan border, the Maoists are controlling areas in more than half a dozen states. The only significant difference is that the Maoists do not commit violent suicide attacks on their own or other countries’ citizens unlike the jihadi Taliban. But before the Soviet-Afghan war, the militants of Islamic countries from Palestine to Algeria used to fight for their national causes within their own borders. It was the US that created the concept of international jihad for the Afghan war theatre. Nonetheless, it has become Pakistan’s child - rather spoilt brat - for which the country is demonised by the world.
The fact of the matter is that the problem of corruption by the elite or terrorism is not uniquely a Pakistani phenomenon. The US is run by a plutocracy where the rich are enlarging their share of the pie at the expense of the poor. Trillion dollars corruption in the Iraq war and elsewhere also showed that the Bush administration has caught up with the developing countries in creating a rentier class. India is no different either, where the entire system is permeated by corruption and its anti-state armed struggle is much more prevalent than in Pakistan. There is no dearth of religious or caste hatred either. However, the difference is that the American or Indian ruling elite are sophisticated, subtle and much more practiced and skilful in manipulating the system.
Pakistan’s ruling elite is amateur, crude and shallow. Its deeds are easily detected and propagated. It has never allowed (thankfully) the hanging of a minority person accused of blasphemy but it has not mustered enough courage to remove these heinous laws from the books either. The Pakistani ruling elite’s use of the mullah, internally or externally, is unnecessary but their immaturity does not let them see it. Consequently, Pakistan provides enough public material for its international demonisation. Otherwise, none of the Pakistani problems is unique or specific to the majority religion or its citizens’ evil nature.
This is a period in which the rich are becoming richer at the expense of the poor. The entire world economic system is controlled by the corrupt and greedy elite. The reaction to rule-by-the-rich has created adversaries who are sometimes armed like the Taliban and Maoists. It will continue until some progressive movement starts threatening the new status quo on the international level.
The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com
Bring on the turkey - Irfan Husain - December 1, 2010
Last Friday, I helped my son cook a turkey in Karachi. As I was in Sri Lanka at the time, the guidance was by email, text messages and phone calls. But by the end of the evening, Shakir had a lovely, golden brown, 8-kilo turkey ready (and emailed me a photo to prove it). His wife Sheila, a very good cook, had no need for instructions in cooking her bird. So they had lots of turkey to serve their friends at their Thanksgiving party.
Frankly, I think the fowl is hugely overrated as its meat is quite bland. But a large, properly cooked turkey is very festive, and its arrival at the table causes a stir, even among those with a jaded palate. I use the traditional, slow-cooking method which requires a lot of time and attention, but at the end of the process, I have a very tender, moist bird. In particular, good gravy needs care and concentration. Having cooked more turkeys than I care to remember, I have got quite good at it.
This culinary preamble is not the opening of a column about cooking, but about Thanksgiving, and about holidays in general. Americans of all faiths mark the fourth Thursday of November with Thanksgiving, a day that commemorates the feast provided to the early colonists by Native Americans, and is modelled after European harvest festivals.
This is an entirely secular holiday, with no religious overtones. In fact, my (Muslim) daughter-in-law learned to cook a turkey from her (Muslim) mother while growing up in America. Given the nature of the holiday, I was a bit taken aback to read a denunciation of Thanksgiving on the New Trends website. A US-based webzine, this site reliably contains extremist views, but also some valid critiques of American policies.
In an article called Thoughts on ‘Thanksgiving’, Nadrat Siddique writes: “As Muslims, we are often in the difficult position of having to respond to a greeting such as ‘Happy Thanksgiving’. Some Muslims feel it necessary to return the greeting out of concern for adaab (Islamic etiquette) … But words are powerful … and they can help perpetuate a myth … in which Native people and White settlers feasted and cavorted in friendship. But Islam teaches us to stand with the oppressed, against the oppressor. As aware Muslims we should have to option to politely deflect the greeting, then briefly explain why we do not celebrate it. It is an opportunity to educate people, and do some myth busting.”
How exactly do you ‘politely deflect’ a greeting from a friend or a neighbour? Do you say something like “Sorry, but I can’t share your holiday because it commemorates the genocide of Native Americans, and centuries of oppression?”
But surely Ms Siddique should not be in America at all if she feels so strongly about the Native Indians, and what was done to them. If she’s advising her fellow-Muslims in the United States to distance themselves from the holiday celebrated by the vast majority, should she not take this protest to its logical conclusion, and suggest they leave the land of oppressors?
Don’t get me wrong: I feel strongly about the plight of Native people in all the vast territories colonised by Europeans.
White colonists have an appalling record of virtual genocide in the lands and continents they conquered since the 16th century. Indeed, the history of every country in the Americas, as well as of Australia, is written in blood.
However, this fact does not give Muslims the right to preach to Americans or anybody else, given their own track record.
When Muslim Afghan and Central Asian tribes raided across North India over centuries and established kingdoms, they slew and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Hindus and demolished countless temples. When the Arab armies swept into Persia and the Near East, they killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. And the Ottoman conquest and colonisation of the Balkans was hardly a bloodless affair.
These are some of the glories of our past whose passing so many Muslims mourn today. So we can hardly preach to others before we confront our own past. Indeed, Muslims continue to slaughter each other today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan with happy abandon.
It is the sanctimony inherent in Ms Siddique’s article that I find so annoying. Given that so many Muslims in America are having trouble dealing with the rise of Islamophobia there, the last thing they need is a lecture urging them to move further away from the mainstream.
Of course everybody is free to hold their own opinions, but choices have consequences: people like Ms Siddique should not then complain of not being accepted as Americans if they deliberately spurn American traditions.
Other Muslims choose to stay away from non-Muslim religious celebrations like Christmas, Holi or Hannukah. Frankly, I am puzzled to see Muslims refusing to participate in anybody else’s festivals: surely celebrating a non-Muslim holy day should not weaken their own faith.
This entire concept of building a wall between Muslims and non-Muslims is badly flawed, and only creates misunderstandings. My parents used to tell us how their Hindu and Sikh neighbours came to their home on Eid in Delhi before Partition, and how they attended Holi and Divali celebrations with their friends. Luckily, their lesson of humanity and tolerance has been passed on to their grandchildren.
In a world full of tensions and strife, we should be using joyous occasions as opportunities to heal wounds and build bridges to other communities. Instead, religious bigots of all stripes are urging a greater distance between people and faiths.
Over the years, Thanksgiving has become a unifying theme for the many people with different origins and backgrounds who today make up the mosaic that is America. Most are only dimly aware of the origins of the holiday. To use it to make political points is an exercise in pure sanctimony. Muslims who have chosen to make the US their home would be better advised to join their neighbours on this happy occasion rather than to ‘politely deflect’ a friendly greeting.
For my part, much as I find turkeys a bit boring, I am gearing to cook one at Christmas.