Salahuddin
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2006
- Messages
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A nation dies the day when it starts dying for others against its will. A nation dies when it starts a battle against its raison d'etre: Eliminate a nation's purpose, and you extinguish its spark of life. The country that acquiesces in evil can hardly hope to enjoy the benefits of goodness. No one draws freedom or life from a land of oppression and death.
The half-dead Pakistani nation is silently dragging the cross of Bush Junior's "crusade" to its own Golgotha. On the military front, the nation helplessly watched PTV News that called 10 army men, who died for America in an encounter in tribal areas, as "martyrs." On legal front, the nation didn't say a word in protest as its Supreme Court staged a successful coup de main on clear Qur'anic injunctions and claimed its survival in going against Qur'an for its banking system.
Everyone is silently reading reports about their army going on rampage in South Wazirstan. According to Baluchistan Post (June 29, 2002), the infuriated army commanders herded people out of their houses and blasted their houses by artillery and mortar fires to revenge the killings of their fellows. It seems the story of another West Bank or Gaza strip: another factory of desperate "suicide bombers" in making. No one asks, what is this nation fighting for, or what is the meaning of our existence?
The Statesman reports in its June 30, front-page story that in search of Al-Qaeda men "army and law enforcement agencies are capturing every bearded person who has some contact with religious people of mosques' affairs."
A tribal elder of Wana, South Waziristan, told Baluchistan Times that it seems as if "the Army is not operating in its own country rather it is fighting a war in a hostile country." Just to please Bush and company, we are at war with ourselves on military, intellectual, legal and social fronts. This is what Thomas Friedman of New York Times calls a "war within Islam," and this is for what spokesman of the State Department very proudly thanks General Musharraf.
Are we acting like living nations, which act upon the instructed judgement of their conscience? They might be mistaken; but they ought ceaselessly to be aware that the act they oppose is, after all, no more than the opinion of other nations who, like them, are also fallible. The business of a government in living nations is to satisfy the rational desires of citizens or, at least, to make possible such satisfaction; and nothing is more likely to prevent the fulfilment of its purpose than silent acquiescence in the prohibition of such desires.
Whenever a nation is silent in the face of a refusal to let it follow the true spirit of its religious norms and to hear the burden of its social, moral, legal and political experience, it is always assumed by powerful interests that it is, in fact, silent because it has nothing to say: because it is dead. Our government has made countless compromises since September 11 but we seem to have no words to utter in protest. Initially, many of us justified its surrender for lack of alternatives.
Surrendering under pressure has now become a habit. Not only does the habit of acquiescence transform the nation into an inert recipient of orders whom it is difficult to rouse from lethargy; it also persuades a government that it has only to show a bold front to secure acceptance of any command it receives from Washington to impose. Before attitudes such as these, liberty has no chance of survival; for the eternal vigilance, which is its necessary price, is then wanting.
Let it be clear to all that like absolutely absent definition of "terrorism" in the "war on terrorism," there is no definition of Al-Qaeda membership. Any alien who lived in Afghanistan during the Taliban era is a sure candidate to be considered as a member of "Al-Qaeda network." Similarly, opposition members - particularly those belonging to Islamic parties - who oppose policies of the US sported regimes, such as Karzai, Mubarak and Musharraf, are now set for being labelled as supporters of "Al-Qaeda network."
Like communist enemies of the Cold War era, "Al-Qaeda network" would never come to an end until Washington clearly declares victory in its 21st century crusade. Until then every bearded person, as the Statesman report says, is a potential Al-Qaeda member. Before the US declares a victory, it will have to burry many a half-dead nations, such as Pakistan.
Some might argue that there is terrorism in Pakistan and the government is simply combating it. Incidents like assassination of Interior Minister's brother, attack on US consulate, etc., are simply part of the reactions that we are witnessing in occupied Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
For the laws, systems and policies under which we live are someone's induction. They represent a response to someone-in-Washington's interpretation of our social, religious and political needs. If what they do contradicts our religion, our experience and our needs, it is simply folly to assume their necessary wisdom and take it for granted that we are wrong. We forget that justifying and imposing the wrong triggers a reaction as well.
Imposed leaders, might save themselves from negative consequences of their acquiescence with installation of $ 50 million anti-missile system on their planes, or installation of hundreds of surveillance cameras along the roads from their residence to offices, but the nation suffers the reaction of wrong policies and for its lack of collective courage, which is the secret of freedom. The resistance and reaction to wrong somewhere begin in a minority of one; the courage of one man heartens others to make articulate their burden of experience as well. A repression at this stage stimulates the sleeping sense of religious and civic obligation.
It leads to a sense in those who have been content with passivity, that active minded obligation may, even though it involve discomfort, not necessarily be dishonourable. One never knows if the US may start wondering as to who is not Al-Qaeda in the Muslim world. Details of the 10 wanted men in connection of attack on US consulate, published in Dawn June 29, reflects that these "Al-Qaeda members" are not Arabs indeed. Apart from the fringe violent minority, in the end, "Al-Qaeda" in each occupied country would be majority of the most truly citizens against a few US-sponsored rulers. These members of living nations would insist upon bringing back their rulers to a realisation of the harmful conditions upon which their power is held.
A nation half-dead doesn't mean that it would die. There is an equal opportunity for it to recover and resist. It only needs to understand that it is living in a world in which supporters of secular morality are anxious at all costs to legislate against the religious diversities, particularly Islam, of which they disapprove. Islam and independence of Muslims they view as sin; and they seek to clothe the old Calvinist dictatorship in new terminology in order to enjoy the luxury of suppression.
Our salvation is not in dropping our guards and dying for America, but in dispelling myths such as madrassas are the source of terrorism. Instead of a nationwide crack down on religious institutions, we must ask impartial observers to come and verify that not even a single gun exists in these institutions. It was rather the same army that is being used to suppress this nation, which trained Afghan Mujahideen as well as Taliban at its own training camps.
We must remember that policies built on the US clamant expression of what it desires will never cease to proliferate. And every time it is successful in extracting concessions from us and making us surrender our principles and freedoms, it appetite grows for power. Bush began in a humble way; but he ended by sweeping the world into his vision. His associates now pronounce with confidence their judgment upon every subject from the choice of rulers in the Muslim world to the governmental limits within which the Mosque may live a life of its own. Their impudence is the measure of our futility.
Their self-expression is purchased by the suppression of ours. Like many other Muslim nations, we, too, run to meet our chains because the citizen is too afraid to venture out of the little private corner in which he is buried. He does not seem to know that the power to insist upon his freedom lies in his own hands. He is powerless because he is unconscious of his power.
Because we share, that is, in a collective experience, we are not effortlessly assured of individual salvation. We do our duty by examination, not by submission, by zeal for truth, not enthusiasm for uniformity with American standards. Nothing can ever entitle us, as free spiritual beings, to disown our religion, merge our lives into secular utopia, and accept standards which within ourselves, we know to be contradictory to the spiritual message of the religion we profess to follow. For all obedience that has the right to regard itself as ethical is built upon a conscious agreement with the purpose we encounter. Anything else is a betrayal of ourselves; and when we surrender the truth we see, by that betrayal we betray also the future of this nation and Islamic Ummah as a whole.
The half-dead Pakistani nation is silently dragging the cross of Bush Junior's "crusade" to its own Golgotha. On the military front, the nation helplessly watched PTV News that called 10 army men, who died for America in an encounter in tribal areas, as "martyrs." On legal front, the nation didn't say a word in protest as its Supreme Court staged a successful coup de main on clear Qur'anic injunctions and claimed its survival in going against Qur'an for its banking system.
Everyone is silently reading reports about their army going on rampage in South Wazirstan. According to Baluchistan Post (June 29, 2002), the infuriated army commanders herded people out of their houses and blasted their houses by artillery and mortar fires to revenge the killings of their fellows. It seems the story of another West Bank or Gaza strip: another factory of desperate "suicide bombers" in making. No one asks, what is this nation fighting for, or what is the meaning of our existence?
The Statesman reports in its June 30, front-page story that in search of Al-Qaeda men "army and law enforcement agencies are capturing every bearded person who has some contact with religious people of mosques' affairs."
A tribal elder of Wana, South Waziristan, told Baluchistan Times that it seems as if "the Army is not operating in its own country rather it is fighting a war in a hostile country." Just to please Bush and company, we are at war with ourselves on military, intellectual, legal and social fronts. This is what Thomas Friedman of New York Times calls a "war within Islam," and this is for what spokesman of the State Department very proudly thanks General Musharraf.
Are we acting like living nations, which act upon the instructed judgement of their conscience? They might be mistaken; but they ought ceaselessly to be aware that the act they oppose is, after all, no more than the opinion of other nations who, like them, are also fallible. The business of a government in living nations is to satisfy the rational desires of citizens or, at least, to make possible such satisfaction; and nothing is more likely to prevent the fulfilment of its purpose than silent acquiescence in the prohibition of such desires.
Whenever a nation is silent in the face of a refusal to let it follow the true spirit of its religious norms and to hear the burden of its social, moral, legal and political experience, it is always assumed by powerful interests that it is, in fact, silent because it has nothing to say: because it is dead. Our government has made countless compromises since September 11 but we seem to have no words to utter in protest. Initially, many of us justified its surrender for lack of alternatives.
Surrendering under pressure has now become a habit. Not only does the habit of acquiescence transform the nation into an inert recipient of orders whom it is difficult to rouse from lethargy; it also persuades a government that it has only to show a bold front to secure acceptance of any command it receives from Washington to impose. Before attitudes such as these, liberty has no chance of survival; for the eternal vigilance, which is its necessary price, is then wanting.
Let it be clear to all that like absolutely absent definition of "terrorism" in the "war on terrorism," there is no definition of Al-Qaeda membership. Any alien who lived in Afghanistan during the Taliban era is a sure candidate to be considered as a member of "Al-Qaeda network." Similarly, opposition members - particularly those belonging to Islamic parties - who oppose policies of the US sported regimes, such as Karzai, Mubarak and Musharraf, are now set for being labelled as supporters of "Al-Qaeda network."
Like communist enemies of the Cold War era, "Al-Qaeda network" would never come to an end until Washington clearly declares victory in its 21st century crusade. Until then every bearded person, as the Statesman report says, is a potential Al-Qaeda member. Before the US declares a victory, it will have to burry many a half-dead nations, such as Pakistan.
Some might argue that there is terrorism in Pakistan and the government is simply combating it. Incidents like assassination of Interior Minister's brother, attack on US consulate, etc., are simply part of the reactions that we are witnessing in occupied Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
For the laws, systems and policies under which we live are someone's induction. They represent a response to someone-in-Washington's interpretation of our social, religious and political needs. If what they do contradicts our religion, our experience and our needs, it is simply folly to assume their necessary wisdom and take it for granted that we are wrong. We forget that justifying and imposing the wrong triggers a reaction as well.
Imposed leaders, might save themselves from negative consequences of their acquiescence with installation of $ 50 million anti-missile system on their planes, or installation of hundreds of surveillance cameras along the roads from their residence to offices, but the nation suffers the reaction of wrong policies and for its lack of collective courage, which is the secret of freedom. The resistance and reaction to wrong somewhere begin in a minority of one; the courage of one man heartens others to make articulate their burden of experience as well. A repression at this stage stimulates the sleeping sense of religious and civic obligation.
It leads to a sense in those who have been content with passivity, that active minded obligation may, even though it involve discomfort, not necessarily be dishonourable. One never knows if the US may start wondering as to who is not Al-Qaeda in the Muslim world. Details of the 10 wanted men in connection of attack on US consulate, published in Dawn June 29, reflects that these "Al-Qaeda members" are not Arabs indeed. Apart from the fringe violent minority, in the end, "Al-Qaeda" in each occupied country would be majority of the most truly citizens against a few US-sponsored rulers. These members of living nations would insist upon bringing back their rulers to a realisation of the harmful conditions upon which their power is held.
A nation half-dead doesn't mean that it would die. There is an equal opportunity for it to recover and resist. It only needs to understand that it is living in a world in which supporters of secular morality are anxious at all costs to legislate against the religious diversities, particularly Islam, of which they disapprove. Islam and independence of Muslims they view as sin; and they seek to clothe the old Calvinist dictatorship in new terminology in order to enjoy the luxury of suppression.
Our salvation is not in dropping our guards and dying for America, but in dispelling myths such as madrassas are the source of terrorism. Instead of a nationwide crack down on religious institutions, we must ask impartial observers to come and verify that not even a single gun exists in these institutions. It was rather the same army that is being used to suppress this nation, which trained Afghan Mujahideen as well as Taliban at its own training camps.
We must remember that policies built on the US clamant expression of what it desires will never cease to proliferate. And every time it is successful in extracting concessions from us and making us surrender our principles and freedoms, it appetite grows for power. Bush began in a humble way; but he ended by sweeping the world into his vision. His associates now pronounce with confidence their judgment upon every subject from the choice of rulers in the Muslim world to the governmental limits within which the Mosque may live a life of its own. Their impudence is the measure of our futility.
Their self-expression is purchased by the suppression of ours. Like many other Muslim nations, we, too, run to meet our chains because the citizen is too afraid to venture out of the little private corner in which he is buried. He does not seem to know that the power to insist upon his freedom lies in his own hands. He is powerless because he is unconscious of his power.
Because we share, that is, in a collective experience, we are not effortlessly assured of individual salvation. We do our duty by examination, not by submission, by zeal for truth, not enthusiasm for uniformity with American standards. Nothing can ever entitle us, as free spiritual beings, to disown our religion, merge our lives into secular utopia, and accept standards which within ourselves, we know to be contradictory to the spiritual message of the religion we profess to follow. For all obedience that has the right to regard itself as ethical is built upon a conscious agreement with the purpose we encounter. Anything else is a betrayal of ourselves; and when we surrender the truth we see, by that betrayal we betray also the future of this nation and Islamic Ummah as a whole.
