Age of madness

[RabzonKhan]

Age of madness

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

It quite often seems that, as a nation, we seem determined to climb backwards into the Dark Ages, leaving behind what progress has come our way since then. There are many examples of such madness. In a gruesome rite enacted recently in Dera Murad Jamali, a man was made to walk over burning coals to prove his innocence in a criminal matter. Such incidents have taken place elsewhere too. In Swat, militants hung out the body of a local 'Pir' who had died in a gun-battle against them after digging it out of the grave. In Orakzai Agency the local Taliban have imposed their idea of 'Shariah' and warned men not to allow women to move out of their homes. Other stories that reflect a mindset that is just as medieval continue to come in. Even within our cities, where 'honour' killings are not unknown, such mindsets seem to prevail.

The problem is tied in to the failure to educate people. Fifty per cent or more of the population remains illiterate. The quality of education imparted even to those fortunate enough to attend a school is often so poor that the learning is meaningless. Lack of development pins people to lives that have not changed in centuries. There are issues to that go beyond this. The lack of access to justice results in people taking matters into their own hands. The 'jirga' judgments that come in periodically are one example of this. The state seems to be absent from the lives of most people. Citizens cannot bank on it to meet even the moist basic needs. This appears to be another factor behind the descent into anarchy we see everywhere. The trend must be stopped. Our leaders must realize the dangers of allowing such madness to continue. If it is permitted to grow it could engulf all of us and the aspects of life that still place us among 'civilised' societies.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Bane of sectarian violence

January 28, 2009

A DEPLORABLE side effect of the communalisation of the state in Pakistan is the sectarian frenzy it has released in the country. Had it not been for the fact that the people by and large still display a spirit of tolerance in their inter-sect dealings, as was seen during the month of Muharram, society could well have been up in flames. It is no coincidence that extremists of all shades who preach jihad and justify violence in the name of religion also call for the destruction of minority sects they believe do not fall within the ambit of Islam. But what needs to be viewed with serious concern is that, as the extremists spread their tentacles all over the country, sectarian incidents are on the rise. The killing of the Hazara Democratic Party chairman in Quetta on Monday is a brutal demonstration of this phenomenon. This comes in the wake of a series of assassinations, bomb attacks on imambargahs, target killings and even self-styled executions in Hangu, Kurram, Karachi and Balochistan. The casualties of the last few months run into hundreds. This undercurrent of sectarian violence has not been addressed the way it should have because it has been masked by the mayhem unleashed by terrorists claiming to be fighting an anti-imperialist war for the imposition of the Sharia or the army’s crackdown on the warring Baloch nationalists.

Apart from causing loss of life — which should be condemned in the strongest terms possible — the evil of sectarianism, if left unchecked, could prove to be the undoing of our already fragmented social and political fabric. As the Quetta incident shows, the community’s angry reaction to the killing of a high-profile leader can be violent and result in the destruction of property and the breakdown of law and order. Thus the fissures widen as a strategy of imposing peace without addressing the root of the problem allows the perpetrators to attack again when the situation permits. What is harrowing is that the avowedly sectarian outfits, many of which mushroomed under the Islamisation policy of Ziaul Haq, have been allowed to flourish even when they are officially banned. The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, which claimed the killing of the Quetta leader, is one such example of how sectarianism grew blatantly under the benign patronage of the state.

It is a pity that governments of the day, by relying on the crutches of religion, failed to anticipate the outcome of their flawed approach. Sectarianism was inevitable when obscurantists were appeased and given a free rein to preach violence. The need of the hour is that the government cracks down forcefully on banned religious groups before their violence spills into neighbouring states and others compel us to act.

 

[RabzonKhan]

80-year-old man and 70-year-old woman declared kari

January 29, 2009

LAHORE: An 80-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman were declared kari in Sukkur district’s Jaffarabad area on Wednesday, a private TV channel reported. According to the channel, the people who passed the verdict also attempted to kill the two accused using bricks and wooden sticks, but the man and the woman survived the attack. The man declared kari has been missing since the attack, while the woman was in a critical condition, the channel said. daily times monitor

 

[paritosh]

what is kari?

 

[RabzonKhan]

what is kari?

Karo Kari is a type of “honour” killing, it involves the murder of a female member of the family by a male relative, because she is thought to have brought dishonor to the family. This evil custom is mostly practiced in rural and tribal areas of Sind.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Good thoughts, Rabzon, Sir. What I cannot understand is how people can use technology, like radios, cell phones, night vision goggles, yet reject the scientific rational methods that were necessary in order to develop them. Do these people think that Western technology is "magic". I don't see how they can deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeking medical attention for a gunshot wound but rejecting polio vaccination.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Good thoughts, Rabzon, Sir. What I cannot understand is how people can use technology, like radios, cell phones, night vision goggles, yet reject the scientific rational methods that were necessary in order to develop them. Do these people think that Western technology is "magic". I don't see how they can deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeking medical attention for a gunshot wound but rejecting polio vaccination.

My friend, I wish I had answers to your questions, but I really don't. I grew up in a very liberal household and for that I am extremely grateful. I can never understand why they are so irrational and ruthless. They had opposed polio vaccination, saying it was a Western conspiracy to render Muslims impotent.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Barbarians rule?

Editorial
Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The publication in this newspaper last Sunday of the decapitated body of a man suspended upside down with his severed head rammed between his thighs is proof-positive if it were ever needed of the appalling barbarism that threatens to envelop us all. Further evidence of the depravity of those who are fighting to establish a Pakistani caliphate is provided by the seven-minute video of the beheading of Piotr Stancza who was kidnapped by the Taliban last September. The video includes a statement by the Taliban which says that other foreign nationals that they are holding – including a Chinese man – would meet the same fate if the Pakistani government did not accede to their demands. The tape goes on to try and do a deal for the release of the man's body, along with a refusal to do so if the deal – 'free our men or else' being the substance of it – does not materialize. What sort of animal uses dead bodies as bargaining chips? The Taliban animal, seemingly. Further revelations include the unsurprising news that the same group that had killed Piotr Stancza had attacked the Mianwali checkpost and a procession of Shia mourners in DG Khan. What busy butchers these boys are.

The threat to other foreign nationals must have sent a chill through every foreign embassy and consulate in the country. It will have sent fear into the hearts and heads of those who come from far-off lands as volunteer doctors, nurses, teachers and engineers and is a powerful advertisement for just how heedless of normative values – and powerful – these Taliban groups have become. They are beyond the law or the writ of the state and now murder at will our guests, our friends and supporters, and unless stopped in their tracks, and soon, will establish their own writ across this scarred and mangled land. The murder of Piotr Stancza may turn out to be the watershed, the point at which nations which have hitherto been generous in their support to us may begin to review their commitment. The point at which foreign firms may decide that it really is no longer worth the risk of sending their employees here. The point at which international NGOs and aid agencies say that enough is enough and the security environment has deteriorated to the point at which humanitarian work is no longer possible. The point, and we are perilously close to it, at which it may be said that the extremists have won. We are not at that point yet, but it is going to take decisive action to ensure we never reach it.

 

[Cheetah786]

Most pakistanies are a sleep behind the wheel and are will fully closing there eyes to the ditch country is heading to.i am affraid they will not open there eys till country is in the dark for good.

only way you can have these people wake up and smell the coffee when it will start to hit them personally till then its sympathy for these animals all the way.

 

[niaz]

My friend, I wish I had answers to your questions, but I really don't. I grew up in a very liberal household and for that I am extremely grateful. I can never understand why they are so irrational and ruthless. They had opposed polio vaccination, saying it was a Western conspiracy to render Muslims impotent.

I had mentioned earlier that we have a crisis of Identity in Pakistan. The customs of Karo Kari, (killing of some one accused of illicit sex) Vanni (giving a daughter in marriage to atone the sin of a family member or redress a grievance) marriage to Quran to avoid giving dowry to a girl, ordering rape of accused sister or daughter to redress a supposed wrong (Mukhtara mai) are all dark age tribal customs. Even though most of these customs go against the teaching of Islam, tribal culture takes precedence.

We have senators who defend burying of women alive as an acceptable age old Baluch tradition! However, when it comes to the writ of Pakistan gov’t, many of the same tribals will ignore it in favor of the Sharia law. Interests of Pakistan state therefore take a back seat.

Why all those clamoring about the imposition of Khilafat in Pakistan don't use their energy in reforming the society and getting rid of these Dark Age practices is beyond me. Once major ills of the society are cured, no one would have any problems with Sharia Law or Khilafat. But why should they bother with such trivia as human rights when they can exploit Islam to gain power?

 

[RabzonKhan]

The damn PML-N is just a Punjabi brand of Taliban.


Editorial: Thus spake Rana Iqbal!

The Punjab Assembly speaker, Rana Iqbal, has spoken and Valentine’s Day has been damned. When Pakistan People’s Party MPA Riffat Sultana Dar said the government should allow people to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Mr Iqbal, oracle-like, thundered that it has nothing to do with our religion, culture and constitution and we cannot allow the celebration. Not just this, we are told the day is against Islam. Of course, we had predicted in so many words the possible reaction of the self-styled guardians of public morality in an earlier editorial. Even so, here are a few questions.

Since when has the Shehbaz Sharif government become a custodian of public morality beyond the sphere of the law and constitution? Are we about to see a reversion to the time when the police would see a couple strolling in the park and demand to see their nikah-namas or notice of clutch of loud youngsters at night and demand to smell their breath? One of the many banes of General Ziaul Haq’s rule was the conflation of sin and crime. Now, Mr Iqbal has risen to put down the innocent for expressing their love and affection for each other. As for culture, Mr Iqbal should know that there is nothing left of it, not even agriculture, unless there are good rains. The Punjab Assembly should be more concerned about legislation to ameliorate the regular plight of the citizens of this province rather than pronouncing judgements on moral behaviour or categorising and cataloguing it as this and that. Let it be said that Mr Iqbal has not covered himself in glory by his “verdict”. Is Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif going to sit back and say nothing?

 

[RabzonKhan]

Rehman Baba’s vision

The Guardian, London
By William Dalrymple
Tuesday, 10 Mar, 2009

REHMAN Baba, “the Nightingale of Peshawar,” was an 18th-century poet and mystic, a sort of North West Frontier version of Julian of Norwich. He withdrew from the world and promised his followers that if they also loosened their ties with the world, they could purge their souls of worries and move towards direct experience of God.

For centuries, Rehman Baba’s shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass has been a place where musicians and poets have gathered, and his Sufi verses in the Pukhtun language made him the national poet of the Pathans. As a young journalist covering the Soviet-mujahideen conflict I used to visit the shrine to watch Afghan refugee musicians sing their songs to their saint by the light of the moon.

Then, about 10 years ago, a Saudi-funded Wahhabi madressah was built at the end of the track leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it on themselves to halt what they saw as unIslamic practices. On my last visit, I talked about the situation with the shrine keeper, Tila Mohammed.

He described how young Islamists now came and complained that his shrine was a centre of idolatry and superstition: “My family have been singing here for generations,” said Tila. “But now these Arab madressah students come here and create trouble. Before the Afghan war, there was nothing like this. But then the Saudis came, with their propaganda, to stop us visiting the saints, and to stop us preaching ‘ishq’ [love].”

Rehman Baba believed passionately in the importance of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God, as a way of opening the gates of Paradise. But this use of poetry and music in ritual is one of the many aspects of Sufi practice that has attracted the wrath of modern Islamists. For although there is nothing in the Qur’an that bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with dancing girls and immorality, and there is a long tradition of clerical opposition.

At Attock, not far from the shrine of Rehman Baba, stands the Haqqania, one of the most radical madressah in South Asia. Much of the Taliban leadership, including its leader, Mullah Omar, were trained here, so I asked the madressah’s director, Maulana Sami ul-Haq, about what I had heard at Rehman Baba’s tomb. The matter was quite simple.”

Music is against Islam,” he said. “Musical instruments lead men astray and are sinful. They are forbidden, and these musicians are wrongdoers.”

Nor were Sami’s strictures limited to the shrine’s music: “We don’t like tomb worship,” he continued. “We do not pray to dead men, even the saints.”

This sort of madressah-driven change in attitudes is being reproduced across Pakistan. There are now 27 times as many madressahs in the country as there were in 1947: from 245 at independence, the number has shot up to 6,870 in 2001. Across Pakistan, the religious tenor has been correspondingly radicalised: the tolerant, Sufi-minded Barelvi form of Islam is now out of fashion in northern Pakistan, especially in the NWFP, overtaken by the rise of the more hardline and politicised Wahhabism.

Later, I returned to the shrine and found Tila Mahommed tending the grave. Making sure no one was listening, he whispered: “We pray that right will overpower wrong, that good will overcome evil. But our way is pacifist,” he said.

I thought of this conversation, when I heard that the shrine of Rehman Baba had finally been blown up on Thursday, a few hours after the Sri Lankan cricketers were ambushed in Lahore. The rise of Islamic radicalism is often presented in starkly political terms, but what happened in Peshawar last week is a reminder that, at the heart of the current conflict, lie two very different understandings of Islam.

Wahhabi fundamentalism has advanced so quickly in Pakistan partly because the Saudis have financed the building of so many madressahs, which have filled the vacuum left by the collapse of state education. These have taught an entire generation to abhor the gentle, syncretic Sufi Islam that has dominated south Asia for centuries, and to embrace instead an imported form of Saudi Wahhabism.

 

[PeacefulIndian]

very informative articles. thank you

 

[osamaziadxb]

Rabzon! revealing ur national secrets is not good ..jus find out who is culprit?

 

[RabzonKhan]

Attack on Pakhtun culture

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Farhat Taj

In February this year someone circulated an email on one of the email lists I am a member of and was talking about the possibility of any attacks by extremists on shrines in NWFP, especially that of Khushhal Khan Khattak. The email said that we should all ask the provincial government to provide protection and predicted and reasoned that the attack was likely because the Taliban were bent on destroying all symbols and icons of the Pakhtun culture. Khushhal Khan is symbolic of Pakhtun nationalism. His poetry is nationalist in tone and he is a symbol of Pakhtun identity.

As recent events have shown, the concern expressed in the email was neither alarmist nor misplaced because a couple of weeks later, on March 5, the Taliban bombed the shrine of Rehman Baba. Like Khushhal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba is also widely respected among the Pakhtun. People across the Pakhtun area know his poetry despite a high level illiteracy. Foreign scholars have commented that the reception of the poetry and teachings of Rahman Baba transcends differences and tribal schisms found in Pakhtun society and that he is widely read, listened to and respected.

Unlike the Pakhtun nationalism that Khushhal Khan embodies, the message of Rahman Baba is universal love and tolerance – the very antithesis of the message of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

And now a story I would like to narrate. In Nov 2006 I went to Jamia Hafsa. Many of the girls that I met there were from FATA and various parts of NWFP. We engaged is a discussion on Islam and Pkahtunwali. Some of the girls referred to some verses of Rehman Baba to prove that their extremist and violent understanding of Islam is the same as the mystic poet’s. For me this understanding of Rehman Baba was no less than a cultural shock that my own fellow Pakhtun gave me.

On my way back home I was thinking Rehman Baba has been hijacked by the extremists among us. Nothing can be more unjust to the poet and his message. Between then and now the extremist have raised their public levels of intolerance. Now they cannot tolerate Rehman Baba. They bombed his shrine. I heard some pro-Taliban people in Pakistan justifying the bomb attack on the shrine. They say that his shrine had become refugee of ‘undesirable’ social elements, like drug abusers. What a strange argument! Is the only method to deal with the drug abusers is to bomb the shrine? Will that get the society rid of drug abusers and other ‘undesirable’ social elements?

Attack on Rehman Baba’s shrine is part of the agenda to annihilate the Pakhtun culture. The agenda includes destruction of schools in the area, attacks on music shops and singers, violent expressions of misogyny through attacks and restrictions on women, assaults on Buddha statues in Swat and so on. The aim is to write off the cultural memory of the Pakhtun and force them to become foot soldiers for global jihad. The Taliban and Al Qaida have occupied FATA. Swat has been surrendered to them by the provincial and federal government. But They will not stop there.

The attack on the shrine of Rehman Baba should be seen as an attack on cultures on both sides of the River Indus. One of the similarities in the cultures on both sides of Indus is the message of the sufi poets. The message of peace and love is also the message of Shah Latif, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah. It is now the responsibility of the wider society to conveys to the Taliban that their alien ways of life are not acceptable

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy.