Tag Archives: Pakistan

FTAC – A Note on Refusing to Legitimize Murder One

28 Thursday Feb 2013

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A correspondent in Pakistan brought this incident and publication to my attention:

Reference: http://pakshia.com/en/shia-killing-pakistan/lahore-sipah-e-sahaba-terrorists-open-fire-shiite-doctor-and-son-martyred/ –>

“A famous Eye-Specialist Dr. Ali Haider, and his 11 year-old son Murtaza Ali Haider, was martyred Saudi-funded terrorists of Sipah-e-Sahaba and Punjab Government-backed Taliban opened fire on their car in Lahore’s Kinal Road.”

My return:

Bookmarked: Islam, Sectarian Conflict. 😦 Without a broad and common law enforcement (paramilitary) umbrella, this atrocious criminality would seem without end.

The special interest press reports these items also as a badge of honor and claim of grievous injustice — both fair enough — but the effect may be to encourage and sustain more of the same in cycle. Some groups — “Pallywood”, for sure, the remote Catholic press, maybe, sometimes — make stuff up: pure propaganda; but this is not.

It may be one reason Obama’s Administration has approached violence associated with Islamic Jihad or a Muslim defensive posture (e.g., Fort Hood Massacre) as clinically criminal — these events add up to “murder in the first degree” and nothing else — rather than legitimize them as culturally, politically, or socially expressive.

I mentioned posting the exchange to this blog.

So done.

As I had mentioned Fort Hood in the exchange, I may mention here that on Facebook, the Coalition of Fort Hood Heroes: More Than Remembrance wants the same sense of the crime — that is, a Muslim American military officer upset with the American military mission in Afghanistan opened fire on his (unarmed) brothers and sisters in uniform while shouting “Allahu Akbar” all the way through.

Just another “gun nut”?

Same category as any other mass shooting (i.e., the “mass shooting”, “massacre”, or “rampage” category — plain force of nature)?

Aviva Shen’s “A Timeline of Mass Shootings in the U.S. Since Columbine” (ThinkProgress, December 14, 2012) provides an overview of the same kind of crime variously motivated.  Stateside racially-motivated killings may come closest to the sectarian experience (of similar crimes) within the Islamic Small Wars.

Where nationality, race, or religion — a simple generalized “discriminator” — provides excuse for aggression and murder, no one wins.  In fact, such violence would seem to backfire and set off an “antibody” type reaction in the populations surrounding events.  Every assassination, every ambush of the innocent and of the unarmed, becomes — or should become — cause for a different kind of courage.

Whether such crimes should be stripped of the rhetorical filigree that would make them more grounded (in something, even poison) if no less hateful, I don’t know.

In the west, this ploy goes both ways: legislators and states on the modern track have a still new classification in “hate crimes” and may add to recognized felonies additional penalties for a crime having been anti-gay, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and so on.

At the same time and as demonstrated by the Obama Administration in its handling of the context or framing of the Fort Hood Massacre, taking the chief contributor to cause — ideological conviction and identification within the Islamic frame (or a version of it) — and officially minimizing its role in the crime has become a part of the Administration’s display of appeasement, courtship, and denial in the American (Christian-majority nation) relationship with Islam or Muslim-majority states and the internal wiring that keeps many of the same (from Afghanistan to Yemen) slipping in pools of their own blood.

FTAC – Pakistan – Fast Note – Integrity in Information – Generalists and Governance

11 Monday Feb 2013

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Information possessing integrity may be Pakistan’s most critical missing piece between the feudal (and obscure) and modern (and open). Getting there, unfortunately, may involve the good — the most sound, the most righteous — fighting for every inch of carpet pulled back and curtain pulled aside. Some motivation may come from the polls, some from personalities already in place and fed up with some things they may have seen or that are bothering (leveraging) them personally, but however it happens, the bringing of more things to light, factually and in reportage, in information open to challenge and further investigation, may spell an end to many things.

As regards management, I’m inclined to agree with F. as regards the want of “bigger picture” generalists at the helm, but perhaps the “generalists” themselves need to be formed to fit the ends of the meshing of the various moving parts within their assignments. Getting improvements in Qualities of Living — physically / materially ; psychologically / spiritually — have a foundation in spatial relationships, and as much takes some brights to manage or produce or enable a whole and healthier human ecology.

While the flow and sensibility of my prose may be easily approached, such falls also too often into regions of the mind where it is much easier to imagine a better world, provide guidance to it, and avoid looking at those nasty gremlins crawling around the space and known as “facts on the ground”.

“We talked about ways to confront the dangerous conditions facing Pakistani journalists. It was a bad year: Seven journalists would be killed before 2011 concluded, making Pakistan the deadliest nation in the world for the press. The year before, eight had died.” [1]

Pulled from an interview with a Pakistani journalist, Ayesha Haroon, who was to be subdued by cancer, the statement only hints at how bad the record has been for journalists in Pakistan; in fact, according to the Center to Protect Journalists, some 51 journalists have been killed in relation to their work since 1992, and the coverage of politics, war, and crime account for about two-thirds of that grim news. [2]

The latest, Mirza Iqbal Hussain, caught the second bomb in the combined suicide and car bombing of a billiards hall in Quetta.  CPJ lists two other journalists killed in the same incident and one other journalist killed in another incident of similar “double-bombing” kind.

Fifth on CPJ’s list, Rehmatullah Abid seems to have been directly targeted — “Unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle killed Abid in a barber shop in Panjgur District, about 375 miles . . . from Quetta . . . .” — in relation to his reporting on the Balochistan Conflict.

In such ways, I suppose, “dark regions” remain dark.  (In fact, a “dark region” is an information concept: it could be a thug’s backroom in any city as well as a locale distant from consolidated military and police operations.  It could be a bureaucracy too — any place where the cards cannot be turned up by the public’s “trusted others” — journalists, in general; appointed official investigators who enjoy the imprimatur of a free and informed electorate).

Working down CPJ’s list, one finds possible dual or triple motives for the offing of Abdul Haq Baloch: one journalist submits that Baloch had been threatened by a state-sponsored militant army; another route: rebel armies upset about their exploits being ignored (!); and yet another path: a government cover-up involving missing (Baloch) persons.

From a related article:

“The latest victim of the violence against independent media in the area – Abdul Haq Bloch – was the Secretary General of the Khuzdar Press Club. He was a great source of inspiration for his colleagues and his violent murder has affected his community members quite deeply. The intensity of the panic amongst local journalists can be gauged from the fact that many of them decided to leave Khuzdar along with their families soon after the burial of their friend, Abdul Haq Baloch, in the evening of September 30th.” [3]

Intimidation works, unfortunately, and it takes a government — a very good one — to turn around to face criminal violence, investigate it thoroughly and to conclusion, and to mete out to murderers their name and their due.

(I’ve just sent a note to an associate asking about security in regard to covering government agencies and operations in Pakistan.  I’m looking forward to hearing back on that).

Now continuing to crawl down CPJ’s list, I find myself going back to January 2012, more than a year ago, to find a conventional, however, reprehensible listing of a murder.  Of Mukarram Khan Aatif, a Taliban spokesman said the journalist had been warned “a number of times to stop anti-Taliban reporting, but he didn’t do so. He finally met his fate.”

We in the west expect to read that kind of a statement.

It fits with what we know we know.

Two more stops down (the list is teaching me to set aside the Baloch theater as a separate variable associated with the killing of journalists), one finds a murder more associated with mainstream politics: “Shahid Qureshi, who also wrote for The London Postwebsite, told CPJ that he and his brother had received death threats from men who claimed they were from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement political party, or MQM.”  Faisal Qureshi had edited a a web site, The London Post, that was, according to CPJ, “widely recognized as anti-MQM.”

Also possibly more in context with Jihad vs. anti-Jihad thinking, and, finally, possibly involving the state, this lead packages the murder of Saleem Shahzad: “Shahzad, 40, vanished on May 29, after writing about alleged links between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s navy.”  Shahzad had also written a book with a dangerous title: Inside the Taliban and Al-Qaeda; and he had complained about receiving threats from intelligence officials.

Cited Reference

1. Dietz, Bob.  “Remembering Ayesha Haroon, editor who embraced facts.”  Committee to Protect Journalist, February 7, 2013.

2. Committee to Protect Journalists.  “51 Journalists Killed in Pakistan since 1992 / Motive Confirmed”.  Current to January 10, 2013 as I type.

3. Capital Talk.  “The tragedy of journalists in Balochistan.”  October 6, 2012.

FTAC – A Note on Qadri, Pakistan, and Integrity

16 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology

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Neither countries or cultures can guaranty the happiness of their people: human lives and particularly the lives of minds in their internal narratives are too complex for that; however, fairness, justice, and respect in how we deal with one another are matters that involve the expression of a place – locality, state, nation, and region — through the collection of laws and customs that create the social environment in which their constituents will experience their lives.

With that in mind, I felt in this passage — and do feel so — that if one word could change the world most beset by conflict, that word would be “integrity”.

Most, if not all, of the conflicts extant in Muslim-majority states revolve around disputes involving integrity. In turn, so I believe, that involves two sides of language-based and conveyed cognitive behavior that may be distilled down to choosing to use (for a while) a clinical, empirical truth — measurable, observed, verifiable — and avoiding the traps set by potential aggrandizement, flattery, and romance.

My first impression of Qadri is that he has on one hand attempted to dull the zealot’s edge as defined by the propensity for violence (2010) and this year has approached government demanding an end to, essentially, nepotism and patronage. At the same time, he has a role as a knight errant of Islam, and that in his interpretation may have yet in it vestiges of the medieval.

The want of integrity in governance — of honest appraisal and measurement in states of affairs; of open public investigations involving corruption and crime — seems to me a most fundamental and legitimate want, and Qadri and his followers are right to demand it — or by marching and making news, bringing this aspect of Pakistan’s predicament to perhaps a more global forum.

We sometimes joke in the west that “democracies elect the governments they deserve” — a wry observation and perhaps today a little painful for Pakistan, but these are new days too, and if you’re here in the “social network” — and it may be regarded as a miracle that I’m here, considering the confluence of personal, cultural, political, and technology variables involved — some may have a little more on which to chew with the idea of “integrity” as a key to getting and putting things right.

As Pakistan’s Election Season Approaches, Mobarak Haider Asks a Critical Question or Two

15 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan

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Call it political poetry as it calls for considerate and patient reading.

Today, Pakistan approaches a general election for setting the National Assembly of the Parliament of Pakistan.  The run up to the event, which is to be held on or before March 18, 2013, is fraught with ambivalence over the direction of the country, overshadowed by the presence of Islamists, especially groups within the Pakistani Taliban, continuing to bring their intimidating and violent acts to the innocent of Pakistan, and haunted by memories of military dictatorship and fear of recurrence.

Mobarak Haider, who has long produced work in the area of political psychology, published the following with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan and on his Facebook page, and I’m please to post it here with the author’s permission.

Where is the End?

How many more do you wish to kill?

All Hazaras and Northern Shiites first?

Yes, they are comparatively easier to kill because they can be found in a herd, are peaceful and have no horns to hit back with.

Then all Shiite in smaller towns, followed by stronger ones in the cities? Then Christians en masse, if need be?

Good strategy by our strategic assets!

We must salute you Brave Lions of the Desert, before we salute the Men at their best who follow you to restore peace! Then will be a period of calm; vacation for you to eat in your cages your well-deserved meat and pats from the boss. Our great warriors in khaki will be admired for their immense courage and nobility in sparing their helpless brothers from carnage.

Our hearts ache in helpless frustration when we see you perform massacre after massacre with holy impunity.

We bite our lips in impotent rage when again and again our army manipulates our constitution against our constitution and brilliantly arouses civilians against civilians: “Well if law and order is to be restored by us , then what use are you?” asks the innocently bored general, “Now then, sit aside and face the cases of corruption which brought the nation to the brink of disaster”!

The politicians who have saved their skins by obediently playing second fiddle for five years will now save their skins by submitting confessions for pardon.

Great work!

As first step defeat the police and civil rule through your strategic assets, then get invited by an immense national clamor, to take over as interim or hopefully permanent government.

We are more aware than ever before that as a people crowd, we do not have the democratic option to have representatives.

We have to salute a savior.

Two of them, are available: Army Generals or Taliban Generals.

In fact it is not a choice but a possibility.

They will settle affairs among themselves; such is our destiny. In fact Allah seems to have chosen kings and soldiers as destiny of all Muslims for all times. In past centuries we had king like others had. Generals and Jihadists have appeared to combat the heretical trends of democracy and human rights. Perhaps that is why Muslim immigrants are struggling against representational democracies of the West, to attain their destiny of life-time rulers.

It is not true that generals and jihadists overthrow every rule they serve.

They are loyal to kings and sheikhs and Imams. They hate only modern Muslim rulers who choose heretical path of power: democracy.

Let us see some close cases.

Muslim kings ruled for centuries the Indian population which was deeply hostile most of the time. Throughout these centuries there were tiring wars, mass armed revolts and deep unrest which army alone handled, because no ‘darogha’ or ‘Kotwal’ could handle them.

But no general ever took over.

The British, foreign rulers with a foreign religion ruled us with a few thousand English soldiers and a large army of Muslims and other locals. Muslims soldiers faithfully fought to defend the British rule against Muslim jihadists led by Syed Ahmad Shaheed and others for half a century.

They finally fought for them in WW2.

The British hanged Muslim Ulama, they massacred in Jallianwala, they hanged freedom fighters, they hanged Ilm Din, a far greater hero of All India Muslims than is Mumtaz Qadri; he had acted over a book that strongly and directly insulted the Prophet of Islam, he had been defended by Iqbal and Jinnah, but he was hanged without the need of a Martial Law.

Musaddiq of Iran was easy to overthrow because of his democracy.

Ayatullahs rule till their death with an authority of Allah. They hanged hundred thousands, they plunged their people in a meaningless war of a decade. No protest from a general, not even grumbling.

Unlimited rule of kings, holy men and foreign rulers has been a norm because no general interfered with political power and no agency created independent civil brigades of assassins to create anarchy as a pretext for takeovers.

Isn’t it grotesque that an intelligence network which wrestles with CIA and KGB, locates and sends out their highly covered agents, fails in this godforsaken land to get hold of its own leashed Lions of the Desert?

As helpless observers of our disaster, we can just observe: “It is not wise to destroy your people, any people, for prosperity and power which already overflows from your coffers. Pain and disgrace will be the final reward of misdeeds”.

It would seem to take a general with a well comprised army to empower a president with a fairly elected government, and nowhere may this be more so than for Pakistan, a state naturally inclined to drift west toward peace and prosperity only to find itself several times yanked back toward medieval oligarchy embalmed by the honeyed venom of Islamic dogma working through the veins of some impassioned young and many venal and well positioned elders, all glorious in their mission, frequently bloody in fact.

Such an impression, however, may overlook assaults against Pakistan’s defense and other security elements on the ground as well as the effects of a sustained and still within-bounds presidency and perhaps an equally persistent drone-and-missile program targeting Taliban leaders and clarifying both a human message and a form of conversation and its influence.

Out of habit, we may perceive strings and puppets and some, say, Qatar-to-Pakistan connections — or, say, a Pakistan military and ISI mainline to Taliban — but autonomy and autonomy-seeking behavior and politics may play a stronger role in Pakistan’s restive frontiers than so many other invasive forces.  One might read — and I have read — a devout Pashtun’s equivalent of “they went that-a-way” in reference to the hotter heads in the area.

However Pakistan may wish to walk, one hopes it will be upright and down the middle of the street as opposed to slouching menacingly at one hour and  obsequiously the next down both sides of it for decades to come.

Related Reference

Ahmad, Riaz.  “Execution: Taliban slay 21 tribal policemen in FR Peshawar.”  The Express Tribune, December 30, 2012.

Ahmad, Riaz.  “Late-Night Offensive: Six policemen killed in attack.  The Express Tribune, October 16, 2012.

Ali, Zulfiqar.  “Car bomb kills 17 in crowded market in Pakistan.”  Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2012.

Bangkok Post.  “Militants kidnap 22 Pakistani soldiers: officials.”  December 28, 2012.

Imtiaz, Shah.  “Pakistan gunmen shoot 5 workers from anti-polio campaign.”  AlertNet, December 18, 2012.

Kouri, Jim.  “Terrorists kidnap and execute 21 police officers in Pakistan.”  Examiner, December 30, 2012.

Reuters.  “Bomb Kills 14 Pakistani Soldiers in North Waziristan.”  Updated News, January 13, 2013: “The court order came as an enigmatic preacher turned politician, Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, addressed thousands of supporters outside parliament and repeated calls for the government’s ouster. In earlier speeches, he said that a caretaker administration led by technocrats should take its place.”

Rosenberg, Matthew.  “Taliban Opening Qatar Office, and Maybe Door to Talks.”  The New York Times, January 3, 2012. Note: the article seems to deal with the Afghanistan side of Taliban political interest.

Walsh, Declan.  “Pakistan Supreme Court Orders Arrest of Prime Minister.”  The New York Times, January 15, 2013.

Zahra-Malik, Mehreen.  “Gunmen kidnap seven Pakistani soldiers.”  Reuters, January 2, 2013.

A Middle Path for Pakistan? A Glimpse at Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Long March

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan

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For this two year old clip, the YouTube introduction by “DarSahb” reads, “This is the real islam and he is a real Muslim scholar and a real man who loves humanity without considering which religion they belong to n thats wat islam teaches.  Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that “respect the humanity” so, we all need to respect each other.”

Yesterday, from Pakistan:

Mobile services were also suspended in areas of Lahore that come in the route of the caravan,Express News reported. The areas include Ravi Town, Model Town, Shahrah-e-Quaid-e-Azam, Minar-e-Pakistan and Imamia Colony. According to government officials, the decision was taken due to security threats.

AFP, Rana Tanveer, Web Desk, Zahid Gishkori.  “Tahirul Qadri’s long march begins from Lahore.” The Express Tribune, January 13, 2013.

Buses have been stopped on the way to their step-off points.

Police have been mustered in the tens of thousands to secure the marchers (the noun in mind for that today seems to be “Taliban”).

Dr. Tahir Ul Qadri presents something of a mystery today.  His 604-page fatwa on terrorism (against it, thank God) seems to have brought him to David Frost’s attention, but before we believe the scholar “pro-west”, one may want to develop a larger view of the person.

Tahir-ul Qadri, who returned to Pakistan last month after years in Toronto, accuses the government of being corrupt and incompetent, and says polls cannot be held until reforms are enacted.

He claimed on Monday to be leading one million people into Islamabad, where they will camp out on the streets until their demands are accepted.

Geo Pakistan.  “Tahirul Qadri leads long march towards Islamabad.”  January 14, 2013.

Ul Qadri’s primary demand seems to be for honest government, an essential “no” to corruption.

Who (the world over) is not in favor of honest government?

The next video showing links to a YouTube page titled, “Misc. Dr. Tahir ul Qadri Videos” and maintained by Jawwad Sadiq.

It appears Sadiq is promoting Ul Qadri, but to western eyes and ears, at least two conversion-related clips in the series, one of a woman in burka talking about her experience (and how becoming Muslim helped her quit smoking) and the other of a young man accepting conversion (and affirming his belief in angels) might ruffle some feathers.

In a report filed today, Jewish News One notes that “Qadri went into exile in Canada in 2006 after falling out with Pakistan’s political leaders and the country’s political leaders are worried he is seeking to derail the upcoming elections which are vital for Pakistan’s transition from military rule as this could be the first ballot held after a civilian-led government has completed a full five-year term.”

Jewish News One.  “Pakistan cleric’s ‘long march’ amid sectarian violence.”  January 14, 2013.

Close to the present moment on this story:

But on Monday, Mr. Qadri’s threat to mount a million-person march on Islamabad to push for change in politics fell flat.

The march went ahead, but according to witnesses the number of participants was as low as 5,000 people and no larger than 30,000 as it neared Islamabad late Monday.

Symington, Annabel.  “Tahir ul Qaeri March Falls Flat”.  The Wall Street Journal: India: India Realtime, January 14, 2014.

Additional Reference

Dr. Muhammad Tahir Ul Qadri

Wikipedia.  “Muhammad Tahir-ul=Qadri”.

FTAC – Point & Counterpoint – With Guest Writer Waseem M. Altaf

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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I’ve edited Waseem Altaf’s piece lightly, some for style by turning “%” into the written “percent” and spelling numbers when they’re used to start a sentence, and some for online readability (“Paragraph frequently” would be my advice).  The gist is simple, a familiar “tale of two states born in 1948” — one produces a mighty ultra-modern democracy, and the other suffers along with military dictatorships and a grievous record of political corruption and violence.

In general, I argue the comparison only partially valid and otherwise deeply unfair.

* * *

Country of Interest: Pakistan

Knowledge as a National Priority

By

Waseem Altaf

We were extremely poor yet we had books at home, said Ada Yonath, the 2009 Nobel laureate in chemistry from Israel.  Six million Israelis buy twelve million books every year, being the highest consumers of books in the world.

Knowledge comes through education and Israel has the highest school life expectancy in South West Asia with the highest literacy rate.

In Israel, education is compulsory for children between the ages of three and eighteen.

Israel also spends $110 on scientific research per year per person. Six of the best universities in the world are in Israel. For every 10,000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or scientists. On the other hand there is zero percent chance that Pakistan will achieve the millennium development goals on education by 2015.  India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are well on their way to achieving the same goals.

One in ten “out of school children” in the world is a Pakistani.

What is required is an additional spending of rupees 100 billion, a fifty percent increase over current spending.

Israel, the most threatened country in the world was spending 24 percent of its GDP on defense in 1984. Today it is spending only 7.3 percent.  The budgetary allocations have since been diverted towards productive sectors of the economy.  We on the other hand are spending around 50 percent of the net revenue receipts on defense. As a major chunk of foreign arms purchases is made through loans, there is no account of the amount of loans taken and the interest paid thereon.  As much as 50 percent  of the net revenue receipts go to debt servicing.

As a result of “love for knowledge”, deeply ingrained in the Jewish mindset, three  out of the four most influential people in the last century were Jews.  Except Charles Darwin, the others namely, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein were all Jews.  Forty-five Jews have won the Nobel prize in Physics so far.  Twenty-eight received the Nobel prize for original contribution in the field of chemistry.  Fifty-two of the Nobel laureates in the field of physiology and medicine were Jewish by birth.  Twelve recipients of the Nobel prize in literature and 21 in economics were also Jews.  Nine got the same prize for peace. In other words, 0.3 percent of world population received 24 percent of the Nobel prizes.

A Jewish mother would like her son to be a scientist than to be the Head of a State. Albert Einstein was offered the Presidency of Israel which he politely refused.

So it all originates in the family values.

The love for knowledge is learned as it is valued in the family.  Anything rewarded in the form of praise or other incentives within the family and for that matter in the larger social setting is reinforcing and ultimately becomes part of the national character.  A state and society which honors the knowledgeable becomes a formidable force to reckon with, as technology is based on scientific knowledge and whoever has the technology has the power.

The six day war which Israel fought against the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq resulted in the total capitulation of the Arab Armies.  Israel captured the Gaza strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the West bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan.  Some 779 Jews were killed against 21,000 Muslims.

While 24 percent of Nobel prizes went to the Jews 22 percent of humanity is Muslim. What has been their contribution in the last 800 years in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Economics?  Approximately 1.4 billion Muslims have produced almost nothing yet 14 million Jews have given so much to humanity. We simply cannot repay what we owe to Jonas Salk who invented the polio vaccine in 1955, preventing billions of Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews from the effects of the deadly virus.

The Nobel Foundation is awarding the prize for more than 100 years, yet during this period the 1.4 billion Muslims have produced only six individuals who won the prestigious award: Abdus Salam considered a persona non grata in his own country, because of his religious beliefs; Ahmad Zawail with an American citizenship pursued his work in the U.S.; Naguib Mehfooz, an Egyptian was stabbed in the back by a fanatic Muslim; Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist is in exile in Canada due to threats to her life in her own country; Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist was criminally charged after he made statements alleging mass killings of Armenians and Kurds during the Ottoman period; and Muhammad Yunas, an economist from Bangladesh and the founder of Grameen Bank who has also been subjected to an audit by the government for alleged wrongdoings. A number of petty cases have also been instituted against him.

At present only one percent scientists in the world are Muslims.

Today a large part of the Muslim world is taken over by forces preaching nothing but hatred and contempt for all others belonging to the out-group. Anyone can be held guilty of blasphemy if his or her views do not match with the official dogmas. The total emphasis is on the revealed truth and not on empirical knowledge. We hate to find the truth. For us truth lies in all kinds of conspiracy theories. From 9/11 to the crash of Air Blue Airliner to cricket match fixing to floods every phenomenon was the result of some kind of conspiracy against us.

In a recent survey conducted by “Newsline”, 57 percent of Pakistani youth was in favor of a non-secular state. You visit any educational institution and would find more than half the students with obscurantist views. This ideologically motivated lot is conditioned to see the world in a context which suits their strongly held beliefs reinforced by the forces of dark.

No place for empirical knowledge on the national priority list, indoctrination of hatred, intolerance, revenge, death and destruction is what leads to the collapse of civil order, civil society and finally the state.

Quest for empirical knowledge, tolerance, respect for mutual coexistence, love for all human beings regardless of their faith, are attributes of a progressive, peaceful and prosperous society and a stable state.

* * * 

Response by this blog’s author

I have seen this argument before and have to this point provided caution in relation to several assumptions and variables.

For one thing, not all Israelis (or Jews) are successful or otherwise shielded from the vicissitudes of life. About 20 percent of Israelis live in poverty; a significant number of Israelis emigrate for both economic and educational opportunity plus personal reasons, a mixed picture but one suggesting too that all is not magical in the Jewish State.

The “family values” mentioned, including their being deeply integrated into a now ancient and global ethnic and religious commune, has its own intellectual roots and evolution that starts with the Torah and its mix of origin myths, legends, illustrative stories, and admonitory rules that INVITE argument, criticism, discussion, and exegesis.  Despite the investment or expenditure of great energy in determining a good way to live (with God and with others), the Jewish experience includes horrific episodes of destruction and suffering.  Such historic tragedies tend to cleave away what  one may call “things that didn’t work” — like priests and animal sacrifice and burnt offerings.

Thirteen million contemporary Jews, fewer than half gathered in modern Israel, the rest scattered in Diaspora and sharing a common heritage in each heart comes to not even 1/100 of the Ummah’s breadth and reach involving the conquest / conversion / reversion of thousands of otherwise formerly separated peoples. 

A certain kind of social engineering story comes out in the numbers cited in relation to state-based investments split between, say, defense ware and human capital. However, another part engages with self-concept and the detection and definition of ideals and values as they may be envisioned and suspended in language and transmitted in language behavior.  The Jewish heritage has not only to do with “investments in human capital” but with the transmission across generations of the core monotheism, i.e., faith in one God,  a concomitant investment in the guidance inspired by the study of the Torah, and, finally, the integration of that conversation into Jewish customs, laws, and traditions that have radiated outward into larger global societies, making, for example, the Romans who once destroyed Jewish life in Jerusalem, Christians, millions of whom promote the Jewish return to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.

As seen in the last century, neither customs nor ethics served to defend mine from German barbarism, but both having informed a greater surrounding civilization — having more of humanity with it, literally — prevailed in that round. 

It doesn’t take much light reading in, say, linguistics to realize how wild a species we are — just as we are biological and have to wrestle with all implied by that — and I’ve inclined to think that civilizational efforts are essentially minority affairs, i.e., with many contributing “moral entrepreneurs” everywhere (from many walks) working with language across time and through the species but slowly and with time to be slow to effect adaptive, global, and positive change, but not monolithic change. 

In essence, I believe an evolving, modernizing humanity will strive to improve its felt qualities of living, but it may do so while experiencing and grinding against other tendencies.

At about this point, I generally note that Moses led not only Jews but a “mixed multitude” out of Egypt, and as parable the story repeats itself but perhaps in widening circles. 

One more observation: the “compared to the Jews” message also includes as message, “Compete with the Jews!”

It’s coaches a competition where one must win (something, I guess) at the expense of the other.

However, the structure I foresee is more integrating, more binding together, more engaged with an evolving way in thought that need not belong particularly to anyone but may be more a natural expression of an evolving human consciousness.

Again, within that cosmological view, God and a small part of the world work on that emergence together and across myriad cultures and languages, while the larger part of the world passing its ages in darkness becomes with every generation itself a little smaller.

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FTAC – Why Drones

09 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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“So far, the TTP has carried out 200 suicide attacks killing 561 security personnel and 2,403 civilians. At least 702 security men and 6,125 civilians were injured in these attacks. It has also carried out 1,300 IED attacks killing 2,060 security men and 2,073 civilians, and injuring 1,532 troops and 2,309 civilians. The group has blown up more than 300 schools during this period.”

Shehzad, Mohammad.  “Brotherhood of Bombs.”  The Friday Times, November 9, 2012.

A state might send in massive force, including investigative force, and attempt to shut down the social and physical machinery producing so much death and misery, but it risks also not succeeding completely — e.g., of seeing its outposts raided and officers murdered with impunity — as long as obsession continues to motivate the party that can neither contain, discipline, nor restrain itself.

Old Talk – Still New: Muneeb Tahir’s Satire Along the Edge of the Arab Expansion in Pakistan

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan

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Pakistan encountered by way of an English-speaking liberal in Lahore differs quite from the Pakistan encountered by way of the network news.  Here from September 11, 2011 comes a reference-worthy excerpt from a satire about, perhaps, the deliberate deflection and quiet destruction of inherent landborne Pakistani character and culture out along the Wahabbi Front.

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I was feeling a little murky after watching a TV program in which a televangelist and a lady with a “bindi” had quite a tussle. The bell rang and my friend was there with his “noorani chehra”, as luminous as ever, standing at the door. I invited him to come in. After a little chit chat he asked me whether I watched the TV program in which Sir Zaid (something) bashed an infidel Indian. I was shocked at first but gathered some courage to respectfully make corrections to the questions placed before me.

“Yaar, wasn’t she a Pakistani Hindu?” I said.

“What nonsense? Don’t you know Pakistan is an Islamic Caliphate with camels, oil wells and Palm trees? We don’t have monkeys and elephants in Pakistan, we have camels. She had a bindi. What does that imply?”

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Read More from “Wherever My Camel Leads Me,” Minto Park, September 11, 2011.

Muneeb Tahir, the author, and I chat now and then via Skype, and I have found the experience so far enlightening, heartening, and hopeful.

Taking Muneeb’s advice, I’ve been reading Alice Albinia’s Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River.

If he takes my advice, he may be reading (soon, I don’t know) Vine Deloria Jr.’s God is Red.

Embedded in both would seem the observation of cultural attachment and rightness with distinct landscapes and large regions.  We “Yankees” have come to love not only our moccasin slippers (and Pendleton whatnot, for example) but to have constructed a cultural and ecology sensitive environmental and social movement unprecedented by way of its ambitions and scale.  Most of us foreigners — well, comparatively few of us North American Native Americans — have our roots and wires tuned to our surrounding oceans, bays, rivers, fields, hills, and mountains.

We breath with the land on which we have established ourselves.

Should Pakistanis feel otherwise about the natural treasures bequeathed to them by God in the form of a varied landscape hosting many indigenous cultures — genuinely so — and evolving languages?

Muneeb has a great command of his cultural surrounds and the history of the land. One may expect some wonderful observations to come by way of his experience and voice — and he’s just getting started.