THE RESPONSIBILITIES THAT GO WITH IT

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/04/28/the-responsibilities-that-go-with-it/

One angle to events such as the horrific tragedy, the massacre in Sri Lanka is that the people apparently responsible for the murders call themselves ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’, the same as you and I do, and we should resent that. We feel murderers should not be allowed to use that label for themselves. On the other hand, given their understanding of the subject, they probably wouldn’t want us to call ourselves Muslim.
Who’s to judge?
We all have our own definitions of things and are as convinced that we are right and the other wrong as the ‘other side’ is of the reverse. The matter, therefore, should be out of our jurisdiction, which means that we may hold an opinion on a given case but should not be able to enforce it legally. For those of us who believe in a divine authority, such matters are for Him to judge alone. We know where this is headed, and we also know that declaring Ahmadis non-Muslim was a political move, meant to satisfy extremist views. We know too, that it has achieved nothing beyond grief and violence.

The responsibilities that go with calling this country the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, or simply with considering ourselves Muslim, do not appear to have sunk in

Isn’t it time, when the brain has become the most prolific organ of all, when human scientific achievements are so mindboggling, when implants are turning thought to speech, when we have actually seen a black hole for the first time, when a severe immune-deficiency disorder can be cured by means of gene therapy… for us to use our brains to reason out some of the conundrums supposedly stemming from religion? Such as the strange question to be found on the Pakistani passport form, probably the only country other than India to demand an applicant’s religious affiliation. There is probably a similar question on the Saudi passport, I wouldn’t know. After all, the male citizens in that country can even deny their family members the right to travel if the family member happens to be female.
Here is an extract from an application for a Pakistani passport. This declaration may be found at the end of the form:
(sic) DECLARATION IN CASE OF MUSLIM. I, s/d/w/of — aged adult Muslim, resident of — hereby solemnly declare that: a) I am a Muslim and believe in the absolute and unqualified finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him) the last of the prophets b) I do not recognise any person who claims to the prophet in any sense of the word or of any description whatsoever after Muhammad (peace be upon him) or recognise such a claimant as prophet or a religious reformer as a Muslim c) I consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani to be an impostor nabi and also consider his followers whether belonging to the Lahori or Qadiani group, to be NON-MUSLIM.
…………………………………….
No segment of society should be tagged in such a way, but that is a different matter. The question here is to identify what these questions achieve on the form. If someone holds a different set of beliefs, specifically those who believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be a nabi, are they to be treated differently in some way? Denied education? Denied loans? Healthcare?
What if the person signing this document believes quite differently to what he/she declares, how is it to be proved?
Can we deny our citizens the right to travel based on their religious affiliation? If not, what is the point of that question on the passport for? If it is for the purpose of statistical record, this question should be in the census form instead, since only a small segment of the population of Pakistan possesses a passport.
Once again, who’s to judge who is Muslim and who is not? Are extremists and people who murder innocent civilians Muslim? Yet these are the people being sheltered in this country, it has been admitted. These people are allowed to stage protests and shut down roads, whereas others, peaceful nationals who happen to hold different views about some religious matters, are hounded. If this is Islam, it is unrecognisable as such.
The responsibilities that go with calling this country the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, or simply with considering ourselves Muslim, do not appear to have sunk in. This name makes… or should make us more inclusive, more humane, much more averse to violence, and very much more rational. That it is the reverse is the result of a lack of education, and a lack of humane instinct.

THIS PERPETUALLY BURNING BUILDING

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/04/21/this-perpetually-burning-building/

On April 15th at around 16.30 GMT, a fire broke out under the wooden roof of the 850-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral, one of France’s most iconic buildings. The spire and the roof collapsed, but the main structure including two bell towers, and the artifacts inside the cathedral, were saved.

Since then, all in the space of a couple of days, French billionaires, organisations and citizens have pledged almost €900 million in donations to rebuild the cathedral. Imagine what they could achieve if they pledged instead to solve the greater issues facing the world Hunger, lack of medical care, illiteracy…the list goes on.

Speaking generally of the people of this world, Tennessee Williams said, “We live in a perpetually burning building.”

Yes, we do. And in Pakistan, the roof caved in when the first martial law was declared in 1958. The main spire collapsed further damaging the roof, when the country split into two with such cruel violence, in 1971. The scaffolding of the burning building, composed of millions of people, can be seen through the hole in the roof, and the falling embers make it a precarious place to live. People continue living here though, because they have nowhere else to go. And the fire keeps burning because the smoke is useful to shield mainly those who claim to help but aim to hurt.

It is Pakistan’s philanthropists, those with hearts of gold, who have made the place liveable. There are many such people, only some are mentioned below.

There are many organisations, to all of whom the people of this country owe a debt of gratitude. Those responsible for them are the country’s most influential people, because rather than generating hope, they actually make it come true. Although hope is useful and one cannot live without it, help in time of need is what we need most

Abdul Sattar Edhi started work as a pedlar in Karachi and then became an agent selling cloth in the wholesale market. After a few years of this work, the Memon community to which he belonged helped him to set up his first free dispensary, and then the Edhi Trust and Edhi Foundation were born which– with the help of Edhi’s wife Bilquis, established maternity homes, the largest fleet of ambulances in the world, orphanages, food kitchens, women’s shelters, clinics and nursing training institutions. Help is provided indiscriminately by the Edhi Foundation to whoever needs it.

In 2014, two years before Edhi’s death, his Foundation was robbed of £400,000 in cash. The Edhi Foundation and Edhi sahib himself have also often been targeted by Pakistan’s extremist groups.

Dr Adeebul Hasan Rizvi graduated from Dow Medical College in 1968. He worked in the UK for a while, then returned to Pakistan and set up a small urology ward at the Civil Hospital in Karachi in 1970, which became the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT). It has since grown to be Pakistan’s largest Urology and Transplantation Institute. Dr Rizvi is the President of the Transplant Society of Pakistan. In 2003 he led a team of surgeons to perform the country’s first liver transplant.

Treatment at SIUT is totally free for everyone because the founder believes that access to quality healthcare with dignity and compassion is every person’s right. Over a thousand patients are treated for free at the Institute, and to date it has been responsible for 5878 transplants, and about 970 dialyses take place every day.

In 2001 there was a plot to murder Dr Rizvi, which was foiled.

Ruth Pfau, who has been called Pakistan’s Mother Teresa, was a German whose home was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. She escaped to West Germany and studied medicine, becoming a doctor. She converted to Roman Catholicism and became a nun in 1953. Her Order sent her to India from where she came to Pakistan. She decided to spend her life here battling leprosy, and she did.

Ruth Pfau ran the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi, which was later expanded to a larger institution and rehabilitation Centre for leprosy patients. Currently, along with the head office in Karachi, the centre has expanded to 157 health centres all over the country.

There are many other people who make it possible for the people of this country to exist. Ramzan Chhipa, who owns the Chhipa Welfare Association that runs a large fleet of ambulances in Karachi, second only to that run countrywide by the Edhi Foundation. There is the Aurat Foundation and the Agha Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), the Ansar Burney Trust and Dar-ul-Sakun for people with disabilities who could not otherwise afford care. And the Shaukat Khanum Hospital, Imran Khan’s greatest achievement to date.

There are many more organisations, small and large, to all of whom the people of this country owe a debt of gratitude. Those who are responsible for them are the country’s most influential people of all the years that Pakistan has been in existence, because rather than generating hope, they actually make it come true. Although hope is useful and one cannot live without it, help in time of need is what we need most.

As for the rest of us, we need to find out who lies behind the smoke, and why the smoke is allowed to shield them before we can put out the flames that are burning this country down to the ground.

POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/04/14/pot-calling-the-kettle-black-2/

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has demanded that Britain should apologise for the 1919 Jalianwala Bagh massacre, and the 1943 Bengal famine. Oh, and as an addendum he has also demanded that it return to Pakistan the Kohinoor Diamond taken in 1849.

It is not certain where the Koh-i-Noor diamond first came from. It was probably mined in Golconda, present day Andhra Pradesh.

Babar wrote about it in the Babar Nama, saying it was acquired by Alauddin Khalji of Delhi from the Kakatiya Dynasty of Southern India at the beginning of the 14th century. Babar himself acquired it as tribute in 1526 following the Battle of Panipat.

The Koh-i-Noor was taken from the Mughals by Nadir Shah of Persia when he invaded Delhi in 1739. he might have been the first person to call it ‘Koh-i-Noor’, or ‘Mountain of Light’ in Persian. When he died in 1747 and his empire collapsed, the gem went to his grandson who gave it to Ahmad Shah Durrani of Afghanistan. One of Ahmad Shah’s descendants Shuja Shah, the self-proclaimed King of Afghanistan, fled to the Punjab in 1813, and lost the diamond to his host Ranjit Singh.

You wish members of the Pakistan government would stop embarrassing its people each time they open their mouths. You wish too that one’s leaders would do what they are supposed to do and stop fishing for popular ra-rah by means of such asides which have nothing to do with what they were elected for

In 1849 the Kingdom of Punjab was taken over by the British. Article III of the Treaty of Lahore signed then ceded the diamond to Queen Victoria, not as a personal gift to her, as the Governor General Dalhousie had it presented by Ranjit Singh’s son to the East India Company, which presented it to the Queen as a spoil of war. It– or rather its segments, since it has since been cut into several pieces– can now be found in the various crowns belonging to the Queens of England.

There are therefore many claimants. India first demanded the British return it at the time of Independence in 1947, and then again in 1953 and 2000. In 1976 Pakistan asked for its return, and in 2000 the Taliban claimed it as Afghanistan’s legitimate property.

The British Government rejected all these claims, saying that the diamond was legally obtained by the British under the terms of the last Treaty of Lahore. Which is what they will say again in response to Fawad Chaudhry’s demands, if they bother to respond.

Yes, the British government ought to have apologised for that shameful part of its history that is Jallianwala. That they have not, will forever stand against them.

To ask for an apology for the famine of Bengal though is nothing less than gross cheek and gall when the demand comes from Pakistan, and if I were a citizen of Bangladesh, I would say so. As a member of the human race, I do say so.

The famine of Bengal took the lives of between two to three million Bengalis, due to starvation, malaria and other diseases.

When the Japanese occupied Burma, modern day Myanmar, the British were afraid that they would advance into India via Bengal. To prevent this, the British ordered the stocks of paddy (unmilled rice) and other food products to be destroyed along the coastal areas of the Bengal. The British Army also confiscated or destroyed all boats large enough for ten or more persons, belonging to the local people who relied on these boats for fishing, and transport of commercial goods, seeds and other equipment. Rice and fish are the staple diet of the people of Bengal who lost both at this time. No recompense was provided and no food rations, and a famine set in.

Pakistan was formed after that in 1948. The people of Bengal had a majority over the people in the Western wing, yet the capital and the government was always in the hands of the West. Various such things led to the separation of East Pakistan from the West and the birth of Bangladesh, but not before what has been gross excesses committed by the West against its eastern wing, although both sides suffered fatalities at the hands of each other and neither is willing to accept the figures presented by the other. The death of civilians killed in Bangladesh as a result of the war has been called genocide, because they lie anywhere between 300,000 and 3,000,000. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women are said to have been raped.

According to the Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas writing in 1971 for the British Sunday Times (Mascarenhas was once the editor of Karachi’s Morning News): “I saw Hindus hunted from village to village and door to door, shot off-hand. I have heard the screams of men bludgeoned to death in the compound of the Circuit House in Comilla. I have seen truckloads of other human targets and those who had the humanity to try to help them hauled off ‘for disposal’ under the cover of darkness and curfew.”

For this Pakistan is responsible. Can Pakistan in all conscience point fingers at someone else for doing similar things?

You wonder if the gentleman making demands for an apology from Britain is aware of the history behind the events he speaks of, and the events that took place afterwards? You wish members of the Pakistan government would stop embarrassing its people each time they open their mouths. You wish too that one’s leaders would do what they are supposed to do and stop fishing for popular ra-rah by means of such asides which have nothing to do with what they were elected for. There is the small issue of increasing Press censorship that the Chaudhry is probably trying to muffle under such rhetoric. His tactics might work since the public is easily diverted by such macho calls for justice, but the events that took place in Pakistan’s eastern wing will always be remembered by anyone with half a conscience.

CODDIWOMPLING: Travelling purposefully towards a vague destination

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/04/07/coddiwompling-travelling-purposefully-towards-a-vague-destination/

Back in 1896 the American Supreme Court ruled that so long as public facilities were the same for whites and the rest, it was okay to segregate the two. ‘Separate but Equal,’ was the term used. Because of that ruling, segregation was sanctioned, legally, constitutionally. This is how matters stood for about 60 years by which time there were aggressive moves to challenge these laws. Then, a gentleman called Oliver Brown filed a suit against the Board of Education in Kansas questioning why his daughter was unable to attend all-white schools. He said that not only were the white schools better, but that segregation violated the ‘equal protection’ clause of the 14th Amendment in the US Constitution.

By 1954 Earl Warren had been appointed as new Chief Justice to the US Supreme Court, and he succeeded in bringing about… no, not a dam fund… but an extremely progressive verdict, a unanimous one at that, against segregation.

It took considerable skill and effort to achieve this, because racism was not as yet politically incorrect and so there was little pressure to be otherwise, in fact there was quite a lot of pressure to continue being racist. The only opposing pressure was that exerted by reason and conscience. But the case made it through the court, proving that when something is considered worthwhile it is possible to resist pressure and make it happen.

Is it by dividing a nation along religious lines, or any other lines, that unity is sought?

Because of this landmark decision, when you and I visit the USA today, despite the doubtless racism which exists there and everywhere else including Pakistan, except among thinking individuals, we are able to use the same bathrooms, schools, buses and so on, as the white population. No need to use rang gora karnay wali creams.

Back in September last year, Prime Minister Imran Khan appointed Atif Mian to the Economic Advisory Council. But following pressure by extremist right-wing groups that appointment was rescinded and Mian resigned. The reason for taking back the appointment as we know was that Mian belongs to the Ahmaddiya community. That is old news. What is current is that now that the economy of Pakistan is in such dire straits that that old matter insists on coming to mind, not that it should ever have been allowed to leave it.

It is probable that Mian, who has previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago and is currently a professor of economics at Princeton University, serving as the director of the Julius Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, would have done a much better job because he knew finance and economics. With him as advisor, perhaps this coddiwompling government would have been able to steer the economy into safer waters instead of making confident noises about doing so, and pretending it has a direction and an economic policy.

But who would have done a better job and who has not, and in fact the economy itself is a secondary matter. The important point is, why did this incident involving Atif Mian ever happen? Not until such things never happen again should this matter be put on the back shelf.

The dismissal of Atif Mian cuts at the roots of this country’s existence. The government ought to have been challenged in court when Mian was dismissed because that action shattered the Constitution. Because such discrimination is not what an ‘Islamic’ Republic should indulge in. Where was our reason, religious sentiment and conscience at the time? Why do extremist right-wing political parties carry the day with such sickening regularity?

According to the Constitution of Pakistan it is only the President and Prime Minister who are required to be defined as Muslim. All other posts in government are open to followers of other religions.

The dismissal of an eminently qualified candidate on such grounds had not a leg to stand on.

Following the event Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said that the decision was taken because the government wished to maintain unity. The man is wrong, plain wrong.

Is it by dividing a nation along religious lines, or any other lines, that unity is sought? Remember 1971 when Pakistan refused to hand over government to its elected representatives in its East Wing because we did not want the kalay bhookay Bengalis to rule over us? Did that decision unify Pakistan or split it?

The past has a way of coming back to bite you, and in our case now, deservedly so.