SHE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/26/she-who-must-not-be-named/

According to an Afghan Taliban spokesman in an interview with Reuters, “Mentioning the names of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters is not culturally tolerable in our society,” he said, claiming that from a religious point of view, taking the name of a woman is prohibited.

The context of this curious statement was the question of having a space for a person’s mother on a national identity card, an idea that the Taliban clearly do not approve of.

Which religion is the above spokesperson speaking of? There is no such prohibition in Islam. In a real Islamic society every member is expected to respect other members, women in particular, and the last time one checked respect did not translate to incarceration, or making a woman ‘she who must not be named.’ If that were so, among other problems we would have had a hard time speaking of the female family members of people we hold special in history and benefitting from them. Instead we refer to those women with reverence as Bibi Khadija, Bibi Ayesha and so on and learn from their achievements and character.

It is obvious that for ultra-orthodox persons, women are synonymous with sex  alone, and have no other role in life.

In Saudi Arabia which, like Pakistan, is one of the countries where a national ID card is compulsory, and which as a country is oddly enough considered by many to be the standard of correct Islamic conduct,  only those women who are widowed can register and update their children’s information in the family documents. Otherwise the law considers the father as head of family, and only a father can deal with such documentation as ID cards and birth certificates. It is only when the father dies that this authority devolves upon the mother. When some men fail to register or update their children’s information for a variety of reasons the mother cannot perform this duty. It is hardly a surprise then that in Saudi Arabia just three quarters of births are registered. It might well be the same in Pakistan.

Afghanistan is one of those countries where every Afghan adult over the age of 18 must possess and carry an  ID card, called a Tazkira, the usual small plastic card with identifying information including the owner’s name– even if it’s a women– and a surname.

Three years ago a young woman by the name of Laleh Osmani began her campaign to make a space for a mother’s name on these identity cards. It is this that the Taliban spokesperson above was referring to.

It has been a struggle for Osmani, and she had to face the usual threats and insults but this courageous young lady and her supporters came up with results. Just a few days ago an amendment was signed by the President of Afghanistan according to which it should be possible to allow the mother’s names on an identification card and the birth certificate, as well as the father’s. One can only hope the amendment is able to make it through the obstacle course.

You wonder why the fact of having a mother’s name on an identity card was so difficult to accept since if anyone is entitled to it, it should be the person who has definitely produced the child. If one thing is certain about a child’s lineage it is who his or her mother is, and this is not an attempt at facetiousness, it is a simple biological fact. It is of course not necessary to have either parent’s name on the card.

Identity cards are not a must in all countries. They are not, for example, in the United States and Canada. Instead, everyone owns a birth certificate, which is issued by the State. The States report this information to the federal government for the purpose of statistics. The information sheds light on population changes, childbirth trends, parent trends as well as maternal and fetal health. The names and addresses of both parents are required on the form.

It is time that ultra-orthodox factions in society understood that life is more than the ‘s’ word. It is up to the education we all receive to help everyone understand this fact. The absence of such an understanding makes not just for embarrassment, but for suffering on the part of women and children and as a result of this of the whole of society. Women after all are not just the ones who bear but they raise children too. Women’s abilities, their minds and their well-being deserve care and respect in the interest of us all.

Laleh Osmani deserves respect for her efforts towards this goal.

IS THE DEATH PENALTY A SOLUTION?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/19/is-the-death-penalty-a-solution/

• Capital punishment should not be an option in Pakistan

A just society is one in which citizens fully comprehend the result of committing an offence; in which citizens know that if they break the law they will be apprehended and punished. Yet crime happens.

In a place like Pakistan where committing an offence is almost unavoidable and it is easy to avoid apprehension and punishment, crime is rampant. Here not only do real offenders escape being caught and punished, those who do get caught and punished are often innocent.

Fraud and forgery are strong industries in Pakistan, and bribery and misrepresentation a daily occurrence in almost everyone’s life. Fake documents (think driver’s licenses, for example) are nearly more common than genuine. An AFP report says that the system in Pakistan allows people with money or power to rise above the law. And that is scary. One of the basic tenets of the law is that no one should be above it. When segments of society are above the law, law enforcement and justice cannot function. In this scenario innocents suffer and criminals live the good life.

Following the recent dreadful case of the rape of the lady on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway– and in front of her small children, the country has seen strident calls for the rapists to be apprehended and punished as they definitely should be. What is debatable is whether capital punishment should apply. And what is very difficult to understand is the clamour in support of a public hanging and castration. Even the PM has added his voice, for what it’s worth, in support of the call for public hanging or chemical castration.

Whether or not capital punishment is effective is a moot point, and not under discussion here. The point of this column is to question whether capital punishment should be allowed in Pakistan, a country where people with influence are above the law, where officials are easily bribed, where false documentation and false testimony are rife. If a capital punishment is handed out despite this, and later found to be false, a dead person will not come back to life. His or her family members will have lived with the pain of wrongly losing a loved one and that stigma and suffering will never be lifted. This is not justice.

The same argument applies against castration.

The further call for the hanging to be public, to “Let everyone know what happens to those who commit such crimes” is impossible to understand. No one seems to make a move to make repercussions so explicit when each and every day innocents suffer and criminals go free. Why then this sudden baying for blood when in today’s age of newspapers and televisions, when even the poorest man possesses a cell phone and a TV, the public know well what happens without people being hung on their doorstep. Do the people of Pakistan need to witness the image and stink of such violence? Do they lack such images in their lives? Do they lack the tendency towards violence that they should witness more?

Should our children see such images? Should they grow up to accept such sights as part of their lives?

If there were any sort of guarantees that the men caught for committing such crimes are really guilty, that their conviction is not the result of revenge or wrongful arrest based on fake evidence then capital punishment is open to discussion, but public hanging never.

It is my conviction however that because there can be no such guarantee in Pakistan, the idea of capital punishment in this country should never be entertained. Based on very common precedent there is no guarantee whatsoever of the real criminal being caught, in fact a good chance of the opposite.

There are those who say that religion calls for this. That is not so. You can only hand out punishments when the conditions are such that the punishment is likely to be just, and there is little justice in this country.

Pakistani society is as much to blame for crime as the criminals, as are the governments who have failed to check corruption, and law enforcing authorities who have failed to check crime. In the particular case that took place on the motorway the police did not turn up when called. If there was a shortage of officers this should have been made clear to anyone using the motorway and alternative arrangements provided.

So if there is to be no capital punishment, what then?

We need a complete overhaul of law enforcement. Officials should know as much as any rapist that they will be held accountable for neglecting the security of the citizens of the country, accepting bribes and giving in to pressure.

It is the government’s job to ensure that pressure does not come to bear on those who enforce the law. It is most often government officers and the rich segment of society which provide such pressure, and get away with it every time.

Punishment is not the only deterrent. Attempts should also be made to change the conditions that encourage crime, to prevent crime from occurring. We need jobs, education and security in this country. And just as important we need to change the deeply entrenched attitude against women as a result of which it is considered acceptable to harass women, to commit crimes against them and to hold the victims themselves responsible. It is the attitude we saw reflected in the CCPO’s statement where he held the victim responsible for being raped. Such reprimands are not his job. His job is to ensure security and this he entirely failed to do.

The criminals must definitely be apprehended and punished. One has no sympathy for people who commit such crimes. But as we all expect in our own cases, there must be a proper investigation free from bribery, sloth or self-interest. The rapists must face time in jail.

To take a life and to cut off body parts is neither a solution nor a deterrent. Those who have the wherewithal still know that they can get away with rape, murder and fraud, and they are as much a part of this society as anyone else. Is one segment to be deterred and not the other?

In case of a false conviction, if the person is eventually pronounced innocent, at least he or she can still be freed, in many cases, and the shadow cast over his/her entire family can still be lifted, albeit after much suffering. A dead person cannot be brought back to life and whatever is lost cannot be replaced. Choose.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER 16,000 MOUTHS TO FEED

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/12/another-day-another-16000-mouths-to-feed/

A huge population is a threat to its components both individually and collectively, particularly if the size precedes prosperity; a poor country cannot feed or educate a large population, or provide any of the other conditions necessary for prosperity, because the needs of a large population are greater than its lucrative output. Rather like a city that floods after a downpour where you must first unclog the drains to enable the streets to dry, you must clear the way for a large population to sustain itself before it can become prosperous. And without prosperity there is corruption, crime and all the other factors that we see around us in Pakistan.

Pakistan has one of the fasting growing populations in the world– although it is outstripped by Afghanistan and some other countries. Pakistan’s population is estimated at 220.9 million according to the 2020 World Population Data Sheet released by the US Population Reference Bureau, and it is ‘growing rapidly, with an annual fertility rate of 3.6 children per couple.’ According to the same report, Pakistan has a growth rate of 3.6  percent. It points out that a population of this size doubles itself every 19 years.

Reducing the growth rate is not impossible. Other countries with larger populations have managed to reduce the growth rate, India being one of these  with a growth rate of 2.2 percent while Bangladesh stands at 2.3 percent after both countries made efforts to bring it down.

China with its massive population, has brought its growth rate down to 1.5 percent, but given the way it achieved this, it is perhaps not the best example.

In 1980 when the Chinese population was nearing the one billion mark the government announced its ‘one child policy’ which meant that it became against the law (except in certain cases such as where the first child was differently abled) to have more than one child per couple. Those violating the policy were sanctioned in various ways. To encourage compliance the government offered free contraception, as well as financial incentives, even preference in employment, for complying individuals. At times stronger measures were taken, such as forced sterilization and abortions. There was obviously a decline in the population rate as a result. In 2015 China announced that it was allowing families to have two children.

For obvious reasons such forcible measures are undesirable, and in any case they cannot be implemented in Pakistan where contraception faces a backlash. However some measures can be taken on board such as the free contraception and the financial incentives.

Pakistan has a family welfare programme with clinics throughout the country. Attempts are made to include less accessible regions by means of mobile vans. There are health workers who reach out to the public. The clinics include mother and child wellness programmes including childhood immunization and health checks, educational talks and assistance with contraception. But a survey reported that many women preferred attending private clinics where possible because private clinics were better equipped with seating and so on, and they the women were treated with more dignity there.

According to Dr Ansar Ali Khan, an advisor on the subject of reproductive health to the United Nations Population Fund Programme in Pakistan, “A combination of factors like non availability of services, baseless traditional beliefs and misconception play a big role” in this country.

He is not wrong. In the Punjab for example local culture frowns upon parents living with their daughters even when they attain old age.

Dr. Ali Khan adds that a sizeable part of the population “believes the use of artificial contraceptives for family planning is against nature and also against Islam.”

It is yet another example of a poor understanding of religion standing in the way of progress in this country. Pakistan needs to not just educate its people on such (and other matters) but also the mullahs, and to woo the latter onto their side as Afghanistan has apparently managed to do. The American National Broadcasting Company NBC reported a few years ago that in Afghanistan several mullahs endorsed contraceptives as a means of increasing the gap between births. Some even delivered the message during Friday prayers. The mullahs’ major concerns centered on safety and infertility. The report quoted the programme director of a British based family planning organisation in Kabul who said that thousands of religious leaders in Afghanistan had been trained on the subject.

The American National Public Radio quotes a cleric belonging to one of Lahore’s oldest religious seminaries as saying that ‘family planning is wrong and un-Islamic if practiced routinely.’ In support of his statement the cleric cited one of the most misunderstood passages in the Quran which enjoins us not to kill a child for reasons of poverty, because Allah takes it upon Himself to provide sustenance.  This injunction is commonly construed as saying that humans can go ahead and reproduce all they want because God provides, regardless.

The fact that God has also asked us to give our children a good, comfortable upbringing is in that case threatened, since almost 40 percent of the children in Pakistan under the age of five are underweight, and mother and child are both undernourished. None of the family is educated and nor does the poor man of Pakistan live in safe housing and neighbourhoods. And most of Pakistan consists of ‘the poor man.’

One of the reasons for the high birthrate in Pakistan is that infant mortality is so great here at 57.2 per 1000 live births. Couples therefore produce many children against the eventuality that only one or two will survive. In the process they often end up with more mouths than they can feed. The fact is that in the absence of pensions for much of the population, who is to look after an aged couple if not their child?

They also keep producing children until they have a son, given that sons are more important in this culture than daughters.

A doctor working for the family welfare programme in Pakistan suggests the importance of incentives given to parents to keep the birthrate down. A pension, as mentioned above is a good idea, something to keep an elderly couple off the street. It is also a good idea to provide free contraception and consultation to patients.

The doctor also suggests that family welfare programme workers should be given better incentives─ salaries, pensions and perks at a level with other government officials, along with better training.

There is little time to spend on pondering this issue. Every day brings with it an average of 16,918 live births, every hour 704.90. Each day lost increases the problem by as much as that.

God did say our destiny lies with Him. But he also gave us free will and a brain. Why not use the brain and the will and plan accordingly?

GETTING WHAT YOU FOSTER

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/06/getting-what-you-foster/

Well, the inevitable has happened: Dirilis (Ertugrul), the Turkish play dubbed into Urdu, an enthusiastic project of the Prime Minister, has taken viewers by storm in Pakistan. Now the usual army of desi gawkers and self-righteous blockheads have a brand new target, Ertugrul’s on-screen wife and Turkish actress Ezra Bilgic. The poor girl has been trolled endlessly about what she wears in real life until recently she lashed out and told the offenders to just stop following her, in other words, ‘shut up and get lost.’ Not that that will make any difference.

But for now, let’s ignore the pestering of women that is such an integral part of this society and talk about other aspects of the matter.

It isn’t clear whether people everywhere tend to confuse television shows with reality but they certainly do in Pakistan. That makes the blockbuster serial Ertugrul a great risk here- as has been warned earlier; but the powers that be are not known for their sense, or their will to do the right thing. Just as Bilgic’s trolls presume that her on-screen pious character should conform with her appearance off-screen, many viewers of the show are certain to expect that the Turkish war against ‘infidels’ that took place in the 13th century should carry on in the 21st. Which makes it extremely ominous that toys meticulously modelled upon the weapons used by Ertugrul and his people– swords, knives, daggers, axes, all stamped with the Kayi tribe symbol–  are now selling like hotcakes in Pakistan.

Does it matter if children are taught violence via their games?

Toys are not just cute little things that children spend their time bouncing up and down or talking to. They are crucial to the development of every child’s brain. This is why too much time spent playing with electronic toys is not a good thing because they adversely affect a child’s attention span, intelligence, and social and emotional development, although some electronic toys undoubtedly do foster intelligence. But there is little chance of pushing the genie back into the bottle now and electronic toys and games are here to stay, but parents can restrict their use to a small span of time each day.

Meantime there is also the much larger segment of society for whom electronic toys are just dreams. Of course the specific Ertugrul toys will also be beyond their reach, but should children generally be allowed to play with guns? Swords? Should they be allowed to play ‘kill, kill!’?

The best pastime for children are interesting games that  foster values we care for: creativity, inclusion, patience. Games and sports that promote skills, strengthen muscle coordination and team spirit, sportsmanship, and toys, simple ones, including basic things such as string, old boxes, tape, and so with which children can use their imagination to adapt, innovate, create, and build. Whatever children play with must promote that most important thing of all, peace. Older children must play with younger ones part of the time. It is up to parents to ensure that both employ courtesy, patience and kindness, that no one calls the other ‘stupid,’ or ‘mad’ or ‘langray’ or ‘motay’…the name calling that unfortunately takes place all the time. Even when used in ‘affection’ such names should be firmly disallowed. The aim must be to foster virtues we claim to possess but which are fast becoming a very rare commodity: the virtues of adab.

There are toys appropriate for each age, sound and movement for the very young, hand and eye coordination for the somewhat older, size, shape, push and pull and take apart things for children between the ages of one and two.

Then follows the pretend stage, dressing up, painting, all of that.

Never, ever should violence come into play except as something to be avoided, something to be employed as a very last resort in self-defense.

The problems we are having in this part of the world are all to do with violence and with those who are trained to employ force. Life appears to be imbued with it. In news today is the story of soldiers martyred and injured in North Waziristan as a result of an IED attack, of wars and violence everywhere.

It is an undeniable fact that, in Pakistan, authorities refuse to do their job unless they are forced to do so by means of violence, such as in Karachi where citizens are protesting DHA’s inaction following the rains, by threatening to resort to riots. Violence appears to be the catalyst to action, because that is what we grow up with. Even apart from the violence in games it is considered kosher for parents to threaten children with slaps, ‘meri jooti,’ a whipping or some other form of brute display of power.

Is there a way to raise a new generation along a calmer theme? If so then is it wise to encourage shows such as Ertugrul– gripping as it is– to be shown on national television? Or now that the damage is done is it time to realise the importance of toys that foster peace and creativity rather than bloodshed?