"THE STRONGEST AMONG YOU...

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/10/31/the-strongest-among-you/

…is the one who controls his anger.”─ The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

There are certain roads down which we are told it is best not to go. Certain others we have learnt to abandon ourselves. An example of the latter is that ever since some segments around the world became more conscious about how people ought or ought not to be treated, certain words have become ‘haram’, so to speak. It is because these words refer to people who have been severely discriminated against, and therefore the terms carry much distressing baggage. You do not say ‘handicapped’ now for example; that is a word that brings back memories of a time when persons unable to do this or that were considered lacking. Now, since it is recognized that we are each of us unable to do something or the other the word has been abandoned for an adjective with less overtones, such as disabled or differently abled.

Similarly since the 1970s, the word ‘negro,’ associated with generations of slavery, discrimination and cruelty, is not used. It has been replaced by ‘black’ or ‘African American,’ words that are acceptable to the people referred to.

Certain attitudes too have become unacceptable, more in some countries than other, attitudes such as invading another person’s personal space, or gender bias.

Commendable as this is, in this matter– as in many others– people seem to have gone too far due to their inability or unwillingness to think about these matters, and understand what makes them important.

The BBC reported last month that ‘Professor Greg Patton at the University of Southern California (USC) was telling students in a Communications lecture last month about filler or pause words, such as ‘err’, ‘umm’ or ‘you know’ in English.

He said: “In China, the common pause word is ‘that, that, that’, which in Chinese would be na-ge, na-ge, na-ge.’

Enunciated, na-ge sounds like the English word ‘negro’ which as mentioned above is no longer an acceptable word. It led several of the professor’s students to complain to the university, following which the dean of the university told the students that Professor Patton would no longer be teaching the course.

A supreme example of political correctness pushed to the extreme. Not only was it based on a fallacy since the professor was not saying the N-word at all, but even if someone did, as part of a lecture on the subject of racism for example, how would he broach the issue without using words such as this?

Surely that is an objection born of people’s failure to think.

Roads down which we have been asked not to go are those leading to idolatry.

Muslims believe that the foundations of Islam were laid with Adam, but the religion was completed as we know in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), when the practice of idol worship was at its peak. It is for this reason that the Prophet (PBUH) himself forbade his followers from making images of his person because there was a good chance that this would lead to an over-veneration of his person, and perhaps even its worship. Even with this prohibition, as we know, people tend to bow down at his tomb, a practice strictly forbidden in Islam. Whether or not someone else wishes to draw him is their headache. There are already many pictures in existence purporting to represent Muhammad (PBUH). We Muslims do not do this. Yet to kill a person for doing this therefore is insanity. Even more so since the killing is done in the name of a man who was peace personified, who brought us a religion the very name of which means ‘peace’. A religion that allows war only in self-defense, that asked its followers during that war not to harm even the plants and trees growing around them and to treat prisoners of war with kindness. So wherefore the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty?

Yes, Paty should have had the sensitivity not to display drawings of the Prophet (PBUH), particularly given that, at 10 percent, France’s Muslim population is the largest in Europe. But Paty was not Muslim, and France is a secular country. We cannot expect the world to follow exactly the same customs as we do, because yes, not making images of the Prophet is a custom─ our custom, not a law.

French President Emanuel Macron proved himself to be divisive and lacking in diplomacy in his subsequent statements, but how does our own Prime Minister come off in the matter?

Pakistan’s record in matters concerning its minorities is hardly spotless. There is little need to go into detail at this point, but the fact remains that the country has not treated its minorities well, and has been in the past home ground for extremists and continues to be so in the present. For a representative of any government of Pakistan to object to someone else’s insensitivity, is laughable.

In which case of course Macron’s statements too lacked a sense of history, given France’s colonial past in Algeria, and its treatment of its Algerian minorities.

The fact remains that Islam is a religion of peace, it will always be a religion of peace, a rational religion. Nothing can change that, not an army of extremists or any number of mindless politicians. It is the perception of Islam through other eyes that will ‘be in crisis’ until Muslims fix their own image of extremism and violence, an image that taints the whole even though it is created by the very few. To magnify that image and use it for their own ends will be something politicians do, because that is what politicians do. To moan and whine about the fact is an exercise in futility, and stupidity.

Yes we do not like the image of our beloved Prophet (PBUH) to be made or displayed. Aside from anything else, no image can accurately depict the towering personality he was. But is murder going to prove either of those points or betray them?

COMPROMISING THE DREAM

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/10/25/compromising-the-dream/

Jinnah’s dream of non-discrimination appears to have dissolved into a filthy slush composed of equal parts hypocrisy and ignorance. There are many incidents that support this imagery, but one of the recent ones took place when Captain Safdar along with his wife Mariam visited the mausoleum of the father of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi. Here Captain Safdar saw fit to indulge in a few slogans, ‘respect the vote’ and ‘long live the mother of the nation’ at the grave of Jinnah’s sister Fatima, who rests next to her brother in the mausoleum.

The Captain is a man who is no asset to his political party from which he was in fact suspended in 2012, returning to it no doubt because of his position as the son-in-law of the leader of the party, his only claim to fame. Captain Safdar obviously does not know what Ms Jinnah and her brother stood for, and how much their views were opposed to his own.

Some part of the Quaid’s vision of Pakistan were stated in these words addressed to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on the 11th of August 1947:

“If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.

We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.”

That was a great message in support of tolerance and equality.

Captain Safdar’s sloganeering was a gimmick and as such disrespectful of a national mausoleum. The bigger factor though is that the slogans at the Jinnah mausoleum were raised by him, a man who three years ago indulged in a tirade against the Ahmadiyya community in the National Assembly, accusing its members of being a “threat against the country, its constitution and ideology,” even calling for action against them. He also objected to the naming the Physics centre at the Quaid-i-Azam University after Professor Abdus Salam who happened to belong to the Ahmadiyya sect, a man who brought respect to the country when he received the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Three years ago Captain Safdar called Abdus Salam an infidel and demanded that the name be changed back to its original. He further called for action against the community in the shape of a law forbidding the recruitment of Ahmadis to the armed forces. Almost definitely he has no idea that Pakistan’s first foreign minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, one of the major supporters of Jinnah and his dream of a separate homeland, was a prominent member of the Ahmadiyya community.

When Captain Safdar was arrested as a result of his behavior at the mausoleum therefore, it is more the manner of his arrest that is annoying. One has little sympathy for the man himself.

There are many theories regarding Pakistan’s PM’s stance on this incident. These have already been discussed elsewhere. The point here is to wonder at the PM’s general attitude to matters of discrimination and equality. Is it any better than Captain Safdar’s or does it also form part of the ignorant hypocritical slush into which Jinnah’s dream has dissolved?

Soon after coming into office the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan appointed Atif Rehman Mian as a member of an Economic Advisory Council to advise on economic and financial issues pertaining to Pakistan. The appointment seemed to indicate the new PM was on the right track.

Unlike many other appointees to posts in the country, Mian was eminently suitable for the position. Born in Pakistan he currently serves as Professor of Economics, Policy and Public Finance at Princeton University. He ranks among the top 25 economists of the world. The IMF in 2014 was responsible for this ranking of persons it considered likely to shape the world’s thinking about the global economy. To have such a person to advise the government would have been a coup indeed. There was also the fact that Mian belonged to the Ahmadiyya sect, and the new government appeared to be displaying shades of tolerance. Yet some people objected to Mian’s appointment based on that very  fact and rather than standing up to them the Prime Minister took that objection on board and acted upon it by removing Dr Mian from the Economic Advisory Council soon after his nomination. End of high expectations.

“Compromise for your dream, but never compromise on your dream,” Imran Khan once said. One of his dreams he has said is to make the country into a Riasat-e-Medina, a state like Medina. Hold back your smiles, and wonder only how anyone can admit to such a dream while being such a master of performing U-turns as Mr. Khan is.

It is as disrespectful of the real Riasat-e-Medina when the person who claims to have set up another one fails to support minorities within the supposed new one.

Dr Mian, after having first been removed from the Advisory Council had his lecture cancelled this month, only because he was to deliver it. The lecture dealing with economics, sponsored by the IBA, was scheduled to take place via zoom. Where was the PM when the IBA received threats and was forced to cancel the lecture? Any statements, measures or even apologies? Is this compromising for your dream or compromising on it? It appears most of all to be compromising it.

THE EASY WAY OUT

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/10/18/the-easy-way-out/

• How to sell dumb ideas

The downside of democracy is that ‘the public’ is not prone to checking what it hears, and those elected to lead the public understand this only too well. What’s more, they use it. This is called manipulation, and those elected people are politicians, and their manipulation generally takes the form of slogans. Politicians are past master at sloganeering. It’s the nature of the beast.

Take Boris Johnson for example when in 2016 Britain was debating EU, in our out. Mr. Johnson of course was campaigning for out and he needed support. He knew full well which buttons to push.

“What I certainly cannot imagine is a situation in which 77 million Turks, and those of Turkish origin can come here without any checks at all,” said Mr. Johnson. “That is really mad.”

Said the man who while being English is himself a great grandson of a Turkish Muslim, and otherwise descended from Russian Jewish/Lithuanian Jewish, Swiss German, French, Irish, Dutch, Belgian, and American ancestors. You could call him a one-man crowd of immigrants who stormed the country without any checks at all, and took over. Mr. Johnson’s English side knew well that a reference to a horde of Turks pouring into the country would translate into a graphic image of a Mongol invasion, and he knew how it would sit with the bulk of the British population which like the bulk of populations anywhere reads little beyond the London Underground guides.

After all why not millions of Spaniards, or Italians, or Hungarians? But that would not have had quite that impact, would it. It had to be Turks and Turks it was.

The people of Israel have managed to elbow away the people who lived in what is now Israel and establish a homeland for themselves. The country is now a fact of life. It is here to stay. It has the backing of powerful nations. Yet ‘Jewish Survival’ remains a rallying cry and their elected leader uses the term freely: when he wants to re-stoke the fires against Arabs and Palestinians he invokes memories of old sufferings. Very much as the spectre of India is used in Pakistan. ‘Jewish Survival’ is a leftover from when the Jews wandered the desert in search of a homeland, and were centuries later horrifically persecuted by a monster with an idiotic moustache.  Those times are over but the fear remains in the hearts of people.

And then out there across the pond in the erstwhile democracy is the man who once said “I’m the least racist person you have ever interviewed” sometime after questioning why the US let people from ‘shithole’ countries enter the United States. He was referring to Haiti, El Salvador and an assortment of African nations at a closed-door meeting with congressional leaders and Cabinet members in 2018.  This is the same man who has fed himself obese on the ‘American Dream’ which he has re-defined to suit himself.

“We’re going to make the country great again,” has been his rallying cry for whatever atrocity he wished to commit, the Mexican wall, little children separated from their mothers, for attacking affordable health care for the people. And it worked. The racism which once simmered beneath the surface but had not been given the stamp of approval has come out guns blazing, crying to make the country white ‘again’. As it once was, you understand. We heard about the Indigenous man who was told to ‘go back where he came from’ so he pitched his tent in his taunter’s front yard.

On home ground then, and here we have the corona relief Tiger Force (rowwrrr), something like another army without the discipline, or a police force without the training. This yet another group is composed of men and women between the ages of eighteen and forty. They are supposed to have their own transport, no police record, be medically fit and dedicated to ‘serving the nation’ (slogan alert). They’re volunteers, but in these times of covid when every paisa should go into supporting the people who have been struck cruelly because of it and are at a loss for making ends meet, there is a special fund to support these by now hundreds of thousands of Tigers across the country. And what they’re supposed to do is hand out food packages, report any breach of SOPs, or issues identified in markets, educational institutions, public places, police stations, land record authorities, and local courts. They are also supposed to keep an eye on the prices of essential food and health items, in other words to monitor food prices and inflation. This is an incredible workload for a massive group of persons with no training or legal sanction.

You wonder what other slogan was used in an attempt to validate this our PM’s latest spark of genius. Well, that would be contained in Mr. Khan’s twitter post – the new political disjointed pontification that has taken over from verbal irrational statements – which says that he wants our youth to do jihad against the suffering caused by this pandemic. There it is, that magic word ‘jihad’ that brings up images of sword wielding Ertegruls driving back shrieking covid attackers.

Raise your hands all those who are sick and tired of religion and Arabic words being used to manipulate minds?

Not many hands. That’s why it works.

Do we honestly need another messy group of persons unable to do their job? Or do we need a dedicated group of persons capable of doing what they need to, but who lack the funds and the necessary support.

All the Tiger Force has managed to achieve for now is to attend a meeting in Attock where they violated all social distancing and safety measures themselves, all 17,000 of them at that one event. There they created uproar because their local chapter’s president was not invited. In the end Mr. Zulfi Bukhari who was to speak at the event had to give up and the affair ended in shambles. What is such a bunch of people going to achieve?

Why is it that politicians almost always try to take the easy but hugely detrimental way out?

ROLE MODELS OF A FREE SOCIETY

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/10/11/the-role-models-of-a-free-society/

Howard Zinn, the historian, socialist and great thinker died ten years ago. He described himself as ‘a bit of an anarchist, something of a socialist, and perhaps a democratic socialist.’ Themes in his writings were mainly the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement and the labour history of the USA.

Among Howard Zinn’s most read books is A People’s History of the United States which in that country is something of an icon. It has sold more than 2,000,000 copies.

Zinn stressed that teachers must be honest with children, regardless of the child’s age, and he was honest. His viewpoint was not common in his lifetime. Even today when society likes to think of itself as more politically correct, possessing a greater social conscience, the view presented to the people in most countries is geared to make them proud of what they did, historically, whereas in reality that may not always be right.

Zinn looked at the American Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, and whether historically it protected their rights. It did not.

Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the USA, from 1829. Textbooks speak of him as “a man of the people” but Zinn saw him from the viewpoint of the Cherokees, who were the people native to Georgia, and spoke of him as a ‘a land speculator, a merchant, slave trader, and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history.’ In his book he presented Jackson as a man who exploited native land mercilessly and was responsible for a great deal of death and destruction.

Predictably, Donald Trump calls A People’s History of the United States a ‘propaganda tract,’ and ‘a book that tries to make students ashamed of their history.’

Well if the facts are shameful, then so be it. Being aware of a mistake is the only positive side of making one, because knowing what went wrong can prevent it from happening again, and US society has proved itself to be far from free and democratic. But this is speaking not of just US history, but of the history of any country. Do we in Pakistan know anything about what happened in 1971, if this generation has even heard that something happened then? Should we be proud of what took place then? Are we allowed to talk about it?

Zinn understood a young person’s need for icons and role models, and encouraged them to study their heroes, those currently held up as icons and role models. He wanted them to think outside the box and work out whether or not those icons deserve to be on a pedestal.

Unless we do this, our world, everyone’s world will never change. It will go on as it is, at the mercy of war and those who make coin from it. There will always be hunger, disease, racism, sexism dominating our lives.

Instead of Christopher Columbus and other imperialists, Zinn suggested other role models: Mark Twain who worked against the Spanish American war, Helen Keller whose achievements were not just for those deprived of vision; she was a pacifist, a staunch supporter of women’s suffrage, labour rights and socialism. Zinn suggested Muhammad Ali, the boxer whose greatest fights were outside the ring he was king of: his support of black rights, his insistence on personal identity, and his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.

Zinn’s view is that a past to be proud is defined by dissidents, and by exponents of peace whose goal is the uplift of the masses, not by those who wage war. If that is so, who should our heroes be? The men in brass or people like Abdus Salam, the great Pakistan physicist and Nobel prize winner, hounded out of the country for his religion. Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the poet who wrote with magic words, a man who spent time in prison for his leftist views. Asma Jehangir, who founded Pakistan’s first legal aid centre, a human rights activist and lawyer who worked on behalf of the poor and most defenseless. Her life was threatened, she was assaulted and also placed under house arrest for her protests when General Musharraf proclaimed a State of Emergency. There was Abdus Sattar Edhi whose services to the poor and needy can never be praised enough. He was opposed throughout his life by conservative religious groups for his work for all who needed help, regardless of their faith.

There was Akhtar Hameed Khan, whose model of community participation in development has been studied around the world. He set up the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, and earlier a similar project in Comilla in what is now Bangladesh. He was severely criticised here for his liberal views and was even charged with blasphemy. Parveen Rahman, his pupil and colleague, was similarly criticised and eventually shot dead.

Malala Yousafzai, an excellent role model for young people. She defied the Taliban when they imposed a ban on women’s education in Swat, and was shot because of it. She survived and went on to win a Nobel Prize and continues to work for women and children’s right to education.

And Ghamidi, the scholar of religion and the man who right wing scholars such as Mufti Muneeb ur Rehman love to hate for his rational understanding of Islam. Ghamidi has moved from Pakistan saying he would like to return when things change.

Last, but definitely not least, is Muhammad the man (peace be upon him) who belongs to all of us and can rightfully be claimed by the people of all and any country as their hero and role model. In discussing and understanding whom we are unfortunately as hampered as we are in our understanding of all of the above.

What all these figures share strikingly in common is a brush with violence, in the case of some such as Parveen Rahman and Malala, much more than a brush. They also share the fact that their work has led to the uplift of society, contributed to its knowledge, well-being and happiness. Their sufferings tell us a great deal about our flawed understanding of heroism and idols, greatly because of the curbs placed on our study of their contributions and personalities.

It is suffocating to live in an unventilated society. Minds function better in an open atmosphere, not to mention the fact that fewer people suffer. Pakistan has made many mistakes, but it also has a lot to be proud of, something that its people will discover if they are permitted to study and understand both.

DIVERSIONARY TACTICS?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/10/03/diversionary-tactics/

At the 2020 Presidential Debate on September29th in Cleveland the President of the USA said about his adversary Joe Biden: “I don’t wear a mask like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

At the time of writing this it is not known which way Mr Biden has tested for the corona virus, but the vice President Mike Pence who seems as averse to masks as the President has tested negative. On the other hand, the President and his wife Melania have tested positive for corona yesterday. It is now just a month prior to the elections. It’s an interesting scenario. Given that the President is male (men are at greater risk than women), is 74 years old and the fact that he is clinically (and visually) obese, the prognosis is a bit iffy for him, despite the fact that as POTUS he has the best healthcare in the world.

It is unclear what is to happen now. While Mr Trump is still President, Mike Pence obviously takes over his job and is the acting President until Mr Trump returns to the Oval Office. But should Mr Trump fail to return will Mike Pence take his place in the elections? Does the Republican nomination devolve upon him by default?

Apparently it does. Which means that whether or not Mr Trump survives (and one wishes no one ill), the debates and the elections are likely to go on as planned. The scenario does not have a precedent.

You wonder how a change in candidates will be received.

Mr Trump may have wide support within the country, but support for the Democrats is larger at present, although the way the US elections are with the electoral college system, it does not necessarily indicate a win for Joe Biden. Still, Mr Trump is one of those persons who generate a strong reaction. Following the first debate reaction was not complimentary to either candidate. Mr Trump’s constant interruptions while the other person spoke and Biden’s subsequent frustrated response led to a chaotic shouting match, something that can hardly be called a debate.

According to Wikipedia on the subject:

CNN called it a mess, a fire inside a dumpster and a train wreck. They also called it a ‘disgrace” and a “shitshow” and the worst Presidential debate.

ABC compared the debate to ‘mud-wrestling’ and called it the worst presidential debate ever. They also said that Mr Trump “came across as a bully.”

Fox criticised Mr Trump for not condemning the white supremacist, all male neo-Nazi group the ‘Proud Boys.”

Others have called it a disgrace and an uncivilized and disorderly discussion, and the lowest point in American Democracy.

So, will Pence be seen as a welcome replacement for Mr Trump should the need arise?

You can’t help thinking of something: given the dreadful reception that the ‘debate’ received, was the Covid-19 test engineered? Because really, something like this appeared on the cards ever since The New York Times disclosed the details of ten years of Mr Trump’s tax returns.

That report came out a bit more than a month before the elections and was basically a revelation of years of tax avoidance by the man who loves to boast of his success as a businessman, the man who now holds the highest elected office in the country. Many people felt that a diversion would be created that would take the focus off that report and ease the pressure on Mr Trump and his modus operandi. And that diversion had to arrive soon because the elections were looming and– well here it is.

The Chicago Tribune reported some years ago that Mr Trump is a master at diversionary tactics, something that is surely common knowledge by now. It reports that:  ‘Apart from starting the Obamacare rollback and withdrawing from the TTP, he (Trump) has frozen a reduction of mortgage insurance premiums, allowed the Keystone pipeline to go ahead and is prepared to sign an executive order to begin construction of a border wall.’‘

It reports that he knew that these actions would (and should) cause indignation and protest, so he tweeted– as he does, that ‘I will be asking for a major investigation into voter fraud, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even those registered to vote who are dead.’

He got what he wanted. The Chicago Tribune reports that the public hared off after that story ‘with news about the border wall coming a distant second.’

So, the positive test. Everyone goes haywire talking about him not wearing a mask and see what happens? Versus someone else did wear a mask and still got it. Meantime seeing that Mr Trump’s debating skills are somewhat flawed. A positive test means that Mr Pence who probably has a better hold on himself takes over the debates and puts up a better show. Probably. Most people would. And then the baton goes back to Mr Trump, who seems certain that he will recover. Remember the tax evasion anyone?

All this however is just conjecture. Let’s wait for the elections to see what really happens. May God have mercy on His people.