TINY THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/30/tiny-things-that-make-a-big-difference/

People tend to remember only the dramatic discoveries and inventions, such as penicillin, the telephone and the automobile. These are without a doubt huge inventions/discoveries, crucial ones, and thank the Lord for them, but life would be hard indeed without some apparently less spectacular discoveries as well, such as the compass, the flush toilet, matches and anesthesia, to quote just a very few examples. We discovered fire a long time ago, but imagine having to rub two stones together every time  you needed a cuppa tea. Or having your tonsils removed without anesthesia, let’s not even think of amputations or anything else. I mean come on, life without the flush toilet…doesn’t bear thinking, right? Yet there are many millions of people today who live without toilets.

It may come as a relief however to know that this write-up will not be focusing on flushes, although it has drawn attention, hopefully, to how miserable life would be without them. Instead, let’s go with the pacemaker, the little gadget that connects to the heart and ensures that the heart beats at a regular, safe rate.

Pacemakers have come a long way and are very much in use now since they were first invented in the 1960s by the Canadian John Hopps. The first one was used in 1962 to help 72-year-old Mr Hintzman with his erratic heart, one that would beat either too slowly or stop altogether.

That first pacemaker looked like a small radio, was about 30cm long and it was powered by a specific household current. Patients hooked onto this would not last half a day in Pakistan, if that, given our erratic power supply.

Pacemakers matured to implantable ones in the 1970s, but they could only be set to one heart rate, lasted just a couple of years after which the four lithium batteries had to be replaced, and they could not store data which meant that if the heart became better or worse there was no easy way to find out.

Today’s pacemakers are about the size of a small pencil sharpener, the battery lasts six to ten years, it also stores data and it is adjustable to the required heart rate as indicated thanks to that data.

What makes these new pacemakers and many other things which are indispensable to life today possible is a little thing called a microchip, the real hero today.

Think a little gizmo about the size of your fingernail, that is a microchip. That pert little thing is one of the most important inventions in the world today.

An article in ThoughtCo. by Mary Bellis tells you about the microchip.

The people who invented the microchip were two Americans, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. They’re built layer by layer on a wafer of semiconductor material, like silicon. Chemicals, gas and light are used to build the layers. Delicate computer circuitry called an integrated circuit is etched upon these layers. It is this tiny piece of something that powers almost everything today, from spacecraft to phones, tracking systems, televisions, bank cards, the above-mentioned pacemakers, other medical devices, and of course once again the ubiquitous toilet. Yes, there is a toilet that contains a microchip which shuts off water in the commode if it threatens to overflow, and hear this, there is now another one developed in Japan that makes intelligent deductions based on the user’s daily contributions to the bowl and automatically sends information to the person’s GP. So if your doctor knows you have diabetes you know who’s been talking.

If we’re grateful for the telephone today, remember it too has come a long way from the telephones made of Bakelite that were plugged into a certain spot and could not be used anywhere but at that spot. No Google, folks, no GPS, no using it in the car and definitely no placing one in your pocket or bag. All those changes came about, thanks to microchips.

Today people go about their daily lives with pacemakers inside them, there are no tubes, wires or anything else to tell that there is one there. Other delicate surgery too is performed with the aid of instruments using microchips and patients are able to lead a much more normal lives subsequently thanks to them.

Most lately in Canada a chip has been developed that once it is installed in the brain, can interact with brain cells, detect seizures and treat people with neurological diseases. The two people involved in this research have been Colin Dalton of Canada and Naveed Syed, also Canadian but originally from Pakistan.

It’s people like these, and Kilby, Noyce and Bill Gates who have made all this possible.

The world would have been a much harder place without them.

NOT IN HIS NAME

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/23/not-in-his-name/

“No Arab is superior to a non-Arab, no coloured person to a white person, nor a white person to a coloured person, except by piety.”

Muhammad (PBUH) the Prophet of Islam

What do you say about a country in which 20 percent of the population feels threatened?

The plight of the Palestinians of Gaza is heart wrenching. The Israeli attacks began more than ten days ago, since when the Israelis have subjected the people of Gaza to hundreds of air attacks. Buildings have been razed to the ground and almost three hundred men, women and children killed.

It is good to see the support Pakistanis have shown the people of Gaza, despite this country’s own track record which might have made its people hold back in shame, in keeping with the Urdu saying: hum kis moun say uhhain bura kahain (what right does our own behaviour give us to condemn them?) Or let’s put it this way, it’s great that we are protesting, but other than the handful of people who over time have brought attention to the matter, where is the justice and similar protests for our own people, our own sufferers of discrimination?

According to a report published in 2018 by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, ‘Pakistan is one of the countries most affected by violent religious extremism, despite lying outside the major conflict zones.’

A major newspaper reports that ‘as many as 247 civilians were killed in sectarian terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2017’ alone.

The groups that most often suffer at the hands of extremists in Pakistan are the Hazaras, the Shias, the Ahmadis, and the Christians. Although women should be included in this list, this column is not about gender bias.

Shias constitute about 20% percent of this country’s population. Shias, if you remember are the people who hold the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)’s daughter, grandson and their family in particular reverence.

As many as 4,000 Shias have been killed in sectarian riots since 1987 in Pakistan, over a period of just 30 years.

Just outside Karachi is a graveyard with hundreds of graves. Many of the Shias whose lives ended violently are laid to rest here. Five of these graves belong to members of the same family. Al-Jazeera reports that one belongs to a four-year-old child who was killed in one of the many sectarian riots. His mother is buried next to him. The mother apparently died when she saw her dead son’s body.

The graveyard is surrounded by metal fences and high walls. Even in death…

Most Hazara people live in Afghanistan. The Hazaras also form a significant minority in Pakistan. They live mostly in Quetta. The Hazara community made a contribution to Pakistan via Qazi Muhammad Essa who was a close friend of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He came from Baluchistan and he helped Jinnah set up the Muslim League in that part of the subcontinent. Yet, because most Hazara happen to be Shia, After the Taliban came into being, this community was greatly persecuted by that group, and later also persecuted by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other militant groups. Despite all this, and throughout Pakistan’s existence the Hazara community has made significant contributions to Pakistan. Genl Musa Khan, commander in chief of the Pakistan Army for ten years could trace ancestry to this community as could several other persons in public life today.

The Hazara community has long been persecuted in Pakistan, but since 2001 more than 550 Hazaras have been killed in Pakistan and many more injured. Among these were those men and boys shot in Mastung near Pakistan’s border with Iran as they were traveling in a bus in 2011; their bus was stopped and specifically these men were asked to come out (the driver who was not Hazara and the women were left in the bus), the men were told to lie by the roadside and were shot dead.

The Pakistan Constitution may have been amended in 1974 so that people of the Ahmadiyya community could be declared non-Muslim, but Pakistan is also signatory to the International Covenant to Civil and Political Rights, and to clamp down on its people’s religious beliefs and practices is a violation of its obligations under this Covenant. It is time that the government and the ‘mainstream’ people of Pakistan understood their obligations, and lived according to them, regardless of what India or Israel do.

Since the amendment mentioned above, hundreds of members of the Ahmadiyya community were killed in Pakistan, and in 2010, 86 of them were killed while at worship in Lahore. Many mosques belonging to the community, on land legally owned by it, have been taken over or demolished with no legal sanction. They are discriminated against in education as well as in other fields. In 2008 in the Punjab Medical College, 23 Ahmadiyya students were suspended, three years later and elsewhere, ten more were expelled and five years later, yet elsewhere, two more. Last year alone, five Ahmadi’s were killed in Pakistan only because of their beliefs.

In 2011, mullahs declared Ahmadis ‘deserving of death’ and published leaflets with names and addresses of prominent community members and their businesses.

Access to Ahmadiyya websites has been blocked in Pakistan.

Christians constitute a large minority group in Pakistan and there have been times when they have been targeted like the other minorities, particularly with accusations of blasphemy as a result of which riots break out and people die. One of the best known of those was Asia Bibi who was accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death, although her sentence was later overturned. The then Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer who criticised the blasphemy law was murdered by his own security guard Mumtaz Qadri. Although Qadri was later executed on the charge of murder (he murdered the Governor, didn’t he? Other murderers in such cases are never apprehended and the acts continue), his burial place is now a shrine for his many admirers.

So to return to the criticism of Israel’s actions, that criticism is absolutely justified and very necessary. Any person, group of country with half a conscience must condemn their despicable move against the Palestinians.  Yet, given the treatment of minorities in this country, Pakistan’s criticism of Israel is pretty ironic, don’t you think?

There is a saying, an anonymous one, that says that when we point a finger at someone else, our other three fingers are pointing the other way at ourselves. And when we look at ourself, just what do we see?

THE CAESARIAN MOON

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/15/the-caesarian-moon/

And so here we go again, yet another moon sighting fiasco, while a fatigued populace waited for a group of men to decide if the new moon had been seen or not.

The Ruet e Hilal Committee (RHC) took its time, its members no doubt milking their moment of power for all it was worth; it was almost midnight before they ended their ‘deliberations’ and declared the moon had been sighted and it would be Eid the following day.  Sehri was hastily exchanged for sheer khurma, and in many homes people woke up to fast only to find that it was Eid that day.

One of the many memes on the subject said the new moon was not a normal delivery. They’re right, it wasn’t. Leave it to the clergy to make a laughing stock of religion.

One of the biggest factors this exposes is that if the authorities are unable to handle even such a trivial thing as moon-sighting, no wonder the country is in the state it is. Mr. Fawad Chaudhry obviously prefers  if technology were to take over, as would most rational persons, yet the fact that technology and science cannot seem to do so thanks to the country’s right wing battalion  also shows how utterly helpless the authorities are in the face of right wingers. You can see why it is that groups such as the TLP, the TTP and the ASWJ and others are so out of control.

The Head of the Ruet e Hilal Committee (RHC)), Maulana Azad said  “We are engaged with clerics of all schools of thought and various groups, involving them in the process.” This newspaper reported that earlier, in an attempt to ensure that Eidul Fitr is celebrated the same day across the country this year, RHC members had approached and tried to persuade the clerics who have publicly opposed the announcement related to Shawwal moon-sighting by the national body (RHC) in the past. While separately, in Peshawar, the Qasim Ali Khan mosque’s Mufti Popalzai heads the local unofficial moon-sighting committee.

That is good of course, but why do we even need the RHC? Why can dates for Eid not be fixed years in advance?

Is it really un-Islamic to use technology and a fixed calendar in lieu of physically sighting the moon? Is science really incompatible with Islam?

Islamic history shows evidence of a productive relationship between faith and science. Muslim scientists took an early interest in astronomy, since keeping time accurately was important for the performance of the five daily prayers. They constructed astronomical tables specifically to determine the exact times of prayer for specific locations around the continent, serving effectively as an early system of time zones.

In other words they did not try to check the position of the sun five times a day to determine the time for each prayer.

The world of science is full of names of Muslim scientists, Jabir ibn e Hayyan, Al Khwarizmi, Ibn e Sina, Ibn e Rushd and scores of others. So no, there is no dichotomy between science and Islam. The only rift is that which has been created by a clergy that seeks to ‘keep power unto itself.’

In the time of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) there was no other way of telling when a new month began except by sighting the new moon. It has now been more than a thousand years since and we have other ways of determining such things. Despite that, if one must stick to the way it was done in the Prophet’s (pbuh) time, why then are we trying to collect sighting information from all kinds of remote areas before declaring the month of Shawwal. How come we try to follow Saudi Arabia or any other place? They could not do all this then. They had no phones in the Prophet’s (pbuh) time to relay messages to a central authority. If we must stay in the past, let’s do exactly what was done then and sight the moon in individual villages, separate sightings in Mozang, the different phases of DHA, Gulberg, etc etc and everyone celebrate Eid according to whether or not the new moon was seen in their neighbourhood. That is how it used to be.

It’s time we stopped making a mockery of religion. That has to be the real blasphemy, when religion and its prominent figures are made into a laughing stock by its own people. When will we learn to respect Islam and allow it to be what it is, a manual for life and a set of beliefs that allows us to grow as persons and progress as nations? Islam is a religion that lays stress on education and rational thought, research and enquiry. That is something we fail to recognize.

PANDEMICS HAVE BEEN AROUND A WHILE

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/09/pandemics-have-been-around-a-while/

Study the past if you would define the future 

– Confucius

Plagues and pandemics are nothing new. They have occurred with disastrous regularity over millennia and in many cases changed the course of history. As when the earliest recorded pandemic that occurred in 430 BC in Athens, it was a major cause of the defeat of Athens by the Spartans. And then again there is the Justinian Plague about nine hundred years later, that scuppered Justinian’s plans to reunite the Roman Empire, and is also said to have created conditions that led to the spread of Christianity. And then again the pandemic in 1350, the second outbreak of the bubonic plague that spread all over the world and contributed to the collapse of the British feudal system, among other things.

There have been many pandemics subsequently. The Spanish flu in 1918. Families of those who died as a result of that pandemic are still alive today. The Asian ‘flu of 1957, HIV/AIDS in 1981, SARS in 2003 and now covid-19.

So why do pandemics appear to come as a surprise and catch the world on the backfoot every time, particularly now when communications are so much better and history is no longer a closed book. It was Desmond Tutu who said that, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” He was not wrong.

Since we are able to travel so easily now, and we do, pandemics should be something very much to be anticipated. Even so far back as when the Spanish arrived in the Caribbean they took smallpox, measles and the bubonic plague with them. As many as 90 percent of indigenous people died in North and South America as a result. The first cholera epidemic that started in 1817 started in Russia. It then spread via British soldiers to India and then on to Spain, Africa and virtually all around the world.

If instead of reading history as events dead and gone, something to be found in the pages of fusty old books alone, we read it as something to learn from, we would pick up several pointers for many things, but for the purposes of this column, it would help in dealing with pandemics when they occur, as they have a fatiguing habit of doing.

There are factors that facilitate the spread of disease. Travel, as we have seen, is one. Hygiene is another major one as Florence Nightingale discovered. Lack of hygiene is seen in poor living conditions, caused by poverty or simply by unclean habits. And then there is unclean drinking water for which the main responsibility lies with governments as well as with societies today that destroy the environment by dumping pollutants into water sources.

Lack of fresh air is another factor. One of the things that sets this pandemic apart from previous ones is the fact that so many people are able to work from home, thanks to greater connectivity, the internet and telephones.  It is increasingly possible now to work from home, conduct meetings, and communicate not just by means of sound but also visually  . This staying home often contributes to a lack of exercise, insufficient exposure to sunlight and lower counts of Vitamin D. It is said, although it’s unclear if it’s a certainty, that Vitamin D helps combat viral infections.

When the flu epidemic of 1918 reached the US hospitals were full to overflowing, as they are now in Pakistan and in many other countries. Emergency tents were set up outdoors in sites that were properly drained, and provided with bathrooms, running water and sewage.

There was maximum sunlight and fresh air in these outdoor hospitals. When the weather was good patients were taken right outside the tent. Everyone in contact with these patients was required to wear a fact mask made of five layers, covering the mouth and nose.  These masks were frequently washed. Medical staff was also required to wear gloves, and gowns and wash their hands frequently. Nobody was allowed to share dishes, and patients’ dishes were sterilized after use. Rates of recovery were higher in these outdoor hospitals, and there were fewer cases of depression.

Does all of this sound familiar or not? Why then does it come as a surprise.

If hospitals are full now, why not put up tents with fans and move patients there? Why do hospitals not come with such open spaces that can be used even under normal conditions, and definitely in case of pandemics? This should be a mandatory factor in hospital design, the provision of clean outdoor spaces, isolatable rooms, well ventilated buildings, and a strict adherence to hygiene.

This pandemic has been around for a while, unfortunately. It was first reported in China on the 31 December 2019, and reported for the first time in Pakistan on the 26 February 2020. While that period is generally and ideally not much to come up with a new vaccine, clinical trials and all, even that has been done, admittedly with fewer studies than one would like.

But that is ample time for us to have stocked up on things such as oxygen, cylinders, and other equipment. We are close to running out of those, and India is already out, may God have mercy on their people. And ours. And sufferers all over the world. There is no reason to run out of these things because all it needs is planning and little else to make enough. We are not as short of funds as we are told. It is where those funds are used that needs monitoring, as does the quality of those cylinders, oxygen being exceedingly flammable.

Planning ahead does not appear to be a strong point in our society. And of course there is the squirreling away. Whether the lack of planning is because it is somehow not inculcated in us, or because the wrong persons are in place where decisions are made, well, what would you say to a bit of both? A great pity in either case.

FOR LESS THAN TWO HAPPY MEALS

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/02/for-less-than-two-happy-meals/

For a while there was a furore about the carpet-making industry in Pakistan and how children were forced to work cruel hours at the loom. They have small hands, you see, and those little hands can make more knots per square inch. But then other things happened and we forgot. As we do. Let this remind you.

Muridke is a city near Lahore. It is the hometown of six world-class cricket players and it was home also to one little boy called Iqbal Masih, Muridke’s most heroic son.

Iqbal was born in 1983 to poor Christian parents, which in Pakistan counts as a double whammy.

When he was four years old, Iqbal’s parents borrowed Rs 600 from a man who owned a carpet weaving business. That’s Rs  600, which was less than $12 at the time and is under $4 at today’s rates and less than the cost of two happy meals at a McDonald’s in Pakistan.

To pay off this unhappy debt Iqbal became a bonded labourer. At the age of four, an age when our children are enjoying Chinnoy’s 3 Bahadurs, or are thrilled by the antics of Sponge Bob Square Pants, Iqbal was chained fast to a loom and made to work.

At the time there were no laws against debt bondage in the land of the pure. That law came about thanks to Ehsan Ullah Khan who belongs to Gwadar and was born the year Pakistan came into being. It was he who mobilized workers for the cause, and that was when the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared bonded labour illegal in 1989, 43 years after the birth of the nation. Ehsan Ullah’s role in this story does not end here.

Iqbal had by then been working for two years. He learnt about this law when he was ten years old– a testimony to the cruelty of the life he led that he took note of that law, understood it, and related it to his own condition. That was when he escaped his slavers and went, poor child, to the local police station, little realising his mistake.

The police returned the boy to his slavers who treated him even worse than before. Iqbal escaped again and joined a school run by the Bonded Labour Liberation Fund (an Indian NGO with a branch in Pakistan) for children like him. He wanted to become a lawyer to help free other children in his position. In the meantime Ehsan Ullah helped him to travel around the world where this small child spoke against bonded labour and the urgent need to help other child slaves.

When he was 12, Iqbal Masih was shot and killed in Muridke. It has never been proven who his murders were although there were many allegations.

What was your child doing when he or she was 12?

An entire country of adults has failed to bring the issue of bonded labour to the forefront in Pakistan with notable exceptions such as Asma Jehangir, who championed the cause of bonded slaves, both women and children, and many other such causes.

Bonded labour still thrives in Pakistan. According to a report by the Bureau of International Labour Affairs Pakistan made some efforts to eliminate the worst kind of child labour in Pakistan in 2019 by means of some Acts that were passed by the National and Provincial Assemblies.

Nevertheless, children in Pakistan are (still) engaged in the worst forms of child labor, including in commercial sexual exploitation and domestic work. Children also engage in forced labour in brick kilns and agriculture. The federal government and Balochistan Province have not established a minimum age for work or hazardous work in compliance with international standards. In addition, provincial labour inspectorates do not receive sufficient resources to adequately enforce laws prohibiting child labor, and the federal and provincial governments fail to publish data on their efforts, or to enforce criminal or labour laws related to child labor. Further, police corruption, particularly the taking of bribes from suspected perpetrators to ignore child labor crimes and lack of willingness to conduct investigations hindered Pakistan’s ability to address the problem throughout the country.

In all of Pakistan 9. percent% of children between the ages of 10 and 14 are working. In Punjab 12.4 percent between the ages of five and 14 and in Sindh 21.4 percent between the ages of five and 14. Figures for the other provinces are not available.

69.4 percent of these children are employed in agriculture, 10.9 percent in Industry, and 19.7 percent in ‘services’, which includes domestic work, hotels, restaurants, gas stations and automobile repair. The rest work at scavenging, sorting garbage, recycling, begging and street vending.

To summarise:

Do we know that children bonded to carpet weaving continues today in Pakistan? It is classified as the worst form of forced child labour and is often a result of human trafficking. The list of worst forms of child labour includes forced labour in agriculture, brickmaking, and coal mining. That is by no means all. Children are also exploited in the production of pornography and sex, and used in armed conflict by non-state armed groups. They are also used in other illicit activities such as producing drugs.

These children are subject to the worst kind of physical abuse, aside from being enslaved.

Let us never forget Iqbal Masih, who was shot in April 16years ago when he was just 12. Never forget the horrendous life that child led, and his courage in speaking out against his slavers.

Let us not forget the people who helped him.

Until these matters are resolved, can Pakistan ever be proud of itself?