CONTROLLED BY A SPECTRE

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/22/controlled-by-a-spectre/

Ever since its inception figures in authority have used the spectre of India to scare the bejesus out of the people of this country. It is high time we realised that the problem lies not with India but with us.

According to Forbes, ever since 9/11, the US has spent more than $2 trillion against Afghanistan. That is $300 million a day, every day, for two decades.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports in 2020 that India’s military budget was the third largest in the world behind the USA and China. About Pakistan, SIPRI reports says its military expenditure has gone up to reach $10.3 billion.

What have any of these countries achieved against their targets?

Pakistani society is mired in values that are in dire need of change. Its tribal areas in the north and Baluchistan are where militants have the greatest support, where women are most oppressed, where education has suffered much more than anywhere else, and all else is affected as a result. The reason behind this support for militants is probably the myopic, patriarchal structure of these societies that view change as a threat to their existence. As a result, the regressive, so-called religious views of militants are welcomed, and there is of course the fact that many of them hail from these regions.

It is not as if things are any different elsewhere in the country.

Why, when it is these attitudes that need to be changed are we so focused on some indeterminate threat from across the border?

India cannot be ignored, of course. We have had several wars with our neighbour, and border skirmishes take place on a regular basis. But it must be borne in mind that the society across the border is little different to ours, it contains almost as many uneducated minds, as much poverty, just as much religious bigotry and the same degree of religious intolerance. Why, instead of following the same route do we not try to follow another that is more likely to lead us down safer paths, down avenues where our people can discover their strengths, and actually make progress? Why cannot we adopt a rational policy towards our neighbour instead of one reminiscent of the belligerent hero of a Punjabi movie?

It is a crime to spend what money Pakistan possesses on beating the drums of war. That money needs to be spent on measures that will lead to greater, deeper, more long-lasting change. Measures such as education.

According to statistics gathered in 2017, Pakistan’s total literacy rate was then just around 59 percent. That means that half the people of this country cannot read. They cannot read their names, their history, a summary of their goals, or tot up their financial records. That means that almost half the people of this country can be led by the nose to believe just about anything, even something that is far from reality and far from their interests.

The figures also indicate that just 47 percent of the women of this country are literate. It means that more than half of those who nurture this country’s future lack what it takes to turn them into thinking, informed individuals; they are unable to impart to their children the knowledge that literacy is able to provide, because they are unable to decipher the alphabet themselves, unable to read to their children or teach them to read.

The fact that only about 71 percent of men too are literate serves to underline the attitudes prevalent in society, where it is considered more important to care for and educate one gender at the expense of the other, where one gender is more privileged than the other.

The figures gathered in 2017 indicate that far from narrowing, this gap has been growing at a steady pace.

It is past time we recognise the importance of social change versus war. If this country fails to recognise this, then nothing can rescue this nation from the pit into which it is sinking deeper by the day, and war – which is meant to be a last resort when all else fails, will further destroy us.

Our funds must go to support education on an urgent footing, much like a war effort, only this war would be fought against ignorance. We need schools that actually exist, not just on paper, and teachers that really teach rather than simply draw a salary.

They must go towards controlling a population that has already outstripped its resources, a population the size of which should be controlled before it outstrips those resources beyond redemption.

Funds should go towards changing the mindset that says that population control is unGodly, that says that education is unnecessary, or only for males. A mindset that considers it acceptable to attack women physically and verbally, that considers women to be fair game, to tease, ridicule or control.

They should go towards providing justice and accountability, to raising an awareness against the vulgarity, display and ostentation that plagues our society.

Not until these things are achieved will the people of Pakistan be able find a secure footing, both within their country and in a world where societies like that of the Scandinavian countries have progressed so much, and provided their people with what is rightfully theirs, with what is their due. Let’s choose our priorities and aspirations carefully before it is too late.

THE CULT CULTURE

 https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8105796839443061496/3980351365977412465

Will the Taliban cult gain recruits here?

A cult is a group whose members share one or several ideas, ideas which may be based on a certain interpretation of religion, spiritualism or philosophy, or a belief in a particular goal or personality. A study of specific cults or the phenomenon in general is interesting, and has been of great interest to sociologists.

The word ‘cult’ reminds one straight away of the Manson Family, or the Rajneesh Movement, but these are just some of the better-known cults, whose members included some people who were in the public eye, for example Bernard Levin, Parveen Babi, Mahesh Bhatt, Terence Stamp, Arianna Huffington, Vinod Khanna, Prince Welf Ernest of Hanover… associated with the Rajneesh cult; and Sharon Tate, Phil Kaufman, Deanna Martin (daughter of Dean Martin), and Squeaky Fromme (who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford), associated with the Manson Family.

There are both religious and secular cults out there, and even anti-cult cults, destructive cults, political cults, doomsday cults, polygamist, racist, and terrorist cults– and others, all over the world. Why do they occur? Why, in some cases, do they attract so many followers? And what can be done to prevent people from joining the harmful ones among them?

Cults are attractive because they present an illusion of peace and comfort (which are often overlapping states) by promising things that are rarely attainable by the means suggested by the cult. For example, you have to work for peace. You cannot attain it, inner or outer, by means of violence, or meditation. As for comfort, people who have the means, those who are relatively well off, they do not lack comfort in their lives. That means that it is predominantly those who yearn for it because they do not have it who are most attracted to cults which offer some version of comfort that could be attained by means such as violence, sex, drugs… Some cults also create the illusion that comfort is possible regardless of one’s finances– which it can be to an extent but not to the extent that it is promised.

Cults satisfy the human desire for definite answers, by compartmentalizing things, events and people as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ rather like Snowball’s summary of the difference between animals and humans, in Animal Farm: ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ Simple. The problem is that life is not as black as white, and answers to problems can only be attained by means of reasoning, and a certain amount of education. So, once again, it is the uneducated who are more drawn to such conclusions.

Cults are even more attractive to people with low self-esteem, who may yearn to belong to a group, have friends, be accepted, or be involved in something ‘big’. A result-oriented educational system that does not cater to the individual is likely to give rise to many adults with low self-esteem.

Cults are made particularly attractive for potential or new recruits, who are surrounded by a very deliberate and flattering response to their presence, in an attempt to lure them in, regardless of academic performance, financial status or appearance. How many organisations in any society can boast such a thing?

Members generally do not realise that this friendly, exciting thing that they signed up for, this group that holds out so many promises and has suddenly provided them with a feeling of belonging and many friends and colleagues, is actually a cult.

Cults promote an ‘us versus them’ mentality, which is already a major factor in societies like ours where the huge gulf between the haves and have-nots promotes this attitude. They’d have no problem at all gaining recruits here.

It is easier to join a cult than to leave it. Penalties for trying to leave one can include death for the person and his family. This grim fact can help the organisation achieve a frightening sort of power that is attractive to some people.

Many cults are able to provide the excitement that is so craved by young people, not very different to what must have been experienced by the band of Scarlet Pimpernel followers.

Cult leaders are good at mind control, and possess the ability to get people to do exactly what they want. They are masters at enticement, promising what might be completely unrealistic, making it appear within easy reach. They are also good at self-projection, often projecting an image that is powerful, and quite unlike reality. One of Manson’s followers for example said later on that Manson never had to say that he was Jesus. It was just ‘obvious’ that he was the closest to Jesus that this follower would ever witness on earth.

So, here’s a profile of those who are likely to be attracted to cults. It may be something of a generalization but it’s likely to be not too far from the truth.

Most people who are attracted to a quick, often militant, extremist solution to the ills of the world and for their own problems are likely to be those who are not given to rational introspection, who perhaps have little time for it, and although there are many exceptions, who are less educated. These would be people who have learnt the hard way that striving and hard-work does not pay.

They are willing to give up their comfort zone, perhaps because there ain’t much of it anyway, and because they find that it gives them a sense of purpose to take up arms for a given cause. The sense of belonging and adventure that goes with the undertaking proposed by the militant extremist group might also make life worth living for them. They are willing to take by any means what they consider to be rightfully theirs. And because cult leaders excel at holding out elaborate promises, we have the promise of paradise and all its lures, reachable by some extreme short-cuts. It sure beats a life-time of being on one’s best behaviour.

It may seem as though we in Pakistan are relatively free from cult culture, but that is not true. With the militant extremists gaining power in Afghanistan as rapidly as they have done, we would do well to worry. Very much.

It is unrealistic to ascribe the ascent to power by the extremists in Afghanistan to violent means alone. There is after all the question of where the manpower to wield those arms comes from. And now that they are close to gaining Kabul, we in Pakistan must realise who our real adversaries are, and they are yet another powerful cult, and ours is a culture very much attracted to power and cults.

There is a large segment of society attracted to militant extremism in Pakistan. It is important to pay attention to why that is so. And to the solutions, which have little to do with armed intervention.

Some suggested solutions would be a more widespread and better education, and more facilities for the young where they can participate in activities and expend their energy, both mental and physical. A big aspect is to provide them with a better, more rational approach to religion. And a society in which hard work pays off, even in the absence of ‘contacts’ in important places. A society in which there is no compulsion to bribe, extort, and fight for what is rightfully yours.

IS THIS HOW IT SHOULD BE?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/07/is-this-how-it-should-be/

When the poor suffer, it's par for the course; when the rich suffer, it's a tragedy.

If you are a woman living in Pakistan, it might be an idea to brush up on a spot of self-defense. We are all familiar with the reasons, which are borne out by a survey conducted about three years ago by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. That survey concluded that Pakistan is the sixth most dangerous country in the world for women, with India the first, and the USA the tenth.

These results should not come as a surprise for a country with a regional history of ‘honour killings’ (it is high time that phrase was changed) dating back thousands of years, a practice that thrives to this day.  These ‘honour killings,’ as a result of which women, who are accused of adultery, are killed by the men of the family to maintain the family’s ‘honour’, are just one among the many forms of violence committed against women in Pakistan. In other forms, women are routinely abused, injured and killed, following domestic violence and rape.

The clerics seem to be making the situation worse in every way. There’s little point in enlarging on that theme. As for the Prime Minister of the country, he has had this to say regarding the prevalent attitude against women in this country: “If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact, it will have an impact on the men, unless they’re robots.” The prime minister said, “I mean it’s common sense.”

It is not just the Prime Minister who holds such views although not everyone has such a penchant for speaking without first weighing their words; he also has liberal access to air-conditioned environments where he lives with his walking tent. No, this mindset is easily available across society where people believe that despite the heat, and despite the amount of work they must do, women must cover themselves from head to foot at all times– leaving men to go exactly where their lecherous minds take them.

There are thousands of such incidents against women that never make the news, and only a fraction that are prosecuted, and action is taken in another fraction of those.

It all starts pretty early in a woman’s life. To speak of a handful of recent cases, there was the case of a six-year-old girl who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed in Karachi last month. Her body was later found dumped in the garbage.

Also last month was the case of a little girl, a student of Class 8, who was abducted and sexually assaulted by a group of men in Rawalpindi. She, mercifully, was rescued.

And last month, a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped and assaulted for about three days, but she too was rescued.

There was also a 15-year-old girl raped in Toba Tek Singh in June, and in May there was the case of a bride being gangraped by four men in Multan.

Again, last month, a Filipina, who had come to Pakistan to earn some money, was raped in Lahore.

A young couple was stripped and assaulted by a man, with other men present in the room. A video was recorded showing this.

These are only some of the cases that made the news, and they took place within a period of two months. It is the tip of an iceberg that goes way down.

Some activists stand up on behalf of these abused women, prominent among them Asma Jehangir who is now no longer with us. The rest of society, much of it, condemns it, but it has become a way of life, something that a large segment of the country takes for granted: women are property and can be dealt with as the male segment of society wishes.

There are however some cases that catch the limelight. Such as the recent tragic, and terrible murder of Noor Mukadam, which hit the news and social media like a meteorite on fire. As it should. May God help her family in this time of extreme need.

There is no need to go into the details. The victim lost her life in circumstances which will never be forgotten. The thought of what her family must go through is painful beyond endurance. The person responsible for her murder should face justice.

The point of this column is that nothing speaks of the massive gulf that exists in this country as this tragic case does.

There is that huge segment of society, where hundreds if not more, every single year, women lose their lives to murderers, rapists and other predators such as male members of the family. A fraction of these cases make the news as pointed out above. The rest not only do not make the news they go unreported because of that sickening sentiment ‘Log kiya kahen gay’ (what will people say).

For the very, very small number of cases such as Noor’s, her awful fate made the news like only the cases of our ‘elite’ manage to do.

Why do other victims never get as much coverage? Why do they never produce as much outrage as this crime did, when in terms of tragedy they are all on a par with each other? Where are the processions, petitions and outrage on social media for them?

This outrage stems from a fraction of the literate segment of society, and you wish that this segment was equally outraged across the board.

One can live with one person getting away with affording a better sofa than the other, or getting a better higher education than another, but we are talking about a person’s life here. The life of a mother, a daughter or a sister. A human being who lived and breathed and loved and worked. One of God’s Creations.

Justice is meant to be blind. The law should apply across the board. But does it? People are concerned that when a person from a well-to-do family commits a crime, he or she gets away with it. They’re trying to prevent that from happening in this case. But how about when the victim is poor, destitute and friendless, perhaps old, or belonging to some other religion…and once again, poor.?

We need justice for such people in Pakistan too, but there doesn’t seem to be any…what is being done to change this?