tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81057968394430614962024-03-04T22:11:58.334-08:00Life in PakistanRabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.comBlogger479125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-20941790075255004852023-03-13T20:18:00.001-07:002023-03-13T20:21:43.328-07:00WHITEWASHING HISTORY<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2023/03/14/whitewashing-history/</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 22px; text-align: center;">Mullahs of the literary world</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is impossible to adapt the world to a single set of values. There will always be a wide variety of opinions. One must take that or leave it, like it or not. The options are to block our eyes and ears, or live in a cave.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">And yet, the act of trying to force everyone onto a uniform platform is familiar for us here. But what about this current attempt in some Western countries to force the literature of the past to confirm to the opinions of the present?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">As it happens, this practice is nothing new. Roald Dahl and his books might have come more intensely under the public eye recently because of their publisher’s attempt to sanitize his language, but there were other similar cases which seem to have escaped the uproar the changes to Dahl’s books have caused.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Six books by Dr. Seuss are no longer published because they contain images said to be racist and insensitive. Cat in the Hat seems to have escaped the ire of the literary mullahs. Enid Blyton’s popular The Magic Faraway Tree series has been edited to cut out the kids having adventures on their own, without adult supervision.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The children’s name in that book have also been changed, Bessie and Fanny to Beth and Frannie, and Jo, the boy to the more valid spelling in current days, Joe, for a boy. As for Rick, he was known as Dick in the original text; his name has been changed for obvious but unnecessary reasons, even though Dick Cheney still retains his name and fails to attract the giggles his name is apparently supposed to.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">And then, as Lionel Shriver in The Cut points out that in literature, ‘fat has persistently marked a character as disagreeable. The corpulent John Reed in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and a similar Mrs. Van Hopper in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca are both bullies. The rotund Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist is wicked. Pudgy and victimized, Piggy in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is sympathetic, but also weak and pitiful. So, the prejudice goes way back. And it continues, with for example J. K. Rowling’s Dudley Dursley, Aunt Marge, in Harry Potter who are loathsome, their bellies an outward manifestation of interior defects.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">And let’s not forget Umbridge, Crabbe and Goyle.</p><blockquote style="background-color: white; border-left: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin: 40px auto 38px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: Muli !important; font-size: 19px; line-height: 29px; margin: 24px 0px 14px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Once a book is published, it comes into the public domain and ought to be out of the publisher’s hands; he/she should no longer have the right to edit it.</span></h4></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There was Jabba the Hutt, the bad guy in the Star Wars anthology. And ‘Fatty’ the leader of the Five Find Outers by Enid Blyton who was a very good guy, and ‘The Fat Controller’ in Thomas the Tank Engine who was not a bad guy at all. His real name was Sir Topham Hatt. The presence of those particular other names has been criticized, however, for fat shaming, because both of them were corpulent.</p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_45 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_45" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; font-size: 16px !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px); word-break: break-word;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Other books have faced that ire, for example the Babar the Elephant series, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, the first because they were said to be a celebration of colonialism, and the second for a stereotyping of Native Americans.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In the C S Monitor, Gay Andrew Dillin reminds us that in the 1980s, Judy Blume, a best-selling writer of children’s books wrote about several subjects that tend to get various reactions, such as homosexuality, the female body, menstruation, racial prejudice, cruelty among peers…etc. And there was her most popular book: ‘Are you there, God? Its me, Margaret.’ The very name suggests an “Uh-Oh! Be careful!”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Blume’s books have come under repeated attack, to which Judy Blume’s response was worth thinking about. She said, ‘”You don’t teach values. Values are there. You <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">absorb</em> them. One doesn’t say, ‘I’m going to teach you these values.’ Children absorb them by watching their parents’ behavior. If your parents say one thing and do another, the values they are teaching their children is by doing, not by saying.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">And that is a most important point.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Once a book is published, it comes into the public domain and ought to be out of the publisher’s hands; he/she should no longer have the right to edit it.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Over the ages, we have had different values, and different ways of expressing ourselves. Words that were once considered acceptable, are no longer so, generally with valid reason. But to pass on these values to our children is the job of parents and teachers, not the job of Penguin House, or Simon and Schuster. Because we and our children belong to a varied group with different ideals and values, even if a book is changed to delete one value and depict another, it would be variously acceptable…or not, to different people in society.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Changing what Dickens or Wilder said is tantamount to attempting to white-wash history. The new edition is not the way Dicken’s spoke, or the way Wilder presented her stories.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is also important to see the struggles mankind has faced to reach the point it is at now. When the struggle is successful it is useful to know how that success was achieved, to study the methods and analyse them for application to other such issues. When the struggle is ongoing, or has failed then too it is useful to be able to study the process. This is how man learns, starting in childhood.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The treatment and language used by plantation owners when dealing with their slaves, the treatment and language meted out to their workers by feudal lords and rich persons in general in Pakistan is enlightening. We can study it and know how not to behave. As it is enlightening and important to know what the North American States went through to achieve what racial freedom they possess today, and where it still falls short. It helps to know about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. And about the people in Pakistan who have fought injustice, Akhtar Hameed Khan, Parveen Rahman, Asma Jehangir, Faiz Ahmad Faiz. The option is to remain in the dark and for the new generation to imagine that every person in the past grew up exactly as they do now, and had the same values as we are taught in this day…which is how it will be if publishers continue editing books. This is as important as it is to know the struggles our religious figures went through to push through the various reforms they did in their ancient societies.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Words that we disagree with can either be left out when we read out these books to our children. Or…which is better….they can provide a ground for discussion on how it is not right to use such words, or hold those values, and the fact that until people fought against them those words and attitudes were once used and considered acceptable.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Children do not live in a sterilized world, and it is to their detriment if we force them to think they do. 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margin-bottom: 30px !important; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-49543542204137544752022-04-18T23:32:00.006-07:002022-10-13T01:21:21.328-07:00THE PARKING LOT<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK7wzwCw9ycdCWsCcxB9sKcYYAP7gM1SIJlIKGHYn3hDI1upSkaNy8Ky8kcx1tdQaX05JJ7839DPpovS16yvk6yO5-cVD8JoNUr63me-gTwf_OXyPxmZVzlKWkU6Z9XkeiPGEHqnvPQHAGyXRw74GI01Oyg8lUCa7AipIfssX99dfBQHsWE48ibagL" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="434" height="421" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK7wzwCw9ycdCWsCcxB9sKcYYAP7gM1SIJlIKGHYn3hDI1upSkaNy8Ky8kcx1tdQaX05JJ7839DPpovS16yvk6yO5-cVD8JoNUr63me-gTwf_OXyPxmZVzlKWkU6Z9XkeiPGEHqnvPQHAGyXRw74GI01Oyg8lUCa7AipIfssX99dfBQHsWE48ibagL=w305-h421" width="305" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">My novel The Parking Lot has just been published. It is available from all Ferozsons stores, Saeed Book Bank, Liberty Books, and online at https://ferozsons.com.pk/</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Also on Amazon as as ebook at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3RYXRKK. </div><br /><p></p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-80033651848444403552021-11-13T18:46:00.001-08:002021-11-13T18:46:21.260-08:00STOP BREATHING<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/11/13/158095/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Lahore has been rated the most polluted city in the world with an Air Quality Index (AQI) touching 500 and more. That means the very act of taking breath in this city is hazardous to health, and Karachi is not far behind on the scale.</p><p></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad0 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">It is such a sad state of affairs that even the Punjab government has taken note of matters as they stand and declared the situation to be a crisis. Unfortunately, that is all it seems to have done so far.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Of course, it is not just the air one breathes that is hazardous to health in this country, it is also the water one drinks and several other things including the traffic on the roads, all things that one encounters every day and cannot stay away from.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The major reasons behind the pollution are the fuels that are burnt in factories (plastics are used as fuel by some), and the amount of pollution being spewed into the air by the many brick kilns. The major factor, however, has to be the fumes emitted by vehicles on the roads, and of course the crop burning that takes place in the Punjab, the agricultural giant of Pakistan– and therefore one of its greatest polluters.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">This ‘crop burning’ takes place after a crop is harvested and the stubble is left behind in the fields. This stubble can be removed by machine, or by hand, or it can be allowed to remain where it is. Removing it by hand is obviously not an easy process. If the stubble is allowed to remain where it is, it disintegrates in time into the soil, in the process returning some nutrients for the following crop. This is the easiest and cheapest solution, and the one that gives the best results. The third solution is to turn the soil by machine to bury the stubble back into the soil – a process that would again put back some nutrients. But this is an expensive process.If this option is selected, machines exist that can make it happen, some cheaper than others, yet still too expensive for the average farmer. This is where the government can step in and provide these machines to do the job at a subsidized rate where required.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is obvious that farmers in Pakistan lack the information to do their job effectively, they are unaware of the pros and cons of the various measures, and unable to evaluate their options, so they generally choose to burn the stubble, causing a blanket of carbon-laden smoke to cover the region, which coupled with the other pollutants in the air is responsible for our elevated AQ Index. This is another place where the government can step in; indeed it must, to ensure that farmers are educated in the best way of doing their job… not by those with an interest in selling their products, but by means of some genuine trainers in the field. They must also ensure that crop burning is brought to an end, by penalising all who attempt to do so, without discrimination.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There are some factors that have always prevented this country from making much progress, and will always prevent it from doing so, as long as they exist. One is the habit of invariably pointing a finger at someone else, and ignoring one’s own role in any given problem. It pleases the people of this country therefore to point a finger at India, which shares this practice of crop burning, despite all arguments indicating our equal share in the problem. It has been pointed out that the wind direction almost throughout the year is north to south, at other times it is west to east. It is only for a short time every year that winds come from India in the East to Pakistan in the West, and yet, judging by the comments in any article and column in the newspaper, everything is always India’s fault, or the fault of the political party other than one’s favoured one, or the fault of some mysterious Western mafia.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The other roadblock in the way of progress is the tendency of the wealthier classes to use their power and money to exempt themselves from all rules by greasing relevant palms. Seeing that it is this class that owns the most land, and this class that owns the most kilns, factories and cars, it is easy to see what this argument refers to and where it leads. The habit of accepting pay-offs pervades every aspect of society, at every level.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Unless these matters are tackled and brought to an end, Pakistan might make a few dazzling malls, it might have become a nuclear power, it might posture and try to figure as a voice to be reckoned with in various matters; but this is no progress, and with this alone Pakistan will never amount to more than what it is at present, and that is nothing much at all.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One of the actions that could make a difference is take stock of those in control, and since this is about the environment, it is an idea to look at the people in charge there.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The person in charge of the environment, who has been in charge for a while now, is another one who considers India predominantly responsible for the smog in the region, and what is far more incredible, has been reported as saying that the smog is fake news, spread by those with vested interests.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">She is not alone in being ill-equipped or uninterested in the job that has been entrusted to her</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-74361308296171267962021-11-06T20:04:00.000-07:002021-11-06T20:04:01.998-07:00INDIA TAKING THE KNEE? REALLY? <p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/11/07/india-taking-the-knee-really/</p><p><b>AND PAKISTAN CHIMING IN? </b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Before its match against Pakistan began on 24 October, the Indian cricket team ‘took the knee’ on the field, in what is by now an internationally recognised gesture against racism. The Pakistani team expressed their support of this gesture by placing their hands across their chest, à la Ertugrul Gazi.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The gesture has been received with raised eyebrows, given India’s human rights violations, against Kashmiris, and against Muslims, and because of verbal attacks on Mohammad Shami, the only Muslim player in the Indian team, after the match.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Referring to this event, Andrew Bolt of Sky News recently spoke about how India should fix its own record before making grand international statements against racism. He was speaking specifically about India’s caste system, in which Brahmins have the upper hand, followed by others on a descending scale ending last of all in the untouchable class composed of the Shudras and the Dalits, whose lives are a dreadful tale of survival despite discrimination.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There must be several people on both teams, let us presume all of them, who have their hearts in the right place with regards to racism. Neither team had much choice in making this gesture. It has been said that the Indian team did what they did upon instructions from the Board that manages the event at their end. And the Pakistani team understandably had to chime in.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Be that as it may, what concerns us is the Pakistani team and its support of the anti-racist sentiment.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Any country’s national team, even if it is a sports team, represents the country, which means it represents what the country stands for, so the question arises: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">does</em> Pakistan stand for racial equality?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Certainly, given the political rhetoric against India in this country, you would imagine that Pakistan itself is free of racism. That would be a highly erroneous perception. It does not, despite its constitution, despite the religion of the majority of its people, and despite the image it likes to project.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The foundation of Pakistan and its people being free to go to their temples, mosques, or other places of worship has long since been overridden by certain amendments. That brings one to the religion.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The majority of Pakistanis claim to be Muslim, a religion that at its inception made a gift of freedom against racism and any kind of bigotry to all humanity. And yet, here in Pakistan, that gift has in effect been thrown back into the hands that gave it.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In Pakistan, other forms of racism aside, the caste system is alive and thriving. Conveniently cloaked in terms such as ‘brotherhood’ (baradari), it is difficult to see how the caste system in the Punjab, consisting of Rajputs, Arains, Dogars, Butts, Bhattis and all that bull differs to the caste system among Hindus. People who number themselves as one or other of these ‘castes’ often have the fact written across their cars, and tend to prefer to marry someone from the same caste as themselves. As for Syeds, that is another ball game, hilarious if it weren’t so dreadful, and so belittling of him from whom members of the caste proudly claim descent. The people who bestow that title upon themselves often, (there are as always many exceptions) prefer to marry only within themselves, and yet DNA tests conducted upon some of them in the sub-continent indicate that they have no connection with any Arab, let alone any particular person hailing from that region. And even if they did, if the supposed head of that family held no illusions of superiority for his family or himself based on that lineage, if indeed he condemned such things, nothing justifies the existence of that illusion among many of his so-called descendants.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Far from the government making the slightest move to change this mindset, the land documents issued by the government of Punjab require a person to state his or her caste. If this isn’t racism, our Interior Minister is a level-headed man.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One can name many shameful incidents, such as those against Pakistan’s minorities, the Christians, the Hazara, the Shias and the Ahmadis.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Let us never forget the Christian colony that was burnt down by a rabid mob, and the Christian couple that was burnt alive in a kiln, or the fact that our Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam was drummed out of the country because he belonged to a much-persecuted, discriminated against community, even by law. Just, you know, as Muslims are discriminated against in India, because they belong to the community they belong to, a discrimination our government and people protest vociferously against.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">And most recently, there was the case of the Ahmadi student who was expelled from the University that had given him admission on a minority quota.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Mind you, this was not the first case. In 2008 23 students were expelled from a college in the Punjab. Not for any misdeed, but because they happened to belonge to the Ahmadiyya community. And that took place less than a month after the National Assembly of Pakistan reaffirmed its commitment to uphold the interests and rights of all minorities within the country in front of the United Nations Human Rights Council.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The most recent incident mentioned above took place this month, when the Bahauddin Zakaria University located in Multan suspended a young man’s admission without informing him or giving a reason for the suspension. It was a relief when the Lahore High Court set aside the decision, saying that it ‘amounted to persecuting the already persecuted.’ One would like to know if any measures are planned against those responsible for these actions in the University.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">These events mentioned above are only a very few of the racist acts that take place in Pakistan, acts that bring shame upon all Pakistanis, and upon all those who call themselves Muslim, human or decent.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">So, what makes us think we can place our hands over our hearts and make a statement against racism? What allows us to condemn India as our people and politicians have been doing, as a matter of course as well as following the cricket match? And just what allows us to point fingers at racism when it takes place anywhere else in the world?</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-77843801472037630652021-10-16T20:03:00.000-07:002021-10-16T20:03:09.423-07:00THE QUESTION OF WHODUNIT<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/10/16/the-question-of-whodunit/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Forensic medicine, which is the application of medical science to criminal investigation, is a fascinating field, and one of its most vital aspects is employing DNA to identify those involved in crime, particularly in cases of assault and death. It is a technology that has been in use since 1986, and then, in that first case it was responsible for proving that someone had <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> committed a murder.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The first time DNA evidence led to a conviction was in 1987 in the UK, and in the USA In 1992 two other DNA analyses led to a conviction and an exoneration. This technology is now used throughout the world, and some countries have set up databases so that when a crime is committed the DNA samples recovered from the scene can be compared with samples belonging to known offenders existing on the database, while a search is conducted for other persons potentially involved.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The rules, such as those of sanitization surrounding the collection of these samples are vital, and stringent. In other words, success greatly depends upon the care with which this technology is used. The same applies to many other things. It can be dangerous for example to eat food or medicines that have been improperly stored, and plants sicken or die if housed under inappropriate conditions, as do animals and humans. There have been innumerable cases where surgery has gone badly wrong because of ineptitude, carelessness, or inattention to hygiene. We still have surgery, despite this, because if it provides the only chance of recovery, not having it would greatly increase the odds against survival.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">So, coming back to Pakistan and the use of DNA as evidence here, the case of gang-rape at the Mazar-e-Quaid immediately comes to mind. In this re-trial of the case registered in 2008, the judge in his verdict stated that: ‘the evidentiary value of a DNA test is not acceptable in a case falling under the penal provisions of zina punishable under the Hudood laws, which had its own “standard of proof.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In short, DNA evidence was not accepted in this re-trial of the three accused men accused of the crime.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is important to reiterate that The Hudood Ordinance does not accept DNA evidence, while Pakistan’s other legal stream, the PPC (Pakistan Penal Code), which is a colonial legacy, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">does</em> accept such evidence.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">An observation made in the verdict in this case was most interesting. It said that ‘The court pointed out that the clothes of the victim produced in court as evidence were not sealed.’</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad2 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">And that is probably one of the crucial points when assessing whether or not DNA evidence should be taken into account in Pakistan.</p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_fb0 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_fb0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; font-size: 16px !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">While DNA evidence is invaluable in determining responsibility in criminal cases, it can only be so when and if such evidence is obtained and stored in conformity with the guidelines. Even when the guidelines are followed it can still point, in a few cases, towards the wrong person. If those guidelines are not adhered to, that evidence would definitely be unacceptable.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">This is the reason why some people wonder if using the Pfizer covid vaccine in Pakistan is a desirable option, given its stringent storage requirements of extremely low temperatures, since it is an unfortunate tendency in this country to ignore guidelines, a tendency fostered by ignorance, and in the case of storage requirements by Pakistan’s regular power breakdowns.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In the case of the evidence produced in this Mazar case, the clothes the victim wore at the time the incident took place were produced in court in a bag that was not sealed. Which means, that even if DNA samples were taken at the time, they stood a great chance of being contaminated by conditions if the bag was not sealed to make it impervious to them. It also means that these samples– clothes, with or without DNA evidence, could easily have been tampered with at any stage. So, even without the stipulations made by the Hudood Ordinance which were legally binding on the judge, it is worth considering whether or not to accept such evidence.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Science is an invaluable asset. It is also worth understanding that certain guidelines that were gifted to us are powerful reminders of the principles behind matters involved, so they should not and do not forbid better and newer methods. However, if there is a great chance that the methods are implemented incorrectly, as they very often are in Pakistan, should such methods be admissible? Or should we first ensure that attitudes towards guidelines first undergo a sea change?</p></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_post_share tdi_46_0f0 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1" data-td-block-uid="tdi_46_0f0" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 23px; position: relative;"></div><p></p><div class="wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_45_b01 td_separator_solid td_separator_center" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 20px !important; margin-top: 28px !important; orphans: 2; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; width: 695.994px; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="border-color: rgb(235, 235, 235); border-top-style: solid; border-width: 2px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 1px; margin: 0px auto; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></span></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-41677808113909030642021-10-09T20:11:00.002-07:002021-10-09T20:11:36.690-07:00WHEN THE ONLINE EXPERIENCE REPLACES REALITY<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/10/10/when-the-online-experience-replaces-reality/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">When something gains such a massive presence in people’s lives as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have— as the entire being on-line experience has— it’s a good idea to be a bit wary and examine the phenomenon a bit more closely to see what effect it is having on us.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Instagram is one of the fastest growing social platforms with a billion users at a time when WhatsApp had two billion users, and Facebook two and a half billion and rising. So, few people would <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">not</span> know that these media platforms had a bad week recently, that not only did they shut down across the world, but that when they did come back, it took a while for them to run smoothly again. It seems in fact that even some Facebook employees were shut out of their offices, since their security cards would not function.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Even those who are not on one or all of these platforms would have heard about the outage from friends and family, and what they heard would have sounded as though they had been deprived of food and water, so important have these platforms become. If you’re addicted to Facebook for example, it is no relief to be forced to spend that time with anything else, not Tumblr, not Tik Tok, not Twitter. They’re no replacement.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">For many people social media means entertainment alone, but for as many it stands for the ability to connect with friends and family, and view them and their lives in far-away places, in an age where friends and family are spread out all over the world. And now, during the pandemic, it means the ability to shop online since isolation has become a way of life for those who are able to keep themselves isolated. For businesses it has become a lifeline, particular now that fewer people are visiting shops and malls and other places of business.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">But what lies in the online experience for children, who we see glued to the screen even more than adults?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It’s not just Facebook we are talking about, or Whatsapp or Instagram, it’s the entire online experience. Children these days go online for the fun of being there, for the ability to have someone to ‘play’ with without having to coax them to do so first.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Entertainment is available online for the asking so long as someone can access a screen. All those games where you shoot someone, run a race, almost anything you like. It is the place to be, also because online is where the adults are, and children have been copycats ever since humans were born.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Yet being glued to the screen for long periods for children is even worse than it is for adults, since it means that not only could they access all the wrong content, they are giving up active time to sit on a couch, necks bent, staring at something presented by someone else. No physical exercise, no imagination required, no creativity. It leads to obesity, eye strain, and problems with sleep.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One hears it all the time, but it’s a valid concern: there was a time when children played, using their hands and feet and the rest of their bodies, outside, in the fresh air. They jumped, and chased, and fell. They made stuff with their hands, and went camping and climbed trees. None of that is the case anymore. And the result is not good.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There are non-physical problems too.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Children who spend too much time in front of the screen are less able to handle reality, less able to handle social interaction, since their one aim when any human interaction takes place is to get back in front of that screen as soon as possible. They miss out on the give and take and become increasingly less able to pick up social cues. They are likely to become impatient, because they are used to instant solutions, and might be subject to depression when forced to spend time with other humans.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The onus now is on the parents to find a solution. Governments need to butt out of this matter. No amount of ‘banning’ and controlling as our authorities try to do, will prevent those who want to access something from accessing it. Our world is no longer a tiny, isolated space that can be controlled. It is parents who need to place curbs on how much time their children spend in front of the screen, parents who must provide their children with interests when they are not in front of it.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Children need attractive alternatives, activities and other creative things to compete with being online. Unless this is provided, we are set to be a nation of zombies, glued to a shining rectangle, and in the case of a predominantly illiterate nation a set of people with the ability to click but not to understand. The recent downtime for FB et al and the reaction to it should serve as a warning for what the consequences can be.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Social media and being online for work and play is here to stay. There is no way it can be pushed back into the box. The most we can do is regulate the amount of time we give it at home, and this must be done.</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-22005295126198693932021-10-02T20:04:00.003-07:002021-10-02T20:56:19.048-07:00A DIRE NEED FOR PALLIATIVE CARE<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/10/02/the-dire-need-for-palliative-care/</p><p><span face=""open sans", arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-size: 22px; text-align: center;">It is time morphine was made available in hospitals for pain relief</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“All of medicine, not just cadaver dissection, trespasses into sacred spheres. Doctors invade the body in every way imaginable. They see people at their most vulnerable, their most scared, their most private.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Paul Kallanithi</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Hospitals in Pakistan cater to most fields of medicine, cardiology, oncology, rheumatology, gastroenterology, but the crucial field of palliative care is sorely neglected, in fact it barely exists. It is said that the ratio of palliative services to population in Pakistan is 1:90 million, which is a staggeringly woeful picture.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">What is palliative care?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Palliative care is the help offered to a patient when his or her disease no longer responds to curative treatment, in other words at a ‘terminal’ stage, where the disease is considered likely to lead to death. That is when palliative care and hospices are required.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Of all other fields of medicine, palliative care is the one that caters most holistically to a patient.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Palliative care includes non-medical care for the dying person, it caters to a person’s physical as well as emotional needs, such as providing religious facilities where required, addressing the patient and his family’s questions and concerns, and generally making that period of life as easy as possible.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Palliative care takes into account a person’s quality of life, and works towards making death as peaceful, as dignified and as painless as possible.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">At a certain stage, such care is ideally provided in the patient’s home, when the role of the family takes on even greater importance, but that depends on the individual situation. In a poverty-stricken country like Pakistan this might not always be possible, therefore adequate facilities must be available in hospitals, and professional training, equipment, and personnel provided.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There are the usual set of people who say that death is not the concern of hospitals and medical professionals. Those are generally the people who also say that since it is God who determines the manner of death, everyone else should stay out of the matter. Again, these are generally the same people who fail to rationalize religion, who in fact imagine that reason contradicts faith.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">God is certainly the one who determines the manner of death. However, if humans must stay out of that matter, then we should all also stop taking medications and going in for surgery, since ‘all of medicine trespasses into sacred spheres,’ yet no one expects this.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There are other misconceptions.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Palliative care is sometimes confused with euthanasia, when in fact these are two very different things. Euthanasia is the practice of actively ending a person’s life to minimize suffering. Palliative care does not end life, it strives to make the living easier and the ending – when it comes, less difficult.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Paul Kalanithi, an American neurosurgeon who opted to work in palliative care until he himself died of metastatic lung cancer, was 37 at the time of his death. His book on this subject, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">When Breath Becomes Air</em>, is worth a read. Obviously, after a certain point Paul was unable to write himself, and then the tale was taken up by his wife. One of the most remarkable features of the book is her description of the way Paul dies. The quote at the head of this piece is taken from this book.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One of the most important requirements of palliative care is morphine, which is used to minimize pain and help the dying person move forward with the least possible suffering. Unfortunately, that is another misconception, that allowing morphine into mainstream medical care is the same as encouraging drug addiction. That is highly incorrect. To equate the two is like equating breathing polluted air with suicide. You need to prevent pollution, which would minimize deaths related to it. In the same way, the manner in which morphine is dispensed needs to be controlled, to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Morphine, a crucial narcotic, is not available in Pakistan. At least not legally, not even in hospitals.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Morphine is an extract derived from the opium plant. Also made from the opium plant is heroin, which is used as an addictive substance.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is time morphine was made available in hospitals for pain relief.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium. Its opium harvest accounts for 80 percent of the world supply. So now, instead of simply batting our eyes at the new Taliban leadership, authorities in Pakistan should look at importing opium, the most abundant and useful commodity produced in their country, instead of importing the Taliban brand of religion. And then to use this opium to make morphine, to help all who need this narcotic in this country.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Palliative care is probably a difficult concept for our authorities to understand, the fact of making death easy for its people, when they seem to find it so difficult to make it easy for them to live, but it is well to remember that we all have to experience death, which is an integral aspect of life, and not all of us can be airlifted to another country and treated in foreign hospitals when the time comes.</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-41200454841405674882021-09-18T21:12:00.003-07:002021-09-18T21:12:16.333-07:00ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH vs MISWAK<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/09/18/electric-toothbrush-vs-miswak/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">A letter addressed to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was recently leaked to the public. Iftikhar Khan has given the details of the matter and of the resulting furore in a National Daily.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is known by now that NADRA wished to hire the ECP to develop an online voting system and electronic voting machines, for which it offered to pay a very large sum. The details are contained in a letter in which an outstanding factor is the language. You’d expect the commission that runs the national election system to express themselves significantly better than it does in that letter, but more importantly, you wonder why NADRA is paying the ECP to set up a voting system. Shouldn’t the ECP be worrying about that matter (as tf points out in the letter), since elections and all things related are their job? But perhaps the ECP has not managed to get its act together after all these years.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">A slight digression at this point, to speak of a matter that should concern the ECP and which has to do with their ‘getting their act together’:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Local Government Elections in the Cantonment Boards were recently held in the country. In these elections the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI) was defeated in several major cities. The Prime Minister was not pleased, and he has asked the PTI’s chief organizer and its Secretary General to find out why this happened.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There could be several reasons for this defeat, several come to mind, but one that comes to the forefront, personally, is a canvassing letter received from a PTI candidate prior to these elections, in which voting slips containing voters’ relevant information – ID card numbers, address, name etc., were clipped to the outside of the envelope, displaying all that information for anyone to read.</p><ol style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 26px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 0px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 21px;">If a voter must elect someone to represent their interests, would a person capable of allowing the above be the right person? He would no doubt excuse himself by saying that he cannot be expected to keep an eye on every small detail and worker, in which case will he be able to do so when in office? After all, the Right to Privacy of Data and Information is a major concern, and even the Constitution of Pakistan grants that right to the citizens of the country. Pakistan is also signatory to several International Covenants, on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which both uphold the right to privacy, and to the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights which also upholds the right to privacy. A representative who is unable to prevent his department from committing such flagrant breaches of civil rights has a problem; maybe such ‘small’ things explain the PTI’s losses.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 21px;">When an attempt was made to contact the ECP regarding this infringement of the right to privacy of data, it turned out that the ECP’s inbox was full. So much for that.</li></ol><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">An online voting system and electronic machines are good ideas. But before we invest in expensive electric toothbrushes, it would be a good idea to get our heads around the concept of oral hygiene itself, to understand why it is important and how it works, and its impact on a person’s overall well-being. It might be a better idea to make the humble miswak work until an electric toothbrush is feasible.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">For a society that has little idea about the importance of elections, and almost no idea about the rights of the electorate and the duties of the elected, an expensive voting system seems to be overkill.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In a democracy it is possible for any person who gains the majority vote to act as representative of the people, but perhaps there should be some scheme to educate these elected representatives before they take office, a scheme that teaches them about things that count and are more important than the salary, the prestige, flagged car, guards and such gimmicks and publicity. They need to know how to get the job done, for heaven’s sake, to have some idea of the basic laws of the country. The PTI has been outstanding in this matter, with the Chief Minister of a major province, personally appointed by the Prime Minister himself, being as clueless a person as any, with his patron often not far behind. There are many other people’s representatives in the same league, persons who have abused, cursed and slapped their way through their tenure, and have lived to tell the tale without being removed from office.</p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_66a td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_66a" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; font-size: 16px !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It seems that politicians across the board ignore important things, and matters directly related to their job; they cross the floor when it suits them, pay attention to gimmicks alone, and spend valuable time bad-mouthing the opposition and little else.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Minister of Railways for example, recently recommended that such institutions as the ECP should be “set ablaze,” a recommendation to arson, made at a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, no less.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In such an atmosphere, do we really need a voting system that costs Rs 2.4 billion, and voting machines that will most likely be kicked out of service, literally, when the predominantly uneducated populace of the country cannot get them to work? Or perhaps they will be set on fire, as recommended by the Minister for Railways himself?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It has been the ultimate tragedy for this country that there are so many obstacles in the way of accountability and justice. Some might say accountability and justice do not exist. That makes it hard to achieve any progress, or to justify spending money in ways such as the above. These roadblocks need to be addressed before anything else.</p></div></div><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_post_share tdi_46_d61 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1" data-td-block-uid="tdi_46_d61" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 23px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-share-classic" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px; position: relative;"><br /></div><div class="td-post-sharing tdb-block td-ps-bg td-ps-notext td-post-sharing-style1 " id="tdi_46_d61" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; margin-left: -3px; margin-right: -3px; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 0.3s ease 0s; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 2;"><div class="td-post-sharing-visible" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block;"><a class="td-social-sharing-button td-social-sharing-button-js td-social-network td-social-facebook" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pakistantoday.com.pk%2F2021%2F09%2F18%2Felectric-toothbrush-vs-miswak%2F" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; font-size: 11px; height: 40px; margin: 0px 3px 7px; min-width: 40px; opacity: 1; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none; transition: opacity 0.2s ease 0s; vertical-align: middle;"><div class="td-social-but-icon" style="background-color: #516eab; border-radius: 2px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; line-height: 40px; padding-left: 13px; padding-right: 13px; position: relative; width: 40px; z-index: 1;"><i class="td-icon-facebook" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1; position: relative; top: -1px; vertical-align: middle;"></i></div></a><a class="td-social-sharing-button td-social-sharing-button-js td-social-network td-social-twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Electric+Toothbrush+vs+Miswak&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pakistantoday.com.pk%2F2021%2F09%2F18%2Felectric-toothbrush-vs-miswak%2F&via=ePakistanToday" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; font-size: 11px; height: 40px; margin: 0px 3px 7px; min-width: 40px; opacity: 1; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none; transition: opacity 0.2s ease 0s; vertical-align: middle;"><div class="td-social-but-icon" style="background-color: #29c5f6; border-radius: 2px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; line-height: 40px; padding-left: 13px; padding-right: 13px; position: relative; width: 40px; z-index: 1;"><i class="td-icon-twitter" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1; position: relative; top: -1px; vertical-align: middle;"></i></div></a></div></div></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-12275365859608965872021-09-11T20:09:00.001-07:002021-09-11T20:09:18.463-07:00ENOUGH IS ENOUGH<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/09/12/enough-is-enough/</p><p></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_author tdi_29_6c3 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 tdb-post-meta" data-td-block-uid="tdi_29_6c3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: none; color: #444444; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 16px; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="align-items: center; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; justify-content: center; transform: translateZ(0px);"></div></div><p></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_subtitle tdi_28_e13 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1" data-td-block-uid="tdi_28_e13" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 40px !important; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: center; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px !important; font-style: normal !important; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.3 !important; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Wazir Khan mosque case is disturbing</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">We believe religion to be a powerful thing, and it is; we believe it is meant for all time, and is looked after by the Divine Being Himself. The religion of Islam was handed down to man thanks to the extreme dedication and incalculable efforts of some extremely courageous individuals; in our hands it is meant to be a manual for life, for all humankind. Why then is the attempt to distort it, and make it accessible only with great difficulty, one of the greatest ambitions for so many humans? Should it not be accessible, so that everyone, Muslim, non-Muslim, men, women and children, they can all access it, easily, without first scrubbing between each toe, and heaven help you if you miss a corner?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px !important; line-height: 1.3 !important; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad0 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">For those who dispute the claim that it is inaccessible, check out almost any mosque in Pakistan to see how many women are allowed in. By contrast there are many mosques in the USA, notable among them a mosque in Virginia– and there are others around that country and the rest of the world, where that place of worship is used as a community centre as well as a place for prayer, as it should be.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">Men, women and children visit that mosque in Virginia to learn languages, computers, and other subjects. Young people use the main hall as a basketball court, and when it is time for congregational prayers, these young people tidy up and leave the room, perform ablutions before returning, many of them, to join the congregation and pray. It would not otherwise be easy to get as many young people to put in an appearance at a mosque.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">It is also not just men who pray here; women do too, although so as not to offend the sensibilities of those prone to take offence, they pray separately, in a gallery upstairs. Tolerance is one of the very important aspects of religion. The Imam of the mosque is a pleasant man. Women can obtain an audience with him just as much as men can, and neither need to make changes to their attire when they do. This is a mosque that would attract followers, a mosque that can achieve much.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">This rant was kicked in motion by the criticism leveled at, and even an arrest warrant (a bailable one) issued against a couple of actors and singers who filmed a video in the beautiful Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore. They have been accused of ‘desecrating this mosque.’</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">The Wazir Khan Mosque is a heritage building, a beautiful one, built nearly 500 years ago. It was recently restored by the Aga Khan Foundation and the Norwegian Embassy. What is wrong with using this as a background for a video, the theme of which is nothing offensive, if making it does not disrupt congregational prayers? It is likely, in fact, that seeing this beautiful mosque in the background people will ask “where is this beautiful place?” and make a point to visit it when they are in Lahore.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">\Religion needs to be taken out of the hands of those who exist with their heads in the sand. We live in a difficult world, one that was never very easy. To make it possible to exist in this world it is important to realise that women, humour, technology, laughter, literature – as well as crime, men, vulgarity and tragedy, they all stem from the same source, the same Divinity, the source of all pleasure and hardship. The hardship exists as a test for us, not a battle zone.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad2 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">There were a couple of lines doing the rounds of social media recently which said: ‘Religion is what we do after the prayer is over.’ Doesn’t that make a great deal of sense?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">Prayer reminds us of Him, the Being we pray to, and of what He wishes us to do, and He certainly does not wish us to kill, exclude, destroy and mock. His wishes, as stated in the Holy book are to welcome, help, include, love and be just with everyone, not just with one segment of society, or with the segment that can pay for it. Having prayed to Him, that is what we must seek to accomplish.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">Instead of disapproving of a mosque being used as a background for a video, lets be happy that this beautiful place of worship was considered worth it. If that video contains dance and music, so be it. Laughter, eloquent movement, and beauty, these were all created by the same One Being. There is no inherent crime within any of these things.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">Are we so weak and spineless that a video can make us change our convictions?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">If one must condemn beauty and music, then let us examine the Wazir Khan Mosque itself. It is hardly an austere building. It is a beautiful mosque, a hymn to the Creator who is worshipped within its walls. If beauty is a crime, why was this mosque allowed? Why do maulvis perform nikahs at weddings where women wear beautiful clothing? At weddings where in fact, very often, too much is spent on that clothing and on those events to the point of vulgarity and waste, making such weddings almost a crime in a world where so many people lack the basics of life? That is the real desecration, is it not?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">A mosque does not stand apart from the life around it. They are each part of each other. The must lend each other a hand. Similarly, religion is meant to be incorporated into one’s life, to help us deal with it, to be adapted around changing times keeping the main principals in view. That is the only way it can hold any meaning. We desperately need to take ours back from the hands into which it has fallen at present, where it is being strangled to death. We must stand up and say: Enough.</p></div></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-64186940332089891772021-09-04T20:15:00.000-07:002021-09-04T20:15:01.131-07:00A LIVER TRANSPLANT FOR AN ALCOHOLIC<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/09/04/a-liver-transplant-for-an-alcoholic/</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; text-align: center;">Does the Single National Curriculum solve anything?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Last month, on the 16 August, the Prime Minister launched the first phase of the Single National Curriculum (SNC), which is supposed to ‘guide the youth of the nation in one direction to achieve success.’ It is said to be an important step towards providing the growing generation of Pakistanis an equal opportunity for a good quality education across the board.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">This curriculum has apparently now been implemented from classes 1 to 5 across the country, except as yet in Sindh. It is planned to implement the SNC among the higher classes by stages. The directives that go with the SNC apparently include teaching certain subjects, including science, in Urdu.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">As with so many other initiatives in this country, this is a ‘virtuous’ idea, but a sadly impractical one, not one likely to survive the initial zeal of its initiators; it is an initiative that provides great press at first glance, but is certain to share the fate of sundry other initiatives stemming from the same source, rather like the gymnast who decided to swing impressively from vine to vine in the jungle, in the same way as he swung on ropes in the gym, only to find that vines growing in the wild were less hospitable than the ropes in his gym, so he immediately lost interest and looked around for other interests to push.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The fact is that ‘equal opportunity’ is an unknown commodity in this country, where it seems to be the aim of most citizens to make sure that no such aberration gets off the ground. It is also a fact that simply plonking down a syllabus is not going to cut any ice. What we need, very badly, is an overhaul of the national brain, which seems to bank on inequality. Equality is not something our feudal systems and elitist society appreciate, nor something our begums look kindly upon. There is also the sad fact that equality, in Pakistan, where women are fighting for existence, invariably applies to men only.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is unlikely that the private school system, which under the SNC is permitted to teach students extra material/books of their choice– but must also teach the SNC books, will take much notice of either that rule, or those books, always presuming that the SNC books are worth taking notice of. We cannot seriously imagine, that the parents of children who expect their progeny to gain admission in expensive universities will take the SNC seriously, or allow it to be used for very long, and we know who calls the shots. What is far more likely to happen is that since all schools are to be examined to ensure they are using the SNC, expensive private schools will teach it so as to ‘get it over with’, and then move on with their own system. The schools that do take the SNC seriously will become the ones to be mocked, and they would be the ones already suffering from that attitude. It will end up as the same gap with a few additions to contend with.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">What with the disruptions due to the pandemic, the last thing children need is sudden changes, and further disruptions.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The good thing is that the SNC is to be implemented in all streams of education (Pubic, Private and Deeni Madaris); that latter is the best aspect of the whole venture.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The number of deeni madaris (religious seminaries/schools) in Pakistan rose sharply in the 1980s. These schools are particularly popular among the poorer segment of society, because in addition to providing literacy they also provide lodging, which includes food. These schools are the only option many parents have of providing a good meal and an education for their boys, a question of ‘one down, three more to go’, if they have four children to feed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">These religious seminaries teach little beyond their version of religious studies, which judging by what is seen when you pass the open door for some of them involves much rocking backwards and forwards sitting cross-legged at a low table. Apparently, a few also teach logic, philosophy and mathematics, with the aim of furthering the understanding of said religious subjects. It also appears that most militant extremists once attended these schools, as indicated by the profile of suicide bombers. The SNC can therefore only be an improvement as far as the curriculum there goes.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Is the SNC really likely to close or narrow the gap between the various systems of education in this country? Wouldn’t it be a better option not to mess with the ‘better’ education wherever found, and improve what is taught elsewhere?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The English language is a factor at the crux of this issue. It is indisputable that so long as one segment of society is taught in English, and the other poorly taught and in Urdu, ne’er the twain shall meet. But is for example teaching science in Urdu a rational alternative? Tell me, what do you call a telephone in Urdu? Or is there a word for Sodium Nitrate? Or pertussis, or syncope? According to maulana google, syncope in urdu means ‘hum ahangi’, which is translated into English as ‘harmony’. But that is not at all what syncope means in English, it means fainting or losing consciousness. So how do we propose to teach this subject in Urdu?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">I know we are proud of the fact that the first doctors, chemists and astronomers were Muslim, but there is no such thing as a ‘Muslim language’; in Pakistan Urdu is the national language, yet only a small percentage of Pakistanis actually speak it; and what is equally of note is that Urdu has not kept up with the developments in science. Is there any point in teaching a subject in one language (that few people understand), loaded with words belonging to another?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">What, moreover, do we do about those children who may have a single curriculum if they go to school, but who are unable to go to school, because they work? What do we do about people who employ children in their homes, factories and other businesses? What do we do about families that are unable to manage without the earnings of every single one of their members, and so their children work too instead of attending school, about parents who consider education to be overrated and a waste of time, about children who do not attend school because there is no school where they live?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Those are the issues to take care of before a thing such as the SNC can be implemented. It may have been set in place with the best will in the world, but that will tend not to last very long here. What do we do about this?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Just as sufferers of cirrhosis of the liver are never given a liver transplant if they continue to be alcoholic, the people of Pakistan are desperately in need of education, and a better one, but there is little point in going through the expense of putting a new one in place if it is almost certain to be rejected before long.</p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad0 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"><span class="td-adspot-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bbbbbb; display: block; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 21px;">- A</span></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-71508903377137873932021-08-21T20:24:00.002-07:002021-08-21T20:24:47.117-07:00CONTROLLED BY A SPECTRE<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/22/controlled-by-a-spectre/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">What have any of these countries achieved against their targets?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is not as if things are any different elsewhere in the country.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Why, when it is these attitudes that need to be changed are we so focused on some indeterminate threat from across the border?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The figures gathered in 2017 indicate that far from narrowing, this gap has been growing at a steady pace.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Our funds <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">must </span>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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">They should go towards providing justice and accountability, to raising an awareness against the vulgarity, display and ostentation that plagues our society.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-39803513659774124652021-08-14T23:22:00.001-07:002021-08-14T23:22:12.892-07:00THE CULT CULTURE<p> https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8105796839443061496/3980351365977412465</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; text-align: center;">Will the Taliban cult gain recruits here?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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 <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Animal Farm</em>: ‘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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-8031575150081008902021-08-07T18:31:00.004-07:002021-08-12T21:26:10.673-07:00IS THIS HOW IT SHOULD BE? <p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/07/is-this-how-it-should-be/</p><p></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_author tdi_29_830 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 tdb-post-meta" data-td-block-uid="tdi_29_830" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: none; color: #444444; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 16px; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="align-items: center; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; justify-content: center; transform: translateZ(0px);"></div></div><p></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_subtitle tdi_28_0c8 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1" data-td-block-uid="tdi_28_0c8" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 40px; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: center; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: x-large; text-align: left;">When the poor suffer, it's par for the course; when the rich suffer, it's a tragedy.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad2 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p style="font-size: 14px;"></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">And last month, a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped and assaulted for about three days, but she too was rescued.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">Again, last month, a Filipina, who had come to Pakistan to earn some money, was raped in Lahore.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">A young couple was stripped and assaulted by a man, with other men present in the room. A video was recorded showing this.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">The point of this column is that nothing speaks of the massive gulf that exists in this country as this tragic case does.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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 ‘<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Log kiya kahen gay</em>’ (what will people say).</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">This outrage stems from a fraction of the literate segment of society, and you wish that this segment was equally outraged across the board.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">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.?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left;">We need justice for such people in Pakistan too, but there doesn’t seem to be any…what is being done to change this?</p></div></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-20279038810539253422021-07-31T19:40:00.002-07:002021-07-31T19:40:32.910-07:00THE POWER OF WORDS<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/01/the-power-of-words/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">“The unexamined life is not worth living”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Socrates</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">People must have the ability to read and write to be able to work at most professions, and also so that they may be aware of what happens around them, but several things prevent them from doing so. Illiteracy of course is the major factor preventing people from reading, and censorship is another. Neither of them is a new phenomenon. They both involve words.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Words are easily the most powerful things in the world: words on paper, as well as spoken words. We grope desperately for them if the right words do not come to mind, and a sudden or prolonged silence between individuals can be more unpleasant than a physical dispute. Words are potent, they can change the course of events, move obstacles and transform lives. That is why, throughout history, words— not guns or bombs— have posed the biggest threat to those who seek to remain in power. Guns after all can only kill and bombs destroy, and then what? Power means nothing if there is no one to wield it over.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Plato in the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Apology</em>, called his mentor Socrates ‘Myops’, which in English means ‘Gadfly’; the name refers to Socrates’ ability to chafe the Athenian political scene, and not allow it to become complacent, very much like a spur or a biting insect pushing at a slow-moving horse. According to Plato, Socrates believed that one must ‘question everything, admit what you do not know, and never stop seeking wisdom/knowledge.’</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">His weapons, to put it another way, were words. And for his pains Socrates was condemned to death, by drinking poison. Free speech and the tendency to question and seek knowledge has never been welcome to those who seek to remain in power at any cost, censorship is nothing new; people encounter it every day all over the world.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There are so many avenues through which information reaches us, the old means such as newspapers, magazines and books, the relatively newer ones such as the radio, television and the newest and most potent of all, the internet.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">None of the older means of communication were as interactive as the internet, as a result of which more people use the ‘net than they ever read. There is a cell phone in almost every hand, even in poor countries, making it harder and harder to prevent information from being disseminated. This poses a problem for those seeking to control, but not for those seeking to facilitate reading.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The population of Pakistan is predominantly un-educated, but this has not stopped its people from accessing social media. They use it not simply to listen to inane jokes on Tik-Tok, but also to message each other. Even those who do not otherwise read, manage to message each other on their phones.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Take for example the following message from a young man to his employer:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Baji ji may aaj nahi aa sakta. Behen bimar hai. Mai us ko huspatal lay ja raha hoon</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The young man who wrote this knows enough of the English alphabet to be able to convey his Urdu message in Roman script, even though, if he were given an English book meant for students even at the secondary school level, he would be unable to read it.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">You wonder why he did not use the Arabic script to convey the same message.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The reason is that the Arabic script, beautiful as it is, does not come off as well on electronic media as the Roman does. The Arabic script is always written in the cursive style. There is no provision in that script for each letter to be written separately. It is hard to decipher small Arabic script, dots and all, on a phone as compared to a similar sized Roman script. And when it is written in the cursive it is not easy on the eyes with the dots and dashes not always where they ought to be. And so, the legibility of the Arabic script takes a knock. This is why an increasing number of people— and they are not always uneducated— have taken to writing as the young man did above.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is possible that this is one way to encourage people to read and write— on the phone, for which the Roman script is far better suited than the Arabic.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It would definitely be worth considering replacing the Arabic script by Roman as far as Urdu is concerned, to make it easier for people to communicate. It isn’t unheard of. Turkey has done it, as has Malaysia. Arabic is always taught separately in Pakistan in any case, so that children can learn to read the Quran. If Urdu turns Roman in an organized fashion, would this help in the fight against illiteracy? Changing a script does not mean leaving behind a literary heritage, because the words themselves, the powerful aspect of language, would remain. If changing a script means more people can read that literary heritage, and more people can learn about the world, would this make it harder to impose opinions, and foist incorrect information upon them?</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-47443728455487286692021-07-17T20:46:00.002-07:002021-07-17T20:46:33.262-07:00DESERVING? OR NOT? <p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/18/deserving-or-not/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sex and gender are the perspectives from which most things are judged in a society like Pakistan’s. And since women are the weaker gender, they are subject to a host of compulsions, frequently against the law, no problem: they can be married against their wish, they must not work (except of course when they must, when they are grudgingly allowed), they must muffle themselves up in unnecessary garments regardless of the heat, and a whole myriad of musts; later they must not, God forbid, promote rights and independence for other women.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And that is what Malala Yusufzai came up against, as did the OUP when it included Malala’s name in a book that contained a list of national luminaries, and in which her photograph was printed next to that of Major Aziz Bhatti Shaheed of the Pakistan Army. A brave man, Aziz Bhatti Shaheed, one to whom the nation owes a heavy debt of gratitude for his courage and ultimate sacrifice. May the Almighty reward him.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The question most frequently asked is: what gives Malala the right to be included among that list of illustrious people? What has she done to earn it?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As much as any other person who stands in the path of danger for the sake of the country and others, the child Malala stood up to the Taliban with her demands for education for women at a time when they, the Taliban, were shutting down schools for girls in Swat. With the support of her parents, the young girl gave speeches supporting education for women, and became a blogger under a pseudonym, reporting on the condition of women under the Taliban. She was unlucky enough to be exposed and became a target for terrorists.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Malala, as much as any other person who actually lost their life in the process, almost lost hers when at the age of just 14, she was shot in the face for her crimes; if the man who shot her had anything to say in the matter, she would have lost it. Clearly, the Amighty had other plans for her.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That she and her family escaped to Britain was not a choice, it was a necessity when it was not possible to treat her injuries as well in her home country, and when it became clear that this was not the safest place for the family to be.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">She was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, she won Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize, and 12 July (her birthday) is now officially Malala Day. She has also been awarded the Sakharov Peace Prize for Freedom of Thought in acknowledgment of her work, just before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize simultaneously with the Indian child rights activist, Kailash Satyarthi. Malala is the youngest person in the world to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to win the right to education for every girl, particularly in societies where it is often denied.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad2 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After that, in 2017 she was appointed the UN Messenger of Peace to promote female education, which is one of the UN’s highest honours.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All through this time, Malala has continued to support her cause for the right to education for girls. She has spoken about it, and written about it. Her support has not been an idle matter.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In 2013, Malala and her father launched the Malala Fund, which strives to ensure that girls around the world have access to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. The countries that have priority for the purposes of this fund include Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey, where girls are most likely to miss out on secondary education.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For those– surprisingly many– people who criticize Malala, there is this question: how many people have won as many accolades and achieved as much for her country and women in general, even before the ripe old age of 24? Have you?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But this fact of Malala being considered unworthy of praise is only one of the issues raised by the episode when Malala’s name was included in a book published by the OUP. When this happened a team belonging to the PTCB, the Punjab Textbook and Curriculum Board, walked into the OUP bookshop and confiscated these books, and conducted raids across the city to confiscate them wherever else they were being sold.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Censorship is almost always a futile exercise, and it is definitely always based on some particular group’s version of what the public has a right to read. And clearly, it is not always run along sensible guidelines.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Such censorship may be understandable if a publication is promoting violence, or murder or treason, or other dangerous activities. But for adding Malala’s photograph to a book of luminaries…? The mind boggles at the intellect of persons entrusted with policing our reading.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All this takes place, please note, while the Taliban are set to stage a comeback in Afghanistan. They have already taken over the area on the Afghan side of Chaman on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a letter to the local imam that states, according to a resident of the district, that women must not go to the bazaar without a male companion, and men should not shave their beards.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It would seem that we need more Malalas, not less. It would also seem that our PTCB needs to sort its values out, and if it must exist it should clamp down on its insecurities.</span></p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-82012816739934101242021-07-10T20:58:00.002-07:002021-07-10T20:58:52.146-07:00IMMINENT IS HERE<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/10/imminent-is-here/</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-family: "open sans", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; text-align: center;">Preparing for the killing heat</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have been warned over the years that climate change is imminent, that glaciers will melt and shrink, global temperatures will rise, and there will be other disastrous consequences of throwing bouncers at the environment. We did not pay much attention to those warning us, ignoring them and often labeling them as some kind of a plot…Zionist, Western, take your pick, the usual stuff. Unfortunately, the warnings are now reality. Glaciers <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">have</em> shrunk, ice on water courses <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">is</em> breaking up too early, sea levels <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">are</em> rising and several places in the world such as a hitherto benign British Columbia in Canada and the never-so-benign Death Valley in California are witnessing heatwaves to rival Jacobabad in Sindh, once known as Khanger, the erstwhile heat champion of the world. Welcome to the year 2021, the year many of us might find ourselves inside an overheated oven simply because we neglected to learn how to turn down the heat. Now the world either learns to live with an up to ten-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures in the coming years, or people will die on a very large scale. We must heed the warnings, there may still be time. We must do something constructive to combat global warming.</span></p><p></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad0 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The urgent need to minimize the effects of this warming on our long-suffering population is what this write-up is about. The rich have enough, and although their practices need to be changed, the same practices that have brought about global warming, it is the poor who need most help.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; border-left: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 40px auto 38px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></blockquote><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Pakistan is a poor country. Most of Pakistan’s population lives in the rural areas. Most people in these rural areas are unable to afford much by way of housing, so a small house composed of a single bedroom, a courtyard mostly for the cattle, and nothing else, is the norm. A corner of the courtyard serves as a kitchen and the fields as bathrooms.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because rural areas are mostly fields, little concrete and no bitumen, you can get a little respite from the heat under a tree or in the great outdoors by night. The excessive morality of urban life does not plague the life of villagers, so if they must sleep on charpoys on the roof where the women are visible to neighbours, so be it.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">That is not the case in our cities where villagers sometimes move to, so they can find work in fields other than agriculture, pun not intended.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">What they discover when they move, however, cannot be an improvement on what they leave behind. Cramped living conditions, filthy and excessively hot, thanks to the concrete and bitumen everywhere; this is what city life turns out to be for the poor. It is not possible for women to sleep on the roofs here, because the tight housing means they can be seen by their neighbours, and nerves are not taught to recover from such sights in our cities.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Many things can and must be done to prepare for the global warming that is upon us, because the resultant heat is beyond human endurance. One is to ensure that houses, however small, are constructed and designed better, to protect their residents against the heat.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad2 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">To increase the number of trees must be made a priority. Construction and design must be overseen and thermal insulation made mandatory. There are a variety of insulation materials out there. They must be made available and affordable. Buildings must face away from the sun at its hottest. Bricks that are used in the construction of buildings must be designed to hold a layer of air within them. Windows must be recessed as much as possible and shaded against the sun. It should not be allowed to use metal in outside doors and windows because metal emits much more heat than wood.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The older systems of construction such as verandahs and ventilators high up on walls made great sense in our weather conditions. Extremely effective as they are, verandahs are not always affordable given the shortage of space, but ventilators can and must be mandatory to allow the hot air to exit the building, seeing that hot air rises. Attention must also be paid to cross ventilation. In the absence of verandahs, green netting fabric must be provided free of cost to low-income housing as protection against the sun.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The old methods of plastering over construction with mud and clay are a great method of insulation. They should be used as a crucial finishing touch to all buildings, and renewed as required.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is a greater danger of fire in extreme heat conditions. Fire proofing must be incorporated and fire escapes and evacuation regulations ignored at very great cost to those responsible.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the most common means of storing water now are those ubiquitous blue plastic storage tanks mounted on rooftops. It is best if plastic storage is not exposed to the sun long-term. According to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">National Geographic</em>, ‘most plastic items release a tiny amount of chemicals into the food or beverages they contain. As temperature and time increase, the chemical bonds in the plastic increasingly break down and (those) chemicals are more likely to leach’ into the stored item. According to the FDA, the long-term effects build up in a big way. Alternate methods of storing water must therefore be found and used and these must be comparable in cost to the blue plastic tanks, or else they will not catch on.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Measures rarely have a long life in this country, which appears to favour a stop, start and disappear stance until someone suddenly decides to move again. That sporadic lifestyle has become the norm. It has been this way with encroachments for example, when those who encroached around drains and markets were allowed to do so for years until suddenly, the authorities decided to enforce the rules, ruthlessly ousting the long-term offenders in the process. The fact is that those who allow encroachments to take place and to persist are as much the offenders as those who build those encroachments. They should be held equally responsible for infringements of the law.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The same must apply to those who build chicken coops for people to live in, airless, hot ovens that are a crime against anything living – animal, or human. The problem of course is that those who are less affluent are often not considered to be human by those with wealth in their pockets. That is the biggest problem in every sector of life in Pakistan.</span></p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-73596331819215629732021-07-03T19:45:00.000-07:002021-07-03T19:45:09.945-07:00FIGHTING THE VIRUS<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/04/fighting-the-virus/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">We get vaccinated so we may develop immunity to a given infection, which happens when the vaccinated person’s body learns to make antibodies against the organism that gives rise to that infection. If, however, many or most people around us are not vaccinated, they have no antibodies against an infection and are able to pass on the infection. That means that even vaccinated persons have an uphill task maintaining immunity and it isn’t long before they succumb and get infected, regardless of the vaccination. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">In the case of Pakistan, the Chinese vaccine against Covid-19 that we are getting, while it works, apparently does not have as high a rate of success as some others out there, and even of those out there no vaccine is able to completely prevent the disease. It is therefore proportionately important to take precautions as recommended, such as wearing a mask and avoiding contact with large groups of people, particularly indoors. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">The other aid to immunity, which goes hand in hand with individual vaccination, is herd immunity. This means that when the majority of the population acquires immunity to a disease, even those who do not have immunity are protected because the people they encounter are most of them not passing on the infection. The way to acquire this is to vaccinate the majority. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">This is not happening in Pakistan.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">While the vaccination campaign here appears to be better organized than most other government efforts, it has not managed to reach the bulk of the population. Vaccinations are available for all eligible persons but they are not easily accessible; many people have to travel inconvenient distances to be vaccinated. It also means that all or even most eligible persons are not convinced that they require vaccinations.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">There are many rumours doing the rounds, dominant among which are those that say that anybody who receives the vaccine is likely to kick the bucket at the end of two years. The other is that the vaccine alters a person’s DNA and should therefore be avoided. Yet another is that the vaccine renders people sterile, which means that it makes them unable to have children. Other rumours say that these vaccinations are a Western plot, a means of controlling the world, and of course there is the inevitable opinion that vaccines go against the Will of God, that had He wanted us not to get covid-19 He would not have created the virus. There are also those who doubt the origin of the virus itself, saying that it is manmade and therefore some kind of a vague conspiracy towards some mysterious end.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Such rumours are of course also rife in other countries, but this is about Pakistan where illiteracy and ignorance kill as many as does this virus and others.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">The result of these rumours is something that almost every relatively well-to-do household can report: a reluctance on the part of its workers, the cook, the cleaner, and so on, to be vaccinated, and if not an outright reluctance almost always a complete indifference to receiving the shots. This is also how it is almost throughout the rural population. Also, when someone is willing to be vaccinated, they require someone to register them, since many such persons are illiterate and unable to handle the process. Perhaps the registeration can be done at the desk at the centres rather than online? </span></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_eee td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_eee" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; font-size: 16px !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">It has now been approximately a year-and-a-half since the first known case of covid-19 was recorded in Pakistan, and we are very far from achieving herd immunity against the disease, even though the rate of infection appears to have gone down.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">It is obviously not just this vaccine that has attracted such rumours, others too have suffered because of them, specifically the polio vaccine. Those who administer that vaccine have on several occasions been attacked and even killed. As a result, Pakistan is one of only two countries that has been unable to stamp out that devastating illness. The other is our neighbour, Afghanistan.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">The way around this problem is not simple. Illiteracy does not seem to be the only barrier since such views are also not unusual in the United States either. Perhaps it is the quality of education that is at fault? In the US another barrier to vaccination is an inflated sense of personal or civil rights, that makes some people bristle at being made to do anything as a group. That cannot be the case here, since for most people in Pakistan civil rights is an unknown aspect of existence, a great pity in general.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">What is most likely driving the resistance here is an ingrained suspicion of ‘The West’, strengthened by our colonial past and the more recent alleged attempts of the US to capture bin Laden via Dr. Shakil Afridi.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">The other far greater culprit is likely to be the right-wing conservative segment of society, from where most of the irrational fears of the West appear to stem. They have many platforms, among which the Friday congregation is always a major one. Other than that, word of mouth, and social media are major culprits.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">It’s hard to figure out what to do about this. Penalise those who spread such rumours? That just does not seem right. Clamp down on Friday congregations? As impossible as a clampdown on social media.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Penalties are in the hands of those in power, and those in power come with their own views and their own axes to grind. That means there is no guarantee of the penalty being directed at the right targets.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">At the end of the day, the only thing that offers any hope is not just education, but a scientific, rational education, one based on proof and facts, which by no means suggests that the humanities should be rejected in academics. Absolutely not. Humanities subjects are crucial, but they should be supplemented with a necessary and hefty dose of reason, fact and science. In the final analysis that is the only way forward, and even that is no guarantee that the population of any given country will do the right thing.</span></p></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><div class="wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_45_376 td_separator_solid td_separator_center" style="align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 20px !important; margin-top: 28px !important; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-58721656816216446572021-06-19T22:32:00.000-07:002021-06-19T22:32:17.067-07:00WHERE'S THE DIFFERENCE?<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/06/20/wheres-the-difference/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The USA now has a new Federal holiday, the 19<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> of June, known as Juneteenth. It commemorates the day slaves– who were mostly Black African, were told in Texas that they were now free and no longer enslaved. Although slavery had been officially outlawed three years earlier by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the proclamation had been larger ignored in Texas and some other States.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In Pakistan people have scoffed at this new holiday, and have called it hypocritical, pointing at the many incidences of racism and violence still occurring in the USA even though its Constitution says that all people are equal.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The fact is that much of what happens in the USA should ring a bell with us here; the maudlin leadership, the police brutality against Black Americans, the murders of George Floyd and Arbery, and the January 6<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> storming of the Capitol.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Pakistan started out as a secular country. Jinnah stated in the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Later in 1956 Islam was brought in as the official religion of the country, and Islam also proclaims very strictly that there is no difference between people whatever race they may belong to.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Yet all of these things have always been ignored. In Pakistan our minorities are still prosecuted, very much so. Hazaras, Shias, Ahmadis, Christians are all targeted, their colonies are destroyed, their women abducted and forced to convert after being forced into marriage. Asia Bibi has taken refuge in another country, and Malala Yusufzai is condemned by all and sundry in the country of her birth because as a woman she is not supposed to say the things she does. We claim to be devout followers of Islam, a religion that condemns racism, gender bias, discrimination and violence in no uncertain terms, and yet we call people names based on their gender, colour and caste, and in the Punjab marry according to caste as well.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Salman Taseer died ten years ago in January, murdered by his own security guard because he spoke against an unfair law, one that goes against the very religion it claims to stem from. He was murdered because he voiced sympathy for this law’s victims. His bravery was never commemorated, yet the man who murdered him lies buried in a shrine near Islamabad that is daily visited by thousands of admirers that include the son-in-law of a former Prime Minister.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Taseer’s death was a loss for the country, because with him we lost a man who had his heart in the right place. He was also a man who spoke out against a law that goes against the state religion of the country.</p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-39005856054505423552021-06-12T20:39:00.002-07:002021-06-13T03:47:25.072-07:00SIMS AND SALARIES<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/06/13/sims-and-salaries/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ideally of course things should be organised in such a way that people are able to have their legitimate concerns addressed without resorting to crime. But when a crime does occur it requires punishment. The best punishment is that which is just, and acts as a deterrent for any future crime.</span></p><p></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad0 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, what is crime?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">A crime is an intentional act that is socially harmful.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">And what is justice?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">In its most basic definition, justice is ‘the principle that people receive that which they deserve.’ And an aspect of justice is the relationship between a crime and its punishment. Every punishment or penalty must fit the transgression or crime for which it is prescribed, otherwise it is unjust. An extension of this is that the punishment should discourage or prevent other similar transgressions or crimes from taking place.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><blockquote style="border-left: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 40px auto 38px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"></blockquote><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The current government, like previous governments in this country, can claim a handful of achievements. The vaccination drive against covid-19 is one of them. The drive has been well organised, and many people have been vaccinated, but still many more are refusing vaccinations.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Certain penalties seem to have been prescribed for non-compliance just now. Are those penalties just? Do they fit the crime? And will they discourage or prevent other similar transgressions? This is why this discussion is taking place.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Those refusing vaccinations are in many cases doing so without knowing a thing about the science involved. They imagine they know better than the medical experts.</span></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_070 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_070" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">For others, vaccination figures low on their list of priorities which in many cases concern where the next meal is to come from, which area to use next when nature calls, how to afford a child’s marriage, and so o Given such matters, fending off an invisible bug seems almost a laugh.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> being vaccinated a crime? In other words, is non-compliance with the directive to be vaccinated a crime?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is, indirectly. Covid-19 is a deadly disease. It has killed millions of persons worldwide and it has had untold economic fallout. An unvaccinated person is much more prone to infection, so is much more likely to die from the disease and is likely to pass on the virus to others. Therefore non-compliance with regards to vaccination against covid-19 is tantamount to self-harm and murder, which are both crimes.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the case of not getting vaccinated because there was not enough information extended in a fashion appropriate to the audience, or if there are matters to do with basic survival that take precedence, the fault lies with the authorities. Do we have any penalties against them?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The government has come up with some penalties against non-compliance.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to the news ‘an official’ says that ‘the Punjab government decided on Thursday to block the SIM cards of people refusing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus’. Since then a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health Sajid Shah has refuted the report regarding SIMs saying that no such proposals are under consideration. Neither news has been confirmed. It is either yet another U-turn, a hallmark of this government, or the matter is still under consideration, despite the assurance. We will find out.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meantime in Sindh it seems it has been decided that government servants who do not get vaccinated by July will not be given their salaries.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Should either penalty using SIM or salary be allowed? Are these penalties just or even legal?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Oxford handbook lists punishments under the following categories: Retribution, Deterrence, Rehabilitation, Incapacitation, and Restoration.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">They’re all fairly self-explanatory:</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Retribution</span> is the traditional eye for an eye which tends to satisfy the anger that is produced by a crime. It is open to judgement, to a consideration of what equates what. It is considered to be an effective deterrent – if it is used responsibly, and can be an effective deterrent.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Incapacitation</span> is another traditional penalty which means putting the culprit in a place where no harm can come to others. That means anything from prison to execution, both of which are a huge deterrent to others but like all other punishments, and perhaps more than others, it requires justice and equity.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Deterrence</span> is the knowledge that punishment will occur if a certain crime is committed. It depends on being aware of the consequences of a crime, and like retribution it works if it is used responsibly.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Rehabilitation</span> is not a deterrent. It takes place alongside the punishment and seeks to mitigate the reasons that made that person commit the crime. The reasons may be psychological or financial, or they may be linked to a lack of understanding, in which case education and information are provided. In other words the person committing the crime is helped to find ways of dealing with his or her problems, ways that are legal and not harmful.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Restoration</span> calls for the person committing the crime to see for him or herself the results of his actions, to hear about them from the victims themselves, and then to try and make amends, which may take anything from saying sorry to doing something to resolve the matter if possible, or to at least try and lessen the fallout. It is a positive approach to punishment, and once again, it works only if it is implemented responsibly.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">A penalty must have a direct bearing on the crime, and have a relationship to it, and the consequences of the penalty must not worsen the situation.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">To return to the matter of SIM or Salary, do either of those penalties bear any relation to the crime. If a man refuses to be vaccinated, do we have a right to starve his family (holding back the salary)? What’s more, since the salary is linked to the performance of a job, if that job has been performed it requires payment. To withhold that payment is morally and legally wrong and also not allowed from the religious point of view.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">If people have not been sufficiently educated as to the importance of this vaccination does the fault lie with them?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">No.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will taking away the SIM card on a person’s phone and not allowing him or her to possess another solve this particular problem? Will it force him to be vaccinated if he does not believe vaccination is required? Can he not borrow someone else’s phone? What’s more, in a country where fake documents are the norm rather than the exception, would a fake vaccination document be a surprise?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will either of these penalties educate people as to the importance of being vaccinated?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The answer is no to all of those.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">These measures could have been classified as a deterrent for non-compliance that’s the only one, and once again, in Pakistan there is always a way around.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">In a society where punishment is reserved for the certain few, where a certain set of persons escape punishment every time because they happen to have the right contacts, a healthy bank balance and position, can this and other punishments ever be a deterrent, or will it simply produce more resentment, more resistance to what is right?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are intelligent minds in this country which disappear at crucial moments. You wonder if this is because they are not where they should be, or if they are not permitted to function.</span></p></div></div><div class="wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_45_b22 td_separator_solid td_separator_center" style="align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 20px !important; margin-top: 28px !important; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-19089427813167728922021-06-05T19:35:00.000-07:002021-06-05T19:35:02.849-07:00OF A LIMITED UNDERSTANDING AND ITS HARMFUL EFFECTS<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/06/06/of-a-limited-understanding/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">It appears that Pakistan’s Punjab is likely to miss the Covid-19 vaccination target, which hardly comes as a surprise.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Arrangements at vaccination centres appear to be more or less satisfactory, although there are cases of overcrowding which are likely to cause a few outbreaks of infection by themselves. There are fewer glitches than anticipated, and those that exist involve mostly the less well heeled segment of society, which again comes as no surprise.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some of those ‘less well heeled’ people were turned back for the first jab because ‘the due date wasn’t there yet.’ There is no reason for not vaccinating any person when he or she arrives without a date, if, under the rules such a person is legitimately allowed to be vaccinated, that is, if he or she fits the age currently being vaccinated, and is Pakistani. The first dose does not require a specific date, it’s the second one that needs to be three weeks away from the first, with the Chinese vaccine. The authorities should welcome all comers with open arms, whenever they turn up.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The registration website is well designed and easy to use. The CNIC issue date field on the website was a bit fiddly but someone seems to have fixed that problem. Well done.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The hardest part to get around as always is the attitude among some segments of society, the know-it-all anti-vaxxers who put both themselves and people around them at risk by refusing to be vaccinated, and little is being done to get such people to change their mind.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the rural settings of the Punjab– which are probably no different to rural settings anywhere else– people appear to be quite unconcerned about getting vaccinated. It is in fact a subject that does not seem to feature anywhere on their mental horizon. It would be a good idea to take the vaccination drive to such places rather than expect people who live there to lay down their tools and make the long and difficult trek to a vaccination centre, something that is not likely to happen.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">As for other nay-sayers their mind is often made up by so-called religious authorities who present one of the most witless arguments by saying that vaccinations represent an attempt to pre-empt the Will of Allah. That if a person gets ill it is Allah’s Will and if he dies or recovers that too is Allah’s Will. It is not up to us to ‘interfere.’</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, we all know that everything is Allah’s Will, but if that interference logic were sane it would apply equally to the ditches at the Jang-e-Qandaq (Battle of the Ditch) all those years ago, wouldn’t it, when the followers of the Prophet (pbuh) should have simply sat there waiting for Allah’s Will and not lifted a finger to defend themselves then. No trenches, no digging. That is just one of the millions of examples that proves how ill-considered such arguments are, and how much the people of this country have suffered at the hands of people who present them, and how little they are used to reason.</span></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_bbb td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_bbb" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">I remember my henna-haired maulvi sahib teaching me to read the Quran when I was a child. He was a good man, very patient with my errors. Yet when we came to a certain verse which is a particularly beautiful one, he told me that if I were to put a stone with a hole in it into my mouth and then read that verse, all my prayers would be granted. Somewhere along the line he also told me that not stopping at a ‘meem’ would land me in hell. He told me nothing about that verse or any other verse, indeed he knew nothing about that verse, or about any other verse of the Quran. My father, hearing his instructions, asked me to simply learn how to read the Arabic from the teacher, and leave the explanations and meanings to my parents.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">And yet my teacher’s limited understanding of the scripture was nothing unusual. Most religious figures in this country today are no different, yet they pass on their flawed understanding to all those willing to accept it, and there is no shortage of those willing to accept it. After all, all education is passed on that way here, be it science, history, or another subject, and how can anyone understand anything if all they’re doing is reeling off a list of elements, dates and something else off another list?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway, this was a somewhat belated attempt to celebrate the annual World Parrot Day this past May 31<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">st</span>. May we succeed in protecting all nature as well as those birds, while at the same time remembering just what parrots are: twits, beautiful ones.</span></p></div></div><div class="wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_45_63e td_separator_solid td_separator_center" style="align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 20px !important; margin-top: 28px !important; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-47255132347015049352021-05-29T19:22:00.003-07:002021-05-29T19:22:55.694-07:00TINY THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/30/tiny-things-that-make-a-big-difference/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad0 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_083 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_083" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">An article in ThoughtCo. by Mary Bellis tells you about the microchip.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s people like these, and Kilby, Noyce and Bill Gates who have made all this possible.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The world would have been a much harder place without them.</span></p></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_post_share tdi_46_230 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1" data-td-block-uid="tdi_46_230" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 23px; position: relative;"></div><p></p><div class="wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_45_1fb td_separator_solid td_separator_center" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 20px !important; margin-top: 28px !important; orphans: 2; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; width: 695.994px; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="border-color: rgb(235, 235, 235); border-top-style: solid; border-width: 2px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 1px; margin: 0px auto; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></span></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-77497271464000188282021-05-22T22:08:00.002-07:002021-05-22T22:08:52.318-07:00NOT IN HIS NAME<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/23/not-in-his-name/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">“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.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Muhammad (PBUH) the Prophet of Islam</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-size: large;">What do you say about a country in which 20 percent of the population feels threatened?</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><blockquote style="border-left: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 40px auto 38px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"></blockquote><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">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:<span> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">hum kis moun say uhhain bura kahain<span> </span></em>(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?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.’</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">A major newspaper reports that ‘as many as 247 civilians were killed in sectarian terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2017’ alone.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">As many as 4,000 Shias have been killed in sectarian riots since 1987 in Pakistan, over a period of just 30 years.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">The graveyard is surrounded by metal fences and high walls. Even in death…</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 2011, mullahs declared Ahmadis ‘deserving of death’ and published leaflets with names and addresses of prominent community members and their businesses.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Access to Ahmadiyya websites has been blocked in Pakistan.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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?</span></p>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-32425767886934102212021-05-15T21:24:00.001-07:002021-05-16T01:58:30.135-07:00THE CAESARIAN MOON<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/15/the-caesarian-moon/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">That is good of course, but why do we even need the RHC? Why can dates for Eid not be fixed years in advance?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.’</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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 <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">must</em> 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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><div><br /></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-62115916314717457272021-05-08T20:01:00.002-07:002021-05-08T20:01:42.679-07:00PANDEMICS HAVE BEEN AROUND A WHILE<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/09/pandemics-have-been-around-a-while/</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: large;">Study the past if you would define the future </span></em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: large;">– Confucius</span></em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-size: large;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"></em></span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div class="td-a-ad id_inline_ad2 id_ad_content-horiz-center" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px auto 26px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_430 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_430" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Does all of this sound familiar or not? Why then does it come as a surprise.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">But that is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">ample </em>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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p></div></div><div class="wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_45_aa3 td_separator_solid td_separator_center" style="align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 20px !important; margin-top: 28px !important; padding-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 695.994px;"></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8105796839443061496.post-1497891189869000512021-05-01T21:00:00.000-07:002021-05-01T21:00:02.397-07:00FOR LESS THAN TWO HAPPY MEALS<p> https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/05/02/for-less-than-two-happy-meals/</p><div class="td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_40_800 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type" data-td-block-uid="tdi_40_800" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans" !important; line-height: 1.74; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; position: relative;"><div class="tdb-block-inner td-fix-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; transform: translateZ(0px);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Iqbal was born in 1983 to poor Christian parents, which in Pakistan counts as a double whammy.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">What was your child doing when he or she was 12?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">To summarise:</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">These children are subject to the worst kind of physical abuse, aside from being enslaved.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Let us not forget the people who helped him.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;">Until these matters are resolved, can Pakistan ever be proud of itself?</span></p></div></div>Rabia Ahmedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08035337435174259424noreply@blogger.com0