Make Islam Peaceful: New Age Islam's Selection, 21 May 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
21 May 2016
• Make Islam Peaceful
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
• Islamophobia
By Linn Washington, Jr
• The Economic Transformation of Pakistan through IT
By Hassan Rizvi
• Reminisce — It’s Less Painful
By Abbas Nasir
• Domestic Violence, A Global Issue
By Pushkar Raj
• Loc Trade
By A.G. Noorani
• Bully for the Billionaires
By Amina Jilani
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Make Islam Peaceful
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
20-May-16
Broadly speaking, Muslims respond to a terrorist attack in three different ways. Let me first say, before we talk about those that condolences to families of victims, and calling it a human tragedy on electronic media does not correspond to what I call a response. My understanding of a response deals with the opinion of Muslims regarding the perpetrators of a crime, actions required to take them down and strategies needed to counteract the insurgent ideology.
The first group consists of Muslims who after a brief episode of compassion would defend an act of terror as a reaction to the atrocities of the West: the American invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, the support provided to Israel against Palestinians or a drone strike. Because of that some people call them Taliban apologists. Personally, they may not take up arms to fight, but when given an option to choose sides between the west and a Muslim fundamentalist, they end up selecting the latter. Why? Because they believe they are morally and religiously obliged to lend a hand to their Muslim brothers. Non-Muslims can never be trusted, in their view. To support their hypothesis, they provide quotes from Quran, the Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence. Beware: they are dangerous. Everything they cite from history needs confirmation and further examination, not because what they quote does not exist but because they change the frame of reference and alter the meaning altogether.
The second group represents those who do not associate themselves with Islam or any religion for that matter. They condemn the atrocities committed in the name of God all over the world. However, their scorn is mostly focused on Islam nowadays. Why? That is because Muslims tend to use religion nowadays for political gains much more than the followers of any other religion. Vocal they are, as you may hear them quite a bit, but their narrative remains unimpressive.
The third group, which may represent a vast majority of Muslims, are those who cannot justify terror on religious grounds, yet they cannot give up Islam because of extremism either. Their faith stands firm that religion does not allow violence to seize power, not at least in the modern era. To a large extent, they believe in democracy but more than that they believe in social justice.
This barbaric, inhuman and violent religion that the world recognises as theirs is foreign to them, as foreign as it is to the west. The reason is simple: a large number of Muslims are still taught about their religion in which Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) showed concern for a non-Muslim woman who used to throw trash on him everyday. One day, she missed her daily ritual, and that prompted him to look for her, only to find that she was suffering and needed help.
In another instance regarding self-restraint and patience, Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) forbade his followers to bother a non-believer who was publicly relieving himself in the courtyard of the mosque. Impressed by prophet’s (pbuh) equanimity, the fellow converted to Islam apologising for his action.
Multiple anecdotes with similar undertones can be found in the history books. Some of them are attributed to the prophet (pbuh) himself, but in many it is his followers who pass on the massage. For example, Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani, a leading mystic of the12th century, told robbers where he had stashed his money, when they asked him if he had cash hidden somewhere. Not wanting to lie about it, he said it was stitched inside his garments, showing the mystic’s preference for honesty over physical possessions.
Very few Muslims are familiar with the violent history of their religion. A large majority, as surprising it may sound, does not even understand the reasons for Shia-Sunni divide. They have some patchy clues but no real insight. Born in a Sunni family they are, most of the time, taught to ignore differences between the sects, and spend their energies on education and career-building rather than digging a controversial past that will not help in future. For them the formula to be a good Muslim is not complicated: offer prayers, perform Hajj once in their lifetime, and fast in Ramadan. On a social level too, Islam never gets very complex. It brings peace and justice in society by redistributing wealth to the poor through compulsory zakat, a 2.5 percent yearly tax on net worth, and by encouraging the rich to be generous. Like any other religion, the bottom-line is: do not be greedy and do not hoard money; instead share your blessings with the people who are hungry, sick and destitute. Furthermore, this is what the Sharia means to them, and this is what they defend when confronted with any modern day challenge.
The first two groups have made up their minds, and that will be hard to change. The former will defend even the most gruesome acts of terrorists, while the latter will criticise even the most humane message of the religion. However, the majority stays in the middle, lost, confused. It is this majority that needs to stand up against those who teach religious intolerance and bigotry — the clergy. We have to equip the majority with a stronger, more effective counter-narrative of Islam that focuses on peace and plurality, a message that brings people together irrespective of their faith. I am not sure how soon it can be done, but one thing is clear: there is no way out, neither for Muslims nor for their faith.
Syed Kamran Hashmi is a US-based freelance columnist.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/20-May-16/make-islam-peaceful
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Islamophobia
By Linn Washington, Jr
May 21, 2016
The Muslim community in Britain “has been targeted against the backdrop of hostility buttressed by the war on terror,” stated a report issued by the London-based Institute of Race Relations in 2013. This report warned that racial violence across Britain is not “something consigned to history” citing police force statistics from 2011/2012 documenting over 100 racially or religiously aggravated crimes per day.
Islam is the second largest identified religion in Britain behind Christianity. Half of the twenty communities across Britain with the largest Muslim populations are located in London. Muslims comprised five percent of England’s population with the majority having ancestral roots in Pakistan and Bangladesh not Arab countries.
Ugly Islamophobia ran rampant during the recent mayoral election in London that ended with the historic victory of Sadiq Khan, a London born lawyer and liberal Labour Party Member of Parliament who is now the first Muslim to head any major Western capital.
Top members of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, including Prime Minister David Cameron, along with minions in the news media, pointedly painted Khan as a person who eagerly embraced Islamic extremism despite Khan’s record of condemning extremism. Khan, during that mayoral campaign, tacked increasingly rightward in advocating militarised responses to terrorism.
Britain’s Defence Minister, Michael Fallon defended Conservative Party campaign attacks on Khan as merely the “rough and tumble of elections” during a media interview. Yet the former co-chair of Britain’s Conservative Party, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, castigated her party colleagues for unleashing an “appalling dog whistle campaign”. Even the sister of Khan’s Conservative Party challenger used the word ‘sad’ to describe the tactics utilised during her brother’s mayoral campaign.
Much of the news media coverage of Khan’s historic election referenced the Islamophobic attacks unleashed on that man whose working-class parents immigrated to London from Pakistan. Yet that coverage omitted wider references about Islamophobia beyond noting pledges of presumptive US Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump to bar Muslims, like Khan, from entering the United States. (Trump has flip-flopped saying he would not bar Khan.)
A few weeks before Khan’s historic victory, Mubeen Hussain, founding member and spokesperson for the British Muslim Youth Association, criticised Islamophobia during his presentation at a conference on political policing and state racism in the United Kingdom. Hussain said many Muslims are now obscuring their religion to avoid discrimination.
The Prevent programme, according to a British government document, seeks “to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”. That document declares that no evidence exists to support claims that Prevent programs “have been used to spy on communities”.
Another presenter at that subversion/spying conference, sociology Professor Mark McGovern, said Prevent and other government policies are now requiring even schools, universities and hospitals to engage in reporting, even from the perspective of concerns about a possibility of future affiliation with terrorism. McGovern feels such policies are devised more to cultivate a “culture of compliance” than to stop terrorism.
Islamophobia shares similarities with anti-Semitism, especially in the notion that those who are religiously and/or culturally different from the majority of a population are a threat to that dominate population, said Fiyza Mughal, founder of Tell Mama, a London-based organisation that monitors Islamophobia and aids victims of Islamophobia.
This article has been excerpted from: ‘Islamophobia on the Rise in England’.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/121562-Islamophobia
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The Economic Transformation of Pakistan Through IT
By Hassan Rizvi
We need a young, dynamic IT minister who can sit with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook. FILE PHOTO
According to the World Economic Forum, Pakistan was ranked 111th among 144 countries in the Global Information Technology Industry report of 2014. Pakistan’s export of information technology (IT) services amounted to $2.2 billion in the fiscal year 2014-15. On the other hand, India is the world’s largest sourcing destination for IT owning almost 67 per cent of the US’ $124-130 billion market.
The Indian IT industry has led to the economic transformation of India and has totally changed the perception of the country globally. Today, Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and all the other top IT companies of the US have branches in India. A lot of this has to do with India’s security situation but we need to note that the Indian IT industry was not set up just recently. It’s a fruit of the hard work put in over more than a decade. Today, corporations like Apple Inc. are planning to invest $25 million in Hyderabad, India, which will create 4,500 jobs. Similarly, Microsoft is planning to incubate 500 start-ups to create viable and profitable businesses and take advantage of the booming start-up sector in that country.
Why can’t Pakistan receive a small chunk of these investments when we have IT graduates from NUST, FAST, LUMS and many other universities in Pakistan? Unfortunately, the number of Pakistani citizens working in the IT sector in the US remains very low. This is further evident from the US H1-B visa programme, which is a non-immigrant visa allowing skilled workers to work in the country temporarily. The current quota for a single fiscal year is 85,000 visas. Although there are no official figures from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services about the exact number of Pakistani origin applicants for this type of visa, this figure is bound to be very low if we consider the number of people from Pakistan working in American IT firms. Furthermore, if we take the representation of Pakistani students in universities in Silicon Valley (San Jose) offering Master’s programmes according to industry needs, we will hardly see any Pakistani student enrolled in these programmes. I once needed on-the-job support and for this purpose tried contacting IT personnel in Pakistan. Unfortunately, they couldn’t figure out what was required as the US working methodologies were completely alien for IT experts in Pakistan. The skilled worker of the IT sector in Pakistan can only be groomed for international standards by either working in the US, or if we have an industry model in Pakistan that is based on the one in Bangalore.
The problem here does not only lie with the government’s lack of interest. Our education sector needs to create this awareness as well. Guidance counselors need to sit down with parents and students, and convince them that there are professions beyond the medical, engineering and legal ones. There is a whole vista of professions within the IT sector that can be pursued. These jobs can pay graduates enough money to support themselves, their families and contribute towards the economy through exports and foreign remittances.
At the government level, we need to persuade international IT giants to open campuses in Pakistan based on the model employed in Bangalore, which is the world’s largest outsourcing location for IT. We should be looking to set up IT cities in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. These cities, along with an effective foreign policy and a competent information ministry, having a specific mandate to secure IT projects during foreign trips of top government officials can change the economics of our country.
India was able to secure a nearly 70 per cent share out of the $130 billion American IT industry. If Pakistan is able to account for only 15 per cent share of this industry, that makes it a $20 billion industry, hence having the potential to become the country’s largest industry. It’s time that all political parties start focusing on IT. We need a young, dynamic IT minister who can sit with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and Bill Gates from Microsoft. The IT sector has the potential to transform Pakistan’s fortunes on the economic front, as well as change the global perception of Pakistan. This potential needs to fulfilled.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1107108/economic-transformation-pakistan/
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Reminisce — It’s Less Painful
By Abbas Nasir
May 21st, 2016
A DECISION by the PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to ask Senator Rehman Malik to inquire into the Panama Papers disclosures about the ruling Sharif family was met with predictable scepticism and derision on social media.
After Mr Rehman’s incredibly ludicrous quotes topped by one which attained immortality when he tried to explain away the scores of targeted killings in Karachi as interior minister by saying that many unhappy wives were hiring hitmen, leading to a spike in incidents, it became next to impossible to take him seriously.
It is equally true that interior minister Rehman Malik earned kudos for his courage in rushing to the sites of terrorist incidents and suicide bombings ignoring the risk of secondary explosions. He was also unequivocal in naming and condemning the Pakistani Taliban at a time when a galaxy of political stars such as PTI’s Imran Khan and PML-N’s Shahbaz Sharif and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan openly displayed a soft spot for the militants.
Overshadowing the obvious positives, Rehman Malik aroused suspicion also as he was the PPP government’s point-man in handling the MQM and its London-based leader Altaf Hussain with kid gloves during a period when the latter’s party was seen as one of the three key players in the Karachi’s law and order mess.
The question, however, is whether the PPP chairman’s decision to name the party’s former interior minister to lead the Panama Papers probe was derided because of the suggested factors or if people genuinely doubted his ability to do a good job or because he was also named in the Papers.
This latest episode took me back to 1997 when the second Benazir Bhutto-led government had been dismissed and Nawaz Sharif had been voted to power with a two-thirds majority. In elections that year, the PPP had turned in one of its most dismal ever electoral performances, winning only 17 seats of the 207 in the National Assembly.
This happened during a period when the ‘charter of democracy’ between the PPP and PML-N was still years away and senator Saifur Rehman, Nawaz Sharif’s close friend and confidante, was made the accountability czar and an aggressive campaign ensued.
There were non-stop tales of arrests, torture and confessions under torture. High on the list of those being hunted by Saifur Rehman’s men was Benazir Bhutto’s former director general of FIA and a top aide Rehman Malik.
High on the list of those being hunted by Saifur Rehman’s men was Benazir Bhutto’s former director general of FIA Rehman Malik.
But the former FIA boss managed to leave Pakistan via Peshawar airport and evaded arrest. A while later, he resurfaced in London and announced he would continue working for the PPP. Like other journalists, I also read the news and filed it away somewhere in my head.
One day my phone rang in the BBC office where I worked then. It was Rehman Malik on the other end saying ‘BB had suggested’ that he talk to me. I wasn’t surprised as I’d covered Ms Bhutto since the mid-1980s and she was my ‘beat’ later too, so she knew me.
What followed was the strangest request I have ever heard in my entire professional life. He asked me to broadcast his email and telephone contacts on air as he was expecting a lot of people to give him evidence about the Sharif government’s corruption.
After ascertaining he wasn’t joking, my obvious response was that BBC policy did not allow for an individual’s contact details to be broadcast (unless it was lifeline broadcasting to unite separated family members in conflict or calamity zones) and I offered my regrets. He wasn’t happy but politely thanked me and hung up.
A few months later, a rather damning major spread focusing on the Sharifs’ alleged corruption during their stints in power including dodgy money transfers abroad and property purchases in London was published in the Sunday Times.
It didn’t take me long to connect the story to its source whose former organisation (FIA) had apparently carried out a forensic probe into his boss’s chief political rival’s financial affairs. If I remember correctly one name figured in that probe.
Shaikh Saeed. It is a name that keeps popping up whenever one tries to research Sharif family’s financial affairs. It is said his name figures in setting up offshore companies, money transfers and even sale of the Sharif-owned steel mills in Saudi Arabia.
The gentleman in question is said to be a close friend and business partner, and is also said to have been Pakistan’s honorary consul general in Baltimore during one of Nawaz Sharif’s tenures as prime minister in the 1990s. PML-N critics term him the family’s ‘front man’.
Any commission tasked with a Panama Papers probe can start with ascertaining who this person is and what role, if any, he has played. Of course, he is to be presumed innocent till any charges are established in a court of law.
It was probably the Sunday Times story that angered and spurred Saifur Rehman into engaging a London-based firm that specialises in such investigations. It was this firm that came up with the only case against the PPP leadership which looked like it would stick.
Yes, the so-called Swiss case totalling some $60 million for which the PPP would end up sacrificing a prime minister after it came to power in the 2008 elections was dug up by this firm. You would be well within your rights to ask why I am reminiscing. What about the present?
Let me tell you why. We belong to a country where the son of one former four-star general was quoted chiding the son of another four-star general and all-powerful ruler for 11 years by saying: “What is he worth? 280 million dollars? That’s peanuts.”
Here, there is no category of the elite untainted by charges of financial wrongdoing. Isn’t it better then to reminisce and tell stories rather than raise hopes and feel like a fool again?
Abbas Nasir is a former editor of Dawn.
Source: dawn.com/news/1259672/reminisce-its-less-painful
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Domestic Violence, a Global Issue
By Pushkar Raj
20-May-16
One social parallel that can be drawn between two dissimilar countries like India and Australia is rampant family violence in both the countries. As Australia is fighting the menace vigorously, India can learn a few lessons from it, giving some relief to its about 500 million strong female population, majority of which go through the humiliation of domestic violence, sometime or the other in their life.
An analysis by Australia’s National Research for Women’s Safety in 2012 revealed that one in five Australian women, aged over 15, experienced sexual violence, and one in three experienced physical violence from an intimate partner. Every year 80-100 women are killed in the country by their former or current partners. The number was 81 in 2014 as reported by ABC News on May 4, 2015).
The situation is worse in India as the scope of violence against women here is vast — from pre-birth to death. A 2013 United Nations in India Report “Masculinity, Son Preference and Intimate Partner Violence”, stated that 34 percent women (aged 18-39) experienced physical, emotional and sexual violence in their family in previous one year. India’s 2005-2006 National Family Health Survey-III, carried out in all states, found that nationwide 37.2 percent women experienced violence after marriage, and 63 percent of urban women suffered abuse, indicating in urban settings there was more domestic violence on women. Delhi government’s women helpline receives about 13,600 calls in a month, nearly 90 percent of which are reportedly of domestic violence — women who are unsafe in their own homes, according to a report in Hindustan Times, September 14, 2012.
In Australia, however, the debate and action on the issue of domestic violence intensified after an incident in February 2012. Luke Batty, an 11-year-old Melbourne boy, was killed at a cricket ground by his father who was separated from his former partner, Luke’s mother, Rossie Batty. The tragedy underlined a pervasive social problem in the country with which a large number of women identified, pouring support for Batty’s public campaign against domestic violence. The government also set up a Royal Commission on Domestic Violence in Victoria that made 217 recommendations in April 2016, including an awareness programme targeting children, and including it in school curriculum. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called family violence a national problem committing 100 million dollars to fight it, while the premier of Victoria committed 500 million dollars in the current state budget to fund preventive and protective measures to combat domestic violence in the state, as per a report by ABC News on April 13, 2016.
In India, however, no such government seriousness and financial support is seen despite passing of prevention of domestic violence legislation in 2005. After six years, in 2012-2013 budget, government allocated 20 crore rupees for its implementation, but the money remained unspent because there was no programme of action. Since then there has been silence in government circles on the issue. In the 2015-2016 budgets also, there are no financial provisions for preventing domestic violence. On the contrary, the ministry of women and child development, a nodal agency for women-centric programmes, received 17,408 crores in the current budget over 17,352 crore last year — an increase of 0.32 per cent, while Indian economy grew by about seven percent during this period.
Apart from raising serious questions about women’s share in economic prosperity of the country, it also signifies government’s indifference to women protection and welfare in the country. Irrespective of which political party is in power, successive governments have been reluctant to increase spending on women empowerment programmes contrary to loud claims in international forums such as the Commission on the Status of Women in United Nations. It is a serious policy lapse as the protection of women at home has an enormous economic implication for society.
A report of Copenhagen consensus on conflict and violent assessment in 2014 estimated that domestic violence costs the world eight trillion dollars annually. Given India’s approximate three percent contribution in the world economy it translates into whopping 240 billion dollars per annum. Even a little reduction in domestic violence in the country therefore has a rich economic dividend, and an adequate investment in this area makes a sound economic sense.
Socially, domestic violence is a ‘standalone’ problem, which Batty, the Australian of the year in 2015, called ‘terrorism in family’. It requires be confronting and preventing in real time to break the cycle. It is reported that children who witness domestic violence are more likely to perpetrate or accept family violence when they are adults, as per the 2012 UN Report on Gender, thus perpetuating control, patriarchy and disrespect for women in a family. To break this chain there is a need of creating awareness programmes and institutional structure for which a liberal funding is urgently required.
Australia, as an economically developed country has recognised that material prosperity is no guarantee to a civilised and happy life if socially the family remains a violent and barbaric unit. Australia has realised that domestic violence is a deep social problem that requires to be fought legally and socially, matching words with financial commitments. India should follow also follow Australia’s example by heavily investing in women protection and development measures. Sooner it does, earlier it will reap the fruits of modernity that it aspires.
Pushkar Raj is a Melbourne based human rights researcher and author. Formerly, he taught political science in Delhi University, and was the national general secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/20-May-16/domestic-violence-a-global-issue
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LoC Trade
By A.G. Noorani
May 21st, 2016
THE elaborate cross-LoC trade arrangements which were devised by Pakistan and India, avowedly as a confidence-building measure, had a strangely dual aspect. They were rooted in distrust but traders on both sides were required to trust one another. It was to be trade by barter without banking facilities and telecommunication links. On April 27, it was announced that banking facilities would now be provided to traders for conducting their business across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir. Commercial banks on both sides of the LoC will provide a facility to their respective exporters to realise their dues by opening a trade facilitation account at their end.
On the same day, 179 traders from both sides met for four hours at Chakkan Da Bagh in Poonch to settle their accounts and resolve some issues. Their rapport is as significant as the travel; if not more.
Barter is done away with, but much else remains to be done. That the trade expanded from $0.3 million in 2008-9 to $97.2m, in a mere three years, shows its potential. There is yet no mechanism for resolution of disputes and redressal of grievances. The visa regime is restrictive. So are telecommunication links. Despite these handicaps trade grew.
It is distrust at the level of governments that poses the biggest hindrance. Trucks are not permitted to reach the traders on the other side. They cross the LoC, unload the goods, and return. They are then loaded again on the trucks on the other side for delivery to their intended destination. All this adds to the costs and risks to perishable goods. Clearly, what is required is a political decision by both countries for a thorough review of cross-LoC trade; including the cumbersome arrangements, the very limited 21-items list, and the frequency of trucks’ crossings.
The movement of goods can lessen Indo-Pak tensions.
The impact of a proper review of the existing arrangements and their thorough overhaul will be felt not only economically but also politically and culturally. The people long to communicate. Years ago, when Mufti Mohammed first became chief minister, he allowed people to throng on the banks of the Neelum River to communicate with their relations across it. Presents were thrown across the narrow divide.
We have now reached an impasse in ties between India and Pakistan. Realistically, no significant political movement is expected on Kashmir for quite some time. Even if Pathankot had not fouled the atmosphere, the room for compromise on Kashmir hardly existed.
In July 2000 even the Vajpayee government, brusquely rejected its ally the National Conference government’s plea for restoration of the pre-1953 autonomy in Kashmir which was endorsed by a unanimous resolution of the legislative assembly.
The Modi government commands a large majority. It has nothing to offer to Kashmiris or to Pakistan on Kashmir. In Pakistan, the Sharif government looks askance at the four-point formula settled by president Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Yet, both countries can do a lot to make life easier for people on both sides of the LoC. The rahdari system where under a villager could go to an official to get a permit to visit his relations across the LoC can be revived. It existed for nearly two decades, till the 1965 war.
It bears recalling today what the military adviser to the UN Commission for India and Pakistan noted in January 1949 on the meeting of the army chiefs of Pakistan and India. They “agreed to restore the communication by road between Srinagar and Rawalpindi and to rebuild the necessary bridges. In addition, telephonic liaisons [sic] between these two localities will be restored”.
If the chief ministers of Punjab in both countries can meet, there is no reason why the chief executives of the two parts of Kashmir cannot; if need be, with the caveat in Para 4(ii) of the Shimla Agreement: “without prejudice to the recognised position of either side”. They can discuss travel, trade, tourism, environment and the like.
Some years back, a group of distinguished journalists from Pakistan went to Srinagar. In 2006, Mubashir Hasan, who was finance minister in Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government, and the universally respected human rights activist I.A. Rehman participated in a seminar in Srinagar. The popular Srinagar daily Greater Kashmir has a bureau in Muzaffarabad. Our Security is not so fragile as to permit ‘subversion’ by relaxations such as these.
Movement of persons, goods and literature across the LoC will go a long way to relax tensions. It is in exchanges such as these that the seeds of reconciliation are sown.
Like CBMs, these measures of relaxation are no substitute for a solution of the Kashmir dispute. Their aim is a limited one: to make life easier for the people in both parts of Jammu & Kashmir.
Source: dawn.com/news/1259673/loc-trade
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Bully For The Billionaires
By Amina Jilani
May 21st, 2016.
Amidst all these media revelations of the billions that rest in the grubby hands of a large mass of the political classes, one must wonder how the beloved awam, in whose name — democracy — the billions have been garnered and splashed around can even begin to wrap their minds around the figures. There are millions of benefactors of democracy to whom even thousands are somewhat of wonderment.
Perhaps to its credit, some sections of the national press on May 10 printed a large photograph of an old, really old man, probably a great-grandfather, haggard, a blank expression on his face, dressed in ragged attire, some inadequate packing on his back, bent over under the burden of six hefty cement blocks supported by one arm. It was a hot day in Karachi. How many of us even felt anything, or even bothered to look at the photograph of the old man? Excluded for sure are the billionaires, the subservient millionaires they have made, the politicians for whom he perhaps voted, the top couple of per cent fat-cat industrial or business types, glitterati, fashionistas, and so forth — and even the old man’s fellow mates and sufferers who would merely shrug and say “Allah ki marzi” : just another run of the mill beast of burden.
Such is the great nuclear, Muslim, democratic republic so dear to patriotic Pakistanis, the greatest of course being our members of parliament, mostly put there by an admitted if not fraudulent then highly dubious method of election, others indirectly seated gratis those who represent themselves rather than the electorate. The prime member of the indirectly elected, the president (“the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces shall vest in the President” Article 243 of the Constitution) has weighed in on the current mania surrounding corruption stating that the looters of national wealth should face accountability.
Well, well, he is either completely naive or he has turned on his patron. Of course, no one pays the slightest attention to what he says and the poor chap usually looks terrified out of his wits or completely at sea, as he did when standing amidst the top brass which comprises his “supreme command” at the recent March 23 military parade. In Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s prime ministerial era, he installed the innocent speaker of the National Assembly, Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, as his supreme commander, benign, harmless. He was not exactly well known but not as remote as the present incumbent about whom many have asked who and what he was and why he is where he is. One wit even wrote on the presidency wall, “Chaudhry Fazal Ilahi ko riha karo.” Maybe someone should follow suit with our lost businessman.
Back to the billions and beasts of burden — the prime ministerial repeats of his sob story are not only a conglomeration of half-truths and downright lies but are boring. We, who do know and accept our knowing, as opposed to his brother billionaires, his minion millionaires, his paid lackeys and the paid ‘article writers’ of his information ministry, are fed up with prevarication. It’s not so simple because as a perceptive man said thieves do not give receipts, so when the Mian of Avenfield House says there is no ‘pruf’ of wrongdoing who is to argue? Does any thinking person believe the figures or so-called facts he has trotted out? Are his taxes paid in full? Were the billions made legally? Why does he now own up to the fact that his London flats are, in fact, his? The ownership is clearly recorded in the Queen’s Bench Division of the London High Court when the four properties were listed in a schedule of assets to be attached for defaulting on a loan of $32 million in 1999. What purpose do his or his family’s lies serve?
But then, as a most dear friend was wont to say: you cannot shame the shameless. The old beast of burden with his cement blocks merits far more respect that any one of the beasts of billions who have their say with this sorry land.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1107077/bully-for-the-billionaires/
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/make-islam-peaceful-new-age/d/107370