Ramazan Message: New Age Islam's Selection, 03 June 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
03 June 2016
• Ramazan Message
By Amin Valliani
• Does It Matter?
By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
• Women’s Electoral Rights
By I.A. Rehman
• No Quick Fix for Syria
By Manish Rai
• Decline of Bureaucracy
By Muhammad Ahmad Hassan
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Ramazan Message
By Amin Valliani
03 June 2016
GENERALLY, in the holy month of Ramazan, the majority of Muslims around the world tend to became more religious in their day-to-day activities. They fast, perform extra prayers and also donate generously to the needy and take part in other social services.
In this way, many Ramazans have come and gone in one’s life. But what is essential to understand is the multidimensional message of the holy month of Ramazan. Subsequently making it a part of one’s life will enable Muslims to reap the benefits of Ramazan. These benefits belong to the spiritual, moral, social and physical realms of life.
In the spiritual realm, Ramazan opens the floodgates of spirituality. This enables a Muslim to become a real Momin. A Muslim is just one who recites the Kalima, recognising the existence of Allah, while a Momin is one who experiences the Kalima at a spiritual level, feeling the presence of the Creator. This is possible when one applies the spiritual message of Islam in his/her life with full determination. Secondly, the message of Ramazan also makes it incumbent upon believers to be generous and help society.
We fast to inculcate the spirit of Islam in every aspect of our life.
The Holy Prophet (PBUH) experienced Islam at the spiritual level and received holy guidance (the Quran). He was fully conscious of his Creator — Allah. He was never oblivious of his duties towards the Creator and His creation. He fulfilled his responsibilities towards his family and society. He felt the pain of the poor, the sick and paupers and felt duty-bound to redress their grievances. Thus he became a role model par excellence for the entire Ummah.
As the holy month of Ramazan brings a lot of rain of special blessings and bounties, Muslims can develop a sense of Allah’s consciousness in their minds and hearts. They have an opportunity to come closer to Allah, forsake materialistic thinking and control their animal instincts so that divine grace starts pouring forth.
Fasting has been recognised universally in all revealed religions, though the forms and motives vary. But it is a great source of inner purification. Allah says: “O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you, even as it was prescribed for those before you that ye may ward off (evil)” (2:183). The ultimate aim of fasting is piety, which entails spiritual recharging of the soul with additional prayers, recitation of the Quran, meditation and restraining bad behaviour. Islam is a complete way of life. It provides numerous opportunities to the faithful to become enlightened.
Consciousness of Allah and feeling His presence in one’s existence and surroundings is an essential part of Islamic teachings. This is to be renewed, reinforced and further strengthened in the month of Ramazan. The Quran enjoins fasting with an aim of making Muslims ascend to spiritual heights. We fast to inculcate the spirit of Islam in every aspect of our life. Every human being lives, acts and moves in His presence. This has been mentioned time and again in the Holy Book. At one place Allah says: “...[T]here is no secret conference of three but He is their fourth, nor of five but He is their sixth, nor of less than that or more but He is with them wheresoever they may be. ...” (58:7).
We live in a material world and are confined in a material body, therefore, feeling Allah’s spiritual presence within and without is not everybody’s cup of tea. This requires intense introspection at the personal level aimed at reforming thoughts, actions and attitudes.
At the moral level, the holy month of Ramazan provides an opportunity to all Muslims to renew their commitment to be true, honest, and straightforward in dealing with other fellow beings. Those who sincerely fast are sure to acquire respect and dignity. We interact with others through words and the Holy Prophet says that fasting is a shield so the person fasting should not indulge in foul speech. This will make the believer more pious, God-fearing, and civilised.
At the social level, fasting generates social discipline among Muslims. In every society, there exists a great social barrier between the haves and have-nots. This is removed only when the rich class is made to feel the pangs of hunger like the poor, who go without food in their normal life. This will also allow the rich to be philanthropic in their attitude towards the poor.
There are also physical benefits of fasting. Our bodies are like machines; their digestive system remains operational round the year. However, if one fasts in the month of Ramazan, the body gets rest and is reinvigorated with additional capacity to work. The health of a person gets improved with fasting. It also accustoms him or her to face the hardship of life with increased power of resistance.
In a nutshell, Ramazan is meant to upgrade Muslims to make them Momins in order to reflect the multidimensional message of Islam.
Amin Valliani is an educationist with an interest in religion.
Source: dawn.com/news/1262329/ramazan-message
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Does It Matter?
By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
June 3rd, 2016
THE federal budget should be presented in the National Assembly today, after which it will become the subject of grand polemic for the next couple of days. One side will talk up ‘development’ and ‘investor-friendly’ policies while the other will decry the whole exercise as ‘anti-poor’. And then all will be forgotten when the next piece of ‘breaking news’ erupts onto our TV screens.
Make no mistake — we live in an era in which our attention spans are so short that every day heralds a new drawing-room conversation. Certainly some themes never seem to go out of fashion — corruption, the venality of politics and politicians, the never-ending threat of terror and the heroism of the men in khaki most prominent of all. But the superficial nature of the ‘debate’ around even these themes confirms our preference for the whimsical rather than the substantial.
Usually there is some interrogation of the state of the economy in the lead-up to the budget announcement. This year even this convention has been sacrificed at the altar of the Panama leaks and the prime minister’s ailing heart. Having said this, the ‘experts’ mobilised by the media to comment on economic affairs always depict Pakistan’s economic problems in textbook terms, even though the reality of our socioeconomic life defies bookish conceptions.
‘Experts’ depict our economic problems in textbook terms.
I have written before about the so-called ‘informal’ economy and the growing body of scholarship on the phenomenon of informalisation. Unfortunately, academic scholarship in Pakistan is a microcosm of the wider political and intellectual mainstream, and so there is still very little empirical information available on the size of the informal economy as well as the nature of activities therein.
Four years ago, at exactly this time of year on these very pages I questioned the efficacy of the budget exercise (and the Economic Survey that is released alongside it) in the absence of accurate, stylised facts about the ‘real’ (informal) economy. I have no reason to believe that we are today any closer to a more meaningful analysis of economic affairs.
Even if one is to ignore this rather large elephant in the room, formulation of policy vis-à-vis the documented economy has become a virtual formality given the country’s acute dependence on foreign donors.
Generally in Pakistan, there is a blanket tendency to attribute our lack of autonomy on policy matters to the World Bank, IMF and other multilateral donor institutions that are perceived to represent the interests of the imperialist West. Yet over the past few years the Chinese juggernaut has started to make its presence felt in Pakistani markets. CPEC will change our patterns of dependence entirely.
The clerks, teachers and other white-collar government servants currently on the streets demanding pay increases commensurate with the cost of living know enough about the workings of the capitalist world system to cry themselves hoarse over our rulers’ pandering to the World Bank and IMF, as do the workers of privatisation-bound state enterprises such as Wapda and PIA.
But the murmurings of our (admittedly weak) local industrialist against the influx of cheap Chinese consumer durables into Pakistan are not nearly as loud, and therefore the myth of economic hegemony being exercised only by the ‘West’ — including multilateral financial institutions centred in Western countries — continues to be sustained.
It is, of course, too early to be concluding exactly what the long-term impacts of CPEC-related investments will be. But there should be little doubt that the Chinese economic (and ecological) footprint will be at least as large as anything that Western governments and institutions have ever left on Pakistani soil. And the controversy over the CPEC route suggests that regional and ethnic tensions within the country are likely to intensify as the project proceeds, especially if and when our debt to China starts to pile up and the question of its repayment raises its head.
For their part, the Chinese are painting an extremely rosy picture, even insisting that Indian-Iranian plans to develop a deep-sea port at Chabahar should be seen as complementary to CPEC and Gwadar. Pakistani hawks see Chabahar as a grand conspiracy, alongside any activity within Pakistan that is not unconditionally welcoming of CPEC. One way or the other, Pakistan’s political economy is undergoing a not-insignificant makeover which requires interrogation, not slogans.
In the final analysis, the budget announcement is meaningful only because it will be a virtual copy-paste job from years past. We will be reminded of how little our ruling class is willing and able to think outside the box, both in terms of identifying the problem and then devising solutions. A large chunk of expenditures will continue to be dedicated to defence and debt-servicing, the informal economy will be ignored, and there will be much talk of how China’s investments promise to be a game changer. And one cannot help but ask: does any of it matter?
Source: dawn.com/news/1262328/does-it-matter
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Women’s Electoral Rights
By I.A. Rehman
June 2nd, 2016
THE decision by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to set up a working group for promoting women’s electoral rights through partnership with civil society organisations is sound in principle. However, the first reports of the group’s working suggest the need for greater clarification of the project and of its place in the overall scheme of the electoral reforms under way.
The Gender and Disability Electoral Working Group, headed by an additional director-general of the ECP, a woman made responsible for gender affairs, has invited many civil society organisations to help the ECP raise the voter turnout from 55pc to 70pc and to reduce the gender gap.
The activities undertaken by the working group include: promotion of voter education through various means; organisation of training sessions for media persons; research on electoral practices, polling trends, etc; and focus on women voters and disabled/ marginalised/ vulnerable groups.
Obviously, on the one hand the working group intends to cover almost the whole range of matters related to elections, which means the emphasis on women’s concerns will be diluted, and on the other hand it seems to be skirting the main hurdles to women’s due participation in elections.
The project lumps together two target groups — women and the people living with disabilities (PLWD), and the problems this conceptual flaw will create have already been pointed out. A large number of people with disabilities cannot exercise their right to vote or otherwise take part in the electoral process and everything possible should be done to help them. We will take up this matter on another occasion. Meanwhile, the ECP working group may take a look at Zahid Abdullah’s paper on the subject including his admirable study, Disabled by Society and the recommendations of the national convention organised by the International Federation for Electoral Systems in Islamabad in September 2014, which was perhaps the largest ever gathering of PLWD in the country.
A woman is needed in the policymaking echelon of the Election Commission of Pakistan.
The plea that matters related to women’s voting and those concerning the people with disabilities should be treated as separate projects or separate parts of a single project merits proper discussion. The UNDP, that is providing funds, should not be averse to making the project more sharply focused. If nothing else, the project can be split into two parts, one part for women’s concerns and the other for PLWD.
The issue of enabling the women of Pakistan to fully participate in the electoral process has frequently been discussed in the context of a wider reform of the system. Unfortunately, the parliamentary committee charged with the task of developing a comprehensive electoral reform package has taken much too long to deliver. It has caused considerable confusion by getting the 22nd Amendment, to change the eligibility criteria for the chief election commissioner and the ECP members, passed by the National Assembly.
That these offices need not be filled exclusively by members of the superior judiciary, serving or retired, had no doubt been demanded by civil society but this was not the central issue in the debate. The government’s desire to have the 22nd Amendment passed before the term of the present ECP members expires is understandable but there was no need to hold back on what else there is in the reform package. The mist can easily be cleared by generating a public debate on all the reform proposals finalised by the committee.
Civil society has been vigorously arguing for the inclusion of at least one woman in the ECP so as to give the commission the benefit of women’s perspective on electoral issues. This need is not met by appointing a woman as an additional director general for gender affairs. A woman is needed in the policymaking echelon of the ECP.
The most critical issue faced by women is that they are prevented from voting under unlawful compacts among the political parties taking part in an election. Many years have passed since the judiciary held this practice to be illegal; although Sections 171-C and 171-J of the Penal Code are quite clear, the matter is still hanging fire. The ECP nullified a by-election in Dir on the grounds that women had been barred from voting. The decision was overturned by the Peshawar High Court and now the matter has been raised in the Supreme Court. One should like to know what the parliamentary committee has proposed to put an end to the most vile practice of preventing women from exercising their right to franchise.
The ECP has consistently been urged to prepare a separate record of women’s voting in all constituencies. It had promised to do so by 2013 and it must redeem its pledge before the next general election that is due not later than 2018. This data will play a crucial part in implementing the proposal to countermand election in any constituency if ballots cast by women are less than 20pc of their number on the rolls. The reform-makers may consider raising the figure to 30pc or even higher.
A key issue in the debate on the subject under discussion is the lack of attention to defend the rights of non-Muslim women. Apart from a fully fledged campaign to ensure that these women get their CNICs issued and that these cards are not appropriated by waderas and other professional contestants, there is need to remove the obstacles they face while presenting themselves as candidates for election. If Fatwas are issued to warn Muslim voters against voting for a non-Muslim man, similar treatment is likely to be meted out to non-Muslim women candidates. That these edicts have been criminalised under the Penal Code has been ignored for decades. Should we hope that the ECP and the parliamentary committee have found a way to prevent the abuse of religion in electoral matters?
That, indeed, is the most critical issue that affects not only the rights of women but the fairness of the entire election system.
Source: dawn.com/news/1262097/womens-electoral-rights
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No Quick Fix for Syria
By Manish Rai
03-Jun-16 236
Syrian peace talks are heading in direction of another failed process, or have already failed depending on how grim a view we take of the events unfolding in Geneva. The Syrian opposition has called a ‘pause’ to negotiations, which we can conclude as an equivalent to a walkout from the talks. Even UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura says there wouldn’t be a new round of peace talks for at least another two to three weeks. Escalation in fighting and difficulties delivering humanitarian aid has ruined the hopes for an earlier start of the peace process. Moreover, opposition’s chief peace negotiator, Mohammad Alloush, has resigned over the failure of peace talks to deliver any concrete results on ground. These signs clearly indicate that recent peace talks in Geneva turned out to be a futile exercise, since from the beginning of these peace talks there was a lack of good signs or goodwill gestures.
The first casualty of the Geneva peace talks was the cessation of hostilities or truce, which was brokered by the United States and Russia to pave the way for the first peace talks attended by the warring parties. The opposition has already declared that the Syrian truce is over, which means full resumption of fighting.
The cessation of hostilities agreement was never implemented completely. There were numerous cases of sporadic fighting from the start, which gradually intensified. But it surely helped in the delivery of much needed humanitarian aid to needy Syrians and brought a relief from intense fighting to large numbers of civilians trapped between government forces and rebels. But Syrians would now be exposed anytime to the full fury of the war, which could turn out to be very ugly this time. Even foreign backers of warring parties in Syria that were promoting talks once are now taking sides. The High Negotiations Committee, Syria’s main opposition umbrella group had said it was not willing to return to any talks without a full ceasefire and access for humanitarian aid. Russia — which has shown solidarity with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the beginning of the conflict — retaliated back, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticising opposition for setting preconditions to their participation. Even some analysts are suggesting that just as the US provided cover for Israel, Russia is protecting Assad. Even if a renewed peace talk is launched there is no hope of its success because there are major bottlenecks between the Syrian government and opposition.
One of the major bottlenecks is that while the opposition maintains its stand that President Assad has no role to play in Syria’s future, and even in transitional government, on the other hand, government’s delegation refused to even discuss the possibility that President Assad would step down and a transitional governing body would be formed. Even global and regional powers are divided about this core issue. Moscow and Tehran, main backers of Assad, believe that any agreement between the opposition and Syrian government should support the central government of Damascus, even if this means supporting President Assad. They argue that if President Assad leaves power while there is no strong leader to replace him Syria would turn into a failed state just like Libya. The United States and its allies oppose Assad’s stay in power, arguing that should the government of Syria continue to be led by President Assad, it would be next to impossible to assume that armed groups put their weapons down and negotiate and cooperate with Syrian central government.
After taking all these equations in account it is very hard to believe that any peace talks would improve the situation on the ground and bring peace. In these current circumstances the best hope for halting Syria’s destruction is the acceptance of agreed zones that take into account ethno-sectarian divisions and current battle lines while devolving significant power to local communities. While some level of international military presence like the United Nation’s Monitoring Force would likely be necessary to monitor and ensure maintenance of the ceasefire, for success of any new round of talks solid groundwork has to be done first, otherwise it’s all bound to fail again. As we draw on the lessons of mistakes in peace-building processes in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where half-baked measures, lack of stabilisation plans and flawed security arrangements came back to explode in the face of those who show unnecessary hurry in launching the peace process. After a stable ceasefire is achieved, a fresh round of negotiations should be launched so that more workable solutions for resolution of the Syrian war can be discussed in detail — creating a federal structure with greater autonomy to every region, a decentralised system of governance or even the division of Syria on sectarian lines. It is up to Syrians to decide what political system they want for their country. But international community has to facilitate the Syrian people to reach a peaceful solution to this civil war, and then to reconstruct their country.
Manish Rai is a columnist for the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and Editor of ViewAround, a geopolitical news agency.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/03-Jun-16/no-quick-fix-for-syria
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Decline of Bureaucracy
By Muhammad Ahmad Hassan
03-Jun-16 146
The mainstream political discourse in Pakistan seldom contains the nuance that would help in understanding the complex issues that the country faces today. Amidst the melange of accusations and counter-accusations, ranging from pedestrian commentaries of the casual political observer to vitriolic quarrels of stalwarts of political parties, little room is left for informed debate and meaningful deliberation. While it would be unfair to attribute this phenomenon solely to Pakistani politics, nevertheless, it should not be used as pretence to refrain from injecting a dose of complexity to the mix. Of course, complexity demands seeing the present through the lens that take into account both the continuities and changes of the past so that the two can be shifted from each other. This can be particularly effective in detailing the narrative of the transformation of bureaucracy in Pakistan, which has long been viewed as a static entity.
Pakistan inherited a weak state structure on the eve of independence. Makeshift offices had to be made that were extremely ill-equipped to carry out basic functions of the state. Even worse was the lack of industrial base in the area that constituted Pakistan. In that dismal state of affairs, the only ray of hope was the qualified bureaucracy of Pakistan, which was previously part of the Indian Civil Service under colonial rule. Within a couple of years bureaucracy was firmly in control, and it managed most of the affairs of the state, ranging from micro-level administration to macro policy decisions. While the dominance of non-elected state institutions is certainly no cause for celebration, nevertheless, strong bureaucratic organisation allowed the state to pursue policies that were necessary for its survival.
In such uncertain times, the most immediate imperative was industrialisation. State planners realised that without industrial units Pakistan would not be able to sustain its economy. For the state to embark upon rapid industrialisation it needed foreign exchange — one resource it was acutely short of. Here economic imperatives dictated a partnership with a foreign power to supply these needed funds, and hence Pakistan became a willing partner of the United States in curbing communism.
Pakistan’s alliance with the United States brought a great deal of development and military aid into the economy. This was the time when it was believed by the United States that investing in developing countries would prevent the Soviets from increasing their influence. At the academic level, this was the era of modernisation theory according to which aid for developing countries would jump-start their supposed transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies. All this gave bureaucracy a central role in managing the aid that was coming into the economy and directing it towards industrialisation. Not only were state bureaucrats actively involved in planning for the economy, but also in some cases they even directly assumed the role of entrepreneurs as they made industrial units and sold them off to members of the bourgeoisie at attractive prices. Meanwhile, since industrialisation required importing capital machinery, an over-valued exchange rate was adopted, which effectively reduced the cost of imports. Naturally, in the absence of sufficient exports that would have resulted in a balance of payment crisis. However, state planners came up with a scheme in which licences had to be obtained by businesses for limited access to foreign exchange. Moreover, export bonus schemes were devised that rewarded businesses with access to foreign exchange if they met certain export goals set out by government. This made the bureaucracy disproportionately powerful in comparison to the bourgeoisie. It was state bureaucrats who managed foreign inflows and controlled access to foreign exchange. In effect state resources flowed through them, and the bourgeoisie had to adhere to the policies that they had devised.
This state of affairs continued into the 1970s when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto nationalised most of the major industries of Pakistan, and bureaucracy assumed direct control. However, Bhutto had a difficult relationship with bureaucracy, and the changes that he made to it, especially removing the constitutional protection that it enjoyed before, laid the foundation for its subsequent decline. This interacted with the shift to neoliberalism as the dominant development discourse in the 1980s. While Pakistan had already started privatisation under the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, it had not officially adopted the neoliberal prescription until 1988 when it signed the first aid deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its structural adjustment programme.
Forces of neo-liberalism had a profound impact on not just the economy of Pakistan but also the structure of the state. Neo-liberalism is an ideology that is a mix of negative freedoms espoused by liberalism and a free market based economic policy. In particular, neo-liberalism calls for limited government as it holds that excessive bureaucratic red tape acts as an impediment for the growth of businesses. Neo-liberalism’s currency as the dominant development discourse in the current era gives it a subtle form of power as all other development schemes are measured against it. On a much more concrete level, neo-liberalism has behind it the weight of international lending institutions, in particular the IMF and the World Bank. This means that for countries like Pakistan in which there is a heavy reliance on these lending institutions, their neoliberal prescription naturally has to be followed in order to secure the next loan or aid package.
The transformation that the state structure is undergoing as a result of neoliberal policies is subtle yet effective. The economic role of bureaucracy is in decline as funds that are coming in the country are continuously calling for its retreat from the business sphere. Moreover, as bureaucratic culture is increasingly being viewed as déclassé and démodé, autonomous bodies are increasingly emerging that pride themselves on having professionals from the private sector. All this means that bureaucracy no longer has the central role in economic planning that it once had, and space is increasingly being ceded for private firms and multinational companies to invest and flourish.
This raises the question of whether the changes that are taking place in the state structure are good or bad for Pakistan. Pakistani bureaucracy has for long been viewed as a repressive apparatus of the colonial times that rules rather than serves. In light of this, it may appear absurd to suggest that bureaucratic retreat from the economic sphere is not necessarily a good thing. However, bureaucracy has an internal logic to it, which, in all its lethargy and conservatism, is able to work for the benefit of the larger national interest. As the fortune of individual bureaucrats is closely tied with the influence of their department as a whole, and the web of procedures and regulations governing its business leaves little room for going against the system altogether, bureaucracy acts as a regulator that slows things down just enough so that implications of new developments and changes can be wisely considered. Greed of multinational and private sector, on the other hand, knows no bounds and these companies are only motivated by the desire to make more money. Here, bureaucratic regulations, although a nuisance to private companies, are necessary to ensure that the state and its citizens are not exploited as a result of their operations.
This must not be taken as a case for bureaucratic rule as democracy demands subservience of public servants to publicly elected officials. Nor is it a call for bureaucratic control of businesses. The point that is being made is that public authorities have an important role to play in economic development. Hence, in the environment in which bureaucracy is consistently being pushed away from the economic sphere, there is a need to renegotiate the role of bureaucracy vis-à-vis private businesses. And for that to happen, the current stigma attached to bureaucracy needs to be countered.
Muhammad Ahmad Hassan is an assistant editor at Daily Times
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/03-Jun-16/decline-of-bureaucracy
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/ramazan-message-new-age-islam/d/107510