Lifting the veil on the Niqab

There is no requirement in Islam to cover one’s face — the niqab is the epitome of male control over Muslim women
By Tarek Fatah, Citizen SpecialFebruary 5, 2009
Barely a week goes by when my religion, Islam, does not face a fresh round of scrutiny. If it is not a suicide bomber blowing himself up in an Iraqi mosque screaming “Allah O Akbar,” it is news that an imam in Malaysia has declared the practice of Yoga sinful. If it is not a Toronto imam defending suicide bombing on TVO, a Muslim woman writes a column in a Canadian daily, advocating the introduction of Shariah law in Canada.

But the one topic that rears its head in almost predictable cycles is the subject of a Muslim woman’s supposed Islamic attire. Whether it is swimming pools or polling booths there is no escape from the repeated controversies surrounding the face mask, better known as the niqab, or the burqa.

The latest incarnation of the niqab controversy surfaced this week when a Toronto judge ordered a Muslim woman to take off her niqab when she testified in a case of sexual assault.

The woman invoked Islam as the reason why she wanted to give testimony while wearing a face mask. She told the judge, “It’s a respect issue, one of modesty,” adding Islam considers her niqab as her “honour.”

Her explanations were rejected by the judge who determined that the woman’s “religious belief” was not that strong and that in his opinion the woman was asking to wear the niqab as “a matter of comfort.”

But all of these arguments are premised on the acceptance of the myth that a face mask for women is Islamic religious attire.

Humbug.

There is no requirement in Islam for Muslim women to cover their faces. The niqab is the epitome of male control over women. It is a product of Saudi Arabia and its distortion of Islam to suit its Wahabbi agenda, which is creeping into Canada.

If there is any doubt that the niqab is not required by Islam, take at look at the holiest place for Muslims — the grand mosque in Mecca, the Ka’aba. For over 1,400 years Muslim men and women have prayed in what we believe is the House of God and for all these centuries women have been explicitly forbidden from covering their faces.

For the better part of the 20th century, Muslim reformists, from Egypt to India, campaigned against this terrible tribal custom imposed by Wahabbi Islam. My mother’s generation threw off their burqas when Muslim countries gained their independence after the Second World War. Millions of women encouraged by their husbands, fathers and sons, shed this oppressive attire as the first step in embracing gender equality.

But while the rest of the world moves toward the goal of gender equality, right here, under our very noses, Islamists are pushing back the clock, convincing educated Muslim women they are sexual objects and a source of sin.

It will be difficult to pinpoint what went wrong, but most of Canada’s growth in niqabi women can be traced to one development in 2004, when a radical Pakistani female scholar by the name of Farhat Hashmi came to Canada on a visitor’s visa, to establish the Al-Huda Islamic Institute for women.

Maclean’s magazine reported in July 2006 that she had “established a school where she lectures to mostly young, middle-class women from mainstream Muslim families, not only from across the country but also from the U.S. and as far away as Australia.”

In October 2005, the Globe and Mail ran a story on Dr. Hashmi quoting a 20-year-old Muslim woman as saying, “I agree with Dr. Hashmi that women should stay at home and look after their families.” This student was so impressed with Dr. Hashmi’s sermons that she convinced 10 of her friends to enrol in the course that involved wearing the niqab, leaving the work force and embracing polygamy.

In the Globe piece, 18-year-old Sadaf Mahmood defended polygamy and the burqa saying: “There are more women than men in this world. Who will take care of these women? It is better for a man to do things legally by taking a second wife, rather than having an affair.”

While the rest of Canada sleeps, the Islamist agenda, funded by the Saudis and inspired by the Iranians, continues to make its presence felt. The vast majority of Muslims look on in shock, unable to understand why this country would tolerate the oppression of women in the name of religion and multiculturalism.

The woman who was denied her burqa in court is a victim. She is merely a puppet in the hands of those who wish to keep women in their place. First she suffered the trauma of the alleged sexual assault, which was then compounded by the controversy about her niqab. She could have asked the judge to not let her face her alleged attackers, and that would have been a fair request.

But when she invoked Islam and said hiding her face would be an act of religiosity, she became a voice not for justice, but for those who wish to sneak Shariah law into our judicial system. This should be stopped.

Tarek Fatah is the author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. tarekfatah@rogers.com
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Courtesy and Thanks: Ottawacitizen.com

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Life/Lifting+veil+niqab/1254516/story.html

 

The Saudi-ization of Pakistan – Newsline

A stern, unyielding version of Islam is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis in Pakistan.

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

Back
The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.

For 20 years or more, a few of us have been desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. In fact, I am surprised at how rapidly these dire predictions have come true.

A full-scale war is being fought in FATA, Swat and other “wild” areas of Pakistan, resulting in thousands of deaths. It is only a matter of time before this fighting shifts to Peshawar and Islamabad (which has already been a witness to the Lal Masjid episode) and engulfs Lahore and Karachi as well. The suicide bomber and the masked abductor have crippled Pakistan’s urban life and shattered its national economy.

Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.

What explains Pakistan’s collective masochism? To understand this, one needs to study the drastic social and cultural transformations that have rendered this country so completely different from what it was in earlier times.

For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern, unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.

This change is by design. Twenty-five years ago, the Pakistani state used Islam as an instrument of state policy. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory, floggings were carried out publicly, punishments were meted out to those who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for academic posts in universities required that the candidate demonstrate a knowledge of Islamic teachings and jihad was declared essential for every Muslim. Today, government intervention is no longer needed because of a spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state – still in an amorphous and diffused form – is more popular now than ever before as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing state.

Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.

In Pakistan’s lower-middle and middle classes lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement that frowns on any and every expression of joy and pleasure. Lacking any positive connection to culture and knowledge, it seeks to eliminate “corruption” by regulating cultural life and seizing control of the education system.

“Classical music is on its last legs in Pakistan; the sarangi and vichitraveena are completely dead,” laments Mohammad Shehzad, a music aficionado. Indeed, teaching music in public universities is violently opposed by students of the Islami Jamaat-e-Talaba at Punjab University. So the university has been forced to hold its music classes elsewhere. Religious fundamentalists consider music haram or un-Islamic. Kathak dancing, once popular with the Muslim elite of India, has few teachers left. Pakistan produces no feature films of any consequence. Nevertheless, the Pakistani elite, disconnected from the rest of the population, live their lives in comfort through their vicarious proximity to the West. Alcoholism is a chronic problem of the super rich of Lahore – a curious irony for this deeply religious country.

Islamisation of the state and the polity was supposed to have been in the interest of the ruling class – a classic strategy for preserving it from the wrath of the working class. But the amazing success of the state is turning out to be its own undoing. Today, it is under attack from religious militants, and rival Islamic groups battle each other with heavy weapons. Ironically, the same army – whose men were recruited under the banner of jihad, and which saw itself as the fighting arm of Islam – today stands accused of betrayal and is almost daily targeted by Islamist suicide bombers.

Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.

On the previous page, the reader can view the government-approved curriculum. This is the basic road map for transmitting values and knowledge to the young. By an act of parliament passed in 1976, all government and private schools (except for O-level schools) are required to follow this curriculum. It was prepared by the curriculum wing of the federal ministry of education, government of Pakistan. It sounds like a blueprint for a religious fascist state.

Alongside are scanned pictures from an illustrated primer for the Urdu alphabet. The masthead states that it has been prepared by Iqra Publishers, Rawalpindi, along “Islamic lines.” Although not an officially approved textbook, it is being used currently by some regular schools, as well as madrassas associated with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), an Islamic political party that had allied itself with General Musharraf. These picture scans have been taken from a child’s book, hence the scribbles.

The world of the Pakistani schoolchild remained largely unchanged, even after September 11, 2001, the event that led to Pakistan’s timely desertion of the Taliban and the slackening of the Kashmir jihad. Indeed, for all his hypocritical talk of “enlightened moderation,” General Musharraf’s educational curriculum was far from enlightening. It was a slightly toned down version of the curriculum that existed under Nawaz Sharif which, in turn, was identical to that under Benazir Bhutto who had inherited it from General Zia-ul-Haq. Fearful of taking on the powerful religious forces, every incumbent government has refused to take a position on the curriculum and thus quietly allowed young minds to be moulded by fanatics. What may happen a generation later has always been a secondary issue for a government challenged on so many fronts.

The promotion of militarism in Pakistan’s so-called “secular” public schools, colleges and universities had a profound effect upon young minds. Militant jihad became part of the culture on college and university campuses. Armed groups flourished, they invited students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, set up offices throughout the country, collected funds at Friday prayers and declared a war which knew no borders. Pre-9/11, my university was ablaze with posters inviting students to participate in the Kashmir jihad. Post-2001, this ceased to be done openly.

Still, the primary vehicle for Saudi-ising Pakistan’s education has been the madrassa. In earlier times, these had turned out the occasional Islamic scholar, using a curriculum that essentially dates back to the 11th century, with only minor subsequent revisions. But their principal function had been to produce imams and muezzins for mosques, and those who eked out an existence as ‘maulvi sahibs’ teaching children to read the Quran.

The Afghan jihad changed everything. During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia, funded new madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan. A detailed picture of the current situation is not available. But according to the national education census, which the ministry of education released in 2006, Punjab has 5,459 madrassas followed by the NWFP with 2,843; Sindh has 1,935; the Federally Administrated Northern Areas (FANA), 1,193; Balochistan, 769; Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 586; the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), 135; and the Islamabad capital territory, 77. The ministry estimates that 1.5 million students are acquiring religious education in the 13,000 madrassas.

These figures appear to be way off the mark. Commonly quoted figures range between 18,000 and 22,000 madrassas. The number of students could be correspondingly larger. The free boarding and lodging plus provision of books to the students, is a key part of their appeal. Additionally, parents across the country desire that their children be “disciplined” and given a thorough Islamic education. The madrassas serve this purpose, too, exceedingly well.

Madrassas have deeply impacted the urban environment. Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet, orderly, modern city different from the rest of Pakistan. Also, it had largely been the abode of Pakistan’s elite and foreign diplomats. But the rapid transformation of its demography brought with it hundreds of mosques with multi-barrelled audio-cannons mounted on minarets, as well as scores of madrassas illegally constructed in what used to be public parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of their students, sporting little prayer caps, dutifully chant the Quran all day. In the evenings they swarm the city, making women minus the hijab increasingly nervous.

Total segregation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and eight children were crushed to death and scores injured in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi, where a large number of women were attending a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving the injured women to hospitals.

One cannot dismiss this incident as being just one of a kind. In fact, soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. This action was similar to that of Saudi Arabia’s ubiquitous religious ‘mutaween’ (police) who, in March 2002, had stopped school girls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas – a long robe worn in Saudi Arabia. In a rare departure from the norm, Saudi newspapers had blamed and criticised the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.

The Saudi-isation of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytisers carrying this message, such as Mrs Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to the heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades back, the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. The abaya was an unknown word in Urdu. Today, some shops across the country specialise in abayas. At colleges and universities across Pakistan, the female student is seeking the anonymity of the burqa. And in some parts of the country she seems to outnumber her sisters who still “dare” to show their faces.

I have observed the veil profoundly affect habits and attitudes. Many of my veiled female students have largely become silent note-takers, are increasingly timid and seem less inclined to ask questions or take part in discussions. They lack the confidence of a young university student.

While social conservatism does not necessarily lead to violent extremism, it does shorten the distance. The socially conservative are more easily convinced that Muslims are being demonised by the rest of the world. The real problem, they say, is the plight of the Palestinians, the decadent and discriminatory West, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the Kashmir issue, the Bush doctrine – the list runs on. They vehemently deny that those committing terrorist acts are Muslims, and if presented with incontrovertible evidence, say it is a mere reaction to oppression.

The immediate future does not appear hopeful: increasing numbers of mullahs are creating cults around themselves and seizing control of the minds of worshippers. In the tribal areas, a string of new Islamist leaders have suddenly emerged: Baitullah Mehsud, Maulana Fazlullah and Mangal Bagh. Poverty, deprivation, lack of justice and extreme differences of wealth provide the perfect environment for these demagogues to recruit people to their cause. Their gruesome acts of terror are still being perceived by large numbers of Pakistanis merely as a war against imperialist America. This could not be further from the truth.

In the long term, we will have to see how the larger political battle works out between those Pakistanis who want an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic. It may yet be possible to roll back those Islamist laws and institutions that have corroded Pakistani society for over 30 years and to defeat its hate-driven holy warriors. There is no chance of instant success; perhaps things may have to get worse before they get better. But, in the long term, I am convinced that the forces of irrationality will cancel themselves out because they act at random whereas reason pulls only in one direction. History leads us to believe that reason will triumph over unreason, and the evolution of the humans into a higher and better species will continue. Using ways that we cannot currently anticipate, they will somehow overcome their primal impulses of territoriality, tribalism, religiosity and nationalism. But, for now, this must be just a matter of faith.

The author teaches physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

E-mail: newsline@cyber.net.pk

 

My Charlie Wilson War: By Fatima Bhutto

By Fatima Bhutto

Why is the University of Texas naming a chair of Pakistan Studies after the notorious U.S. congressman who helped destabilize that country? Fatima Bhutto—niece of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto—demands an answer.
Pakistan’s new government, the only in the world headed by two former convicts—who have their fingers on the button of a nuclear-armed state, no less—is nothing if not a keen purveyor of irony.
There’s currently an effort underway by the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Texas to raise funds for a chair of Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The chair, a dream of the Pakistani diplomatic community, is to be named after Charlie Wilson. For those who missed the movie, it’s worth noting that of all the people to name a chair of Pakistani Studies after, Charlie Wilson is possibly the stupidest.
Why Pakistan would chose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans.
“Good-Time Charlie,” as Wilson was affectionately known by Afghan warlords and Texan socialites alike, has the dubious reputation of being the godfather of what would later be known as the Taliban in Afghanistan. (He was also buddies with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.) In the 1980s, Wilson led Congress into supporting the CIA covert operation aimed at funneling money and arms into Afghanistan through Pakistan’s military and secret services, the ISI. That money, it should be said, did not go to Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet’s communist invasion. No, it went to the mujahideen in the form of $17 million worth of anti-aircraft weapons, armaments, and other war toys. By the end of 1983, Wilson had managed to siphon $300 million of unused Pentagon cash to the Afghan mujahideen. Before they were the Taliban bad boys of the region, the mujahideen were one of Wilson’s pet projects. And now, Pakistan has decided to honor him by naming a chair of studies after him.
Personally, this is a source of great revulsion for me. My aunt, Benazir, and I never agreed on much, and though she’s no longer alive to debate the point, my guess is that the idea of such a chair would be one more thing we’d not see eye to eye on—she had quite a different relationship with the Taliban than I do.
Why Pakistan would choose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans. According to the university’s newspaper, the Charlie Wilson Chair prompted several professors to send a letter to the dean questioning the naming of the chair. And the Pakistanis? The liberal arts development office at the university said that it “has not heard any concerns from the Pakistani community about the naming of the chair.”
Well if that’s the case, count me as the first. There’s no need to go back in history to find this choice outrageous. Wilson’s legacy remains omnipresent in Pakistan. Inspired by the success of its neighbors, Pakistan now has their very own Taliban (thank you, Charlie), and the ISI continues to exert its might over the country in a distinctly undemocratic way.
Before 2008 was over, Wilson’s boys, the Taliban, had trickled from Pakistan’s northern tribal borders into the heart of the country. They took over Peshawar, once a garden city known for its Buddhist heritage, and in December attacked the Peshawar Model School. The school, which offers co-education to approximately 12,000 of the city’s underprivileged girls and boys, had twelve of its school buses set afire, and a tightly packed set of dynamite detonated in the principal’s office. Several groundskeepers and staff were critically wounded by the explosion and the school was forced to shut down for several days.
But that’s nothing compared to the militants’ hold on the northern city of Swat, the site of a violent civil war that the militants are considered to have won over the past year. The Taliban has set a January 15 deadline in Swat for girls to stop attending school. The choice given to Swat’s parents: take your girls out of school voluntarily, or face Taliban-style justice. Young schoolgirls have already been attacked, a warning of what’s to come should the city continue with its dastardly plan to educate girls.
Wilson’s other pet project, Pakistan’s powerful ISI, also remains a newsmaker. India has been pushing Pakistan to admit that the recent Mumbai attacks were linked to a militant group that was supported by the ISI for years – an accusation Pakistan has not yet accepted, though militants captured in raids earlier this month have supported India’s suspicions. And the Pakistan government would like to hush up the fact that its predecessor, Benazir Bhutto’s administration, aided the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in 1996, and was one of only three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban government, the others being Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bhutto’s minister of the interior, Naserullah Babar, a ruthless man who carried a cane walking stick, publicly called the Taliban “my boys.”
My father, an elected member of parliament, was killed while my aunt was prime minister of Pakistan (by her police force, no less). I was always vocally critical of her government’s extra-judicial killings, rife in Karachi at the time. And I spoke out against her corruption and her nepotistically guided politics, which she didn’t like very much. But it’s her role in recognizing the Taliban that is the gift that truly keeps on giving to me.
See, my email address is public—Google it if you’d like—and I get hundreds of emails a day from Pakistanis. Most are kind and supportive, written by frustrated fellow citizens appalled at the state of our country, seeking someone to commiserate with and debate with. But some are from complete loons, fundamentalist types: “Shame on you,” read one recent email. “Yr a disgrace to the veeson (sic) of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. She has supported the Muslim brothers in Afghanistan and given the blessing of Pakistan to the fighting sons of the mujahideen…Yr a disgrace to our women, your hairs are uncovered and your arms are bare, dressing in western clothes. You’ll see wat we’ll do to you when inshallah we are the powerful. Cover yr breasts.”
It was a charming email, a sign of how far Charlie Wilson’s Taliban has come in Pakistan.
Senator John McCain, unable to focus on what should be a not-so-early retirement, is busy swinging back and forth between India and Pakistan, coddling one country and scolding the other, all the while warning us all that Pakistan is within an inch of being aerially attacked by India. Maybe the Pakistani diplomatic mission can get cracking on funding a chair of Pakistan Studies named after McCain and Condi Rice, who very kindly eased tensions between India and Pakistan and dropped discreet hints that Pakistan may want to rein in Wilson’s chums at the ISI.
So, why not? Maybe one Charlie Wilson Chair of Pakistan Studies simply isn’t enough. Maybe Pakistani diplomatic missions the world over can corral their efforts and set up a whole Charlie Wilson syllabus: Funding Fundamentalists 101; Intro to Training Third-World Secret Services; Right-Wing Dictatorships: Where Have They Gone?
I’d love to sign up for a few classes. Too bad I’m a girl.
Fatima Bhutto is a graduate of Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She is currently at work on a book to be published by Jonathan Cape in 2010 and writes regularly for the New Statesman among other publications. Fatima lives and works in Karachi, Pakistan.

 

George Galloway on Sky News

George Galloway Savages SKY NEWS!

 

We are the web…the web is us…

A Vision of Students Today

an interesting video… ur comments?

 

Party Manifestos

WOW… I was quite surprised. The MQM have always instilled fear in most people’s hearts because of their terror tactics used in the dark years of Karachi’s history. Those of you who lived in Karachi in 1995 will probably remember that era as one that we hope to never ever see again. Was a time when it was never guaranteed that when you left your home…that you would come back again. I am NOT exaggerating. Violent times… during the tenure of BB interestingly enough.

Today we had Dr. Farooq Sattar as our guest and I wasn’t sure what to expect. But the person we met today was a far cry from the murderous reputation the party carries. Don’t get me wrong….. these guys know how to get rough if the need arises. Having said that they have been working hard at trying to make themselves a national party as opposed to a provincial one representing just one section of society. I was impressed with how he did answer some of our direct questions. We asked him would the MQM be willing to reinstate the judiciary if they were voted in the next parliament. He went on record to say YES… and that was a point the party disagreed with the President. We asked him about education and the reforms they planned…. again he came back with an answer that showed obviously these are issues that the party have been discussing and have solid plans to implement them. Now its our job , as the civil society that with each of our politicians…note the promises they make and when they come into parliament THEN mobilize ourselves into ensuring they follow through on their words… I also asked him would the MQM be willing to take on the military and ensure that army does not interfere in the politics of the country again… Again he said yes…. but all the political parties need to be in agreement. Trouble arises when the politicians themselves call on the millitary to benefit themselves…. again THIS is where the civil society really needs to be watchful and not allow our politicians to do this to us anymore. WE are responsible for allowing the politicians to bring Pakistan to where it is today and now is the time to get ready for serious accountability actions. There is a great prayer that I would like to share with you with regards to the nation : Lord give us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.

 

hmmm….

Today was a show I truly enjoyed doing. We had Sheikh Rasheed on as our guest and he always makes for good fun television… On a more serious note it was also interesting to have a political analyst Mr. Shahid Ameen on the show. We talked about the latest US intelligence reports on Iran’s nuclear program and its contradictions with the Bush Administration’s claims… we also talked about the current situation in Pakistan and it was interesting to hear him concede that yes…the emergency imposed on the country has been instrumental in quelling the violence in the NWFP. “you can’t have a state within a state”

Its such a shame that when the Emergency was imposed everyone came out and made a big thing about it instead of understanding why it was being imposed and why it was necessary at the time to stabilize the country. Unfortunately the present govt also reacted to all the civil reactions and a bad situation became worse. Hopefully now that the situation is the NWFP is returning back to normal….Emergency will be lifted by the 16th as promised by the President and we all get back on track. So why the Emergency? because the MMA were not giving the army a green signal to go in and operate functionally to be able to quell the insurgencies….

I hope some lessons will be learned from this episode…first as a society we need to stop being so reactionary and first try to understand the situation and react as and when needed. If we hit the code RED button at everything…. there will come a time when like the CRy wolf story…civil society will stop responding as the feeling will be “har baat pay drama’

Also the govt… present or future need to stop relying solely on the military. I know there are factions in the NWFP *(have to stop saying Northern Areas as that is a different region and is not the area we are talking about ) who are not at all interested in democracy but that is where on the ground action with people to people contact needs to happen and to educate the people…empower them, build up our rural areas to give everyone a decent means of income, and i believe the people will flourish and not be misled by the sort who are hell bent on their own agendas…..

 

For those of you who were alarmed by Newsweek cover of Pakistan as the most dangerous country…

I was browsing some other blogs and added Pak Tea House to my blog roll… thought you may be interested in what’s written there… and pasting another article I found on his blog…. but also pasting the link so you can see the source directly for yourself. For those of you who read the Newsweek article… there is my case in point about media responsibility… Its not just Geo or ARY …its global… anyway…here is another perspective from the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7090632.stm

 

How to take a holiday in Pakistan

 

By Hugh Sykes BBC News, Pakistan

Suicide bombs, battles in tribal areas, and states of emergency tend to put off casual tourists. But the impression such events convey can often be misleading and unrepresentative of a country as a whole.

A few days ago I was sitting in a cafe sipping best Italian espresso and reading a news magazine.

The front page was full of furious faces and clenched fists under the headline, The Most Dangerous Nation in the World isn’t Iraq, it’s Pakistan.

Hugh Sykes journey took him to the Chitral Valley in north west Pakistan

The cafe was in a smart bookshop in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

I sighed and turned to the article inside.

It was a revealing analysis of some penetration of a few places in Pakistan by the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

I pondered the magnifying-glass effect of dramatic news coverage.

The suicide bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming parade in Karachi in October, which killed an estimated 140 people, and the assault on a Taleban pocket in the Swat valley, a tourist destination, took place while I was in Pakistan.

But neither event had a noticeable effect on the general sense of security and stability where I was in Islamabad or on the road.

The notion that Pakistan is more dangerous than Iraq is absurd.

Until recently suicide bombs, murder, and kidnapping were routine in Iraq.

And there is no way I would do there what I have just done in Pakistan: take a holiday.

Never alone

I hired a car in Islamabad and headed out onto the partially completed M2 motorway that will eventually connect Lahore (near the Indian border) with Peshawar (the last city on the road to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan).

But motorways are boring, so I left the M2 and re-joined the ancient Grand Trunk Road, which links most of the main towns of northern Pakistan.

FOREIGN OFFICE TRAVEL ADVICE   We advise against all travel to areas where there are reports of military or militant activity… We advise against all but essential travel to Quetta (Balochistan) and… against using the rail network or bus services in the whole of Balochistan There is a high threat from terrorism and sectarian violence throughout Pakistan… You should avoid any demonstrations or large gatherings of people Full FCO advice for Pakistan

For much of the route it is lined with eucalyptus trees, their almost-autumn leaves and silvery bark shining in the clear October sun as I drove along.

Driving in Pakistan is fast and sometimes chaotic, but not competitive.

They even hoot politely. And one great danger at home you hardly ever have to contend with in Pakistan is drunk drivers and people with concentration blurred by hangovers.

My destinations were Chitral, an isolated valley in the far-north-west on the Afghan border and Gilgit, close to China and Tajikistan.

The round-trip was more than 1,200 miles (nearly 2,000km) and included mountain passes almost half as high as Everest.

And although I was driving alone, I was hardly ever on my own.

There is public transport but not a lot. So, people walk long distances along these high stony roads and if a car passes, they hold out a hand hoping for a lift.

Twelve-year-old Kashif, one of Hugh Sykes’ companions on his road trip

One morning, 12-year-old Kashif sat with me for a while.

He had been expecting to walk for more than an hour to the nearest town, to buy a new pair of shoes.

He showed me the pair he was wearing. The right shoe’s upper was half split away from the sole.

Kashif spoke almost perfect English, good enough to warn me as we turned a tight bend, “Be careful, uncle, road badly damaged round next corner from earthquake.”

Earthquake damage from 2005, still unrepaired.

I spent the night at a hotel next to the old fort at Mastuj, near the snowy Hindu Kush peak Tirich Mir which is 7,690m high (25,200 feet).

The hotel consists of small timber and stone cabins set in a wood of walnut trees and poplars and a plane tree reputed to be 200 years old.

I woke to autumn colours every bit as wondrous as anything I have seen in Kew Gardens or New England.

My next hitch-hiking companion was Mohammed, an English Literature student at Peshawar University.

“So you study Shakespeare?” I asked.

Mohammed, an English Literature student at Peshawar University

“Yes, and Wordsworth.”

And John Donne, I wondered?

“Ah, John Donne,” he raptured.

“John Donne… the poetry of love.”

I do not know any Donne by heart but when I attempted Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man from As You Like It, Mohammed completed every line as we bumped along the dusty road.

Parts of Pakistan are deeply conservative, devoutly Muslim places, and I was not signalled for lifts by many women.

But there were some.

A mother and grandmother, sitting in the back, their heads covered but not their faces and one-year-old Anis and his father Samir in the front with me.

He protested when I took a photograph of the two women but they did not object and posed happily as they waited for the flash.

When I delivered them to the Gilgit hospital where the little boy had an appointment with a heart specialist, his father was so pleased and grateful he gave me a bear hug, and a massive smile that erased his earlier stern objections to taking a picture.

I gave lifts to more than 20 people, learned how to say “no problem” in Urdu (Koi Batnahi), and had to hold back tears when two children said thank you for their lift and offered me money to help pay for the petrol.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday 10 November, 2007 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

 

World Tolerance Day

Today we talked about World Tolerance day on the show amongst other things and it was interesting because we had this doctor in the studio and we discussed how we have become such an intolerant and dysfunctional society as a whole. And it boils down to education, and of course rule of law. These two basics are the reasons why we as a nation are in such a mess. Having said that it was also great to have Sheema Kermani on the show to promote her theatre play which is being performed these days at the Arts council because I truly believe it is through cultural exchanges that promotes tolerance and it is a great way to educate people specially in a country with such low literacy levels.

My children are having their school plays happening this weekend and we are so blessed to have access to a system that gives that kind of exposure to them but I would love to see some kind of exchange happen between the O level system and the govt systems where children interact with each other and learn from each other. As the doctor very clearly said the send of tolerance and acceptance has to be inculcated at the school levels when the children are young and they are able to be taught.

Well it is friday… have yourselves a great weekend… I for one am so glad i don’t have to be up at 4 tomorrow for work though have to go in to shoot the new promo for the show…darn it… but i can’t complain coz i love my work and how many are blessed to be able to say that

have a good one!!