Monday, August 29, 2005

THE WAY IT WAS: My tryst with the Nehrus

Daily times, August 28, 2005
THE WAY IT WAS: My tryst with the Nehrus —Mohammad Sameen Khan

“My name is Indira Nehru,” she said. As an afterthought she added, “Gandhi” and said, “This is my son Rajiv.” The little boy was enjoying his milk made from condensed milk which was then imported from Switzerland

The Sherpur family’s association with the Nehrus was a long one. It began in the early twentieth century. The Sherpur Estate like other estates in UP (some of them were larger than those that had been declared ‘states’) had refused the formal status of ‘states’ with its protocol and formality and had many cases pending before the Allahabad High Court and the Lucknow Chief Court. They therefore needed lawyers to appear in the High Court and the Chief Court on their behalf.

While Mahmudabad and Nanpara chose Mr MA Jinnah of Bombay to represent them in the Oudh Chief Court, Balrampur and some taluqedars of Oudh and the Sherpur Estate of Rohilkhand chose Pandit Moti Lal Nehru.

But in the famous Rani Abadi Begum vs Khalil ullah Khan case, the Sherpur family on behalf of Rani Abadi Begum (who was married to my uncle) chose Hasan Imam and Ghulam Imam of Patna. The respondents Khalil ullah and others were represented by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Iqbal Ahmed (later the chief justice of Allahabad High Court), Naim ullah, Husain Qutbuddin Ahmed and MM Ansari when the case was brought before the Oudh Chief Court .The case was ultimately decided by the Privy Council in favour of Rani Abadi Begum and the Sherpur family.

Since the business class had not emerged in UP by then (it emerged after the First World War) the lawyers’ biggest clients were the taluqedars of Oudh and the big zamindars of Rohilkhand and Agra Division which included the Aligarh District. The lawyer-client relationship between the Sherpur Family and Moti Lal Nehru continued till his death although he had by then emerged as a national leader, of the Congress Party and India.

However, his life style had changed much earlier. He had sent his son Jawahar to Harrow and Cambridge for education and he had also bought the house of Justice Syed Mahmood (the son of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan) and named the house Anand Bhawan. He had developed a close personal relationship with the UP aristocracy.

During the final phase of the Independence movement, I had not merely read the autobiography of Gandhi Ji and Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru but also Joachim Alva’s Men and Supermen of Hindustan which included an excellent write up on Mr Jinnah. I was only a student of seventh class at the Modern School in New Delhi at the time.

However, my two years at the Aligarh Muslim University High School in the 9th and 10th class that transformed me from a scion of the UP aristocracy to an articulate and active political being. During that period I stayed at the English House where the Muslim elite of the subcontinent usually resided.

In 1944 I was admitted in the first year at the famous St Stephen’s College, an elite college. However, during this period I stayed away from national politics. In 1945 my mother Noor-us-Sabah Begum decided that instead of going to Mussoorie for the summer — which was frequented by the UP aristocracy — or Naini Tal — where the UP Governor held court — we should go to Kashmir.

Our lawyer, Mr Bhandari, made the arrangements and rented a villa in Srinagar. A railway compartment was booked for us. We were to go to Lahore from Delhi, stay for a day in Lahore for sightseeing before leaving for Rawalpindi.

Apart from my mother and myself, my two younger sisters, Nuzhat and Nighat, my two kid brothers, Tasneem, who perhaps seven years old, and Jamshed, who was nearing his first birthday, were with us. We were also accompanied by my eldest brother-in-law, Sakhawat Ali Khan of Rampur. He visited a hill station every summer for health reasons. And of course I should not forget to mention the servants, male and female; without them a railway journey would have been unthinkable.

Leaving by the Frontier Mail from Delhi in the evening we arrived in Lahore in the morning .We rented a big Chevrolet for Rs 25 for the whole day and visited the Lahore Fort, the mausoleums of Jehangir and Noor Jehan and the Shalimar Garden. The driver took us to a Muslim restaurant in Anarkali where we had a sumptuous lunch; we were served the best of Lahori food which we enjoyed thoroughly.

In the afternoon we went to the Railway station and were soon ensconced in our reserved compartment. The train moved towards Gujranwala, then a non-descript little town. A little more than an hour later, we arrived at Gujranwala Railway Station. The platform was dimly lit; there were no vendors except women selling boiled eggs with salt. All of them were dressed in kameez and dhoti.

Only 17 years old at the time, I would get down at every station and roam around, visualising myself as a smart young man. My mother always worried till I came back to the compartment. As I wandered around the platform in Gujranwala, I saw a young woman — attractive looking –wearing a white cotton sari running up and down the platform. She was apparently searching for something. I asked, “What do you want? What are you looking for?”

She said, “You can’t do anything about it.”

But when I insisted, she said, “I need a feeding bottle for my son. The bottle I had has broken.” Bottles at that time were made of glass and not plastic.

I immediately rushed to my own compartment and asked my organised mother — who observed purdah — for a feeding bottle. She must have brought at least six for Jamshed, my baby brother. She gave me the bottle.

I rushed to the young lady and gave her the bottle. By this time the train had started moving. I got inside her compartment. She prepared the bottle for her little son and started feeding him while we talked.

“You are an angel. How did you get this bottle?” she asked.

“From my mother who is perhaps more organised than you are. She has six bottles for my little kid brother Jamshed,” I answered.

I asked her who she was.

“My name is Indira Nehru,” she said. As an afterthought she added, “Gandhi” and said, “This is my son Rajiv.” The little boy was enjoying his milk made from condensed milk which was then imported from Switzerland. The can carried the photo of a Swiss maid.

We talked for an hour. She too was going to Srinagar for a holiday. I told her that I was from Sherpur — an estate known for tiger hunting, close to the Nepal border. I also told her that her grandfather, Pandit Moti Lal Nehru, had been our legal adviser.

So this is how I met Indira Gandhi and Rajiv for the first time. As the Americans say it was no big deal for me at all.

The writer is a barrister

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

WSJ: Pakistan's Broad Education Ills; Public Schools May Stir Up More Extremism Than Madrassas

Wall Street Journal
Pakistan's Broad Education Ills; Public Schools May Stir Up More Extremism Than Madrassas
Steve LeVine and Zahid Hussain. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 19, 2005. pg. A.11

Islamabad, Pakistan -- PAKISTAN AND THE WEST have targeted this country's Islamic seminaries for a major overhaul, identifying them as primary sources of militancy and terror. But some critics say the country's abysmal public-education system also enables extremist thought to flourish in the nation and that too little is being done to remedy the situation.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, recently launched a fresh crackdown on the madrassas, as the seminaries are known, where many of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban leaders and their followers were educated. He faces renewed Western pressure to confront militancy within the country's borders since the July 7 London bombings, which were carried out principally by young men of Pakistani descent who spent significant time in this country in recent years.

In response, Gen. Musharraf ordered the deportation of some 1,400 foreign madrassa students and vowed to add science, math and other academic subjects to the schools' almost wholly religious curricula, which he said has contributed to a "jihadi culture" in Pakistan.

But many authorities on Pakistani education say government-run schools are a more pernicious contributor to the spread of such thought. While madrassas teach an estimated 1.7 million students, public-school enrollment is some 25 million students, according to government statistics. And the public schools' failure to offer a rigorous, secular alternative to religious extremism, as well as their own biased and inflammatory teachings, make the population fertile ground for Islamist recruiters.

The government-school curriculum was revised in the 1970s and 1980s as part of an injection of Islam into public policy by military dictator Zia ul-Haq. Gen. Zia ordered textbook revisions, from primary through high school, that critics say misinterpreted history, encouraged antipathy toward India's Hindus and extolled jihad, or holy war, as a response to perceived slights to the Muslim religion.

Gen. Musharraf recently ordered a reversal of some of Gen. Zia's curriculum, and the results are apparent in new grade-school textbooks, which are supplied free to students. But critics cite remaining problems, particularly regarding largely Hindu India, Pakistan's bitter rival.

For example, a fifth-grade Punjab provincial textbook called "Social Studies Class 5," published in September 2004, plays down the violence of the eighth-century Muslim conquest of South Asia and provides a narrow description of fierce resistance to it. "The Muslims introduced Islamic culture in this region and maintained peace and order. . . . [But] the non-Muslims, especially the Hindus, did not like the Muslims as they looked upon them as usurpers," the book states.

"The root cause of this terrorism and religious extremism is this curriculum in textbooks," said Ahmad Salim, a Pakistani scholar who co-wrote a seminal 2003 study of the public-school curriculum called "The Subtle Subversion." "These texts have been in the schools for 25 years."

Specialists say the textbooks scratch the surface of an education crisis in this country of some 140 million people. About 60% of the population can't read or write, according to official figures. The average Pakistani boy receives just five years of education, and girls half that; one-third of Pakistani children never attend school at all.

Because Pakistan devotes just 2% of its gross national product to education -- among the world's lowest rates -- large areas of the country have just shells of schools, lacking furniture, books and sometimes even teachers. The condition of the schools, along with general poverty, result in a 50% dropout rate after the first three years of primary school, experts say.

Critics say the government also understates the attendance problem. Official government data, for example, put the school-age population -- 5 years to 16 years old -- at 40 million to 50 million children, but critics say that is half the actual number.

While madrassas are privately run schools, they are free to the children who attend them, which is part of their appeal -- the students are housed, fed, clothed and schooled at no cost to the family. Under Gen. Musharraf's crackdown on these seminaries, the schools now must register with the government and add more-traditional academic classes to their curricula. Public schools, although more widespread, aren't geographically available to all Pakistani children, and families still have to come up with money to support the child.

In an interview, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz defended public schools and said the amount spent on education has risen markedly as government revenue has improved in recent years. The government has projected $7.2 billion in spending over a 14-year period ending in 2015 to revamp public education. Foreign assistance has boosted the sum. The U.S., for instance, has provided a six-year, $178 million grant to build schools, train teachers and improve adult literacy, and an additional $87 million for higher education.

In order to increase attendance, some schools are paying parents the equivalent of $3.33 a month to keep girls in school. "The spending is more than it's ever been," Mr. Aziz said. "Every education indicator is pointing north."

Nasim Ashraf, a minister of state, says the government also is working on adult literacy as a key to transforming the country. He said new centers set up by the National Commission for Human Development, which he heads, already have taught 200,000 women to read. "We want to make one generation literate. Then your overall attainment levels go up," Mr. Ashraf said.

The government also has encouraged Pakistanis to "adopt" public schools in order to improve them. Three years ago, Zarene Malik and Shelale Abbasi adopted Girls School 52 in Islamabad.

The two women, who formerly ran a private school and now work as education consultants, said that, at this point, they have set modest goals for the school. Since most Pakistani girls currently drop out before high school, they said, a realistic aim isn't to try to prepare them for further education, but simply to teach an employable skill.

"We don't need a country of bachelor's degrees," Ms. Malik said. "They need to be put into trades, given entrepreneurial skills, so they can start earning."

---

Two Schools of Thought

Critics long have blamed Pakistan's Islamic madrassas for nurturing a
jihadi culture, but many now say the abysmal state of public schools bears
much of the blame for enabling extremist thought to flourish. Some education
statistics:

-- Number of madrassas in Pakistan: 11,221, with 1.7 million students

-- Number of public schools: 187,000, with 25 million students

-- Pakistani schoolage children not attending classes: 40%

-- Drop out rate in first three years of school: 50%

Sources: Ministry of Religious Affairs; National Commission for Human
Development

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Bangladesh on path to religious extremism?

South Asia Tribune, August 22, 2005
Synchronized Countrywide Bombings Promise Bangladesh a Bumpy Ride

By Prof. Taj Hashmi
Special to the South Asia Tribune

VANCOUVER, Canada, August 25: It is very disturbing indeed, that two innocent people died, hundreds wounded and millions terrorized by a spate of synchronized bombings in 63 out of the 64 district towns of Bangladesh, including the capital Dhaka, on the morning of 17th August between 10:30 and 11:30 am.

Around 400 “home-made” bombs, with not-so-crude electric timers, came off in government offices, court houses, public parks, universities, airport, and shopping centers and on roadsides. Although the number of dead and injured is relatively smaller, in comparison to the toll of roadside bombs in Iraq, yet the message is very clear, ominously frightening, for those who do not want Bangladesh turn “Islamic” or instable for an indefinite period.

The most alarming part of the story is not the first most synchronized bombing in history, at 400-odd places, but the widely perceived assumption of direct involvement of some clandestine Islamist group having links with Al Qaeda in the bombing. Leaflets in Bengali, and surprisingly in Arabic, were found nearby, which conveyed an ominous message in the name of the Jamaat ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a party of holy warriors said in part:

“People who are against Allah are now running the country. The process, under which the head of the state and other officials are elected, is not in accordance with the Islamic rule. Neither the Koran nor the Hadis approves democracy or secularism, formulated by Kafirs [non-believers] and Mushriks [pagans].”

It calls upon the Government and all the political parties of the country to abandon democracy and adopt the Sharia or Islamic code. “Otherwise, the organization will resort to Qital [all-out killing] for the establishment of the rules of Allah on His land.”

This is the message in the most unequivocal expression. It also prescribes severe punishment for George W. Bush, “the biggest terrorist in the world”, and Tony Blair and their local supporters in Bangladesh, including those who run NGOs and work for the government.

The shadowy JMB, banned earlier by the Government for terrorizing people in certain pockets of northwestern Bangladesh under the leadership of one “Bangla Bhai”, drew the attention of New York Times correspondent, Eliza Griswold in early this year (“The Next Islamist Revolution?” January 23, 2005). Griswold is not the first Western reporter to draw such an alarmist picture of Bangladesh. In April 2002, Bertil Lintner wrote a similar piece in the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Wall Street Journal, that an “Islamic revolution” was in the offing in this poor, overpopulated and the most corrupt country in the world.

However, the then US ambassador Mary Anne Peters registering her anger at the FEER and WSJ for publishing such biased articles on “a liberal Muslim nation” demanded an investigation to find out the motive behind the story. Philip Bowring, former editor of the FEER, also came forward to criticize the Western “Islam-bashers”, including Dow Jones, who owns the periodical. Many Bangladeshi academics, journalists and politicians condemned both Lintner and Griswold for their stories. The Government continued denying the existence of any “Bangla Bhai” and his terrorist gang for quite some time.

After the arrest of some workers of several clandestine Islamist groups by the Government, including Dr Asadullah Ghalib, a university professor and one of the top leaders of the JMB, there have been sporadic bomb attacks on public rallies, movie theatres and Muslim shrines since early 2005. Attacks on the minority Ahmadiya Muslim mosques and properties and demands to declare the community “non-Muslim” have become endemic as well. Several politicians died of bomb attacks. The present British High Commissioner and Sheikh Hasina, former Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, narrowly survived grenade attacks in public places during the last one year.

From police interrogations of more than a hundred arrested suspects of the latest bomb attacks, mostly connected with the JMB, it appears that more than 1500 JMB activists planted the bombs with a view to pressuring the Government to release their mentor, Dr Ghalib, and to warn both the ruling and the main secular opposition parties of the dire consequences of not establishing a Sharia-based government in the country.

The JMB is just the youth front of the global jihadi network of Al Mujahideen. There are scores of branches and offshoots of the parent organization in Bangladesh. They often take new names and banners to evade arrest and detection. The Harkatul Jihad, Hizbut Tawheed and Shahadat-i-Hikmah have been some of the offshoots since the mid-1990s.

It is widely known that several ruling party law makers and a minister are directly connected with some of the militants in northwestern Bangladesh. It is widely believed that Islamists of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (and most probably Taliban sympathizers from Pakistan) have been indoctrinating, arming and financing the JMB for quite some time.

The sharp polarization of the polity between the so-called secular “pro-Independence” and the not-so-secular “Islam-loving” groups has been a contributing factor in the Islamization of the country. Both the “secular” group under Sheikh Hasina and the “Islam loving” group under prime minister Khaleda Zia have been championing the cause of Islam ever since the overthrow of military dictatorship in 1990. It seems, as if the two major parties, Hasina’s Awami League and Khaleda’s BNP, have been competing with each other to prove their Islamic credentials with a view to securing more votes from the God-fearing Bengali Muslims.

Meanwhile, President Ziaur Rahman had formally scrapped “Secularism” and “Socialism” from the Constitution. His successor, General Ershad further Islamized the polity by making Islam the “state religion” through an amendment of the Constitution in 1988. Three successive governments under Khaleda and Hasina since 1991 could neither restore “Secularism” as enshrined in the original Constitution, nor scrap the “state religion” amendment. Realizing the political importance of Islam in this backward and predominantly Muslim country, no major political party champions the cause of secularism by scrapping the “state religion” clause from the Constitution.

It seems, the biggest stumbling block in the way of secularism is the popular culture of the vast majority of the population. Since the immediate post-independence government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1972-75), regarded by many as the founding father of the nation, miserably failed in delivering the promised poverty free, prosperous Bangladesh in a “secular” and “socialist” authoritarian democracy, most Bangladeshis have become suspicious of secularism and socialism.

And while democracy has remained elusive, the average Bangladeshi Muslim has remained loyal to traditional Islamic and authoritarian values. The changed circumstances of the post-Cold War era – the disappearance of the Soviet style socialism and the advent of market economy and Globalization – also brought Islam in the arena of global politics. This time it appeared not as an ally but as an adversary of the hegemonic West, mainly represented by the US and its allies.

Islamism in Bangladesh has similarities with its counterparts in Muslim majority countries like Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia. All of them had gone through secular National Socialism and autocracies under civil/military rulers before turning Islamic during the last decade and a half. Islamism in these countries may be attributed to the failure of the promised welfare state under pseudo-socialism or corrupt and inefficient state capitalism.

Although Bangladesh emerged as a symbol of freedom and equality, unfortunately, it is only symbolic and historical as since its emergence in 1971, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, far faster than anywhere in South Asia. Around 50% of the population is very poor and more than 35% are practically unemployed. The tax evading rich, the absolutely corrupt politicians, bureaucracy and thousands of bank defaulters have accumulated more than $60 billion in “black money” since 1971.

While the rich and powerful get their children educated in English medium schools, at home and abroad, and are the most employable in the country, the fast disappearing middle class send their children to Bengali medium schools and the poor mostly send their children to Islamic seminaries called madrassas. Besides the stream of the under-employed Bengali medium graduates are millions of unemployed/underemployed madrassa graduates.

No wonder, sections of these frustrated, angry young men have swelled the ranks of the Islamist militants, including the ultra-extremist JMB. The situation is very similar to what Algeria and Afghanistan have been experiencing, the class war between the Western (secular) and vernacular (Islamic) elites.

Islamists’ anger and frustration are reflected in their demand for the introduction of the Sharia law, which has several dimensions. Firstly, the demand smacks of their desire to go back to the utopian Islamic past in the 7th century, presumed to be an era of peace, justice, prosperity and tolerance.

Secondly, besides its spiritual aspect, a Sharia-based state would employ mullahs as law makers, judges, teachers and administrators. So, the demand for a Sharia-based administration has pure and simple secular logic. One has reasons to agree with a Western scholar that the ongoing Islamist movements in the world reflect the adherents’ desire for modernity. It is too trite an assumption that all Islamic movements, including the militant ones, are backward looking, anti-modern.

Those who think that there is something inherent in the Islamic scripture conducive to the growth of terror, should ask themselves as to why “Islamic terror” did not disturb the world peace during the 700 years between the crushing defeat of the Ismaili Assassins and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

There is likelihood of missing the forest due to trees. Explaining “Islamic terror” only in terms of cultural, political and social factors is inaccurate and subjective. Unfortunately, the most relevant economic factor is missing in most analyses of “Islamic terror” in Bangladesh and beyond.

There is no denying that thousands of ultra-extremist Islamists do exist in Bangladesh along with millions of frustrated youths, some resigned to their miserable fate while others engaged in criminal activities. However, the mere existence of Islamist terrorists in a country does not necessarily lead to an Islamic Revolution. One may apply Lenin’s classic theory of revolution in rejecting the over-simplified, alarmist views of Lintner, Griswold and others, with regard to their “impending Islamic Revolution” theses.

According to Lenin, there are three prerequisites for a revolution: a) mass discontent; b) gradual infiltration of ideas and c) a weak government. A well-organized party to lead the people is also a requirement. The partial existence of only the first and second prerequisites does not make Bangladesh a good candidate for an Islamic Revolution at all.

Without going into details of Iran, the Sudan and Afghanistan with regard to their respective Islamic Revolutions, the existence of a free press, the semblance of democracy, the existence of scores of Islamic organizations having diverse views, and above all, almost the total disregard for the mullah as their potential rulers by more than 90 per cent of the voters (as reflected in all the parliamentary elections during the last 35 years), Islamists have absolutely no hope of staging a revolution or a sustainable military coup d’etat.

However, what is possible and most likely is the recurrence of more attacks in the future. Since one single factor did not lead to these attacks overnight, there is no single solution to the problem either. Nothing would be more futile than trying to find out a cultural solution of terrorism, bypassing the growing economic disparity between the rich and powerful (corrupt and insensitive) and the weak and poor of Bangladesh.

Economically marginalized and politically disenfranchised poor and lower-middle classes must be given better sustenance, including education and healthcare, dignity and respect before someone tries to find out a solution of terrorism. The inverted pyramid of solution, built by liberal-democrat politicians and intellectuals, both within and outside Bangladesh, must be reversed in the following order: economic-social-political-cultural or religious, not the other way round.

Those who expect normal behavior from sections of the indoctrinated terrorists, must isolate them from the vast majority of the not yet infested hoi polloi, not by resorting to counter-terrorist measures, which are effective in the short-run, but by establishing real democracy ensuring real participation by the vast majority. This, however, does not mean that democracy would only guarantee people’s right to elect their representatives, but they must have the sense of belonging to the state by active participation in the governance. This would eventually narrow the gap between the rich and poor.

There is nothing utopian about this. By curtailing and eventually crushing corruption at every level and making everyone accountable to the law, this can be achieved under a group of dedicated leaders. Bangladesh having better land-man ratio than Japan and South Korea has no reason to remain poor. The dedicated young leadership, if and when emerges from the corner, can easily reverse the process of going downhill since 1947. It is really a big wonder and the biggest tragedy for Bangladesh that the region, which in 1949 was richer than all the countries in Southeast and East Asia but Japan and Singapore, now is on par with the poor to very poor countries in per capita income.

In the short-run, unless the “liberal democratic” parties and most importantly, the civil society come forward in unison to fight extremism instead of calling names and vilifying each other as “terrorists and murderers”, there is no remedy against terrorism. Only lip service to secularism and the “holier than thou” attitude of almost all the political leaders of the country will not de-terrorize the already terrorized polity. Since terrorism is a global factor, its symptoms cannot be eliminated in Bangladesh unless there is a global attempt to contain it.

In sum, we should always keep in mind that terrorism is all about money-power-respect. When individuals or groups, who do not believe in resigning to their miserable fate by turning fatalist either by joining devotional religious groups – Sufi, mystic orders – or, by taking drugs and other intoxicants as modes of escaping, resort to violence.

Small scale violence at local level, not in the name of any ideology – religion or liberation of motherland, Palestine, Kashmir or Chechnya– is called robbery or extortion. When there is an ideology behind such violence we call it “terrorism”. In short, terrorism is a reaction to exploitation, oppression, expropriation and humiliation of people not strong enough to retaliate openly.

Fortunately for Bangladesh, the bulk of the exploited/expropriated/disempowered people have still remained fatalist either by becoming religious – by joining one of the scores of Sufi orders or the pacifist Tableeghi Jamaat – or, by just remaining passive/drug addict to escape the suffering and pain, waiting for death or the paradise to get their respective nirvana. If nothing positive is done to reverse the table, more “fire works” are in the offing. Brace yourself Bangladesh for a long bumpy ride, if not a disastrous crash landing.

The writer is a Professor in the History Department, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He is a PhD in modern South Asian History and has taught at universities in Australia, Bangladesh and Singapore and is presently teaching modern history at Simon Fraser University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and on the Board of Editors of the Contemporary South Asia.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Religious parties Vs.secularists

Daily Times, August 20, 2005

JI urges religious parties to fight secularists
MNA condemns disqualifying candidates with religious schools’ certificates
Staff Report

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan naib ameer Hafiz Mohammad Idrees on Friday urged religious parties to regroup and tackle the secular onslaught against seminaries.

Talking at Jamia Mosque’s Syed Maududi Institute, Idrees said the country’s rulers were following a foreign agenda and it was imperative to launch Jihad against them by mobilising the people. He condemned the ban on magazines Friday Special, Zarb-e-Islam and Wajoud. “The only fault of these papers was their commitment to expose Western and the ruling party’s double standards,” he added.

The JI leader said the local council elections had been compromised when the Sindh government “allowed” the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) to forcibly confiscate ballot boxes. He said the electoral staff was caught filling ballot boxes with bogus votes in Karachi. He added that the government’s claims of foolproof security for the polls had proved false in the wake of the people killed in the election’s first phase.

Meanwhile, Jamiat Ittehadul Ulema president MNA Maulana Abdul Malik condemned the disqualification of candidates with religious schools’ certificates. He told the congregation at Jamia Mansoorah during Friday prayers that religion and politics should be separate. Malik said several Muslim rulers and the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) companions had graduated from the Suffah at Masjid-e-Nabvi, adding, “They were qualified in Quran and Sunnah which proved its worth in their practical lives.” The people present asked the government to accept the equivalent certificates issued by religious institutions for all practical purposes.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

"Jihad" in curriculum

Daily Times, August 19, 2005
Jihad still part of lesson plan in Pakistani public schools
* Texts promote hatred and jihad, say reformers
Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Each year, thousands of Pakistani children learn from history books that Jews are tight fisted moneylenders and Christians are vengeful conquerors, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday. One textbook tells kids they should be willing to die as martyrs for Islam, it added.

“They aren’t being indoctrinated by extremist mullas in madrassas, the private Islamic seminaries often blamed for stoking militancy in Pakistan. They are pupils in public schools learning from textbooks approved by President Pervez Musharraf’s administration,” LAT reported.

“Since joining the US as an ally in its ‘war on terror’ four years ago, Musharraf has urged Pakistanis to shun radical Islam and pursue ‘enlightened moderation’,” it added.

“Musharraf and US officials say education reforms are crucial to defeating extremism in Pakistan, the only Islamic nation armed with nuclear weapons. Yet reformers who study the country’s education system say public school lessons still promote hatred against non-Muslims and urge jihad,” it reported.

It quoted Rubina Saigol, a US-trained expert on education, as saying that she had been arguing that, in fact, Pakistan’s state system was the biggest madrassa. She told LAT that madrassas were blamed for everything and that they were doing a lot of things she would disagree with, but state ideologies of hate and a violent and negative nationalism were getting out there where madrassas could not hope to reach.

“The current social studies curriculum guidelines for grades 6 and 7 instruct textbook writers and teachers to ‘develop aspiration for jihad’ and ‘develop a sense of respect for the struggle of the Muslim population for achieving independence,” LAT reported

“In the NWFP, which is governed by supporters of the ousted Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan, the federally approved Islamic studies textbook for eighth grade teaches students they must be prepared ‘to sacrifice every precious thing, including life, for jihad’,” the paper said.

It further quoted the chapter as saying that at present, jihad was continuing in different parts of the world and numerous mujahideen (holy warriors) of Islam were involved in defending their religion, and independence, and to help their oppressed brothers across the world.

“The textbook for adolescent students says Muslims are allowed to ‘take up arms’ and wage jihad in self-defence or if they are prevented from practicing their religion,” it added.

It quoted the textbook as saying that when God’s people were forced to become slaves of man-made laws, they were hindered from practicing the religion of their God and that when all the legal ways in this regard were closed, then power should be used to eliminate the evil.

It quoted the book as saying that if Muslims were being oppressed, then jihad was necessary to free them from the cruel oppression.

It again quoted the book as saying that ‘jihad’ could mean peaceful struggle as well as holy war and that jihad could be waged on several levels, beginning with a peaceful, inner struggle for one’s own soul and escalating to killing ‘infidels’.

“But Pakistani critics of the public school system maintain that jihad’s softer sense is easily lost in lessons that emphasise that Muslims are oppressed in many parts of the world, and that encourage fellow Muslims to fight to free them,” LAT reported.

It quoted Hussain Haqqani, a Pakistani author and professor of international relations at Boston University, as saying that some people coming from the regular school system were volunteering for various kinds of jihad, which was not jihad in classical Islamic theory, but actually terrorism in the modern concept.

“‘All of that shows that somehow the schooling system has fed intolerance and bigotry’,” it quoted Haqqani as saying.

“‘About 97 percent of Pakistan’s people are Muslims, so it’s not unusual for its government to promote Islamic values in public schools. Many Muslims find that versions of history taught in countries dominated by non-Muslims are biased against Islam’,” the paper quoted him as saying.

“‘But Pakistan’s public education system goes beyond instilling pride in being Muslim and encourages bigotry that can foment violence against the other’,” it quoted Haqqani as saying.

“Under Pakistan’s federal government, a national curriculum department in Islamabad sets criteria for provincial textbook boards, which commission textbooks for local public schools,” LAT reported.

“Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired army general and former head of the military’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, was named education minister in September to revive a stalled reform effort. He acknowledges that the job is still only half finished,” the paper added.

LAT quoted the education minister of a nation with Asia’s highest illiteracy rates as saying that he was determined to have specialists rewrite course guidelines and textbooks, from the first grade to the college level, so that the curriculum would be in line with that of any other advanced country.

He told LAT, “We don’t want to condemn any religion, which we will not.”

“A study of the public school curriculum and textbooks by 29 Pakistani academics in 2002 concluded that public school ‘textbooks tell lies, create hatred, inculcate militancy and much more’,” the paper said.

“The study by the independent Sustainable Development Policy Institute angered religious conservatives, and even a few liberals, who saw it as an attack on the country’s Islamic values, or even a plot by Western governments and rival India to subvert the Islamic state,” it added.

“Ashraf Qazi headed the ISI from 1993 to 1995, when the intelligence agency was recruiting students from Pakistan’s madrassas to join the extremist Taliban militia. Under Ashraf Qazi’s watch, the Taliban won its first major victory, the seizure of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, with ISI training and weapons,” the paper reported.

“His critics say that makes Ashraf Qazi the wrong man to take on hard-line Islamic parties and clerics who are blocking education reforms at every turn. But the education minister insists that he will fight hard to correct a curriculum that he calls lopsided,” the paper added.

It quoted Ashraf Qazi as saying that it would be easier to end extremism in Pakistan if Western governments did more to resolve conflicts that angered Muslims worldwide, such as the war in Iraq, the dispute with India over the region of Kashmir, or the Palestinians’ struggle against Israel.

LAT reported that Ashraf Qazi insisted he was not an extremist, but he offered a short history of the Middle East conflict that left little doubt that he wanted Pakistan’s children to continue learning a distinct view of the world.

LAT quoted him as saying that Palestinians were promised their state and originally they were the owners of the entire area. “‘OK, Israel was created by the British and they indulged in terrorism. The Jews were the worst terrorists in the world’,” the paper quoted him as saying.

“‘They created their state. Fine. Now that everybody has accepted it as a fait accompli, there was also acceptance of a Palestinian state. The Israelis, on one pretext or another, have not granted them that state. And every time something comes up in the Security Council, America vetoes it’,” it quoted the education minister as saying.

“After it won independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan had a secular public school system. President Ziaul Haq, a former military dictator, ordered Islamic education to be incorporated into the public school curriculum in the 1980s as he consolidated power with the support of hard-line clerics,” LAT said, adding, “Pakistan is still grappling with the lethal forces that Zia’s ‘Islamisation’ policy unleashed.”

“Educators pressing for deeper reforms suspect that Musharraf wants to maintain elements of Zia’s strategy in order to preserve the military’s dominant role in Pakistani society,” it said.

LAT quoted Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor who specializes in high-energy and nuclear physics, as saying that reforming education was not a part of Musharraf’s agenda because it would require squarely confronting the mullas.

Madrassa statistics in India

Daily Times, August 19, 2005
India’s madrassas 3 x Pakistan’s
By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: India outdoes Pakistan in the number of madrassas or Islamic seminaries operating within it. In Pakistan, there are just 10,000 registered madrassas, but in India, 27,518 registered Islamic seminaries dot the country except for a few states.

According to a reply filed by the government in response to a question in the parliament on Thrusday, the states without madrassas are Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Pondicherry and Jammu and Kashmir – a surprising occurrence since the state is India’s only Muslim dominated region.

The states of Kerala and Madhya Pradesh have the most number of madrassas with 6,000 in each. They are followed by Uttar Pradesh (4,292), Bihar (4,102), Rajasthan (1,985) and Gujarat (1,727). Even remote areas like the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have 54 madrassas. The states of Sikkim and Goa have only one registered seminary each. The government report says that the state government of Jammu and Kashmir intimated that there were no madrassas, but the State Wakf Board was running 86 private schools.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Madrassa registration issue



Daily Times, August 16, 2005
Sindh, Balochistan madrassa registration now mandatory
Staff Report

KARACHI/QUETTA: Registration and annual audits have been made mandatory for religious seminaries operating in Sindh and Balochistan, by amendments to the Societies Registration Act 1860, introduced on Monday.

Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad promulgated the Societies Registration (Sindh Amendment) Ordinance 2005 under which no seminary can be established or operated in the province without being registered under the act.

A new section, 21, has been included in the 1860 Act, with four clauses. Clause 1 of the new section says, “All Deeni Madaris (religious seminaries) shall not be established or operated without being registered under this act and shall be subject to the provisions of this act in addition to what is provided in sub-sections (2), (3), and (4).”

Clause 2 of the section says all seminaries will have to submit annual reports of their performance to the registrars concerned.

Clause 3 says, “Every registered Deeni Madrassa shall maintain accounts of its actual expenses and receipts and annually submit its report to the registrar. The Deeni Madaris should have audit of their accounts done by auditors and submit their audited accounts to registrars.” Clause 4 of the new section states, “No Deeni Madrassa shall teach or publish any literature which promotes militancy or spreads sectarianism or religious hatred.”

APP adds: Earlier on Saturday, Balochistan Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani promulgated the Societies Registration (Balochistan Amendment) Ordinance 2005 by amending the Societies Registration Act 1860.

Section 21 has been added to the Societies Registration Act 1860 after Section 20 and it will come into force immediately.

The new section introduced in the 1860 Act says all madrassas shall not be established or operated without being registered under this act and shall be subject to the provisions of this act in addition to what is provided in sub-sections (2) and (4). Every madrassa shall submit annual report of its performance to the registrar.

Every registered madrassa shall maintain its accounts and annually submit its report to the registrar. The madrassas should have their audits done by auditors and submit their audited accounts to the registrar.

No madrassa will teach or publish any literature, promoting militancy, sectarianism or religious hatred. The amended ordinances say a madrassa means a religious institution primarily for religious education with boarding and lodging facilities.

Pakistan - 58 years old

The News, August 16, 2005
The good and bad of Pakistan at 58
Imtiaz Alam

The writer is the Editor Current Affairs of The News and founder and Secretary General of SAFMA

Amazing are the ways, to the point of madness, at least in Lahore, where dozens die in road accidents on the occasion, the people celebrate Independence Day in Pakistan. Such great enthusiasm is seldom seen on any other occasion, nor, perhaps, is it seen in any other newly independent nation, including India. Last year, when I was driving my Indian friends through Lahore on the Day, they were really stunned to see the enthusiasm. The greater the sense of alienation, the higher is the resolve to commemorate one's nationhood. Isn't it fantastic? And this is what surprises me most and keeps my hopes in my country. I am two years younger to Pakistan and have grown though all its ups and downs and, interestingly, my failures in life are similar to that of Pakistan's. Despite decades of efforts we have not achieved what could we have in almost every department of human progress. Let us ask ourselves: What is good and what is bad about Pakistan?

When I asked a group of young media practitioners, before writing these lines, what is so good or bad about Pakistan and asked them to give me five good reasons about our country, they were able to tell only two or three good points to boast about: That Pakistan gives them a sense of national identity and the people are quite caring, while the ruling elite, who did not allow democracy and the institutions to grow and have maltreated the people, is the worse. Despite being dissatisfied with the sate of state's affairs and with the way the country is being run, they haven't lost hope in country's future and want to change things. Their sense of alienation has not still touched the point of desperation or hopelessness and all of them want full return to democracy and institution building with a focus on good governance and human resource development. Their response to my question is quite amazing and encouraging, in the sense that, despite their alienation, they have full faith in the destiny of the nation.

If this is the overall trend of optimism of our youth, then one can have high hopes about one's country. When I asked some of the hundreds of thousands of pillion-motorcyclists on the Independence Day about their sense of jubilation, their hodgepodge answers, however, confirmed that this is just not the catharsis of their frustration but also reaffirmation of their sense of belonging to their country. I wish, if instead of a mad rush for rash driving, they could also reflect rationally bout the nature and future of their country, which is in fact the responsibility of their elders, teachers, leaders and journalists. No less amazing is their faith in the Founder of the Nation, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whom we have, in fact, betrayed in every sense and also whatever he believed in. What is the balance sheet of 58 years of Pakistan?

Although it is difficult to sum up, we can still identify some of the major areas of successes and failures. To be precise, Pakistan's history can be summed up as a history of missed opportunities and successive failures of too much experimentation with the system of governance. Instead of being self-congratulatory as every government is, we will focus only on our striking failures that are as follows: 1) most glaring is the failure to establish the federal democratic structures and institutions in which the people could have full confidence. Although the politicians failed thrice -- during the late 40s and the 50s, 1972-77 and the 90s, -- the military bureaucratic elite never allowed the people to determine their destiny and kept its stranglehold by authoritarian means and autocratic structures. No other nation, and in such a short time, has experimented with so many systems of governance as Pakistan has under its military and civilian rulers.

2) Although most fascinating has been the battle of ideas in Pakistan, it could not help overcome the conflict of its ideological personality, despite the clear direction set by the Father of the Nation. Mr Jinnah had a very clear democratic and secular view about the nature of the state of Pakistan, which had no place for theocracy or dictatorship. The betrayal of the Quaid's democratic and constitutionalist legacy, by both military and civilian rulers, in internal politics led to an ulterior foreign policy that brought us into conflict with our neighbours, particularly India. The Quaid had no enmity against India, despite a bloody partition, nor had he subscribed to an essentially anti-Indian nationalism, which was, in fact, an invention of self-convenience by an isolated leadership of the Muslim League and the military dictators who thrived on an anti-Indian bogy. Mr Jinnah had a foreign policy in his mind which was based on 'enmity with none and friendship with all' and Canada-America like relationship between India and Pakistan.

3) Disrespect for the rule of law starts from the top state institutions, which defies the Constitution and goes down to the common public that avoid paying taxes or observing laws that are good for their own existence, such as the traffic laws. This has been the fundamental cause behind the failure of governance in Pakistan and systemic collapse of its institutions and imposition of garrison over civil society. If any institution has developed, that too at the cost of all other institutions, it is the armed forces that are proportionately far more developed -- perhaps even over-developed -- than civilian institutions. This can be seen as a blessing in disguise for a new nation, if the armed forces confine themselves to the task of security which they failed to preserve due to their over indulgence in civilian matters. And this is the single most potent distortion that has brought all kinds of other distortions into the system and policies.

4) An overwhelming obsession with the military security, besides bringing the biggest distortion into the whole paradigm of nation building, resulted in various insecurities, including human insecurity. Indeed, we should have a credible defence but not at the cost of our people, a majority of who remain illiterate and vulnerable to endemic poverty. Instead of becoming a republic at the service of its people, Pakistan became a national security state that could protect neither its internal security nor its external security. Neglect of social sectors and human resources have been so glaring that Pakistan lags behind Sub-Saharan Africa on various social indicators. 5) Coupled with an elitist paradigm of development, a flawed import-substitution strategy and feudal large landholdings, Pakistan could not outgrow a slow pace of economic growth that could equally benefit its people. Consequently, the proportion of people living under the poverty-line is one of the highest in world. The development of human resources suffered most under this paradigm of development that encouraged crony capitalism, preserved landlordism and made rent-seeking and corruption the dominant mode of accumulation.

6) Above all, despite having experimented with various forms of government, Pakistan is yet to evolve its social contract that it did in the form of 1973 Constitution that was neither respected by the politicians nor generals.

All these drawbacks reflect upon the failure of governance in Pakistan. The tragedy of these expeditious experimentations is that neither could dictatorship nor could a flawed democracy deliver in Pakistan. Still worse, this is perhaps one of the few nations in the world that has not learnt any lesson from its past mistakes. Like a beginner, Pakistan must go back to its Founding Father, M. A. Jinnah, for guidance and take a secular republican route to people's empowerment and progress for all and not just for the few. It has to be not only at peace with itself, but also with the world, especially with its neighbours. The time is still not lost on us and we must reverse all that has not worked for nation-building and progress. We can mobilise the energies of our people by making them the true sovereign and focusing on their well-being. Only a well educated, democratic, peaceful and progressive Pakistan can ensure the future of our nation and its multi-ethnic components. What Pakistan needs most is a new kind of dynamic, democratic, forward looking and modern leadership that follows the footsteps of the Quaid.
Email: imtiazalampak@yahoo.com

Friday, August 12, 2005

Popularity of hate-provoking literature!

Daily Times, August 13, 2005
Banned literature being distributed in Punjab offices

* Several top govt officials want to continue reading material
* Home Dept says it confiscated such material in its offices

By Ali Waqar

LAHORE: Hate-provoking religious literature is being openly and freely disseminated in government offices including the offices of senior bureaucrats in the Punjab Civil Secretariat, Daily Times found on Thursday.

Even though such banned religious material has been in most government departments, only the Punjab Home Department, announced that they were confiscating the material immediately.

Some unknown person visited the Civil Secretariat on Thursday and freely distributed extremist religious propaganda material, including the latest issues (August 2005) of monthly newspaper Majalat-ul-Dawa published from Lahore, weekly newspaper Ghazwa and another monthly newspaper for women Tayyabaat.

“We don’t know who the person is, but he visits the offices regularly and distributes this material for free,” said a high up who had the material on his table.

“Its well known that the literature is banned. But no one cares and puts this material on the tables in the waiting rooms,” he said casually. Punjab Home Secretary Hasan Waseem Afzal told Daily Times that the department had confiscated all such issues.

He said that there was a strict policy on hate material and 133 publications were banned under Section 99A of the Pakistan Penal Code. “Only literature with genuine religious content will be allowed on stalls. We have recently banned booklet Manzra-e-Khushab on the recommendation of Muttahida Ulema Board, which decided that it contained controversial and hate content.”

However, some of supporters of the literature said they would like to continue reading it, while some questioned why the literature had been banned. “These organisations have a right to publicise their views,” they said. The latest issues of the literature criticise General Pervez Musharraf’s national address on July 21 in which he announced a crackdown on religious militants and banned such extremist literature. “Janab-e-Sadar, it is not enough to be proud of being a syed if your character and action does not convince people on it,” says the editorial of Majalat-ul-Dawa. The editorial panel includes Professor Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

The monthly defends the Hasba Bill and claimed that Israel was behind the London bomb explosions. It also criticised LK Adavni’s visit to Pakistan and published a story of a Christian who converted into Islam and later was victimised by the Christian community. The women’s monthly paper criticised Mukhtar Mai’s issue. The title page put a question to the readers asking whether they were free in spending a true Islamic life or was Western culture being imposed through a specific agenda?

At last....

The News, August 12, 2005
Project for automation of police record okayed

Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: The government has approved an ambitious Rs 1.4 billion project aimed at automation of complete policing record including the crime details in all 1,350 police stations of 120 districts of Pakistan.

To be initiated from capital police stations and intended to be completely implemented all over Pakistan in 36 months, the project would help create an easy accessible countrywide database of all criminals, crime registered, absconders etc besides the details of police officials and their career details.

Project named as Police Record and Office Management Information System (Promis), was prepared by the National Police Bureau of the Interior Ministry. In its last meeting on August 4, the Ecnec has approved the project and allocated Rs 1.4 b for its immediate implementation.

Celebrated police reformer and Director General National Police Bureau Dr Shoaib Suddle when contacted said that the project would bring a major change in the society and would considerably help in police accountability.

A former IG Police and yet another expert on policing matters Afzal Shigri said that the system once implemented would bring Pakistan at par with advanced countries with respect to tracking criminals and suspects.

As a first step, all the police stations in the federal capital would be fully automated by the end of this year. According to sources, 'fully automated' means that all the crime and police record would be available on the screen of computer and could be accessible not only by other police stations but also by police superiors and the interior ministry.

Such interlinking will also be extended to non-police segments of criminal justice system including courts and prisons. This automated on-line interlinking would help both to check crime and track down fugitives who in the present scenario are unapproachable after crossing the limits or thana, district or province. This data sharing facility to be provided to all police stations in all parts of country, it is said, would in particular help the law enforcers to fight against serious and organized crimes.

Promis, the sources said, caters for all the requirement of police department and can be termed as a comprehensive police management information system, covering all aspects of police functioning i.e. from registration of first information report (FIR) to budgeting. It is said that the provision of basic IT infrastructure would enhance police efficiency and effectiveness.

Presently every police station has 25 registers, each covering specific area like one containing FIR details, another having details about criminals etc. All these registers would be computerized by designing and development of software providing the required services to various police branches.

The project also envisages development of citizen's complaints management system to provide e-service to them and bring transparency in police-citizen interaction. All the police stations in 120 district of Pakistan covering Punjab police, Sindh police, NWFP police, Balochistan police, Northern Areas police, Railways police, Federal Investigation Agency, AJK police, Islamabad Capital Territory police and the National Police Bureau are encompassed in this project.

To achieve the objectives of the project and to ensure its successful implementation, a huge training programme has been designed. All police training institutions in the country are equipped with computer labs and other necessary skills to provide computer related skills to police officials in all grades.

There is a consideration to link the computer training with the career progression of policemen. Under the same system complete career chart of every police official will be developed to help the authorities to better utilize his services or address his weaknesses.

In Shigri's view this project should be centrally controlled and commanded by the FIA instead of the Police Bureau which is a think tank. Shigri expects that the access to the police information would remain restricted in order to avoid misusing of the available information.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Shocking Allegations!

Daily Times, August 9, 2005
EDITORIAL: Fazlur Rehman’s shocking allegations

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of his own faction of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, has lashed out at the government. He has tried to achieve multiple objectives through his Sunday press conference in Lahore. Despite a late and indirect denial of the central element of his statement against the government, most papers covered his views, albeit with different headlines.

Mr Rehman has alleged that the Pakistani government is deceiving the US and the West by helping militants enter Afghanistan from Waziristan. He said that the government should reveal the identity of the infiltrators and explain its reasons for launching these people into Afghanistan. Mr Rehman says these men are being moved from Waziristan to military training camps in Mansehra before being sent into Afghanistan.

This is explosive stuff. Why would Mr Rehman choose to make such sweeping allegations? The answer to this can perhaps be found in his statement at the same press conference that “if pressured, I will reveal facts that will open a Pandora’s box” (emphasis added). This means that Mr Rehman is feeling the heat of some government measures and is signalling to the government to lay off.

Still, the question is: Why would Mr Rehman — a religio-political leader whose party is the biggest vote-getter in the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) alliance — make such an allegation? Mr Rehman was at one time identified with the Taliban and even gave anti-US and pro-Taliban statements. Why should he oppose an alleged official policy that presumably seeks to undermine the Pakistan and Karzai government? For an answer, let’s hark back to the time Pakistan got involved in Afghanistan.

The thin end of the jihad wedge at the time was the Jama’at-e Islami. It was the JI-ISI combine that ran the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami was the leading group that Pakistan was supporting. The Deobandi JUI, Mr Rehman’s faction as well as Maulana Samiul Haq’s faction, were mostly out of the loop. By the early 1990s, however, with Afghanistan having plunged into a fratricidal civil war since the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1987, the JUI got the opportunity to play a role in Afghanistan when Islamabad conjured up the policy of using the Taliban. Mr Rehman was then an important ally of Benazir Bhutto’s government. However, on the ground, it was Mr Haq’s JUI faction that appropriated the Taliban, most of whom, followers of Maulvi Nabi Mohammadi, were educated in JUI-S seminaries.

This period saw the decline of Mr Rehman, both as a political and a religious leader. It was during this period that he employed the device of making anti-American statements to capture his religious vote-bank and cosy up to Mullah Umar. At the same time he got down to the task of reorganising his political party. By the time of the US attack on Afghanistan, Mr Rehman had pulled himself up. A combination of factors — government rigging in support of the MMA but primarily in support of the JUI, mobilisation of seminary students, the Pashtun factor, pro-Taliban sentiments and anti-American feelings — helped the JUIF to emerge as the largest vote-getter within the MMA. Mr Rehman has since played his cards well, securing for himself the position of leader of the opposition and keeping his governments in the NWFP and his coalition partnership in Balochistan safe. Indeed, he would have been even more successful but for the hard line taken by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, amir of the JI, who is looking for a direct confrontation with the government.

Mr Rehman’s objectives are now clear. He wants to retain his two provincial governments because that allows him to retain and work on expanding his political base; he also wants to safeguard his religious interests because those interests translate into political power for him; so he will criticise the government but not do anything that could radically upset the current power balance; he wants to distance himself from extremist elements and the jihad underground because that does not fit into his scheme of things and so on. However, pressure from outside has forced the government to go for a broad sweep against all religious hard liners. Islamabad also seems to be in the process of reviewing its policy of subterranean alliance with the MMA. Mr Rehman feels that measures against the seminaries and getting the courts to disqualify MMA candidates from contesting municipal polls suggest that Islamabad is changing the rules of the game. This has forced him to lash out at Islamabad.

Mr Rehman employs religion to appeal to his constituency for political purposes. He feels that the heat is wrongly on moderate religious elements like the JUI. This is why he was quite specific in making his allegations when he said: “We ask the rulers to reveal the identity of the people being transported to Afghanistan from Waziristan via Kaali Sarak in private vehicles.” It is instructive that he said the government was accusing clerics of promoting religious extremism and militancy although they (JUI clerics) were playing an active role in restoring peace in the tribal areas.

Mr Rehman is really cut up with the government for not having done anything in the wake of his humiliation at the Dubai airport. He feels that the UAE government treated him shabbily because Islamabad is signalling to the world that the extremist trouble can be directly traced to religious parties including the JUI.

Mr Rehman’s allegations are serious. He should have thought twice before making them. He may now be keen to deny them. But the damage has been done.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

curriculum in Pakistan

Why tolerance is not on the curriculum in Pakistan
By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore
Daily Telegraph
July 31, 2005

For almost 30 years the most famous words of Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, have been absent from school and military college curricula.

"You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State," Jinnah told his countrymen in 1947 as Pakistan won its independence.


Cleric teaches the Koran in the family village of suspected London bomber Shehzad Tanweer
He clearly envisaged Pakistan as a democratic, not a theocratic state, but in the 1970s his words were blacked out by the military regime allied to Islamic fundamentalists helping the Afghans and Americans fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Pakistan became an "ideological" Islamic state whose parameters were determined by the army in a bid to differentiate the country from secular India.

Since then the Islamic rather than the democratic and multi-ethnic character of Pakistan has been the thrust of the army and its main allies, the Islamic parties.

Last year Minoo Bandara, a bespectacled Zoroastrian businessman and member of the Pakistan national assembly, tried to reinstate Jinnah's words through a parliamentary resolution.

His attempt failed to win support in parliament, even though in the post-September 11 era another military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf was advocating an enlightened and moderate interpretation of Islam.

Pakistan has been beset with an identity crisis since it came into being in 1947. No other country emerging from the British empire has faced the dilemma of whether it is secular or theocratic more acutely than Pakistan.

Although the fundamentalists have always been far weaker than the democratic forces, the backing they have received from the army has given them enormous power. What constitutes an ''ideological'' Islamic state has veered steadily from identity as Muslims in the 1970s to extremism and jihad in the 1990s as the pursuit of wresting control of Kashmir from India became less of a political struggle and more of a religious obligation.

The other determining factor for Pakistan has been its chronic sense of insecurity with India, with whom it has fought three major wars and several smaller ones. To counter India's might the military used the fundamentalists to pursue a foreign policy based on supporting Islamic extremists in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Pakistan became a national security state where modern reforms, education and public welfare took second place to building nuclear weapons and spending millions of rupees on funding mujahideen of all shades.

The United States shares a large part of the blame as it poured billions of dollars into the Pakistani military in the 1950s and 1960s to fight the Cold War and again in the 1980s to help fund the Afghan mujahideen and Arab extremists.

Saudi Arabia has also been a key ally, providing Pakistan with cheap oil and loans as well as funding for Pakistani extremist groups who were fighting in Kashmir and in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Those groups funded by Saudi Arabia have promoted Wahhabism - an austere form of Islam practised in the desert kingdom - and been largely responsible for the massacres of Shia Muslims in Pakistan.

Gen Musharraf's u-turn after September 11, when Pakistan dropped support for the Taliban and allied itself with the West in the war on terrorism, was considered to be a watershed, supposedly a historical moment when the army and the fundamentalists faced the new reality: that support for Islamic extremism was now considered a criminal offence by the rest of the world.

Gen Musharraf has cracked down hard on the foreign elements that constitute terrorism in Pakistan: Arabs, Central Asians and Afghans, and last week he promised to expel all foreign students from the madrassas.

Pakistan has handed over 500 members of al-Qa'eda to the Americans. But despite periodic crackdowns on Pakistan's home-grown extremist groups, the domestic Islamic extremist infrastructure has remained intact.

The madrassas, or religious colleges controlled by militant groups, have neither been brought under government control nor shut down, the extremist parties have been banned only to re-emerge under new names and state schools have continued to teach archaic hate-filled texts.

The London and Egyptian bombings have demonstrated that extremism is still thriving in Pakistan.

As more details emerge it is almost certain that at least two of the four July 7 bombers were in contact with extremists in Pakistan. Since September 11 almost every senior al-Qa'eda figure captured has been seized in Pakistan. For many counter-terrorism experts Pakistan has now become ''al-Qa'eda central''.

However last week Gen Musharraf said it was "absolutely and totally baseless" that al-Qa'eda had its headquarters in Pakistan. The network was now ''a phenomenon" and "a state of mind" among Muslims rather than an organisation.

Since September 11 the West has helped Pakistan broker a peace process with India and poured in billions of dollars in loans, aid and debt forgiveness, in the hope that Gen Musharraf will deliver by curbing extremism and in the fear that whoever might succeed him would prove less co-operative.

But there is an irresolvable contradiction. Despite his personal sincerity and liberal views, Gen Musharraf is still a military ruler who has stifled political activity, exiled or ousted secular political leaders and given the floor to the military's old allies, the fundamentalists.

He frequently demands that the moderates mobilise under his banner and launch a jihad against extremism, but he forgets that in Pakistan a military ruler has never been able to win mass support or become a popular leader.

Pakistan's problem is not just extremism, but the lack of democracy and the failure of its politicians and military to build democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the decade-long experiment with democracy in which one government was replaced by another, the country's politicians emerged as rapacious and corrupt opportunists rather than visionaries.

But they were also beset by an all-powerful military which never allowed democratic institutions to take root or an elected government to be voted out of office.

Most Pakistanis are conservative Muslims, but the vast majority reject extremism. Many are deeply confused. America's actions in Iraq, notably at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, and at Guantanamo Bay have convinced many that the West is waging a war against Islam.

Yet the car bombs and terrorist acts Pakistanis face at home have made them sick of the extremists. The contradictory statements by government officials about waging jihad in Kashmir but also cracking down on extremism only add to the confusion. For most people the main issue is not the interpretation of Islam, but what kind of governance and economic future they can expect.

Since 1977 no government text book or any of the 20,000 madrassas has taught Jinnah's most famous words. For Jinnah the creation of Pakistan was a means to protect Indian Muslims, not a reason to impose a dictatorship of one religion or a theocracy.

The majority of Pakistanis are still waiting for Jinnah's dream to be fulfilled. Only when the government and military have the courage to reintroduce Jinnah's words into the education curricula can Pakistan make a decisive shift out of its confused state of mind.

Ahmed Rashid, one of the world's leading commentators on militant Islam, is the author of the bestselling books Taliban and Jihad.