Daily Times, August 18, 2006
SECOND OPINION: Our out-of-joint thinking — Khaled Ahmed’s Review of the Urdu press
Khosa should know that his party was twice toppled in the 1990s for not doing jihad properly and for normalising with India. He should join Musharraf because Nawaz Sharif had not agreed with his Kargil jihad
In one week, one may read the Urdu press and come to the conclusion that the state of Pakistan is going to pieces in the minds of the people. The cities are becoming Talibanised, meaning that they are defying the writ of law. A minister may defy the government policy of normalisation by saying no one should trust India. Instead of Urdu, a leading cleric may want Arabic made national language. A politician in the opposition may ask for the resumption of jihad. And Pakistanis may be reported as being caught in their hundreds as illegal refugees in foreign lands.
Writing in Jang (May 30, 2006) Munnoo Bhai quoted the interior minister as saying that cities like Kohat, Dera Ismail Khan and Tank were now outside the jurisdiction of the state as they were being governed through jirgas that smashed TV sets on sight and meted out punishments to those found guilty of breaking the Islamic law. Shops selling music and VCDs were being closed down by force.
The truth is that the cities are rebelling in the name of Islam. De facto, the ideology the state proclaims is pulling the state apart. Had the state been secular one could understand the revolt. Why should an Islamic state fall apart in the name of Islam?
Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt (May 31, 2006) Lahore’s great Barelvi leader Sarfraz Naeemi stated that Hudood Laws should not be changed just because the rulers and the parliament wanted it since the MNAs did not even know what they were signing on. He said there were five Quranic punishments under hudood which could not be changed or repealed: theft, accusation of zina, commission of zina, drinking alcohol and robbery. He said the rulers were creating confusion about Islamic law, which should be resisted.
This proves the point that an Islamic state cannot survive unless it becomes theocratic, after which it is attacked from the outside to save the world from its mischief. Naeemi disqualifies the politicians and anyone who is not a cleric. He clearly wants the clergy to rule.
Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt (June 4, 2006) federal minister for provincial coordination Salim Saifullah Khan said that India should not be trusted and those who are fond of visiting India all the time should know that India is Pakistan’s enemy. He said they should ask India why it had stopped Pakistan’s river waters. He said politicians and the army were wheels of the same vehicle. Majeed Nizami said that Pakistan came into being as a welfare state but was now run by cheeni-chor ministers.
Mr Saifullah, a PML politician, should say this to President Musharraf who has so far trusted India. The party should sit down and think carefully what it wants to do. Then if it wants to reverse the policy it had endorsed earlier it should either get Musharraf to repudiate it or get Musharraf to leave.
Quoted in daily Pakistan (June 7, 2006) ex-foreign minister of India and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said in Lahore that if Pakistan and India listened to America and acted on its advice then both would live to regret it. He said a superpower should not be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the two states.
Yashwant Sinha spearheaded the Indian policy of getting close to the US and it worked because India became a strategic partner of the US. After meeting success as a result of trusting America, why is he advising Pakistan not to trust it? Why shouldn’t Pakistan succeed doing what India did?
Quoted in Khabrain (June 4, 2006) chief of Punjab PMLN, Zulfiqar Khosa, said that Musharraf had Westernised the country through enlightened moderation and made the Pakistanis forget their Muslim culture. He said by changing Islamic content in the textbooks Musharraf had finished the great tradition of jihad, which was a valuable asset.
Khosa should know that his party was twice toppled in the 1990s for not doing jihad properly and for normalising with India. Why should he want jihad when his leader has taken a stand on it while opposing the army leadership?
Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt (June 5, 2006) Dr Israr Ahmad said from Lahore that it was a conspiracy to change textbooks in Pakistan and a prescribed book (in some private institutions) and called Pakistani Kahaniyan should be immediately banned. To set things right Arabic should be declared the official language of Pakistan. According to him Jinnah was wrong in proposing Urdu as the national language. School-chain-owner Adeeb Javidani said that the government had assaulted two sectors, South Waziristan and Islamic textbooks. Qazi Hussain Ahmad said that America was forcing all Islamic matter out of the textbooks in Pakistan.
If Jinnah was wrong in choosing Urdu, how come Urdu is the most printed language in the country today? Dr Israr himself succeeds in his mission because he is such a good speaker of Urdu. Why this suicidal thought? The provinces don’t agree on Urdu? What if they don’t agree on Arabic simply because no one except the clergy knows how to read it?
Quoted in Khabrain (June 5, 2006) former Test cricketer Aqib Javed stated that the current trend of religiosity in the national cricket team will bring its effects in the future. He said looking like a pious man meant nothing, and for good conduct in the eyes of God you simply had to act rightly. He said he wanted captain Inzimam to be like Imran khan when he was leading the side.
Inzimam’s religiosity has not helped him in England while Yusuf’s flowing beard has benefited him individually. Religion has apparently nothing to do with the game. Whenever we start judging players on the basis of religion we usually go wrong.
Columnist Irshad Haqqani wrote in Jang (June 7, 2006) that twice Quaid-e-Azam had stated that Pakistan would be a welfare state which would look after the common man. Allama Iqbal too repeated the idea of a society based on social justice in his poetry and prose. What steps had the government taken to make Pakistan a welfare state?
When Jinnah spoke everyone was thinking of a welfare state, a surplus economy based on a good trade balance. Now in the post-Keynesian world, everyone is running away from it because it is a recipe for a deficit economy with inflation eroding people’s incomes. Jinnah’s welfare state like his shariah was based on his ‘temporal’ and ‘contingent’ knowledge. *
No comments:
Post a Comment