Sunday, April 1, 2018
#Pakistan - #MalalaYousufzai - #Malala; our pride
Nighat Kamal Aziz
A war veteran once wrote in The Washington Post about Malala that his own courage, his bravery, his training to face challenges, paled in front of a teenage girl from a third world country, who stood up and faced life threatening danger … and then went on to become the voice of the downtrodden and a beacon of hope for children worldwide.
Malala tugged at many hearts when as a child she stood on rubble of her school and shook her little fist at the Taliban for denying education to girls long before they attacked and critically injured her. Her courage was like a slap in the face of the powers of evil for they could not crush her spirit or her resolve despite her tender age.
But the girl who had spoken with such eloquence in the UN, in front of world leaders and in so many forums, broke down and cried when she spoke upon return to her cherished homeland. This showed how she must have dreamed about this day in her confinement abroad. Home coming will hopefully be a catharsis for young Malala and help in washing away her fears and unpleasant memories.
I wonder what it is about our country that despite all its problems, the complications, the evils and hardships rampant here, the nationalistic feelings cannot be dampened for long.
Malala has made us proud over and over again. When she recovered miraculously, her mind, body and above all her determination and tenacity intact, she mesmerised the world with her clarity of thought, the way she conducted herself in situations where even veterans would balk. Her eloquence, in Urdu and English, her poise and grace, her clarity of thought and expression was a feat beyond her young age which impressed local and international community alike.
It made the world wonder how such a little girl, born and brought up and educated in a remote city of third world Pakistan, could be so confident and so clear headed about the vision , not only about her own country but about and the world in general.
It spoke volumes to the world about our people, our girls, our education system, our parents who nurtured their children against all odds, our values and priorities in the face of so many difficulties.
Was she a prodigy? An enigma?
The youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace prize, the most coveted award any country would dream of, was bestowed on Malala and she donated large sums to Pakistan for education - yet she could not return home for fear of threat to her life!
How ironic! The Taliban threat remained.
Taliban. How ironic to call them by that word! A term used for the educated, for those aspiring to receive education!
Who would have thought that by her sheer bravery she will make her attempted assassins and their ideology appear so shamefully base and so repulsively repugnant? How ironic that despite the fact that Malala has brought nothing but pride and honour to her country, despite the fact that the whole world has appreciated her sacrifices and her efforts to make the world a better place, the only criticism she received has been from some of her own countrymen.
Was it jealousy, or suspicion or a distortion of facts that caused this resentment? Despite the fact that Malala never once uttered any controversial words, despite the fact that she always spoke about principles, making many hearts swell with pride as she stood on the world stage. She pointed out the sacrifices of her countrymen. She stressed the need for empowering children and women in order to defeat the powers of evil. She spoke about inter faith harmony. She stressed the need to live in peace. She once even hoped to reform her attackers by enlightening them.
And she always dressed modestly and in her national dress. Her actions or speeches never once demeaned her country and she bought an unpresented number of accolades to Pakistan. If all that is not enough to make her a patriotic Pakistani, what else can be?
But fortunately, Malala has innumerable admirers in her country too as well as overwhelming admiration around the world. Because Malala is not a person. She is a belief, a candle in the darkness. People like her are born once in a while. Hers seem to be the classic case, like David and Goliath, the war between good and evil, of justice against barbarity, of light against darkness. She has done more than her share of what has to be done to make this world a better place. Her contribution to Pakistan has been much more than any political figure. Now she needs to be supported. Her intentions, her achievements and the laurels she has brought to us must not be looked upon with suspicion. We need to stand behind her and support her efforts.
A young woman, from a restrictive society, fighting against the barbaric forces for universal freedom and enlightenment of the human race, Malala’s mission is neither easy nor free from danger. It is a mission that was thrust upon her but she has faced the challenge gallantly.
The world envies us for owning a young girl like Malala. Let us celebrate our young heroine to the hilt. Let us use her potential for the advantage of our country and for the betterment of the world in general.
The author is the Project Coordinator for a Pak-German humanitarian organisation and a freelance writer.
#Pakistan - OP-ED Extremism: causes and remedies
By Raashid Wali Janjua
The more religious a society the more virulent the effects of the extremism.
The time has come to take the bull of religious extremism by the horns. Mere placebo solutions and anodyne prescriptions have badly entangled us in a knotty morass of policy inaction that has helped extremists and their vile agenda thrive. Extremism as a sociological phenomenon has its roots in social, economic, and political inequities but its religious roots lend it a supra temporal insidiousness that transcends all normal explanations and remedies. The more religious a society the more virulent the effects of the extremism. Extremism itself is a departure from the healing message of peace propounded by most religions and normally grips a segment of society in the awe of clerics arrogating that they are the ultimate authority on religion. One of the chief causes of religious extremism is the clergy’s hold on the socially defined channels of religious practice. Every religion has had its fanatic fringe that justified violence as a legitimate means to achieve salvation.
The history of extremism goes back to antiquity. During 66-73 AD a highly organized Jewish sect of religious zealots called the Sicarri committed acts of terrorism against Romans in Palestine to protest against the denial of their political rights. Since the early days of Islam, the extremist menace has reared its ugly head with metronomic regularity. First it was the extremist message of ‘Al Khawaraj, the excluded ones that resulted in fratricidal conflict between Muslims even under the reign of the rightly guided Caliphs. Saljuk Muslim rulers also faced the ire of Hashisheens who were a Muslim sect in Northern Persia subscribing to assassination as a tactic to achieve political ends. The term assassin is derived from this cult that was led by their fearsome leader Hasan bin Sabah. A similar problem was faced by Mamluke Sultans, where Ibn-e-Taymiyyah, a religious scholar of radical leanings challenged the prevalent religious interpretation of Muslim scholars of Mutazila or rationalist school of thought. He attacked Mutazila’s Aristotelean concept of ‘first cause’ for envisioning God and rejected Ibne Sina and Al Farabi’s Wahdatul Wajood concept of oneness of God.
He was the first jurist to issue a religious edict or Fatwa sanctioning Jihad against a newly converted Mongol Muslim sect on the request of the beleaguered Mamluke Sultanate. It were his ideas that later spawned a purist religious revolution in Nejd — present day Saudi Arabia — where Muhammad Ibn-e-Wahab, a willing disciple of Taymiyyah’s put his ideas in practice with the help of Ibn-e-Saud. Twentieth century Egyptian writer Syed Qutb invoked Taymiyyah’s second Fatwa to instigate rebellion against Jamal Abdul Nasir. Later Osama bin Ladin and Ayman Al Zawahiri also got inspired, citing Taymiyyah and Syed Qutb’s message of theological correctness leading to their own distorted interpretation of the concept of a postatisation or Takfir that justified violence against errant Muslims. Even during the times of strong Ottoman rulers, there were uprisings led by religious preachers like Jalali rebellion of 1529 that used religion as a rallying cry, though the underlying cause of disaffection lay in social and economic deprivations. One interesting fact that emerges from these internecine Islamic conflicts pitting extremists against the governments of the day is the use of armed force to quell these rebellions. Apparently, the virulence of the faith inspired violence could only be countered through equally violent reprisals.
In Pakistan, extremism has never been dealt with holistically as a pathology. Only symptomatic treatment has been meted out to this malady
According to Bernard Finel — contemporary extremism in the Islamic world can be divided into four generations. The first wave was a sequel to Anwar ul Sadat’s assassination in 1981, and concentrated on internal reforms in Muslim countries relying on Syed Qutb’s interpretations and teachings. The focus on internal reforms was replaced by the second generation warriors baptised in ideological conflicts like the US inspired Afghan Jihad against the Soviets in the eighties, lending them a transnational character. The third generation was the generation of men like Osama bin Laden, who had been radicalized in the Afghan Jihad and had later turned against the US and what he considered apostate Muslim states. States like Pakistan that withdrew support after initial sympathy with these transnational extremists were declared among these ‘apostate’ states. The fourth generation of the religious extremism in Islamic society emanated from the remnants of the transnational Jihadis and their sympathizers who nurse latent grievances against the West as well as their own governments for social and economic injustices. Fifth generation warfare is nothing but a perpetual war fought through narratives and random acts of terror by disaffected extremists is in fact the war waged by the fourth generation of extremists in Islamic societies.
According to Paul B Stares and Mona Yacoubian, extremism’s epidemiological model consists of an environment that includes social, political, and economic conditions acting as a potential breeding ground of conflict, an agent that includes militant ideology, a vector that includes social networks, religious seminaries, and communication tools, and finally a host that might include individual terrorist cells or extremist organizations. Now if one were to treat extremism as a pathology, and violence as its symptoms should one resort to targeting the root cause or the symptoms? In Pakistan, extremism has never been dealt with holistically as a pathology. Only symptomatic treatment has been meted out to the malady. The reasons for this inaction are rooted in our distant as well as recent history. Ever since the inception of Pakistan, the country has oscillated between military rule and pseudo-democracy, resulting in denial of social and economic justice. The use of religion as a palliative to keep people in a fatalistic embrace by autocrats like Zia and the propensity of the early rulers to use religion as a sop to the clerics pressed into government service to justify non-inclusive politics considerably reduced the state’s ability to rein in extremism.
The Afghan Jihad and the Iran-Saudi sectarian ferment in the eighties added a militant dimension to religious politics, where the US trained Jihadi foot soldiers, morphed into permanent warriors, defying states as well as their own sponsors. Post-Soviet withdrawal upheaval in Afghanistan and its potential spill over in Pakistan combined with some sympathy for the Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom limited Pakistan’s options for an effective whittling down of the religious militant infrastructure. The hallowed status sedulously nurtured through joint US-Pakistan psychological operations during Afghan war had sunk so deep into popular imagination that all subsequent attempts at countering the menace of religious extremism were met with popular disdain. A series of happenings, including the Lal Masjid operation and the Peshawar Army Public School (APS) massacre brought to the fore the true face of extremism that had lain hidden so far from public view. A public clamour for action goaded the government into precipitate action, but without political will the endeavour appears to be withering on its wine.
What we have now in Paul Stares words is an ideal environment for extremism, with preachers and fiery clerics still spouting fire and brimstone from the pulpit. A poor populace at the mercy of political carpetbaggers constantly chafes at the unjust political and economic treatment while the state colludes with the looters. The agents of extremism subscribing to the takfiri ideology are present in every religious party and amongst mainstream preachers catering to the elite as well as the poor. The pulpit, mosque and madrassah has been appropriated by firebrand clerics and the government makes excuses for its inaction vis-à-vis regulation of these institutions that have been effectively regulated in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, Egypt and Turkey. Without madrassah reforms, control of mosques, discouragement of extremist preachers, and a ruthless crackdown on all forms of religious militancy, the state will never win a war against extremism. As such, it is necessary for our nation as a whole to reject extremist ideology, while tackling its root causes instead of tinkering with the symptoms.
#Pakistan - #MalalaYousafzai - OP-ED Malala-hating and our xenophobia-radicalisation complex
By Raza Rumi
Somehow facing the bullets by terrorists — and if you are lucky to survive risking your life again — is akin to nationalism. This is as warped as celebrating victims of murder as patriotic heroes.
The return of the Nobel Laureate and brave Pakistani icon Malala Yousafzai to her homeland is a matter of pride. The Pakistani state can rightfully take the credit that successful counter-terror operations in places like Swat have reduced the threat of violence by militias linked to the Pakistani Taliban. It was encouraging that the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the federal cabinet celebrated the event and honoured the young woman who, in real terms, has been Pakistan’s best global ambassador — courageous, resilient and focused on education.
The opposition leader Imran Khan, however, has been silent about Malala’s visit. Nevertheless, one of his celebrity allies Hamza Ali Abbasi tweeted about her return: “#MalalaYousafzai came bk,schools in Swat, APS Peshawar operating normally! Its a testament that terrorists have been defeated. Those suspicious of Malala, I dont blame them as many among us have always been suspicious of any1 west celebrates & history tells us that maybe rightly so!” The aforementioned actor has been pretty active in praising the head of now defunct Jamaat ud Dawa, Hafiz Saeed, and his patriotic credentials. Yet when it comes to Malala, she is a ‘stooge’ of the West and ‘suspicious’. In a way, he summarised the problems of the Malala-hating business in Pakistan.
But Abbasi is not the misogynist. Countless other social media users are peddling the same half-truths that were aired when Malala was shot by the Taliban. In many cases, the social media users who abuse her have something in common: most identify themselves as supporters of Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The others include the usual right-wing suspects who are always keen to find fault with a woman’s voice.
There is widespread brutalisation of the mind that finds it ‘normal’ to attack and depreciate a victim of horrendous violence. And sadly many young Pakistanis display this tendency when they regurgitate lies and disinformation about Malala on social media
In a nutshell, Malala haters promote the following critique: she has not achieved anything significant to earn the global acclaim; and her international promotion as a symbol of resistance for girls’ education and rights is a ‘conspiracy’ to defame Pakistan and Islam which in the popular conservative opinion — set no less by the state itself for decades — are interchangeable. The attack on Malala has also been subtly justified as a reaction against the US occupation of Afghanistan and the drone strikes that take place. Even Imran Khan said something to this effect back in 2013.
Critics also hold that Malala ran away from Pakistan while other victims of terrorism are still in the country. The most oft-cited comparison is with some of the survivors of 2014 attack on an Army public school (APS) in Peshawar. This misplaced critique also echoes what the state has been doing since the attack. First, the narrative that those who die in cold-blooded murderous offensives are somehow giving ‘sacrifices’ for the country. This is why parents of the APS were awarded medals; as if they had sent their children to war. Somehow facing bullets at the hands of terrorists — and if you are lucky to survive, risking your life again — is akin to nationalism. This is as warped as celebrating victims of murder as patriotic heroes.
I have been trying to grapple with this. In the past years, I have been attacked by a variety of people for living abroad without an iota of sensitivity as to why I had to leave in the first place!
And then there is the phenomenon of fake news. Some in our media industry are experts on this subject. When Malala was shot, it was debated for days, if not weeks, that her shooting was nothing but drama. Factually inaccurate commentaries on prime time TV were aired and the unfiltered information on social media continues to circulate. When she wrote her global bestselling books, right-wingers on national TV attacked her for denigrating Islam and much more. Perhaps the best example is an image of Malala with a bearded German politician who is depicted on countless Facebook pages as Salman Rushdie. A clear endorsement of the mindset that equates girls’ education, global advocacy and opposing the Taliban with what ‘anti-Islam’ Rushdie does.
One can give some margin to the young who have been reared on such an anti-West diet of xenophobia masked as ‘honour’ and Islamic nationalism. But those who teach Pakistan’s children, such as private schools’ networks, have been busy orchestrating vicious campaigns such as “anti-Malala Day” with posters yelling ‘I am not Malala’. This slogan is inspired by a popular book called I Am not Malala: I Am Muslim, I Am Pakistani: A Story of a Nation, which was published in response to the self-told memoir, I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.
While it is true that the West may have its own purposes to find poster icons for its security projects across the world, the larger problem of Islamic extremism is a demon that we have to face and exorcise ourselves.
At the heart of this problem remains the ongoing ideological battle within Pakistan. Even though the military has changed its line in recent years and the politicians are more circumspect about glorifying militants, decades of propaganda about jihad has influenced millions. As Malala’s diaries as a teenager in Swat show: her activism even before she was shot was clearly anti-Taliban. The progressive Pashtuns, unlike rest of the country, do not distinguish between the good and the bad Taliban — a distinction that much of the rest of Pakistan has accepted. In fact, for those who identify with this latter view, the Afghan Taliban are resistance fighters and, not to forget, valuable for Pakistan’s strategic influence in Western and Southern Asia.
This is why the ones who try to kill a schoolgirl may not be as bad as someone who gets shot and tries to rebuild her life in a most constructive and glorious manner. There is widespread brutalisation of the mind that finds it ‘normal’ to attack and depreciate a victim of horrendous violence. And sadly, many young Pakistanis display this tendency when they regurgitate lies and disinformation about Malala on social media.
We have to radically transform our education system, as well as the curriculum that is shaping xenophobic minds, which, more importantly robs young people of compassion — a tenet of humanism that was central to our folk cultures. Ultimately, it is the state that has to change its direction and delink Pakistani nationalism from jihadism and fear of everyone out to destroy and defame the country. Those who argue that Malala and her advocacy have hurt Pakistan’s ‘image’ need to ponder this: how is their slander and abuse against her improving it?
Institutions become weak by meddling in each other’s affairs: Bilawal
Institutions become weak by meddling in the affairs of each other, Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Sunday.
While talking to journalists in Hyderabad, Bilawal spoke about the recent tiff between the executive and judiciary, saying the latter should do its work and leave the politicians to do their job.
If politicians are failing at their work then the public has the authority to vote them out, he added.
Bilawal criticised Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, saying the party has weakened institutions. But judicial activism should be decreased, he said.
Moreover, the PPP chairperson also said that space for politics of ideology was diminishing.
About Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s statement regarding the Senate chairperson, Bilawal said the premier should take back his words.
The premier, in a direct reference to Senate Chairperson Sadiq Sanjrani had said: “The Senate chairman also serves as the acting president and it is a disgrace to the country that a man who bought votes became the leader of the upper house. Can there be any respect for the country after that?”
http://www.thesindhtimes.com/sindh/04/institutions-become-weak-meddling-others-affairs-bilawal/
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