Friday, April 17, 2020
چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی بلاول بھٹو زرداری کی بیرون ملک مقیم پاکستانیوں کی کورونا وائرس کی وجہ سے ہلاکت پر ان کے اہل خانہ سے تعزیت
انہوں نے کہا کہ امریکہ، اٹلی، برطانیہ اور اسپین میں پاکستانیوں نے کورونا وئارس کے خلاف فرنٹ لائن پر اپنا کردار ادا کرکے ملک کا نام روشن کیا ہے۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے امریکہ اور یوروپی ممالک میں کورونا وائرس کے خلاف جدوجہد کرتے ہوئے زندگیوں سے مرحوم ہونے والے پاکستانی طبی عملے کو خراج عقید پیش کیا۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ خلیجی ممالک میں پاکستانی مزدوروں کی ایک بڑی تعداد مسائل کا سامنا کر رہی جو انتہائی باعث تشویش ہے۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ امریکہ اور یورپی ممالک میں مقیم پاکستانی سخت وقت کا سامنا کر رہے ہیں۔
انہیں امید ہے کہ پوری دنیا میں ہمارے ملک سفارتخانے مشکلات سے دوچار پاکستانیوں سے رابطے میں ہوں گے۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ سمندر پار پاکستانیز خود کو تنہا نہ سمجھیں عوام ان کے فکرمند اور دعاگو ہے۔
Opinion - #coronavirusinpakistan - ‘God Created the Virus. But Now He Has Lost Control.’
By Mohammed Hanif
Pakistan’s government is dithering in the face of the epidemic because it’s not sure what to fear the most.Is the coronavirus an expression of God’s wrath, a punishment for our sins or, as some of us believers like to think, merely another sign that He is testing us? I’ll address later the godless anthem that insists this epidemic is about nature healing itself, because matters of God are urgent and they might be getting us killed at the moment.
Until a few years ago, Fridays in Pakistan were an occasion to remember God’s grandeur and His kindness, as well as the terror exacted in His name. We used to get together in mosques for weekly prayers, and regularly mosques used to get blown up. Security guards were posted at the entrances, and the terrorists were hunted down or made peace with. But the mosques were never shut down.
And so last month, as the first Friday after the coronavirus’s arrival in Pakistan approached, the government dithered: Can you close the mosques during an outbreak? You can shut down McDonald’s — yes, even home deliveries — but the mosques? Wouldn’t that be like declaring war on God? But maybe it’s God who has declared a war on us? Or is this epidemic just a test? How can anyone be sure?
The first wave of coronavirus cases arrived in Pakistan in early March with pilgrims returning from Muslim holy sites in Iran and Iraq. Pakistan’s largest missionary organization, Tablighi Jamaat, went ahead anyway with its annual gathering in early April, bringing together more than 100,000 people near Lahore, a major city in the northeast.
The government then had to quarantine more than 20,000 attendees, and it is still trying to track down many more across the country. Two participants brought the virus back to Gaza. I have not heard of Pakistan or any other country sending anything else to Gaza recently. On the issue of shutting down the mosques, at first the government appealed to religious scholars for guidance. It didn’t really need to. Prayers had already been suspended at the holiest of mosques in Saudi Arabia. Many other Muslim countries had closed theirs.
But Prime Minister Imran Khan and his team say they worry about the economic suffering that a complete lockdown would bring — and while they do that we all keep waiting for proper guidance on the subject of mosques.
Three wise men appeared on television at one point to give their counsel about Friday sermons and other religious congregations. They laid out absurd criteria for attending prayers: If you have the coronavirus, or are above age 50, don’t go. But how is anyone to know if they have the virus until they get tested, and almost no one in this country can get tested? Some provincial authorities, alarmed at the vagueness of the central government’s directives, have taken matters into their own hands. The government of Sindh Province, where Karachi is, ordered various restrictions in late March. The local police force, despite meager resources, has done a reasonably good job of ensuring that everything except for food stores and pharmacies remains shut.
Sindh has stopped shy of shutting down mosques, but it has ordered a curfew designed to prevent people from going to Friday prayers. Many worshipers still turn up. The Sindh government filed cases against some mosques for violating its orders, but then retracted them. On Friday, April 10, several police officers were assaulted in Karachi while trying to stop public prayers.
While Mr. Khan’s government still can’t seem to decide whether to be more afraid of the coronavirus or the men of God, more and more people throughout the country, seeing the number of infections multiply, are no longer going out to pray.
But they continue to come out for something that may be greater than God Himself: their daily bread. In Pakistan, the economy, that rickety firmament of our existence, may be spreading disease more so even than is religion.
I have lived in Karachi for half of my life, and the city can’t stay under lockdown for even three days because millions of people here won’t have enough food in their homes if they don’t go out to earn a few rupees. When you can’t trust the government to deliver the food you need, you have to defy lockdowns and step outside, and leave the rest to God. You can challenge even a testy God, but you can’t say no to hungry children.
People of no faith who lose no opportunity to rub science in the faces of believers are gloating at the pictures of a deserted Great Mosque of Mecca and a deserted Western Wall in Jerusalem, and are asking, Where is your God now? The questions they get from believers are equally valid: Where are your Ubers and AirBnBs? Where is your vaccine? This godless world of yours never gave us anything, and now, as you tell us that we are all going to die, you want to take your God away from us?
But the people who have no God also live in fear — and that’s not fear of the virus so much as fear of the poor or fear of what the virus will do to them.
“What will happen to the poor people?” some ask. By that they don’t really mean, “How will the poor survive?” The rich have always been in awe of the resilience of the poor, as they pay them monthly wages that are a fraction of the bill for their own three-year-old’s birthday party. What the rich worry about is that if the poor really starve — and this time they actually might starve — the poor will come for them to try to eat them.
The nonpoor, be they godless or godful, try to console themselves by sitting at home and telling each other that this epidemic is nature’s way of healing itself. Consumerism was destroying the planet, and now we have the chance to save it by organizing Zoom parties and baking cakes.
The poor don’t have anywhere to turn. Mosques are Pakistan’s only social centers, except for the clubs of the very rich and some parks for the middle class. They are equipped with public-address systems and have running water; many are air-conditioned. Mosques could have been used to disseminate health tips and distribute food to the needy, or as quarantine centers and temporary hospitals.But the government is too reluctant to take on the men of God to do any of that. So mosques, the very places that might have provided relief to the people, have been left to become, at best, battlegrounds over God’s intentions or, at worst, incubators of infection.
Before Pakistan had a coronavirus problem, it had a polio problem. The country came very close to eliminating that one, but the polio virus has resurfaced: Some people were refusing to get their children vaccinated because they feared that the United States government was using the inoculation program to spy on them. They were also thinking: If God wants to cripple our children, who are we to stop Him?
Soon after the lockdown of Karachi began last month, I called up a doctor friend who worked at the front lines of an anti-polio campaign in the city a few years ago. He told me that while his team administered polio drops in hostile neighborhoods he would stay a street away. Because you just never knew, he said: Here you were wanting to save somebody’s newborn from losing the use of her limbs, but the parents might just shoot you in the head for interfering with God’s plan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/opinion/pakistan-coronavirus.html
Like India, Pakistan has a Tablighi Jamaat Covid-19 problem too. But blame Imran Khan as well
AYESHA SIDDIQA
In Pakistan, Tablighi Jamaat is viewed as benign. Militant groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed do not like them because Tablighis don’t encourage jihad.
India and Pakistan seem to be on the same page as far as the Tablighi Jamaat congregation is concerned. Like in India, after the Nizamuddin Markaz congregation, in Pakistan also, the group is considered as one of the two major sources of the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Many of the 2,000 people that attended the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Delhi went back to different parts of the country. The Indian government now says that they are spreading the coronavirus in India.
As many as 250,000 people gathered in Pakistan’s Punjab, mid-March to participate in the annual five-day event or Tablighi ijtima. This is where people, mainly subscribing to the Deobandi sect get together to pray and obtain further training in proselytising. Pakistan is predominantly Barelvi. But the Tablighi Jamaat, which was formed in India in 1926, and its congregations are very popular and powerful for two reasons. First, theoretically, it cuts across sects and thus attracts people from all ideological schools, particularly the Barelvis who have no powerful religious forum of their own. Although Maulana Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Minhajul Quran, or politically, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan are Barelvi organisations, the Tablighi Jamaat continues to attract Muslims across the board. Even Nawaz Sharif as chief minister of Punjab and later as prime minister supported their gatherings. This is because they are generally viewed as benign.
Second, because of its focus primarily on proselytising, it is popular across the socio-economic classes. From powerful institutions of the state and prominent politicians to the middle and lower middle classes, people are attracted to it for its religious teachings.
Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan
Although it is accused of links with extremist institutions, in Pakistan’s case, militant organisations such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed do not like the Tablighi Jamaat. This is mainly because Jaish-e-Mohammed has an aversion to any institution that does not encourage jihad. However, it is also a fact that a lot of jihadis from the Deobandi sect were initially inspired to join militant organisations because of the introduction to religion by the Tablighi Jamaat.
Perhaps, this is one of the reasons that the son of (late) Lt General Hameed Gul, known for his contacts with jihadis in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Abdullah Gul was sharp in criticising the media for blaming the Tablighi Jamaat as one of the major sources of coronavirus infection in Pakistan. He said, “Media is constantly spewing venom against Tablighi Jamaat, which is hurting sentiments of millions of people…all those religion-weary news anchors, producers, and all news directors should be fined heavily for such irresponsible behaviour.”
His gripe was that it was the Shia devotees who were responsible for most of the infection.
The problem lies in the structure of the Tablighi Jamaat forum that is based on gathering people from within the country and around the world. Even before the annual get-together in Raiwind, Lahore, teams of proselytisers are dispatched all over the world and inside the country. As per the Tablighi Jamaat system, every team stays in a mosque in the areas they travel to and conduct proselytising activities from there. These tours take place throughout the year. But the annual gathering happens in Lahore.
Lockdown still a bad idea?
But does one blame the Tablighi Jamaat for this faux pas or the Punjab government, which was extremely slow in responding to the crisis? The federal government did not behave very differently from its counterparts around the world who took so long in responding to the threat. There still continues to be confusion regarding the lockdown as Prime Minister Imran Khan insists that it is a bad idea.
The Punjab government was neither forceful nor clear in its instructions. This lax attitude was one of the reasons why, as sources said, the Tablighi Jamaat management instructed those of its teams that were yet to finish their tour of duty (the source I spoke to had completed his and had spent four months in the field – from December to March) to go to other places around the country and finish their work.
The Tablighi Jamaat members I spoke with boasted about how well they were organised in Raiwind. After the orders to close shops, there was a separate Tablighi Jamaat office to guide each group on their future course of action. This meant that many of those, who were already exposed to members from countries affected by Covid-19 such as China, Iran, the UK, the US, Spain and others, then moved to other parts in Pakistan carrying the virus with them.
In Sindh, the inspector-general of police Mushtaq Mehr announced a quarantine of all Tablighi Jamaat returnees in his province, especially those sitting in mosques. They would be provided with food and other rations with instructions to the police to ensure that no other person came in contact with them. This meant an end to all preaching activities. This was deemed important after over 130 cases tested positive in the city of Hyderabad. Punjab or Islamabad, on the other hand, have not taken any similar action. While the neighbourhood of Bara Kahu in Islamabad is strictly quarantined as some returning Tablighi Jamaat members tested positive, many of the mosques in smaller towns and rural areas of Punjab with Tablighi Jamaat members sitting inside are reportedly still in action.
The bigger culprit
In many ways, Islamabad and its satellite government in Lahore are even bigger culprits than the Tablighi Jamaat. While Imran Khan remains totally engrossed in his electoral mode by pretending not to hurt sentiments of the religious Right, it is important for him to realise that what he and the world face is an unprecedented turn of events. Religion, though important, cannot be left on its own without any rational guidance. After all, both Iran and Saudi Arabia – the two central hubs of Islamic faith – have ventured to rationalise. Iran stopped Friday prayer gatherings and Saudi Arabia has sealed mosques and even put pilgrimages on hold.
What is required is a firmer but well-thought-out plan of action, especially in Pakistan and India where religion is not simply about faith or culture but is also central to politics and identity of people. Convincing one segment of population becomes tough, especially if the government is seen as partisan.
Closing down Tablighi Jamaat spaces in India, in particular, would require applying rationality to all. Apparently, days after the Tablighi Jamaat gathering at Nizamuddin, there was a large get together at the Shirdi Saibaba temple in Maharashtra. It is the application of greater scientific methodology that will help in survival against this present and clear danger.
How Tablighi Jamaat was born from Mewat’s ‘drinking Muslims who couldn’t even read namaz’
JYOTI YADAV and SAJID ALI
Tablighi Jamaat, which has come under the scanner for a mid-March event that is believed to have spawned a surge in India's Covid-19 cases, traces its roots to Haryana's Mewat region.
Mufti Zahid Hussain Qasmi Sadar, the headmaster of the nearly 100-year-old Bada Madrassa in Nuh, Haryana, where the Tablighi Jamaat has a deep presence, is seated with a group of associates.
Dressed in a white kurta-pyjama and wearing a skullcap and red keffiyeh, the 45-year-old is animatedly discussing a media report about the Jamaat’s alleged violation of government norms that is being blamed for worsening the spread of Covid-19 in India.
Approached by ThePrint for comment, he said, “This is the first time a media organisation has approached us and sought information regarding the Tablighi Jamaat and the Nizamuddin Markaz.”
A relatively unknown organisation in the days preceding the coronavirus pandemic, the Tablighi Jamaat has courted deep notoriety since a mid-March event organised at its headquarters in Delhi’s Nizamuddin allegedly spawned a surge in domestic Covid-19 cases.
The event was attended by hundreds of people who lived together at the markaz despite the announcement of social-distancing norms by the government.
Although the organisation claims the travel restrictions that began to be imposed in the days leading up to the Janata curfew and the subsequent nationwide lockdown prevented it from arranging an immediate evacuation, the Jamaat has become the focus of much public anger for what is seen as a criminal transgression.
The behaviour of the markaz draws no sympathy in Nuh either, but residents claim the negligence is not the Jamaat’s alone.
“The administration should also take responsibility for the Nizamuddin Markaz incident,” said Hussain, who also serves as the chief preacher at the Badi Masjid here.
Siddiqui Ahmed Meo, a local scholar who has written multiple books about Mewati history, echoed the claim. “Gross negligence took part on both sides,” he said.
The wounds of Partition
The Nuh district, known as Mewat until 2016, lies to the south of Haryana, jutting into Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. It is part of the larger Mewat region, which spans the three states and is believed to be the birthplace of the Jamaat.
The Tablighi Jamaat was founded in the 1920s by a preacher named Mohd Ilias, who sought to promote a strict Islamic lifestyle among devotees.
“The dominance of Islam in Mewat can be traced to three periods, 712 AD, 1053 AD and 1192 AD, when large-scale religious conversions took place in the region,” Siddiqui Ahmad Meo, the scholar, said.
The name Tablighi Jamaat means a “group that propagates faith” and it originated in the early 20th century. Affiliated to the Sunni school, members of the group visit mosques, schools, colleges in different parts of India as well as the world to preach Islam and promote the lifestyle of Prophet Mohammad.
About 80 per cent of Nuh’s population comprises Muslim Meos. Local clergy claim around 99 per cent of the Meos associate with the Tablighi Jamaat in one way or the other.
Before the Tablighi Jamaat gained ground here, said Siddiqui, the Muslims of Mewat practised dual religious rituals. “Muslims here would perform nikah (Islamic wedding) as well the saptapadi — circling the fire (a ritual associated to Hindu marriages),” he added. “They would pray to lord Shiva.”
The Meo Muslims residing here had a very different identity than a typical Muslim, said Siddiqui. They used to wear dhoti-kurta and did not keep beards, he added.
They did not even know how to offer namaz, and local mosques were used as warehouses for cattle fodder. While digging wells in their fields, the Meos would first install a brick in the name of Bhairav baba and many were staunch devotees of Lord Shiva.
“Several Muslims had names like Balbir Singh or Rameshwar. In some ways, mixed culture has always prevailed in this region,” Siddiqui said.
Professor and sociologist Shail Mayaram, who has written a book titled Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and Shaping of a Muslim Identity, offered a similar assessment. “Meo Muslims had a kinship system like the Hindu castes of Haryana… The Muslims here used to worship the cow. The Govardhan festival was also celebrated,” she said.
Siddiqui said the conduct of local Muslims “astonished” Maulana Ilias when the former visited Delhi for jobs and came in contact with the preacher during the early 1900s. “He was quite astonished by the fact that these Meo Muslims did not know how to recite the kalma,” he added.
Maulana Illias is believed to have then accompanied some Meos to Firozpur village in Mewat and prepared several ground reports. These studies, Siddiqui said, revealed that most of the mosques were closed, and local residents freely consumed liquor.
In 1922, Hussain said, Ilias set up the Badi Masjid and Bada Madrassa at Nuh. This madrassa, headmaster Hussain said, is one of over 50 Islamic schools in the Mewat region that Markaz had direct contact with.
The Tablighi Jamaat was formed four years later, in 1926.
Siddiqui added, “In 1932, Maulana Illias convened a large panchayat that was attended by 107 chaudharis (eminent persons) from the Mewat region. Fifteen resolutions were passed during this meet, dealing with subjects like teaching people how to offer namaz, foundation of new mosques alongside the older ones, not emphasising too much for change in local style of dressing, and further expansion of Islamic education,” Siddiqui said.
“Following this meet, the first-ever jamaat (congregation) was convened in 1939 at Kandhla (Shamli, UP),” Siddiqui added.
Mayaram said the Tablighi Jamaat didn’t have much influence in Mewat before the Partition. “But during the Partition, the Meo Muslims were slaughtered in Alwar and Bharatpur regions (Rajasthan) even though they followed a mixed culture,”she added.
“The wounds of the Meo Muslims gave space to the Tablighi Jamaat. The Jamaat told Meo Muslims that these wounds were a punishment from Allah,” she added. “So, after the Partition, the Meo Muslims felt that it is better if they stay on one side.”
Finding Islam
In the years since, the Muslims of Mewat have embraced the Islamic identity Ilias sought to promote, such as keeping a beard and wearing a skull cap.
“Muslim women have also shed the traditional odhni and are now wearing salwar-kameez. Arabic names are more in vogue. Dietary habits have also changed a lot,” Siddiqui said. “People also have greater inclination towards religious aspects.”
Despite all this, he said, Muslims in several places across Mewat still engage in age-old rituals like kuan pujan (worshipping of village well), even following some Hindu wedding practices,” Siddiqui added.
Hussain said, among other things, the Tablighi Jamaat had helped the cause of education in Nuh, which, according to a 2018 Niti Aayog report, is among India’s most backward districts with a literacy rate of 54.08 per cent.
“We have drawn attention towards greater cleanliness. Local residents are now becoming doctors and advocates. In the past, most people were highly superstitious and now the situation is not like that.”
He said their work involved discouraging the evil tradition of dowry. Weddings of poor families, he added, were solemnised at the Badi Masjid as part of mass ceremonies.
The headmaster added that the Jamaat was not a “political institution”. “It is a purely religious institution that teaches people how to be an ideal Muslim,” he said.
Hussain told ThePrint that the Nuh mosque hosted two large-scale jalsas of the Jamaat every year, most of whose participants are men. These congregations are scheduled in accordance with the agriculture calendar.
Islam, Hussain added, did not forbid women from entering mosques but they participated from home while still staying behind the curtain.
Mayaram said women played a crucial role in the Jamaat, going from village to village to explain the importance of reading the namaz.
Siddiqui acknowledged that it would be wrong to describe the Tablighi Jamaat as a fundamentalist group, but added a word of advice. The Jamaat, he said, should no longer keep itself secluded from modern education.
‘Wrong to communalise markaz episode’
According to deputy commissioner Pankaj (who doesn’t use his last name), there were 50 Covid-19 cases in Nuh until Wednesday, of which 44 patients were associated with the Jamaat. Several other people associated with the organisation have also been quarantined.
These are people, Hussain said, who had come to stay in local mosques after spending some days at the markaz.
At the local level, Hussain claimed, the organisation had been doing its bit to enforce the government’s directions to control Covid-19. The 225 students of the madrassa, he said, were sent home before the lockdown kicked in.
The markets in Nuh remain closed and several villages are completely sealed, with a large padlock also hanging on the outermost gate of the Badi Masjid.
Hussain said he understood the seriousness of the pandemic and was still appealing to the people to support the administration’s efforts.
He and several other important religious figures have been constantly issuing videos in collaboration with the local administration, urging people to stay at home. “We tell them, perform the namaz at home too,” he said.
Nuh MLA Aftab Ahmed Chowdhury added that it was wrong to communalise the markaz episode. “It is not right to discover a religious angle amid the coronavirus crisis,” he said.