Thursday, July 30, 2020
#Ahmadiyya #IstandwithAhmadiyya How to become an instant hero in #Pakistani social media — shoot someone to save Islam
NAILA INAYAT
Khalid Khan shot dead an American citizen accused in a blasphemy case in a Peshawar court this week. The murderer became an instant hero on Pakistani social media.
There’s a new ‘hero’ in Pakistan. He’s trending on social media, virtual petals are being showered on him and he’s become the Facebook display picture of many. Even a leader from the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party hailed him.
The ‘hero’ is a young man—Khalid Khan—who shot dead Tahir Ahmed Naseem, an accused in a blasphemy case, in a Peshawar courtroom this week. In front of the judge. This is what happens when you weaponise religion for decades.
Naseem, an American citizen who allegedly claimed to be the “last prophet of Islam” during a discussion with a madrassa student, was booked under Pakistan’s blasphemy law in 2018. A law that carries a death sentence anyway. Formerly an Ahmadi by faith and with a reported mental illness, Naseem was one of the many against whom people in Pakistan are prejudiced. And the law helps.
Khalid Khan fired at him six times during the court hearing Wednesday and reportedly said that Naseem was an “enemy of Islam”. Almost immediately, Khalid and his brutal act were lionised — quite literally because people were posting pictures of him with a lion in the background. The moth-eaten social fabric of Pakistan can even condone a killing if it “defends” Islam.
A legion of fans
Many in Pakistan are justifying Khalid Khan’s crime as an act of bravery, putting up his photos as display pictures — just to hail a murderer.
Not too far from the glorification display was PTI leader Haleem Adil Sheikh, who had apparently put up the killer’s photo with a showering-petals filter as his Facebook DP. The leader later said on Twitter: “This is to clarify, I personally don’t manage my Facebook accounts. This was posted without my knowledge or consent.”
The lions
This isn’t new in Pakistan. This has happened many times in the past — even before Partition. Take, for instance, the 1929 case of Ilm-ud-Din, an illiterate teenager who stabbed to death a Hindu publisher, Mahashe Rajpal, for releasing a book on the Prophet. Din believed that the book, which he hadn’t read, had hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims. His case was fought by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and he was hanged to death. Poet Iqbal, while burying Din, tearfully said, “The educated people like us just could do nothing, while this carpenter’s son scored a point.” Today, there is a mausoleum for Din in Lahore and he is revered as a ghazi (warrior), shaheed (martyr) and a saint.
The 2011 assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer by his own guard, Mumtaz Qadri, also took place because of a similar streak of intolerance. Quadri was allegedly incensed because of Taseer’s opposition to the blasphemy law.
Qadri was executed in 2016, but his funeral was attended by more than a hundred thousand people in Rawalpindi. Now, Qadri’s shrine in Islamabad attracts many followers. Even if he was hanged by the state, the duplicity around the issue keeps breeding more Qadris. And that is how in the Peshawar shooter, Pakistanis surely see a Din and a Qadri.
Ban and blasphemy
Between 1987 and 2017, about 75 people have been killed extra-judicially over mere accusations of blasphemy. These include — Christian couple Shama and Shehzad who were burned alive in a kiln in 2014, and Pashtun student Mashal Khan who was lynched on a college campus in 2017.
Yet, blasphemy laws continue to be used as a weapon by anyone who wants to overpower and silence the other. The state has ceded so much space to religious pressure groups that no one can even debate these laws. As in the case of a professor from Sindh, Arfana Mallah, who was threatened with blasphemy charges. Her crime? She supported another teacher, Sajid Soomro, who was booked under blasphemy laws for having a dissenting opinion.
No space for critical thinking is allowed when teachers fear ending up like Junaid Hafeez, a young university lecturer who was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges last year.
Be it the Hindu Krishna temple in Islamabad, the row over a gurudwara conversion in Lahore or the Christian man shot and killed for living in a Muslim neighbourhood of Peshawar, the increasing fanaticism this year doesn’t move the Imran Khan government at all.
Despite all this, the Punjab assembly just passed a controversial bill to protect Islam. In the garb of religion, the idea is to curtail free thinking. Banning a hundred textbooks over photos of pigs in a maths question, banning maps showing Kashmir as part of India, or the wrong birthdates of Jinnah and Iqbal. Then there is a Punjab Assembly member who wants designer beards criminalised because it is a sin. And a possible ban on TikTok is always kept handy — a warning was recently issued to the Chinese app because its content was leading to “extremely negative effects”. Not too long ago, the PTI wanted a ban on the Japanese cartoon Doraemon. What did Doraemon ever do to the PTI?
Not only are these laws, resolutions, calls for bans regressive, but they also remind us that Zia-ul-Haq may have gone, his ruins are still working overtime.
#StateAttackedChamanSitIn - چمن: ایک خاتون سمیت تین افراد ہلاک، حکام کا مظاہرین پر براہ راست فائرنگ سے انکار
پاکستان کے صوبہ بلوچستان کے افغانستان سے متصل سرحدی شہر چمن میں سرحد کی بندش کے خلاف احتجاج کے دوران فائرنگ سے کم ازکم ایک خاتون سمیت تین افراد ہلاک اور 13 افراد کے زخمی ہونے کی اطلاعات ہیں۔
فائرنگ کے بعد افغانستان سے متصل سرحدی شہر چمن اور اس سے متصل سرحدی علاقے میں صورتحال کشیدہ ہوگئی ہے۔
مشتعل مظاہرین نے بعض سرکاری دفاتر کو بھی نذر آتش کیا ہے۔
چمن ہسپتال کے ایک سینئر اہلکار نے بی بی سی کو بتایا کہ اس واقعے میں ایک خاتون سمیت تین افراد ہلاک ہوئے ہیں۔ انھوں نے بتایا کہ گولیاں لگنے سے 13افراد زخمی بھی ہوئے ہیں جن کو ابتدائی طبی امداد کی فراہمی کے بعد علاج کے لیے کوئٹہ منتقل کیا گیا ہے۔
بلوچستان کے وزیر داخلہ میر ضیاءاللہ لانگو نے کوئٹہ میں اس حوالے سے ایک پریس کانفرنس کے دوران بتایا کہ ’ہمارے وہ بھائی جو احتجاج پر تھے وہ ریڈ زون میں داخل ہوگئے اور زبردستی سرحد کو عبور کرنے کی کوشش کی۔‘
انھوں نے کہا کہ وہاں قرنطینہ سینٹر اور نادرا آفس کو بھی نذرآتش کیا گیا ہے۔
ان کا کہنا تھا کہ اس دوران جو شرپسند عناصر تھے انھوں نے فائدہ اٹھانے کی کوشش کی اور حالات کو خراب کرنے کی کوشش کی۔
خیال رہے کہ چمن کی سرحد کو کورونا کے باعث بند کیا گیا تھا۔
#Pakistan #PPP - We did not let Tabahi Sarkar bulldoze the FATF Bills without amendments says Sherry Rehman
Addressing the media in the parliament lodges, Parliamentary Leader of the PPP, Senator Sherry Rehman cleared the air over government’s false claims and said, “The bone of contention was not NAB but FATF. We made sure that our proposed amendments in the FATF legislation by the 24 members of the notified committee were included. We did not let them bulldoze it without amendments”.
She said, “They were trying to move these bills without our amendments and that is why Senate majorities had to be summoned, so they see we have the numbers and send the bill back to committee”.
“The federal government itself admitted that the amendments were much needed and that we are right. We have seen the FATF requirements and they do not include economic terrorism nor was their arrest for 90 days. Pakistan’s parliament is here to ensure the protection of its citizen rights,” she added.
Speaking on the NRO allegations, she said, “We are not scared of NAB and they can keep it to themselves. We have all faced it and will do it in the future too but we will never ask for an NRO. They might need it, not us. We have not asked for any concession from the government. They came to us. We did not go to them”.
“Pakistan was in FATF’s grey list and PPP’s government managed to remove it from the list unlike all the hullabaloo which this government is creating. President Zardari made it clear that we do not need their NAB. He served prison sentence for eleven years, he does not need it,” she added while highlighting PPP’s role.
Parliamentary Leader of the PPP, Senator Sherry Rehman concluded by saying, “They have misused the parliament so much and have not safeguarded Pakistan. This country should be running through the parliament and not executive orders. This is not a presidential system and we will not even let Pakistan become that”.
#Pakistan #PTI wants dictatorial powers in the name of Financial Action Task Force, Chairman #PPP
Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the government,t in the garb of FATF, wanted to bring a legislation through which it could make any citizen a missing person for six months. The PPP could not allow this because our stance has been for democracy and basic human rights. The government wanted to get dictatorial powers using the backdoor but PPP will never allow it to happen. The government is also trying to blend FATF legislation with the legislation for NAB. They are two different issues. The business community had met the Army Chief and the government and their narrative was that NAB and business cannot go together. In this regard, President Asif Ali Zardari had said long ago that NAB and economy cannot go together. Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that after the verdict by the Supreme Court judge Justice Baqar, NAB and democracy cannot go together.
Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the government is trying to provide relief to Kulbhushan Jadhav. Imran Khan was supposed to become ambassador for Kashmir but he has become the counsel for Kulbhushan Jadhav and is trying to give him relief through the backdoor.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that Imran Khan gave NRO to himself, his sister and all his friends. He gave NRO to every case of mega corruption under his government, from BRT Project to Malam Jabba and from sugar to wheat scandals. He said that the wife of Justice Qazi Faez Isa is called by FBR and asked to provide her money trail. Imran Khan has given NRO via amnesties and he also gave NRO to his sister Aleema Khan’s corruption. Every advisor and special assistant should also be asked to give their money trail. There has been no answer from the government about the foreign funding case. The puppet prime minister and his puppet ministers are trying to hide behind the stay order. NAB will have to adopt the same process for PTI which it has adopted for opposition.
Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the PTI government is trying to impose a ban on knowledge in the name of Islam. Punjab government has passed a resolution in this regard. Islam asks all of us to acquire knowledge; we cannot ban books in the name of Islam. Punjab Assembly should review its resolution. He said that this government is also after social media and wants to ban social media and this kind of censorship is not in the interest of Pakistan. It is unfortunate that the government is imposing censorship in the Senate and the National Assembly.
Chairman Bilawal said that PTI government has stopped testing for Covid-19 and is claiming that 19 districts of Punjab are Covid-19 free. They are lying because they are not conducting tests for Covid-19. This will further harm the health and economy of the country.
Responding to questions, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the government accepted our amendments in the two bills which have been passed today. PPP and PML-N are working together and we should not give any credence to the government’s propaganda. He said that all the opposition parties together will decide of the future actions against government. We should not forgive the dictatorial behavior of the speaker of the National Assembly and the opposition can dislodge him so that the NA session does not become a PTI jalsa each time we meet. He said that the green passport was undermined by this government’s actions of grounding all the PIA planes and not taking appropriate action against Covid-19. He said that we should not put a ban on education, knowledge and books in the name of Islam and said that he once again asks Punjab Assembly to review its resolution. He said that the PTI had promised to create a South Punjab province within hundred days but like all the other promises, it did not fulfil this promise as well that had been made to the people.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/2020/07/30/pti-wants-dictatorial-powers-in-the-name-of-financial-action-task-force-chairman-ppp/
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