They let them die in the darkness

        

         It’s very unfortunate that you wake up lately in the morning and watch the tragic Airblue plane crash scene. You might feel little confused by the intermittently broadcasted advertisements about late night cheap call packages and fairness creams. If your common sense is not, yet, fractured by these silly ads then you may ask a basic question,’ how on earth, are these news agencies, time and again, on-airing these festive, lighthearted and rapturous ads in between such a tragic catastrophe and fiasco? Don’t they have any ethics? Are they such a morally elastic that they can use this heart-crushing event for their own business?’ The situation deteriorates exponentially when you listen to the stance of Interior Minister Rehman Malik just after three hours of the plane crash, i.e., 'We hope that everybody will be dead.' ………..Give a break!! I don’t know how on earth he can say the bull-STOP after just few hours of the tragedy. Is he a prophet or something?   

         We live in a world of scientific marvels. The emergency and crisis management is a whole science. We think, normally and forgivably, that the probability of survival of fatal accidents is little but statistics show us another picture. The survival rate of passengers in these types of fatal accidents is in between 21 percent to even 34 percent. We had survivors even after the months of the earth quake in spite of the freezing winter of October 2005.If you are in some other civilized country the picture would be different. It’s considered the basic right of the relatives of the victims that the passengers should be searched until the proven dead. In Pakistan they are not just deprived of their very right but are deceived at the same time.

        The government officials didn’t stop there. First they announced that the rescue operation would continue and after the very sun set every chance of surviving the victims was vanished because the rescue operation was intercepted due to darkness. There is no need to call it a rescue ‘mission’. You can call it a dead-body collection campaign, keep-the-forest-clean mission or even elegiac ceremonies. This so-called ‘rescue mission’ was intercepted in a country having world’s fifth largest and professionally renowned army just due to darkness. Our army ,in spite of its whole sophistication and efficiency and all that jazz, couldn’t overcome the darkness of margala hills. The warriors of world’s highest battle field Siachen , the eagles of the open air and the lions of Islam considered their insult in helping the very people that raised them. And ‘They let them die in the darkness’. 
         I am lying on my bed with my head on the pillow. This fiasco left me speechless.The cries of the injured are hammering my imagination. I know that I will satisfy my conscious that it's very rare for anyone to survive from the crash. But my heart says, "If........if somebody got survive then what will happen. After the continuous drizzling during the whole night over the mountain ,there is anything for an injured lying under the rocks of margalla hills but hope ........When the sun will rise above the hills there will anything but hope........" But I hope ............... I hope that someday our people will rise for their rights  . Someday they will not have to dance in blood and that day the people will be cared or at least somebody will not let them die. 

Moral Dichotomies

 

            The very fabric of our society got intoxicated by our self contradicting morality towards minorities. The acute symptoms of reactionary and self-appointed-public avenger type macho behaviors favor the use of violence and grave inhuman indifferent morality. The point to ponder is that the ideas that were considered extreme now constitute mainstream ideological flux. I am talking about our self-negating arguments which appear constantly in the discourse with minorities.

            The most of us are indulged in the vicious circular reasoning, i.e., we are Muslims (here it means the orthodox Sunnis) so we are best, we are best so we must be the Muslims. Our every brutal logic to our savage behavior is as fallible as the phrase ‘square-circle’. Here are some commonly used square-circle type cyber-jihadist view points.

Islam respects the minority rights as it has offered them some cheap life-long packages like

·         They can observe their rituals but cannot preach their faith.

·         We reserve every right to criticize Jews, Christians and especially off course Hindus but we cannot listen against our beliefs.

·         For the same reasons we can ridicule and/or even humiliate Hindus in our text books and we have every right to call our rest rooms ‘Qadiani House’ but we cannot tolerate such stupid slogans for our beloved-ones. We can make a fan page on facebook naming ‘Draw a holocaust Day’.

·         Mahmood Ghaznavi was our typical super macho hero because he fabulously sabotaged the Somnath temple in seventeen heroic and historic raids and changed the course of history BUT B.J.P was monstrous on burning the Babri Mosque.

·         Babar and Akbar in India, Abdul Rehman of Umayyad, and Tariq Bin Ziad in Spain were saviors of their inhabitants while the British and the Americans established a capitalistic monarchical exploitation in the whole world.

·         Muslim mother obviously gives birth to a Muslim child, a Christian can bear a Christian child but a Qadiyani family has to cherish an orthodox sunni child.

·         We established Arabic the official language on the half part of the world obviously for our managerial convenience (and perhaps for ‘swab-e-jaria’) but the British conspired against us by establishing the English.

·          Jews, Christians wants to snatch and destroy every grain of our identity by their political exploitation and cultural war but Muslims made a valuable historic contribution to the savage people of Spain, Medieval Asia, Africa and whole Indian sub-continent by establishing justice, morality, higher education and new branded Islam.    

·         Muslims imposed tax on non-Muslims, i.e., Khiraj (different from jizia and about 50% of the total agricultural production from the occupied land) is justified. East India Company’s loot in the sub-continent was a brutal exploitation on the ground of natural morality.

·         Europeans pirated our fantastic work on science and laid the very foundation of Industrial and scientific revolution. But Muslims contributed to the Greek knowledge by translating their out-dated work.

·         We wanted to establish a socio-politico-economic system based on justice and natural morality so we bred the world’s largest army of our time. But nobody else like Britain or America has any right to do that because they want to make the world slave.

           These are some  snapshots of the society which aspires to be the chosen people on the God’s Land and to rule the world for one more time but (luckily and thanks to God for that) they got no chance for that. The titanic and bulky social structure, I am afraid, will consume itself in the delusion of self-righteousness. But I hope (what else we can do.) that someday Muslim civilization will come out of the somnambulist moral dichotomist condition and constructs herself on the sound realities of the real world. I hope that humanity will receive the actual message of Islam then we can hope that world will feel a little safer and little happier in the near future.  
Politics of Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Pakistan 
Religious Minorities in Pakistan (Minority Rights Group Report) 
Minorities in Pakistan 
     

of the Language and post-modern approach

Necessity is the ultimate source of all inventions. Every new thing, when arises, changes our life up to some extent. Human race hopes that it will brought some good changes in some faculty of our life. In fact if we are to be able to make life better in one way, we will, optimistically, be able to change it in every way. Now let’s start a classical debate of this century, i.e. which one is the biggest invention in the course of history of mankind; wheel or computer. Most commonly we feel ourselves tempted to the former choice, the wheel. It is said that we can divide the time line in two eras; one before the wheel and other after its invention. But hold on for a second. I think we are missing something. We are, forgivably, underestimating the greatest land-mark of humanity, the invention that is as common as the rays of the sun and as available as the air we breathe. It is very important in its functioning and, at the same time, literally priceless on account of its abundance. It is, astonishingly, a part and parcel of our culture and we assume it, again forgivably, the part of our body. It’s the tool to express our emotions and it’s simply the language we speak……..truly the brightest star in the curtain of history.

                This fabulously fabricated Language is the output of industrious and arduous efforts of thousands of years from the part of social animal whom we name homo-sapiens. Man is distinct from other animals only in its social aspects. If we assume that this creature, somehow, loses its highly developed social tendencies then human will cease to be human. We call such a creature just some highly intelligent mammal and no more. The attributes of humanity, love, beauty, justice will vanish from the world. These highly cherished and developed social interacting capabilities manifested themselves, in past, formerly through direct touch, pictorial paintings and then through different sounds from the mouth and epiglottis. This healthy activity gave rise to the birth of language. This intelligently-made master-piece of human kind is much more superior to the computers of the modern age in its robustness and practicality.

These manifestations of the language are without any parallel in society. Let’s take the analogy of a simple architectural structure. Language is to society as clay is to bricks. It’s the clay of language which holds the gigantic and bulky structure of society together. For the same reason, up to 20^th century, language played its pivotal role and, obviously, there is no reason why it will not do the same in future. But as the sun rose in the land of philosophy in the post-war, post-modern era ‘its’ validity was challenged. Actually the worth of most beautiful and divinely tool, the language, was challenged. It is held, obviously with much lesser accuracy and with much greater scholastic ambition, that it’s the reader, not the writer, who gives some meaning to some prose. In other words we don’t speak what we want and listener doesn’t interpret what we spoke. Another corollary of the main proposition is that words are too small to encompass the true spirit of meaning. So Ideas are to words as map is to building. There is always some difference between the map and a territory. In short map is not the territory. The perception and reality travel in trajectories that are parallel to each other. So the language cannot bear the burden of meanings. These simple theorems seem pretty correct and consistent hmmm…..But hold on for a second…….the aftermaths of the theory are horribly drastic…..they have the power to bulldoze the very fabric of our society. An intelligent reader will ask the ultimate question……HOW ON EARTH YOU THINK SO.

Let’s suppose for a second that we are post-modernist. Consider, in order to answer the ‘HOW’, the administration of justice, i.e., a judge. If we accept the post-modern version of the story then IT’S THE JUDGE WHO IS THE ONLY LAW-MAKER because he hath an absolute authority to interpret any written or spoken law. It is he who is truly the law-giver of all intents and purposes and not the person who first write or spoke them. So legislation, according to this theory, by parliament (or by the King in parliament as it exist in England) is obsolete…….so any type of law-making destroyed……compete chaos. Any written material weather it is ordinary daily newspaper or some contract from transfer of property to certificate of marriage dissolves in air. Similarly, the divine literature from the Quran to the Bible ceases to give forth some fruitful meaning so faith is forbidden………..the very basis on which humanity stands gets shaky……….what will we have at the end?......we will have moral codes that are chaotic, shaky, dislocated and randomly selected…..we will have the society which comprise anarchy and the law of jungle….we will simply face Machiavellianism and will face dark ages.

               The problem is that if I am the post-modernist how on earth I can be a Muslim, a Christian or any other religious person. This will introduce an inconsistency in my philosophy of life, i.e., it means that I believe in some sacred text in one hand and on the other hand I think that interpretation of some text is on reader’s discretion. On one side I want to spend my life according to the Book and on the other side I think language is deprived of expressing any meaning at all. Analogously I am searching something believing, in advance, that it’s not there. So a post-modernist can be anybody but religious person. 

It’s the riddle of our time and every riddle is used to be a matter of time. Emmanuel Kant, once, removed knowledge in order to make room for belief. Likewise someone has to establish the roof of language under which religion can live happily after.

Open letter to Mr. Javed Chaudhry

You are, I think, the most influential Urdu columnist in our country with hundreds of thousands followers. Your knowledge about history always depicts itself in your writings. In your long career in journalism you would have the chance to closely observe the historical development of democracy in the world. We should learn from history in order to make ourselves better, this is the lesson which I learned from you and this is the lesson which I want to make you remind.
World didn't reach to modern democratic state in a day .Its roots go back to Magna Carta. Magna Carta Libertatum , also renowned as The Charter of Freedom , was signed in 1215 between the King of England and barons. In this document it was , for the first time in Monarchical World, eszztablished that barons of England had the right to disagree with the king's decisions in certain matters. After that period the people of Europe struggled very hard for centuries for their freedom. The modern democratic state is their culture not the blessing of some God-gifted monarch or dictator.

Now let’s come to your last column dated 26^th March. In your column you gave us a snap-shot of the market prices of the past and showed us their comparison with current prices of eatables in the market. In your long loosely constructed argument you established the proposition that “the past era of dictatorship was better than this democracy because now we have high inflation rates”. You presumably ignored desolation of judiciary; attack on Lal Masjid, restrictions on media and many more allegations, perhaps, because they don’t support your arguments.

I am not supporting this so called democracy. This is, by no means, much better than the dictatorship of the past. But the point is this that is it, by any means, worst than the past government? My answer is NO. We have taken some crucial steps. Judicial restoration was impossible in the past dictatorship. N.F.C award was the sign of relief in this crucial situation. The freedom of expression is flourishing in the country.
We have law and order situation here but we cannot blame our government for this because our military regime is taking decisions in all the matters regarding ‘war on terrorism’ .So these suicide bomb attacks are the aftermath of the past and continuing policies of Pak Army commanded by their earthly god Almighty America. You talk too about inflation. Let me ask you a simple question. How can we attract foreign investment without peace? And, without foreign investment, how can the fiscal crisis be satisfied? Please don’t think that I am in favor of these seemingly down-to-earth politicians. Obviously they are not the good guys. There is a horribly long list of their loop-holes like exponential rise in corruption, negations of basic human rights by police state in the disguise of fair-looking American-made democratic set-up, long hours of load shedding without any solid plan for future.

As our judiciary has not become the world’s best administration of justice after its restoration but a little step towards the glory. Similarly I am not saying that this is an ideal democracy. This is not a true democracy at all but a little step towards it. We have two choices right now. One that we let these military leaders decide our future .This is easy and straight path in making our country a hell on earth. Second choice is that we get back our freedom of choice from military leadership by working consistently against these powers. We have to reject those leaders too who have made our mandate a purchasable commodity to the dictators. While breathing the air carrying the trauma of dynamite and watching your children playing with scattered pieces of bomb shells remember that they deserve books and real toys instead of bomb shells. Remember your duty towards them and to this country. Remember that justice and freedom are more than words. Remember that God made men equal.