| August 23, 2002 | Friday | Jamadi-us-Saani 13,1423 |
Britons shocked over murder of two girls
It’s time for change: CITYSCAPES
IT is not Huntington’s imagined ‘clash of civilisations’ that one is witnessing these days. Nor it is an action replay of the Crusades because the Jewish factor, which is at the core of the present conflict, was not there at all in the three-century long war in medieval times between the Christendom and Arab Muslims. It looks like a clash of beliefs taking place in the Biblical Holy Land.
After fifty-five years of independence Karachi remains as dysfunctional as ever. The delivery level of civic services is so poor that the residents cannot be blamed for thoroughly hating civic agencies or their employees. With every change in type, colour and creed at municipal services Karachiites may have pinned renewed hopes but finally there seems to be little trust left in the ability of civic bodies and utility agencies to deliver.
The Christians, whether practising ones or those who are indifferent to religion, are born with the belief in Christ’s second coming in Palestine before the Armageddon, or the final battle between the forces of good and evil on the eve of the Doomsday, or the end of the world. All the four Gospels in the New Testament agree that Jesus Christ, while alive, had informed his disciples about his second coming before the Doomsday.
According to Matthew’s version, he even told them: “I assure you that there are some here who will not die until they have seen the Son of Man (meaning himself) come as King” (Matth 16:28). This finds a clear affirmation in the Quran: “There is not one among the people of the Book (meaning Jews and Christians) but will believe in him before his death and on the Day of Judgment, he will be a witness against them” (4:159).
The Book of Acts in the Bible is more explicit on Christ’s second coming in Palestine. It says that, while Jesus was being taken up to Heaven, the apostles, whom he had chosen, asked him: “Lord will you at this time give the Kingdom back to Israel?” (Jesus did not rule out the possibility) He just answered: “The times and occasions are set by my Father’s own authority and it is not for you to know when they will be. But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witness for me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
After saying this he was taken up to heaven... and then two men dressed in white suddenly stood beside them and said, “Galileans! Why are you standing there and looking up at the Sky? This Jesus who was taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way that you saw him go to heaven” (Acts-1: 6-11). Further, Bible’s another book (or Chapter), Thessalonians-2 informs us that “Jesus will appear at the proper time when the Wicked One will appear” and when “the Lord Jesus comes he will kill him with the breath from his mouth and destroy him with his dazzling presence.” (Thes.2.1-15).
Another Biblical book, Hebrews, enlightens: “He will appear a second time not to deal with sin but to save those who are waiting for him.” (Hebrews 9:28). This too is in line with the Quran which hints at Christ’s appearance before ‘the Hour’, the phrase for the Doomsday: “We made the Son of Mary an example for the Israelites... and he is a sign of the Hour, and entertain no doubt about it” (43:59-61).
Christian belief, however, glorifies the Israelites as God’s chosen people and their land, the present state of Israel, as the place where the final battle between good and evil will be fought after Christ’s second coming. This is how the Israelites are portrayed on the eve of the Day of Judgment. The Bible’s Book of Revelation, which is supposed to be a record of what must happen before the end of the world, says that only 144,000 people from the twelve tribes of Israel, 12,000 from each tribe, will be marked with a seal on their foreheads indicating that they are “the servants of God” to be spared from harm (Rev. 7:4-8).
Islamic belief regarding Christ’s second coming, the appearance of Dajjal the Antichrist, or “the Wicked one”, and his death at the hands of Christ, and the fight taking place in the Syrian and Palestinian territories agrees broadly with the Christian belief outlined above. But it is quite at variance with the latter in respect of the present day Israelites being ‘glorious’ creatures as the Bible presents their ancient ancestors to be in the Biblical times.
According to Islamic ‘traditions’, the Dajjal (Anti-Christ) will be a Jew heading a Jewish army of aggression, to quell whom Christ will re-appear in present Syria-Palestine region. He will also reconcile Christianity with Islam and establish world peace and banish all conflicts. All this will happen some time before the end of the world which remains unpredictable, both in Christian and Muslim Scriptures.
The Quran appears to affirm, as we have seen in the foregoing discussion, that Christ being a ‘sign’ of the Day of Judgment, will reappear before the end of the world and die the physical death which all living creations of God have to suffer. The scene of the last battle, or Biblical Armageddon, and slaying of Dajjal, the Antichrist, or the Biblical ‘Wicked One’, has been portrayed vividly in Prophet Muhammad’s sayings (peace be upon him).
One of the well-authenticated sayings refers to an occasion when the holy Prophet said on oath that “Jesus, son of Mary, will certainly re-appear among you as a just ruler. He will break the Cross (i.e. falsify his Crucifixion), declare pork as unclean and end all warfare and conflicts. As a result, there will be such a surfeit of wealth that there will be none to ask for it and people will tend to prostrate themselves before God at least once without thinking of worldly affairs.”
One of the several sayings of the Prophet on this subject is more descriptive: “Jesus Christ will appear and will be recognized. He will be a person of moderate height, of fair and pinkish complexion, wearing a two-piece yellowish dress, his locks of hair looking wet with water, though not actually wet. He will fight for the cause of Islam, break the Cross, declare the pork unclean, end all conflicts and religious dissensions and kill the Dajjal Antichrist and live for forty years.”
Some other equally reliable ‘traditions’ say that while Dajjal, at the head of seventy thousand strong Jewish army, will be advancing towards Damascus, Christ will appear near the minaret and he will muster adequate strength to destroy the attacking army. In another related ‘tradition’ the place where Dajjal and his forces will be liquidated was named by the Prophet as the ‘valley of Afique’ (may be the present Fique, the last Syrian outpost on present Syria-Israel border, a few miles east of the source of River Jordan).
All this is so fascinating, as well as intriguing, particularly in view of the fact that the matter regarding the Jewish diaspora congregating in what is now the state of Israel and acquiring so much military power as to plan an attack on Damascus was beyond every one’s imagination during not only the Prophet’s life time, a millennium and a half ago, but even during the period the ‘Traditions’ were compiled, more than a thousand years in the past and even centuries later.
THE British nation is in a state of shock over the murder of two girls in the quiet Soham village. The bodies of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were found on Saturday. Postmortem tests earlier in the week failed to pinpoint the exact cause of death and, as such, further examinations are being carried out.
A 28-year-old school caretaker, Ian Huntley, has been charged with murder of the two girls and he is being held at a high security hospital under the Mental Health Act, having been deemed unfit to appear before magistrates. His girlfriend Maxine Carr appeared in the court, charged with perverting the course of justice by lying to the police.
There is no doubt that a crime of this nature can shock any society but in a peaceful and stable country like Great Britain this tragic incident has shocked almost everybody, with people asking just one question, how did it happen? Children and parents from the hometown of the murdered girls, struggling to cope with the emotional anguish caused by the deaths, are receiving counselling from social workers using special helplines.
The main churchyard in the area has been transformed by a mass of bouquets as floral tributes continued to arrive in Soham from across the country.
There are blames that some sections in the local education authorities have been slow to check criminal records of the workers as required by law. The system of checking teachers’ backgrounds has been dogged by difficulties because of a backlog of 60,000 cases to provide fast information on past convictions for crimes such as child abuse.
But the Home Office, which has the responsibility to look into the cases, denies the figure. Now it has emerged that some organizations have overlooked the paperwork which would reveal a criminal past, while others have had to employ teaching staff without the full checks in the rush to recruit teachers, teaching assistants and other people to work in schools.
EMBASSY SIEGE: Last week, in a dramatic move a previously unknown, an Iraqi opposition group burst in the Iraqi embassy in Germany and took four staff members of the embassy hostage, including the acting ambassador. Masked German police commandos swiftly and brought a peaceful end to the occupation of the Iraqi embassy in Berlin. The police detained the five assailants.
The local residents expressed surprise that the building was unguarded and had no apparent security measures. By all accounts it was a bizarre incident. The protesters were reported to be demanding that they officially be handed the Iraqi embassy flag, and that Germany crack down on Iraqi secret service activities at the embassy and protect the Iraqis living in Germany. The Iraqi government described the incident as “terrorist aggression” by mercenaries of the Israeli and American intelligence services.
For many the siege of the Iraqi embassy was an interesting incident as Germany, which was a close ally of Saddam Hussein before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, is strongly opposing an attack against Iraq. The German police and the Iraqi opposition parties say they have not heard of the group. The German foreign ministry said it assumed that the group, reported to consist of 80 to 100 members, had been formed on an ad hoc basis.
The incident came as a surprise to the German security agencies as militant activity by Iraqi citizens in Germany has so far been confined to the country’s large Kurdish refugee population. Most people in that group are holders of Turkish passports, though many of them have close blood and cultural links with the Kurds from Iraq.
Some sources suggested that the group contained some independent Kurds who did not support the two Kurdish militias controlling northern Iraq. The Iraqi National Congress (INC), an alliance of the Iraqi opposition parties, in their reaction to the incident, said the siege showed the frustration felt by many Iraqi exiles at the continued dictatorship of President Saddam and, in particular, at German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s comments that Germany should play no part in a US-led military operation against Iraq.
The incident of hostage-taking took another bizarre twist when it emerged that it came almost exactly 30 years after Palestinian guerillas took Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In that incident 11 Israelis and five gunmen had died. Perhaps the only thing that German government has learnt from this incident is to improve police training security at embassies and other sensitive places.
More than broken roads, piling heaps of garbage or even fleeting supply of electricity the polluted and meagre supply of water and overflowing sewers remain the biggest source of agony to the common man in Karachi. Pakistan Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Institute of Chemistry at Karachi University and many other laboratories of repute have declared water being supplied by KWSB unfit for human consumption.
Last week in parts of former District West, people complained that they had not received water for more than 15 days. Even the residents of the fashionable parts of the city have not been any luckier.
During last fifteen years, KWSB undertook many celebrated schemes for supply of water and disposal of treated sewage. Literally hundred’s of millions of dollars have been borrowed from World Bank and Asian Development Bank to finance those mega schemes yet the conditions seem to have gone from bad to worse. No doubt due to its unchecked growth this mega city will always need more of everything but what puzzles most of the people is the fate of the promised dividends of those schemes and our blatant failure for optimal utilization of 460MGD of bulk water and treatment facilities for safe disposal of 220 MGD sewage that the city generates everyday.
The answer remains obviously very depressing. The universally innocent, puppy-like expressions over the long faces of the managers and supervisors that have ruled KWSB for twenty years may be extremely deceptive. Yet someday someone will have to come up with the answer for failing the city so miserably.
Karachiites at large believe and KWSB has repeatedly confirmed poor distribution, over 50 per cent leakage and a system laid on ad-hoc basis during last 100 years and our collective failure to ensure timely maintenance.
With regard to sewage treatment and disposal Karachi was promised an ability to cater for two-third of the estimated 220 million gallons per day of sewerage generated in the city. At # least that was the cumulative design capacity projected for the three sewerage treatment plants during the 1990s at the time of convincing the federal and provincial authorities to borrow those millions of dollars. Unfortunately it has now transpired that treatment capacity may be less than 80 million gallons while 40 million gallons of sewage generated may be actually connected to the plants.
We may never be able to fix the responsibility on anyone of the past mandarins of KWSB for dumping of raw sewage in to our marine environment nor for the technical solutions that these international financial institutions approved for a city like Karachi or the insane and mechanical covenants that our over- excited authorities signed for those shackling loans that future generations shall pay for a long time. All those loans advanced by World Bank and Asian Development Bank may have been simply wasted through a leaking financial system.
One of the biggest crimes that we are routinely charged by the Bank is overstaffing. Apart from pressure to downsize establishment in aggregate terms KWSB has been under obligation to meet many other financial covenants under the various credits. But KWSB directly links its ability to meet these covenants to the issue of reduction in staff as the Board spends over 50 per cent of its revenues on salaries and benefits.
A study conducted by IDA consultants concluded in 1988 that KWSB could afford 8,000 adequately trained employees. That study conducted some 14 years ago became the basis for all negotiations with Asian and World Bank. However in present utter lawlessness, KWSB may have reduced the number of its employees but they remain poorly trained as ever. During 1996 KWSB again rationalized the minimum number of personnel required to be around 10,000. After six years and completion of many water supply and sewage disposal schemes, natural attrition and city’s continued proliferation demands a steady increase in the number of workers. The spineless management that has not seen any reduction in its own perks or benefits however insists reduction of employees to suit World Bank’s insane demands. For the above reason the Board has spent more resources in attempts not to allow the 1,100 or so employees that were arbitrarily sacked during 1998 rather than training of its employees or widening revenue collection base.
Even the World Bank’s magic figure of 8,000 employees for KWSB was based upon the Board’s poor revenue collection performance. During 1995-96 KWSB only collected its dues from less than 166,000 out of some 700,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers. By last year though the number of customers had almost doubled the bill was only collected from some 183,000 customers.
Karachi may have seen very little economic development over last many years. Just recently an experienced officer has taken over KWSB as its managing director. The performance of the Board with reference to its revenue collection cannot be allowed to remain as dismal as in recent past. If service is to improve, the Board needs to emphasise on mechanization, manpower training and adequate level of employment for field staff. Out of the 1,107 employees arbitrarily retired during 1998 Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled in favour of the 573 employees that had moved the court. The remaining 534 continue to run from pillar to post, looking for someone that might help in getting their jobs back while the bloating management of the Board and the slumbering provincial authorities allow Karachi to suffer and suffocate. In any case retrenchments in KWSB may be a good example for World Bank’s much-trumpeted poverty alleviation programme.