| 25 June 2004 | Friday | 06 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
'The Assassins at the Gate'
'Enlightened moderation'
Religious vs secular education
Appeal to president
'Romancing Trotsky'
US presence in Iraq
KMC Sports Complex
Sharea Faisal
Accountability of police
High security area
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This refers to a number of letters appearing in Dawn in recent days (June 16-17) regarding the debate started by Mr Javed Jabbar's article in which he accused MMA acting president and Jamaat-i-Islami Amir Qazi Hussain Ahmad of "provoking people against the Ismaili community and the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF)".
None of the letter writers have tried to analyze whether a minority group is justified in controlling the education system of an ideological country like Pakistan and whether an organization like the AKF should be allowed to take over education boards.
Regretfully, this debate has now been overtaken and run by those aligned with the so-called secular elements trying to convert Pakistan into an "un-Islamic" state and not a "secular" state.
A truly secular state does not exist anywhere in the world, as proven by the anti-Muslim policies and persecution of Muslims in countries which take pride in being secular and democratic.
As regards the allegations against Maulana Maudoodi of opposing the creation of Pakistan, these have time and again been proven wrong and politically orchestrated since they first surfaced six years after the creation of Pakistan when the Jamaat-i-Islami was involved in an active campaign against the then bureaucracy-led government.
Students of history know that Maulana Maudoodi was in the forefront of intellectuals who countered the Congress and the British against the idea of establishing one state in the subcontinent comprising all religions.
Maulana Maudoodi was among staunch supporters of the two-nation theory and he singlehandedly ran a campaign through his articles and speeches convincing contemporary intellectuals among British colonialists and the Congress that Muslims could not share a country and government with Hindus because of the differences in culture, lifestyle and priorities.
Allegations of opposing the Quaid-i-Azam against Maulana Maudoodi are also baseless since he was invited by the government during the life of the Quaid in early 1948 to deliver speeches on state-run Radio Pakistan on Pakistan's ideology and its requirements to evolve a constitution in line with it.
What can be a more interesting instance to disprove the baseless propaganda of the opponents than the fact that Allama Iqbal who conceptualized the idea of a separate homeland for Muslims was an ardent admirer of Maulana Maudoodi's abilities vis-a-vis rendering an Islamic constitution.
The Allama had invited Maulana Maudoodi in 1938 to leave Hyderabad and relocate in Pathankot in East Punjab so that he could work on evolving a constitution for a Muslim country and a modus operandi for division of land between Muslims and Hindus.
Iqbal helped Maulana Maudoodi acquire a piece of land in Pathankot to establish an Islamic centre named "Darus Salam". If Maulana Maudoodi was against the creation of Pakistan, then why did the constituent assembly pass the Objectives Resolution in 1949 on the demands of ulema, Maulana Maudoodi prominent among them?
This is a small example of the reverence and confidence of the founding fathers of this country in the person and qualities of Maulana Maudoodi which should be sufficient to nullify the venomous propaganda of secular elements that were in fact against the establishment of a country in the name of Islam.
This is the rationale behind all the talk of a joint syllabi or its modernization by scrapping cherished Islamic values from it.
AMEERUL AZIM
Central Secretary, Information, Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan, Lahore
'The Assassins at the Gate'
Apropos of Mr Irfan Husain's "The Assassins at the Gate" (June 5), Ruknuddin Khurshah was the reigning 27th Ismaili Imam and not, as stated, the grandmaster of the gardens of Hasanin when Halaku Khan and his Mongol horde destroyed Alamut in December 1256.
Professor Phillip K. Hitti, in his History of Arabs (page447), gives a vivid description of the gardens of Alamut. A graphic, though late and second-hand, description of the method by which the Master of Alamut is said to have hypnotized his self-sacrificing ones (Fid'ai) with the use of hashish has come down to us from Marco Polo who passed in that neighbourhood in 1251 or 1252. Marco Polo says:
"Now no man was allowed to enter the garden save those who the grandmaster intended to be his Ashishin (Assassin). He kept at his court a number of youths of the country, from 12 to 20 years of age, such as had a taste for soldering.
Then he would introduce them into his garden, some four or six or ten at a time, having first made them drink a certain potion which cast them into deep sleep and then causing them to be lifted and carried in.
So, when they awoke they found themselves in the garden, at a place so charming, they deemed it was paradise in very truth. And the ladies and damsels dallied with them to their hearts' content.
So when the old man would have any prince slain, he would say to such a youth: "Go thou and slay so and so. When thou return, my angels shall bear thee into paradise. And should thou die, even so will I send my angels to carry thee back to paradise."
Ismailis who escaped the carnage of Alamut fled to Karakal, then a forest around the Aral Sea, in 1256. There, the gadi of the 28th Ismaili Imam Shamsuddin Mohammad was established who started the Nizari (incognito) phase of Ismaili that stretched for five centuries from 1256 to 1801.
Ismailis were sufficiently secure in the second half of the 18th century, and reverted to their nomenclature of Alamutias during the reign of their 44th Imam Abul Hassan Ali and at Nukkus in Uzbekistan.
Alamutias was foreign, difficult to express, by the locals in their native Turkish language. So, the Turks took to calling them Hojas or the chosen ones, meaning the followers of Maula Ali who was designated Al Murtaza or the chosen. The gadi of Ismaili imams moved from Nukkus to Kerman in Iran in 1801.
The Hojas were defined in Persian as Khwa'jahs, which translated into Khoja, when the Ismaili reached Sindh in 1843, because the indigenous Sindhi could not pronounce khwa.
MOHAMMED AZIZ HAJI DOSSA
Karachi
'Enlightened moderation'
General Musharraf has succeeded in convincing the OIC in Malaysia to adopt 'enlightened moderation' as its motto. If General Musharraf were to look around critically, he would find religious fundamentalists lurking and flourishing in his own political barn.
Whether or not enlightenment is taken seriously by its proponents is evident from the following: Our TV channels are broadcasting programmes on 'Kana Dajjal', 'Istekhara' (divination) and the Muslims vs the rest of the West.
The leader of the opposition (handpicked by the powers-in-power) in the house is not a mild religious person. Our federal religious minister, son of a deceased fundamentalist, has already issued statements that would shame any modernist. Truth may be the first casualty in war; shame is the first in politics.
The Hudood Ordinances are still there. The diehards in the assembly resist even a change in textbooks. Any changes (to the Hudood/blasphemy laws or textbooks) will have to go through the house, studded by 'models of moderation'.
One religious-political party head keeps issuing menacing statements against people of different faiths. Most important, General Musharraf depends on MMA support.Last and most important, the latest budgetary allocations for education are dismally low (two per cent of GDP) and remain more or less so for the next five years. This is no way of promoting moderation or enlightenment, or is it?
In an interview on a private TV channel (June 16), former police IG Sardar Mohammad Chaudhry, who was into the inner circle of Zia, said that after the imposition of martial law of 1977, the West had cut off all financial aid and the country was on the verge of an economic collapse.
Zia and his generals decided that the way out was to tap funds from Saudi Arabia. For that Islam had to be used as bait. Then on, the Hudood Ordinance and other such infamous laws against women were introduced ensuring a free flow of money from Saudi Arabia. Zia was never serious in his Islamic endeavours. "Regrettably," Sardar said, "I was a part of that."
ASLAM MINHAS
Karachi
Religious vs secular education
Qazi Hussein Ahmad and his alliance of religious parties, by threatening secular education in Pakistan, only desire to keep the country backward and spread the intolerance and ignorance coming out of madressahs to the rest of society.
I for one want nothing to do with Mr Hussein Ahmad's 'vision' of education in Pakistan, nor would I want my children to be educated in Pakistan under the present conditions.
They would be far better off being educated entirely in the West, and living in a free society rather than the repressive, intolerant, terrorist-infested, illiterate, culturally stagnant, unfree society that is today's reality. This is not Jinnah's Pakistan; it is a country which has been taken hostage by religious extremists.
OMAR MIRZA
New York, USA
Appeal to president
I am a 71-year-old retired teacher. I am the owner of a plot in the KDA Scheme # 33, Sector 48-A, under PPOECH Housing Society, Karachi. My plot, # B-96, measures 400sq yds vide certificate # 001767, receipt # 12835 dated 12.9.1979.
This plot was allotted to me in 1979. Although I have fully paid the cost of the plot from my life's savings, I have not been given its possession yet. On my inquiry in 1993, the secretary of the society informed me that my plot had been utilized by the government in green belts and that the firm was trying to arrange an alternative plot.
He said he would inform me as soon as the matter was decided. Eleven years have passed and there is no sign of my getting the plot yet. I appeal to the president to look into the matter and do the needful.
KHAIRUNNISA ZUBEDI
Karachi
'Romancing Trotsky'
This refers to the response to my letter on Trotsky by Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmad (June 17). I wish to state in response that most of the claims made by Mr Ahmad on Trotsky's behalf have been denied by hard-core European Trotskyites themselves.
And while he claims that I "have not read a single work of his", I have done something infinitely better: I have engaged with members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) which is the largest Trotskyite party in the world while I was a postgraduate student in the UK a couple of years ago.
For Mr Ahmad's information, European Trotskyites reject the nationalist, communist and anti-imperialist struggles waged by Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il-sung, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Chairman Mao and Enver Hoxha in the wake of the Second World War in Vietnam, North Korea, China and Albania, respectively.
While the differences with Stalin apparently do have a perspective, one simply cannot understand why those largely popular struggles which won the support of freedom-loving people all over the world were exclusively rejected by Trotskyites.
Upon closer inquiry, I found out that the European Trotskyites reject these revolutionaries not because they were supported by Stalin and the Soviet people, but because these great leaders were not revolutionary leaders at all. This is a novel and unique argument indeed.
The reason that European Trotskyites do not accept them as great revolutionaries is because the majority of these liberation struggles were overwhelmingly peasant in character with little working class participation (such was the nature and extent of feudalism pervading these societies at the time) and because the peasantry is totally dismissed by Trotsky as a revolutionary force capable of class struggle (in his famous theory of "Permanent Revolution").
The European Trotsyites have put on ideological blinkers too like their mentor. In Mr Ahmad's reply, there is no mention of the fact that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is not applicable to the conditions of the present Third World, where the majority of people are involved in agriculture.
He refuses to engage with the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution was a struggle where the Russian peasants played a leading part along with the proletariat, as against Trotsky's predictions.
Likewise, Mr Ahmad claims that "Lenin accepted the validity of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution in his famous April Thesis (1917). He does not cite any evidence for this claim.
In fact, Lenin explicitly rejected Trotsky's theory in his book Two Lines of the Revolution (1915) in which he wrote: "Trotsky repeats his 'original' theory of 1905 and refuses to stop to think why, for ten whole years, life passed by this beautiful theory."
He further says: "Trotsky is in fact helping the liberal labour politicians in Russia who by the 'repudiation' of the role of the peasantry mean refusal to rouse the peasantry."
A clearer indictment of Trotsky's counter-revolutionary theory cannot be cited. Mr Ahmad wants to depict Lenin as a Trotskyite while in reality Lenin always saw himself as a Marxist-Leninist.
There were sharp ideological differences between Lenin and Trotsky, which were somewhat affected by the overthrow of the tsarist dictatorship in 1917, but they never really subsided and continued after the revolution.
This was why Trotsky was thrown out of the Bolshevik party, not by a purge, as Mr Ahmad would have us believe, but by his sheer unpopularity. On this, Mr Ahmad offers us no clue.
It was Trotsky and his followers who began to actively support fascism after being discredited within the Soviet Union. Trotsky's Fourth International actively collaborated with Nazi agents in Czechoslovakia, France, Spain (with POUM, the fifth columnists supporting General Franco), China (with the Japanese Imperial army), Japan and Sweden in order to undermine the Soviet Union.
This was probably one of the ways by which, according to Mr Ahmad, "Trotsky fought all his life against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution". The activities of Trotsky and his followers in the service of imperialism and fascism have been documented in the book The Great Conspiracy by M. Sayers and A. Kahn (Red Star Press, London, 1991).
The so-called 'Last Testament' of Lenin needs to be understood in the specific conditions of Lenin's health at that time when he was nearing his demise because of a severe illness, and on the basis of a statement that he made while he was ill.
The Trotskyites cheerfully claim that Trotsky, and not Stalin, was Lenin's true heir. This is like accepting, in reverse, the claims made by those historians of Pakistan who say that because Muhammad Ali Jinnah was gravely ill from tuberculosis, his famous September 11 speech calling for the separation of religion and state should be seen as an aberration and not as a definitive statement.
Mr Ahmad claims that Trotskyism is resurging across the globe. This is again an overgeneralization. May I ask where in the world, more specifically the developing world, have Trotskyites ever led a liberation struggle or are leading one, except in the imperialist heartlands of Western Europe and North America? In fact, not only because of Trotsky's arcane theories but also because of their repugnance for such revolutionaries as Mao, Hoxha, Ho Chi Minh, Castro and Kim Il-sung, the followers of Trotsky have failed to find support in countries where anti-imperialist struggles are currently under way; in the Philippines, Peru, Colombia, India, Nepal and Palestine.
RAZA NAEEM
Lahore
US presence in Iraq
In 2003 President Bush told the United Nations to show some backbone. These remarks were made while a resolution for using force against Iraq was being considered. The spine of the UN has been broken at several places by the vetoes hurled by the US on resolutions concerning Israel.
Now the UN has become a spineless creature destined to die like the League of Nations. The US eventually went to war with a token coalition of the willing despite world wide protests for restraint and disagreement at the UN.
It seems strange that after a year of occupation costing billions and losing 800 soldiers in the enterprise, the US intends to stay on till the end of 2005.
RAFI ADAMJEE
Karachi
KMC Sports Complex
Being a regular walker in the KMC Sports Complex, Kashmir Road, Karachi, along with many others, the complex's deteriorating condition has been a cause of concern. Recently two ditches right in front of the main gate has been dug.
Rubbish of all sorts has accumulated in these ditches and will continue to do so if they are not immediately refilled. More so, the approaching monsoon rain is bound to aggravate the situation and increase the misery of the garden users.
A. RAZZAK KOTHARI
Karachi
Sharea Faisal
I came across a letter about the divider of Karachi's Sharea Faisal and was glad to note that a lot of citizens are now concerned about setting priorities on public spending. It does not make sense to uproot the strong island through heavy machines and remove big boulders.
Instead, millions thus wasted could have been spent on reconstruction/re-carpeting of the adjacent service road lying in a bad shape while a lot of commercial buildings have sprung up in the area.
JAWAID SAEED
Karachi
Accountability of police
Mr Tariq Saleem Dogar, chief of the Lahore city police with the designation of DIG, has said that because of departmental accountability 3,419 policemen have been found guilty of criminal offences during the past five months. Those who have been punished are inspectors, sub-inspectors, head constables and constables.
The DIG has taken action to eliminate corrupt elements from the rank and file of the city police. However, I request the police to analyze the cause of corruption. Removal from service would not be effective because unemployed trained personnel could become a nuisance for society.
PROF (DR) M. A. SOOFI
Lahore
High security area
The Concerned Citizens of Karachi (CCOK), an independent group of citizens, is very concerned about the manner in which Abdullah Haroon Road and its adjoining areas have been closed to public access over the past month or so.
While security is an issue, the public cannot be punished by denying it access to a central part of the city. In this regard, suggestions and ideas from concerned people about how this problem should be tackled will be welcomed at khs@cyber.net.pk.
CCOK
Karachi
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