| July 15, 2005 | Friday | Jumadi-us-Sani 7, 1426 |
To send a letter to the Editor
Click here
Islamic terrorism?
Noise pollution
PMDC: assigning responsibilities
Hasba Bill
ANAA and its role
Identical advice
State Life pensions
‘Don’t mock the people’
‘Wasted years’
I WAS horrified to read (Dawn, June 30) that a Hindu temple in the Lal Kurti area of Nowshera cantonment, known as Lamba Vera Mandir, was attacked, looted and seriously damaged by a 300-strong gang of bigots. It is stated that the trouble started when children, seeing some waste papers being burnt by a Christian street cleaner, reported to their elders that the Holy Quran was being burnt.
Nowshera has been the scene of anti-minority violence in the past also. This mandir was attacked and damaged in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished. A Christian was lynched and killed only a couple of months earlier last April. Evidently, Nowshera is our counterpart of the Indian state of Gujarat where minorities are not safe.
Our prophet taught us to respect places of worship and holy men of other religions. Qazi Hussain Ahmad said on visiting the place of the incident that “Islam fully guarantees the rights of religious minorities”. So, what these bigots did was anti-Islamic. This is a sort of blasphemy against our religion. This and other such incidents should be looked into from this point of view. The perpetrators of the crime should be dealt with under the Hudood laws. Also, cumulative action against the residents of the area needs to be taken according to local custom.
According to our criminal law as well as according to the tenets of Islam, ‘niyat’ or ‘mens rea’ is the first ingredient of the commission of a crime. If there is no ‘niyat’ or intention of dishonouring the Holy Quran, then even burning of torn and damaged pages is no crime if the intention is only to dispose of them. How else such material is to be disposed of?
If the children, without any proof, took the burning of pieces of paper as burning of the Holy Quran, this shows how prejudice and hatred against the minorities have been made to poison their minds. This reflects upon the character of their elders who seem to be living in the days of ‘jahalat’ — the period before the advent of Islam. This view is reinforced by the fact that even the elders did not bother to verify the facts and ran after the blood of the Christian merely on the allegations of the children.
It appears that the story about the burning of papers by the Christian was just a cover to commit the crime. How else can one explain the attack, burning and looting of a ‘mandir’ when the alleged act of desecration was not committed by a Hindu? Besides, even if a Hindu or a Christian had committed such a crime, did it justify the mob attack on a place of worship?
I would pray that strict action, both on an individual basis as well as cumulatively, be taken. It looks a farce that just 13 persons have been arrested in this connection when the crime was committed by no fewer than 300.
SALAHUDDIN MIRZA
Karachi
THE media all over has desensitized the public to the plight of Muslims by streaming televised impressions of what is termed “Islamic terrorism”. They are intent on demonizing an ideology to muster support for the pseudo “war on terror” in which countless innocent Muslim civilians have lost lives.
The Muslim fatalities now run well into tens of thousands and are only cursorily reported by the media and no outrage in that regard pours from the public from anywhere in the world. However, in response to the retaliatory attacks by the sympathizers of victims of US and UK oppression, the media beams pictures around the world magnifying beyond proportion the victimization of the West at the hands of the so-called “terrorists”.
The West has ravaged the lands of many countries around the world and has frequently orchestrated political unrest. Their policies have created unstable political situations in the Muslim world where they have plundered the natural resources by installing puppet regimes that are subservient to their evil interests. It was the US that aided Saddam militarily while he was involved in the massacre of the Kurds and now at their hands Iraq is precariously close to a civil war. These and other culpable facts are preserved in scholarship and one only needs to visit a decent library to ascertain them and get a clear perspective.
Now, all of a sudden, the West has worn some angelic attire and is leading the crusade against the so-called “evil”. It is rather naïve to expect that the people who are wronged in the most terrible of ways will sit quietly and endure the humiliation at the hands of the West in their own lands. Indeed these dreadful attacks were inevitable and were predicted by leading organizations that assess global security.
This in no way condones the horrendous events that transpired in the UK but the intention here is only to put matters in perspective for those who have been brainwashed by the western propagandist media. It is extremely unfortunate that in response to the “you are with us or against us” doctrine and belligerent policies of the US and the UK in Muslim lands, such retaliatory attacks will only escalate making the world more insecure.
FARRUKH
Islamabad
NOISE pollution is usually subtle but deadly. It not only destroys hearing ability but also causes tension and irritability which are harbingers of more serious diseases. Sporadic and half-hearted efforts have been made to check this form of pollution by converting to four-stroke engines for rickshaws and re-designing silencers, etc. For a variety of reasons, not much success has been achieved and this ever noisy form of transportation continues to rule the roads.
The problem of noise gets accentuated by the young who seek thrills by riding motorcycles and driving cars without silencers. The police generally appear helpless in prosecuting these violators.
Aircraft noise is yet another source of pollution which has so far remained unchecked. In civilized societies, operation of noisy civil aircraft was gradually stopped a long while ago. Further protection for the citizens against this hazard was ensured by instituting airport night curfews and noise abatement procedures.
In Pakistan, where most major civil airports lie in heavily populated areas, no such precautionary measures have been taken. Airlines, other than PIA, continue to operate old Russian commercial aircraft which are exceptionally noisy. Despite this, the concept of noise abatement or night curfew remains alien to our civil aviation regulators.
Just imagine a Russian old vintage TU 154 taking off from Islamabad and climbing out on full power, at night, straight over Rawalpindi General Hospital. What must be the plight of the patients?
The situation is not much different at other major civil airports where flight paths of both arriving and departing aircraft traverse over heavily populated areas. The ministry of defence/ Civil Aviation Authority may like to consider suitable legislation to check the menace of aircraft noise.
AIR CDRE (retd)
A. WAJID SALIM
Lahore
THE Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) should be safeguarding the interest of the community at large. This should cover the ethical care of patients and the structured and ethical training of medical students, whose parents, as member of this community, have a moral and legal right to be taken into confidence.
Unfortunately, the PMDC’s role has become limited to “surveillance of medical colleges”. Even this responsibility is being confined to public sector medical colleges. Lately, the PMDC office-bearers have had to face a lot of music and this was spread all over the print media. More recently, the electronic media has become involved. There are television programmes where representatives of the PMA, PMDC and private medical colleges come face to face. The way these elite of the profession conduct themselves falls short of the expectations of the community, which holds them in high esteem.
In my view, 30 per cent of the seats in the PMDC should be given to non-medical persons, including senior educationists and jurors; 30 per cent should be for family physicians; and the remaining 40 per cent should be divided between public and private sector medical colleges. Courses and syllabi should be the responsibility of universities, supervised by the Higher Education Commission, which should also arrange certifying examinations for overseas medical graduates.
The main task of the PMDC is to safeguard the interests of the patients and their guardians and the parents of medical students.
KHALID ZAFAR HASHMI
Karachi
THE Hasba Bill seems to be yet another encroachment on personal freedom. Islam provides a large area of personal freedom to human beings where nobody else can intrude. So much that should belong to the individual, to the
family, and to society is being expropriated in the name of the law.
Inquisitiveness about people’s personal life has been condemned in the HolyQuran and Hadith. In fact, the exhortation is to do otherwise: to cover up each other’s weaknesses, instead of trying to discover them and bringing them to justice. The Hasba Bill will surely increase inquisitiveness and curiosity in the name of religion and law. The office
of the “muhtasib” will definitely feel it right to “keep an eye on the people”, even in the most private sections of their life.
All this reminds one so much of George Orwell’s 1984. The “promotion of virtue and prevention of vice” seems so much like Orwell’s “Thought Police”. The moment you think of a rebellious idea — which means anything against the party ideology — you are caught. You cannot escape.
Loss of personal freedom doesn’t lead to spiritual betterment. The spirit is after all not visible at all. You cannot say by the beard of a man that he is deeply religious. Nor even by the mark of prayers on his forehead.
FAISAL NAZIR
Karachi
MAY I seek the courtesy of your columns to respond to the calumnies heaped on the Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women (ANAA), a USA-based advocacy group run by Americans of Pakistani origin.
We have been accused of bringing the fair name of Pakistan into disrepute, of working at the behest of the Indian lobby, and of collecting funds from the general public in the name of victims of sexual crimes overseas. We have been questioned why we do not agitate against women abuse in the US, Europe and Australia.
Please allow me to set the record straight. ANAA is funded entirely by voluntary contributions of its members and sympathizers. It is not beholden to any group, government or non-government agency.
ANAA held its symposium during the same timeframe as the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA) held its annual meeting in Houston, Texas. Most of the 400 participants in the symposium were APPNA members who had come to attend the APPNA meeting and paid their own expenses. Nilofer Bakhtiar and others were sponsored by APPNA. ANAA paid the inland expenses only of one speaker from Pakistan.
ANAA is bound by its charter to campaign against the abuse of women. It has to limit its focus on Pakistan as its members are of Pakistani origin and with its limited resources it can effectively take on only the problems of Pakistani women.
It invites US politicians and human rights activists to its events because the Pakistan government is in thrall to the US government and media. Witness how Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz scrambled to take Mukhtaran Mai off the exit control list and President Musharraf declared that there were no restrictions on her travel after the US State Department and media intervened.
The BBC has put out statistics according to which only 572 cases of sexual assault were reported in Pakistan in one year, whereas 150,000 such cases were reported in the western countries (North and South Americas, Europe, and Australia) during the same period. Statistics can be misleading, unless taken in proper perspective.
First, only a tiny percentage of sexual outrages are reported in Pakistan. There is a miasma of shame and embarrassment associated with such incidents. People, in general, and the orthodox, in particular, tend to blame the victim.
I was in Pakistan in February and interviewed Dr Shazia Khalid. I talked to a lot of people about the case. I was astounded by the number of people who cast aspersions on the victim that she had brought on the whole thing on herself.
Second, in a country under an Islamic dispensation and where people ridicule the permissiveness and low moral standards of the West, even one rape should be too many.
Further, in the West, city/village councils do not ordain gang-rapes, the victims are not treated as criminals, security agents are not imposed on them as room-mates, their calls are not monitored, they are not kept on the exit control list.
Western countries do not enact discriminatory laws. Pakistan has failed to repeal the Zina and Hudood laws even though commissions appointed by successive governments, including the current one, have advised them to do so.
We at ANAA bring to the stage of the world the best, the most courageous and the most aware of the women in Pakistan, who contest the stereotypical image of a home-bound, downtrodden and submissive woman of Pakistan.
We do not seek to damage the image of Pakistan; rather its people are looked up to because we have raised our voice against injustice. We are not likely to be taken in by Indian or any other lobbies. We bring pressure of the US government and international media to bear on the government of Pakistan to enact fair laws, to repeal discriminatory laws, to act against tribal codes of honour killing, revenge rapes, barter of women and other social abuses.
DR S. EHTISHAM
New York, USA
JUST a month and a half after arriving in Oman, I received a call from a relative that my house in Karachi had been burgled. I had to rush back. I reviewed the situation and decided not to go to the police for obvious reasons. It looks like crime and criminals have become part of society.
Crimes against the public are committed daily in the hundreds. Some surface, most don’t. The reasons are no secret. When we were at the police station after the burglary, we were advised not to press for an FIR because this might result in enmity with the criminals and we would have to face consequences. The criminals would be free soon, and then?
The next week I went to a relative’s house. At about 9pm we were all sitting, talking and waiting for dinner when three young men, guns in hand, appeared and asked all of us to get into one room. We did. They took their time, collected whatever they could and
left with a piece of advice: “Don’t make the mistake of reporting to the police or you will buy our enmity”. Identical advice to the one given by the police.
The question is: “What can we do?” Many localities have hired private security guards (which is unaffordable), but is it a solution? I hope some law-enforcer will advise us.
HAJI ASHFAQ
Muscat, Oman
EVERY time in the past, whenever the government raised employees’ pensions, pensioners of State Life also got a raise. This was because State Life is a government-owned organization and its pension scheme is based on and pegged to the pension scheme of the federal government.
The management of State Life has recently decided that the increase allowed to government pensioners from July 1, 2004 will not be allowed to State Life pensioners. This has dealt a severe blow to them as they are already reeling under the pressure of inflation. The fear is that the fate of the pension increase announced by the government from July 1, 2005 may not be different.
After waiting patiently and in vain for one whole year, we are left with no alternative but to appeal to the president and the prime minister to come to the rescue of the beleaguered pensioners of State Life by issuing orders to its management to immediately allow the increases in pensions both from July 1, 2004 and July 1, 2005, pay all arrears and see that such an anomalous and sticky situation does not occur in the future.
SYED RAUF AHMED
Karachi
MR Ardeshir Cowasjee’s column ‘Don’t mock the people’ (July 10) needs to be supported because it reflects what large numbers of people in Pakistan have come to think about the government of the day. Every day we read high-sounding proclamations of government functionaries that this or that shall be done, but with equal regularity this or that is not done.
People have come to realize that all this and a lot more is meant to mock them. They have no trust in official statements. In typical American fashion, our prime minister has said a ‘task force’ to deal with the cellphone snatching will be set up. One more bureaucratic set-up in the offing to fool the people.
I have personally gone through the ordeal of being robbed of our belongings at gun-point and had described the incident in a letter published in this newspaper. I had sent a copy of that letter to the then chief secretary and the inspector-general of police. The chief secretary had promptly acknowledged my letter and promised action but the IG was too big an officer to take note of what a small citizen had suggested.
I only hope and pray that the Horticultural Society of Pakistan through Mr Cowasjee’s efforts shall be able to get back their plot of land. So help them, God.
MAHER H. ALAVI
Karachi
THIS is with reference to Mr Javed Hussain’s article ‘Pakistan’s wasted years’ (July 12). One can agree with the spirit in which the article is written but the arguments regarding challenges Pakistan faces today are debatable.
I disagree with the writer’s contention that the ‘greatest challenge that has faced Pakistan since its birth is feudalism and tribalism’. I believe that even the under-graduate students of Pakistan’s polity understand that the greatest challenge that Pakistan has faced is the military’s dominant role in all spheres of the country.
There is no one else who has served the private interests of these feudal and tribal lords other than successive military governments. If the military can uproot the so-called terrorist infrastructure from the country, why cannot it uproot feudals from their immoral and inhuman hold over people, politics, constituencies and governance? But it is crystal clear to most of us that a politically ambitious army cannot deprive itself of its natural allies for establishing its own military order (under PCOs and LFOs), whenever it needs.
To our misfortune, the main opposition parties have failed to establish a joint united platform against the military’s political role. Some are talking of a deal and others of ‘dheel’.
MUSHTAQUE RAJPAR
Karachi
You can also send letters to the Editor
Just send your message to the following address: letters@dawn.com
Make sure you include your full name, postal address, e-mail address, and in the case of Pakistan your day-time telephone number.