| July 25, 2005 | Monday | Jumadi-us-Sani 17, 1426 |
Muslims of a different gene?
Oh for an agent!
A FRIEND who writes for a local newspaper from Washington sent the following report published on the July 18:
A Republican congressman said in a radio interview aired by a Florida station that if a multiple-city attack happened in the United States in the next 90 days, as predicted by an Israeli expert, and was found to be the work of extremist Muslims, then “we should take out their holy sites.” Congressman Thomas G Tancredo, Republican from Colorado, was being interviewed by AM 540 WFLA radio host Pat Campbell, who asked him what the response should be if terrorist attacks on US cities were attributable to extremist Muslims. The Congressman replied, “..... then we could take out their holy sites.” Asked if that meant Makkah, Tancredo answered, “Yes”.
This congressman must be stark, raving mad. And who is a Muslim ‘extremist’? Who was Balfour? If the Muslims have holy sites, the Americans have unholy sites. What gives birth to extremism, anyway?
By the way, the first ‘police muqabila’ has taken place in London. British police have now admitted that they shot dead ‘the wrong man during a hunt for failed bomb attacks’ on the cities’ transport system. After the event came this bland statement: ‘We are now satisfied that he (the victim) was not connected with the incidents of Thursday. For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one the Metropolitan police service regrets’.
For this regret a million thanks. But this perhaps is not the first time that the British police have killed innocent people in fake encounters.
I SAW the Punjab Chief Minister with the Lahore Corps Commander in a photograph which appeared in the Lahore Press on Sunday. I, too, have a photograph showing myself with the SHO of the area in which I live. Such things help, you see, and Pervaiz Elahi is such a darling little pet. His photograph with the corps commander, I am sure, will help him against the evil eye. He should do it more often.
MY DAILY travel between home and office and back is becoming more and more of a torture. Five years ago, it used to take me only seven minutes for the journey. Today, it takes all of half an hour and five years hence, it may require an hour, if not more. There are only three traffic signals along the way. Waiting for the green light is taking longer and longer everyday. It used to be one red light and I would be through. Today, there are so many cars ahead of me that the green turns into red, into green, into red, into green before I can pass through. And when there is VIP movement en route, you can switch your car off and go to sleep. And if it rains, you can only marvel at the brilliance of our road builders.
When Indira Ghandi was the Queen empress of India, she had proclaimed, gharibi hatao —- Banish Poverty. We are a desperately poor sub-continent. But we are turning the corner slowly but surely. What will happen when even a quarter of the billion-plus Indians and 150 million Pakistanis have cars of their own. If we have to multiply like flies, we shall have to adopt poverty as a way of life. Surely, not all of us can be car-owning idiots. You think I am talking through my hat? Let me show you something. In article in The Guardian on June 30 John Vidal wrote:
In 1989, when the environment was briefly top of the UK national agenda, a group of Chinese planners came to London. Many of the people who met them wanted to know how the country had managed to get so many citizens to ride bicycles —- something the British authorities were unable to do. The Chinese were perplexed. “You don’t understand”, said one. “In 20 years time, no more bicycles. All cars”.
That prediction is being realised. Beijing’s roads, once kerb-to-kerb with bikes, are now choked with cars. In terms of traffic, noise and air pollution, Shanghai could be Lagos or Cairo.
City after Chinese city is widening its roads, building flyovers and underpasses to cater for the increasing number of cars. The fastest automobile explosion the world has ever known is underway across the world’s most populous country. The bike, just a generation ago the transport of choice, is literally being driven off the street.
Last year, the Chinese reportedly bought four million new cars. Auto numbers there, says the World Bank, are now doubling roughly every four years. Commentators suggest that the country’s 1.3 bn people will have more cars than the US within 25 years. Even now, the world’s leading carmakers are spending billions on setting up plants, vehicles prices are dropping precipitously, and the car has become the object of the new consumer’s dream.
It is a similar story throughout the developing world. For the first time, more than one million new cars were sold in India last year, and the automobile industry there is growing at a rate of about 20 per cent a year. The car fleets of Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Nigeria are growing at similar rates.
But compared to the West, these numbers are as nothing. Private car ownership in the US is about 745 vehicles per 1,000 people, with slightly lower rates in Europe. There may be one car for every 2.4 British people, but only eight Indians and Chinese in 1,000 so far have a car.
Transport, says the Energy Saving Trust, accounts for 26 per cent of all Britain’s green house gas emissions and is the fastest growing sources of global emissions. While the US is by far the greatest source, figures released this month by the European Environment Agency show emissions are still rising in Europe, making it unlikely that EU countries, as a bloc, will meet their Kyoto target.
Transport in developing countries, however, could exceed those in the industrialised world within five years. Three years ago, US energy secretary Spencer Abraham suggested that there would be 3.5 bn motor vehicles by 2050 —- almost four times as many as there are today.
Unless there is a dramatic switch away from inefficient petrol and gas-driven cars towards biofuels, hydrogen, solar and clean electric power, this growth will be an impossibility. At the simple level, there will not be enough oil. At the moment, oil supplies and refinery capacity can only just meet world demand from 795 m vehicles.
Andrew Mckillop, author of the world’s Final Energy Crisis, calculates that China, India and other developing countries will never be able to achieve the vehicle “Saturation” ownership levels of the US.
“There is simply no prospect of China, India, Malaysia, Brazil, Turkey, Iran, Ukraine, Mexico and other emerging car producers being able to achieve US, West European, Australian or Japanese rates of car production and ownership,” he says. “At current consumption rates, the estimate of 3.5 bn motor vehicles would increase world oil consumption by about 70 per cent.”
In fact, the petrol used to fuel a car is the very end of a massive industrial process that requires oil at every point. Each car requires up to the equivalent of 55 barrels of oil, and runs on tyres that are about 40% oil by weight, often on tarnrac (oil-based) roads. The real volume of oil needed to equip the world with cars is much higher than expected.
“Not only is an explosion of the world car fleet a serious threat to the global environment, “ Mckillop says, “ put through its impact on oil demand, it will become a threat to international stability.”
The West’s road transport emissions may be growing by just 1% or 2% each year, but aviation —- spurred by cheap flights and thrusting industry backed by national governments —- is expected to grow enormously in the next 20 years. The world’s aircraft have increased their greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent in the past decade, and these are growing by 4 per cent a year.
The British government expects people to travel three times as much within the next 25 years.
Aircraft already contribute 3.5 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, but if unchecked, this will reach 5 per cent within 25 years. Should this happen, says the EU, all the carbon savings made via the Kyoto treaty will be cancelled out. And at the moment, the aviation industry has no economic or physical limits.
This leaves the developing countries in a fix. If just 10 per cent of the present population of China and India —- about 200 million people —- adopted a western lifestyle, and took the equivalent of a return flight from London to New York once a year, about 850m extra tonnes of greenhouse gases would be emitted. This is roughly what Britain emits in about five years. The effect on the climate would be immense.
But the demand for personal mobility is now so great, and the need to control emissions so urgent, that a simple easy-to-understand technology that can get people from A to B cleanly and efficiently is desperately needed.
A case perhaps, for the wheel coming full circle, and people taking to bicycles once again.
INDIAN leaders often enough find themselves gushing about Indian Muslims and how they are a peace-loving people, averse to extremism and so on. These leaders include the Hindutva variety too, but only when they are already in power and not trying to grab it with the help of trademark anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too indulged in the mushy hypocrisy last week. This approach is of a piece with the state’s policy of paying the occasional lip-service to its minorities. Or perhaps it is a ploy to impress foreign audiences with idyllic images of Indians, including their alleged aversion to terrorism.
To a question during his last week’s Washington tour, Dr Singh exulted that out of India’s 150 million Muslims, “not one has been found to have joined the ranks of Al Qaeda or participated in the activities of the Taliban”.
Dr Singh has his compulsions, as did other prime ministers before him, for saying foolishly syrupy and condescending things about Indian Muslims. Surprisingly, kudos has also come from the Americans.
“We have not seen an Indian Muslim strapping explosives and blowing himself into pieces,” rejoiced US embassy’s number two in Delhi, Bob Blake.
So what is the import of these gratuitous comments? Is the DNA of Indian Muslims different from Pakistani or Afghan or Arab or Iranian Muslims several of whom have supported and worked for Osama’s pack?
Or is it possible that Indian Muslims, to the last man that Dr Singh referred to, have been so nurtured by the caring hand of the benign Indian state that they are potty-trained to be inherently peace-loving doves, secular to the core and democratic by instinct. So much so that they are perhaps collectively deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize! Why not?
The fact is that an inordinately large number of Indian Muslims are languishing in Indian jails, accused of terrorist activities under the country’s draconian anti-terror laws. Are we then saying that these people were falsely implicated, as is widely believed for good reasons? It is a tempting conclusion peeping out of Dr Singh’s claims. And if this is indeed so, what has Dr Singh done to reverse the wrong? This was the question to ask him in Washington, but it is never too late to raise it in our own parliament.
Or is it Dr Singh’s case that Indian Muslims perpetrate terrorism at home while their brethren are feverishly engaged in religious mumbo jumbo at a global level?
Even before his plane landed back in Delhi last week, Dr Singh should have been apprised of the following news report from Mumbai.
“Upholding the prosecution’s charge that Al Qaeda operative Afroze had conspired to blow up (the British and Indian) parliament, a special court on Friday sentenced him to seven years rigorous imprisonment.” A day earlier, there was another report linking a Gujarati Muslim family with the London bombings.
The effort here is not to give credence to news reports that almost always seek to identify Muslims with terrorism. Many of these reports are the product of prejudiced minds and rampant ignorance. By the same logic how can we boast sweepingly that Indian Muslims are less inclined towards terrorism?
Because if we accept the implied logic of this the next question would be: to which variety of Muslims are we comparing Indian Muslims to claim they are less inclined towards terrorism? Dr Singh’s well meaning tripe is loaded with ethnically driven value judgments apart from being bereft of facts.
If resenting American militarism across the world is a Muslim phenomenon then how do we explain the prairie fires of protest that lit up Europe and Latin America, and blew across large chunks of Asia, not to mention the Arab and Muslim corners of the world. The fact is that Indian Muslims, like Indian Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, straddle the ideological canvass.
There are Muslims in the communist parties, there are Muslims in Dalit parties. Patently Hindu revivalist parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party and, of course, the Congress party have all got their fair share of Muslims who support them. However, we must not be blind to the definite possibility that Messrs Blake and Singh could be wrong.
Only recently, the Hindutva mascot, Bal Thackeray, and a few other religious leaders were talking about raising a Hindu suicide squad to target Indian Muslims or perhaps to fix Pakistan. It just shows that fanaticism tends to be equally spread and heeds no ethnic or religious barriers, regardless of Dr Singh’s claims to the contrary.
A CLUTCH of organizations working for peace between India and Pakistan have come together to hold a week-long convention here to promote their message of harmony.
The convention is to be a space amongst policy makers and policy drivers, legislators, academics and activists to dialogue the direction of the ongoing peace process and the various possibilities therein.
The programme would begin with Nagasaki Day on August 9, when peace activists will hold a day long fast at Mahatma Gandhi’s shrine. After a string of discussions and seminars, it would conclude on August 14 with a candle-light vigil on both sides of the India-Pakistan border at Munabao (Rajasthan)-Khokrapar (Sindh).
“That both the governments are keen on sustaining talks and less reluctant about taking bold initiatives is apparent by their determination to commence and continue the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service. This is the opportune moment then to galvanize the peace process by debating and discussing the possibility of a Visa Free Borders in the nearest future,” says the group, led by eminent activists including Teesta Setalvad and Achin Vanaik.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Obtaining a new driving licence or getting an old one renewed should not be a time-consuming and cumbersome exercise. But a colleague recently learnt that this is precisely what is the case in Karachi.
To begin with, an applicant has to deal with a posse of “agents” who promise to get the job done in return for a nominal sum. High-minded applicants disregard their offers of help only to learn afterwards that a little bit of palm-greasing obviates the need for standing in long queues and spending a ridiculous length of time in the waiting room while others are called and photographed out of turn.
Officials posted at the driving licence branch of the police ask applicants to obtain application forms from a neighbouring photocopy shop. So, forms that should be available free of cost can be had at a price ranging between Re1 to Rs50 — the rate being probably fixed by the man who runs the shop.
Looking extremely disgruntled, officials manning the information desk at the driving licence branch are a queer lot. Queries about fees and documents to be attached to the application form are greeted with one-liners and dismissive stares. You are curtly told to deposit money at the post office across the road.
Armed with a post office deposit slip — obtained after much jostling and pushing — you go to a room where you are chastised for not attaching your old driving licence to the application form. Your explanation about the unavailability of a stapler at the branch cuts no ice with the official in charge of the photo section. You are asked to wait for your turn.
Twiddling your thumbs, you find “agents” in the room helping their clients to get photographed out of turn. (They also provide staplers and ensure that their clients are not treated badly.) In vain you fume inwardly and wonder why the official goes out of the room all too often.
When you have been photographed, you are asked to immediately leave the waiting-room and stand close to its window where another official calls out your name when your driving licence is ready.
The colleague who recently visited the driving licence branch says he was asked to pay an additional Rs200 for the new licence — which is needlessly cluttered with pictures and inferior in quality to the ones issued previously — and for which he was given no receipt. When he insisted on being given a receipt, the official said he could not issue a receipt because he did not have one. “As simple as that,” he said, smiling.
This, too, shall pass
Few were surprised when the Karachi police recently launched a crackdown on leaders of religious parties, some of them outlawed by the president in the past, and rounded up “the usual suspects”. This is not the first time that such an operation has been launched.
Members of most proscribed organizations frequent newspaper offices and over a cup of tea discuss with journalists how the pro-US policies of the present government will come unstuck. The fact that they operate in such an unhindered manner indicates connivance of the police.
Analysts maintain that the reason why the police action against militants has failed to find favour even with moderates is that the government is seen to be acting at the behest of the West. They insist that the government should have launched a systematic campaign against religious extremism — a bane of Karachi — of its own volition at the time of its choosing.
Last Friday, religious parties, especially the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, set students of seminaries on law-enforcement agencies and unsuspecting citizens who happened to be on the roads at the time of the protest. But a senior member of the MMA told a colleague that the current conflagration between the state and religious parties will soon give way to a truce. “We know the government is under immense pressure at the moment. This, too, shall pass,” he mused.
Harry Potter fever hits city
“I wish I could sleep today and wake up on July 16 with Harry Potter beside me,” said an anxious college student to a salesman at one of Karachi’s most popular bookshops a couple of days before the book launch.
Sentiments similar to hers and some more exaggerated were echoed by many others. A friend’s daughter begged for days to her mother not to take her to a family reunion up north for fear of missing the launch, saying: “I can’t go unless you can promise me that there is a bookshop in Naran that will have Harry Potter on its shelf!”
Needless to say she bought the book the day its copies came to Karachi. With her hands trembling and a wide grin plastered on her face, she opened the book and began reading the moment she had it in her hands. She kept reading as her mother drove her home. She made a beeline for her bedroom and did not look up till she had read the last word — over six hours.
What is it about the series that has the whole world reeling with excitement not witnessed for any other book before? Is it the magic created by J.K Rowlings’ fecund imagination so infectious or is it that people want a reprieve from a big, bad cruel world?
The managing director of a chain of bookshops — that catered to 100 online requests for the book — said: “People came in their hundreds to inquire about the Harry Potter book and we had around a thousand copies pre-ordered at our outlets.” They sold over a thousand copies in one day and a few hundred more over the next few.
They had even thought of a “festive” launching ceremony with HP look-alikes but were not sure if the books would reach on time. Mercifully no one was disappointed.
“People had gathered in large numbers outside the shops — waiting for the doors to open,” he adds. One has heard of people queuing up at food joints in Pakistan, but waiting outside for books was unheard of.
But there is a seamier side to this book business. There are pirated copies available too, and amazingly within a very short period. Not a week has passed and you can get a copy for as little as Rs300 at many spots in the city, including one near Teen Talwar. “Unfortunately, no action has been taken by the government,” says the bookseller.
“Obviously it has had an impact on our sales as there are still plenty of people who do tend to buy pirated books,” says the bookseller who feels the price of an original at Rs1,195 is not really steep.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com