| August 24, 2005 | Wednesday | Rajab 18, 1426 |
To send a letter to the Editor
Click here
Petition against ‘Shariat courts’
Self-reliance
HEC affairs
‘Existence and anguish’
Withdrawal in perspective
Pope’s call for tolerance
Changing textbooks
Telephone complaint
Import of sugar
Urgent mail service
ON Aug 14 Pakistan celebrated its 59th birthday. In the meanwhile, like other nations it too has entered the 21st century with high hopes and aspirations. It is an irony that even after 58 years and the dismemberment of the country, our rulers’ mentality is reminiscent of 17th and 18th-century Europe. They are indifferent to the people’s sufferings. They act and behave like the kings and nobles of 17th and 18th century Europe.
The Europe of the 17th century is well-known for the rise of the ‘divine right monarchy’ or Despotism and Louis XIV of France was the best exponent of this theory. Of the state, he declared: “I’m the state”. According to this theory, the king was regarded as the representative of God on earth, and was accountable to God alone for the exercise of his absolute power.
This reminds me of a briefing by President Musharraf, shown on PTV, when he said that God had entrusted him with the presidency.
During the French Revolution of 1789 when the poor and hungry people of France took out a procession in the streets of France shouting for bread which was not available in the market, the insensitive queen of France, Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, advised them to eat cake. When the people of Karachi complained about the high price and non-availability of wheat flour in the open market, our prime minister advised the people to buy wheat flour from the utility stores (shown on PTV news) knowing full well that there are very few utility stores in Karachi and these too located at long distances. Are the people of Karachi so unintelligent as to go to a utility store to purchase 1.5 kgs of wheat flour spending about Rs100 in the process?
Moreover, dictatorial rulers have abrogated or drastically amended the Constitution framed by the representatives of the people on the ground that the people of Pakistan do not deserve democracy.
Each change of the Constitution leads to the revival of the same old questions as to the form of government, as to whether it should be parliamentary or presidential.
We have moved between democracy and dictatorship and despotism (I may be wrong in my assumption). Nevertheless, we cannot say with certainty whether we are moving forward or backward.
ABDUL HAKIM
Karachi
A PETITION has been filed in the Supreme Court of India seeking a ban of ‘Islamic courts’. petitioner claims that Muslims have set up a ‘parallel judicial’ system, which, according to him, is a ‘challenge’ to the country’s judicial system. The petitioner, said to be an advocate, has also asked the central and state governments to dissolve all Shariat courts.
According to media reports, the petitioner has also claimed that the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and other Muslim bodies indulge in activities which are “an open, blatant and flagrant affront on [sic] the sovereign concept of the Constitution and deserved to be curbed and trampled, once and for all.” In other words, the gentleman wants to abolish the religious and civil freedoms the Muslim community has continuously enjoyed since the advent of British rule after the fall of the Mughal empire.
Shariat courts are arbitration councils which have no real or claimed judicial powers or authority whatsoever. Hence these councils cannot be termed a “parallel system” by any stretch of the imagination. Their verdicts are no more than recommendations and advice. It is entirely left up to the two parties to accept the verdict or to reject it. In case of rejection, the so-called ‘Shariat courts’ are powerless and the Muslim community at large enjoys no authority to coerce the rejecting party or to enforce the verdict.
Our judicial and political systems encourage such reconciliation councils and committees where people can get free and speedy justice. Such councils take the burden off normal courts where millions of cases are pending and any case takes a decade or more to be decided. ‘Lok Adalats’, panchayats and various arbitration and adjudication councils and committees are playing this role for the benefit of the ordinary people.
According to my knowledge, only the AIMPLB and the Imarat-i-Shar’iyah, Bihar and Orissa, have a few dozen such ‘Shariat courts’ in some cities and towns. Other ‘darul qazas’ are local and autonomous bodies established by people in various towns and villages. In any case, these so-called ‘courts’ deal only with personal law issues, that is, marriage, divorce and inheritance and the like in which both parties are Muslim.
The current petition will be a test of Indian democracy and secularism: can it be generous enough to let its Muslim citizens continue to follow their personal laws which is a right given by the Constitution and reiterated by all governments since independence.
DR ZAFARUL ISLAM KHAN
Editor, The Milli Gazette,
New Delhi,
India
ACCORDING to a report (Dawn, Aug 19), the World Bank has offered $2 billion funding”. In another report (Aug 20), the ADB has approved $25 million loan for infrastructure. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz foresees the proposed funding to cover improvement of the road network, railways and ports and streamlining of custom and documentation procedure.
This is despite the prime minister’s earlier assertion to have achieved economic self-reliance.
Banks having surplus liquidity must lend because idle money is a loss. But takers should not go for it simply because it is available and at ‘easy terms’.
They should think if foreign funding is really necessary and whether state resources are not available.
The projects mentioned above do not appear to qualify for foreign funding. For example, railways and ports. During the British days these institutions were revenue-earning and should have continued to be so being commercial enterprises. But due to inefficiency and massive corruption, the railways are being reduced to dead stock. In such a situation, there is no guarantee that fresh funding will not as usual be plundered. Funds for improvement in the road network, streamlining of customs and documentation procedure, etc., should be found from the state’s own resources.
We already have a foreign debt of $36.6 billion. By taking further loans, our children should not be mortgaged to monetary funds.
ABDUL SAMAD KHAN
Karachi
DR Pervez Hoodbhoy has highlighted in the press the terrible state of higher education in our country. He has correctly pointed out that basic academic values are missing from Pakistani universities, ethical values are absent in faculty and students and resources are being wasted on an epic scale.
He has maintained that many of the measures introduced by the Higher Education Commission have made the situation even worse and too much money is being spent on useless, even doubtful projects. An example is the amount of Rs5.8 million given for the topic “The Quranization of science courses at the MSc level”. The official responses in the press by the HEC to Dr Hoodbhoy have skirted these issues and have, instead, tried to justify HEC policies in a perfunctory, personal and misleading manner. Unless there is criticism and disclosure of malpractices, remedies will not be possible. It is salutary that these matters are being brought out in the open for debate in the press.
The example cited by Dr Hoodbhoy of the HEC purchasing the utterly obsolete 5 MeV Tandem Van de Graaf accelerator for hundreds of millions of rupees when an up-to-date contemporary one can be obtained at a fraction of its cost is a case in point.
Dr Hoodbhoy has also rightly criticised the ill-conceived policy of churning out 20,000 PhDs at the rate of 1,000 a year. If the average PhD student in Pakistan has trouble with even high school level physics and has only a smattering of English, what will these mass-produced incompetent PhDs do when they get their devalued degrees? Their gainful employment will be a major problem for the nation and they will create more difficulties everywhere than produce useful results.
The HEC chairman has recently said that Pakistan’s higher education budget has been planned to reach Rs90 billion in the next seven years and that the allocation will be increased by 1,500 per cent from Rs800 million to Rs11.7 billion in 2005-06 (Dawn, July 28). It is, therefore, all the more necessary that these massive amounts be utilized properly and effectively and a close check be kept on the HEC.
AMIN JAN NAIM
Islamabad
HAVING gone through Mr Ayaz Amir’s piece “Existence and anguish” (August 19), one would like to make the following observations:
We live in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Constitution of which draws its inspiration from the Resolution of 1949. This means that, according to the Constitution, the main source of law or inspiration of law for the country is the Holy Quran and the Sunnah. Why should that be changed to a “normal democratic republic”? This is something he does not care to explain in depth.
Certainly the ulema and president Ziaul Haq are smaller than the contents of the sources of Islamic laws. Perhaps it is time we set the wrongs right instead of giving up our beliefs and the laws that we live by. I for one do not see any “angst” in the process of setting something right and according to our needs. The sources of law are unchanging and permanent but laws can be amended and reinterpreted or struck down if anything it contains is against the spirit of the law.
Let us be very clear on this point also: the ulema are learned in the “fiqh” of their school. They don’t represent the totality of Islam. Islam is bigger than what they presume to preach or tell us. And they by no means are the guardians of the religion. If they have adopted this role, it is self-assumed and because we let them.
By adopting a purely western concept that Mr Amir suggests, we would in reality lose our independence. Others will tell us what is right and what is wrong. If it is liberalism that he seeks in Islam and a spirit of inquiry and questioning, something that I also seek, then it would pay to look at where we are and why we are there, rather than just get off the road and choose another path.
If however Mr Amir laments the lack of civilian governments, we the people are to be blamed for voting our leaders into power and not the armed forces for rescuing us from our elected leaders’ lunacies. If it is freedom he is worried about, then he must define what he means by freedom within the framework of our Constitution and then decide whether it is the law itself or the practice of law that irks him. If it is the role of the army in politics that irks him, then he must study the last judgement of the Supreme Court and find a substitute reading for the “Doctrine of state necessity” which incidentally is not peculiar to Pakistan.
FAZAL HABIB CURMALLY
Karachi
THIS week the world’s media attention turned to Gaza to follow the melodramatic scenes of the Israeli withdrawal which was more akin to a scene from a Hollywood epic than a news report. In a well-orchestrated but totally uncalled for exercise the Israeli government planned and enacted a series of scenes that even the best film director would have been proud of.
Nine hundred journalists from all over the world were given access to the staged conflict of Israeli brother against brother. Scenes of Israeli soldiers forcing out settlers who had barricaded themselves in a synagogue, young settler girls hysterically crying and scenes of a great emotional outpouring were beamed on TV screens worldwide. Interviews with illegal Israel settlers who explained how they were being forced out of their homes added to the feeling of sympathy for a people, let us not forget, who had illegally settled in another people’s land.
The truth, however, was not shown in this epic. The $140,000 to $400,000 given to each family leaving their homes in the Gaza strip was not mentioned. The fact that all these people had alternative accommodation waiting for them and indeed many of them would be moving to other illegal settlements (which are still being built) in the West Bank was not mentioned.
It would have sufficed if the Israeli defence force provided a fixed date when they would be leaving Gaza. The settlers would have duly left under the cover of darkness without the need for pictures of troubled soldiers, defiant settlers and media frenzy. However this theatrical display was aimed at showing the world that Sharon is serious about his disengagement plan and a final peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Where were the cameras and journalists in April 2002 when the Israeli army destroyed the West Bank city of Jenin, killing many civilians and flattening homes? Where were the cameras and journalists to speak to the young Palestinian girl about her home being demolished and her memories? Where were the cameras and journalists to show the story of the Palestinian people and their displacement and suffering for over 50 years?
These events would have caused much anger for many Muslims who see the injustices being perpetrated against their brothers and sisters in Palestine going unreported but yet when a few illegal Israeli settlers are evicted, the human side of suffering is presented. Where is justice?
It is blatant acts of injustice such as this that should drive the Muslims to speak out. We need to convert that anger to a constructive effort for the return of the ‘khilafah’ state which will be a shining light in the midst of the corruption that has engulfed the world a modern, progressive, independent state that has its reference to Islam rather that the war-mongering West.
SHEHZAD BASHIR
Via email
ONE would like to commend Pope Benedict XVI for his message in Germany calling on Christianity and Islam to work together to end terrorism, which he said represented “the darkness of a new barbarism”.
The recent chain of blind violence we are witnessing around the world is the result of scandalous injustices and imbalances that create conditions favouring an uncontrollable explosion of the desire for revenge. When fundamental rights are violated, it is easy to fall prey to temptations of hatred and violence. Nonetheless, we must keep in check our base impulses and together work to build a global culture of solidarity that restores hope in the future to the young.
The pontiff said: “Terrorism of any kind is a perverse and cruel decision, which shows contempt for the sacred right to life and undermines the very foundation of all civil society... If together we can succeed in eliminating from our hearts any trace of rancour, in resisting every form of intolerance and in opposing every manifestation of violence, we will turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people.”
Dialogue between Christians and Muslims is a vital necessity for our future. As the pontiff observed: “If we can continue to coexist in dialogue, it will send a signal that the theory of a ‘clash of cultures’ is baseless,” adding: “The more religious and cultural communities can learn about one another, the more they will realize that there is no reason for hostility.”
PAUL KOKOSKI
Ontario, Canada
ACCORDING to a news item the Americans have showed their concern regarding essays on jihad in Pakistani school textbooks. They want that either those essays should be removed or their text should be tailored according to American requirements.
In Islam there is a clear and unalterable concept of jihad and it has been duly explained in the Holy Quran. Whether the Americans like it or not, it cannot be changed on their orders.
The Americans have taken the joke of terrorism too far. If Pakistan accepts American demands regarding changing textbooks, the next American demand would be to tailor our religion to suit their requirements.
INSPECTOR QABACHA
Lahore
OUR telephone (021-6943409) of North Karachi Telephone Exchange has been out of order for more than one week. Several complaints, personally and otherwise, have been lodged with the exchange but to no avail. Similarly, telephone 021-6974594 of the same exchange persistently goes out of order, but no steps have been taken to remove the fault, which puts us to a lot of inconvenience and torture.
SUBSCRIBERS
Karachi
INDIA is importing very high polarization raw sugar from Brazil at $255-260 per ton C&F (Dawn, Aug 19). In Pakistan there is a shortfall of 500-600,000 tons of sugar between production and consumption.
Therefore, the TCP as well as the private sector are importing white sugar at $360-390 per ton C&F from Brazil, the UAE and also India (Dawn, Aug 20 and 21).
Policy-makers should consider importing only raw sugar instead of white sugar and process it into white refined sugar. This will result in manifold benefits. Pakistan will save foreign exchange worth $100-130 per ton of sugar, which will be $60-80 million for the import of 600,000 tons of sugar. The industry will also benefit due to the increased productivity and value-addition processing and the price of sugar will also come down.
Also, only the sugar industry should be allowed to import sugar in order to eliminate the role of middlemen.
It should also be noted that during the next season/year there is likely to be a shortfall in sugar production. Therefore, there is a need to make a proper sugar policy.
H.A. NAQVI
Lahore
ON Aug 8 I handed over an envelope containing documents of an urgent nature that had to be dispatched to Islamabad. My secretary chose to send the packet by urgent mail service (UMS) of the Pakistan Postal Service which cost me a mere Rs17.25 as compared to Rs100 by courier service.
Our Islamabad office reported that they had not received the packet till Aug 11. On the evening of Aug 12 I was left with no choice but to dispatch photocopies of the same documents by a courier service.
The Islamabad office called on Aug 15 to report that they had finally received the original documents sent by UMS on Aug 8 — a good seven days after its dispatch.
Should we rely on this service if we want our letters to reach the destination in time?
MS TALAT RAHIM
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.