| March 16, 2006 | Thursday | Safar 15, 1427 |
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Racial mindset
‘Wild and woolly land’
Bush visit
Minorities
No more Indo-centric?
Western culture
Kashmir conference
TI strategy
Flag burning
Fatwas
Milosevic
National emblem
Sovereignty
Encroachment
SIBGHATULLAH Mujaddidi’s knee-jerk reaction was to blame Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for involvement in the bungled attempt on his life. The language the elderly man used against President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan, the country where he lived for almost two decades, was very undiplomatic.
President Hamid Karzai also appeared before the media and condemned the attack. Mr Karzai did not rule out the involvement of a foreign hand in the attack, but he stopped short of naming any country or group. Instead he said investigations had been ordered to unveil the perpetrators.
The elderly man, who is also a revered spiritual leader, is known for his straightforwardness. Despite being the one-time interim president and present chairman of Afghanistan’s senate, he says what and as he wants without caring for the consequences. This is because Mujaddidi is a simple and uncomplicated mullah and not a politician.
It is worth considering that the language used for anti-Pakistan statements was Mujaddidi’s but the words came from somewhere else. Who is behind this attempt to malign Pakistan? When President Karzai accuses Pakistan, sometimes he means it, but most of the time he is doing so to appease the Indian-backed Northern Alliance.
Our Afghan brothers must realise the sacrifices Pakistanis have made over the past 25 years. It was Pakistan that extended full-scale moral, material and diplomatic support to Afghans against the Russians. We continue to support them. Pakistan has deployed more than 70,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan to secure peace, in addition to waging a war in Waziristan and other tribal areas within Pakistan to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
President Hamid Karzai has time and again called Pakistan his “second home”. But it is a pity that he is now blindly accusing his second home to mollify a few anti-Pakistan elements. This is a sheer ungratefulness.
D. KHAN
Via Email
Professor Frank Ellis of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Leeds has openly declared that whites have a genetic predisposition to intellectual superiority over black and brown people. Citing the much higher IQs of whites in support of his belief, he said that the IQ of the sub-Saharan African averages 70 which, he pointed out is a level only slightly above that of mental retardation.
Surprisingly, the reaction of the liberal left or the UK race relations bodies has been muted. Perhaps people in the West are unhappy with the black and brown migrants in their midst and are unwilling to speak out against such racially motivated assessments. The university administration too has refused to take sides, having taken refuge behind the old standby of freedom of expression. Others have remarked that whites accept the physical and athletic superiority of the blacks as a given, thereby tacitly acknowledging a genetic basis for perceived differences in the intellectual and physical abilities of whites and blacks.
This is in sharp contrast to days when such racist beliefs led to acrimonious debates over the role of genetics in IQ differences, which in one case in the sixties led to Professor Hans Eysenck being famously punched on the nose while speaking at the London School of Economics. Sadly the fire has gone out of all of us.
ASAD SIDDIQI
Lahore
THIS is in reference to “This wild and woolly land” by Ardeshir Cowasjee (Dawn, March 12). Pakistan is neither a front runner in the banana republic nor the “paan-biri” republic sweepstakes, but it does have a huge lead in the landfill republic category.
If the adage like father like son holds true and if the current majority are indeed the descendants of Muhammad Bin Qasim, what does that say about the conquerors from 712 A.D? What does it say when the ailing father of this nation was left in a broken down ambulance by the roadside, while the wolves were getting ready to divide the spoils of this new country.
I do not concur with the assertion that mankind has diminished with the passage of time. Mankind has always been like this. Humans were as violent and brutal in the past as they are today. Now we just have better weapons to kill the weak and maim the less fortunate. From the Greek gods to King David and the current messiahs, they all fall somewhere between being heroes and philistines depending on who you ask.
Since historians and writers in the past were under the patronage of the ruling class, there are no detailed references to atrocities committed or injustices carried out. These days we have enough crusaders in the news media brave enough to write about the animalistic side of human nature. So good health to them for keeping readers informed, and we hope that their tribe will increase.
FARANGMEHER GHADIALI
Dallas, USA
TWO events, not connected in any way with the substance of President Bush’s recent visits to India and Pakistan, have drawn media attention.
The first is the kiss on the presidential cheek by an Indian agriculturist when the president of the United States was visiting an agricultural university in Hyderabad. The second is his enthusiastic participation in a cricket match in Islamabad.
Devoid of political substance these events are, nevertheless, rich in symbolism. The kiss is a symbol of love and peace. Cricket symbolises discipline, character, courage, patience and, above all, fair play. A leader of the standing and stature of President Bush can play an effective role in moving the two countries towards a just and a lasting solution of the Kashmir dispute. His task will be greatly facilitated if he has understood the message contained in the symbolism of the two events mentioned.
SALAHUDDIN K. LEGHARI
Lahore
THE net result of President Bush’s visit to India and Pakistan can be summed up in these two lines:
Bey takalluf wo ghairon sey hein/Naaz uthaney ko hum reh gaey
S. MUSLEHUDDIN AHMED
Karachi
I RECENTLY read an article in the Christian Post about various people from the minority communities set up by the government to advocate that minorities are treated well in Pakistan. My father Francis X. Lobo was mentioned as one of them. I take great offense to this due to the fact that my father’s appointment to the Majlis-e-Shura was based on merit.
People are never happy. In the United States colour is an issue. In Pakistan it is religion and in India it is religion and caste. I can honestly say that in the 18 years I lived in Karachi, among people who were predominantly Muslims, religion never became an issue for me.
If people do not like where they live and spout propaganda that provokes a feud between cultures and religions, then they need to seek shelter elsewhere. My best friends here in the United States are Muslim, so this outcry of persecution and prejudice is basically stereotyping.
The fact that Pakistani Christians are freely writing propaganda is proof that the government of Pakistan has allowed them to invoke the freedom of expression.
DESMOND J. LOBO
Via email
WE SHOULD be grateful to Mr. Mahdi Masud (Dawn, March 14) for at last writing on our own affairs where he had to “respectfully” differ with the lords and masters of our fate on policy. We have been getting a regular dose of comments from our former ambassadors, admirals, marshals and generals on Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, in short on everything under the sun but on Pakistan. Commenting on Pakistan was taboo for them as they didn’t want to ruffle any feathers.
This is a strange era we are living in. We bomb and kill dozens of our own innocent people in Waziristan and Miramshah and then dismiss it as collateral damage. But an aerial raid in our country by another country is successfully defended by our rulers.
We should forget any more settlements of any outstanding issues with India. As the US-Pakistan friendship is lopsided, so now is our relationship with India. Proof of the pudding is the long eerie silence from across the border on all differences in spite of multiple solutions being offered from the top of Margalla hills.
ASLAM MINHAS
Karachi
MANY people, including writers and correspondents, have been voicing concern at the blind adoption of western culture and values by many of our young people, particularly those studying in the elitist English-medium educational institutions.
For instance, a writer recently narrated an account of young students from a “very high-brow” school in Karachi engaging in objectionable behaviour (Dawn, Magazine, Feb 26). It began by the arrival of these boys and girls packed tightly at the back of a heavy truck. Moments later they were on the loose, with the girls screaming and running wildly on a street near their school and the boys pelting them with cratefuls of eggs as a part of farewell celebrations that also landed on the windshields of parked cars. Swear words “that get beeped out on ‘The Jerry Springer Show’” were being shouted out at the top of their lungs.
Apart from this, the writer also noted how some FM radio stations and some of their foul-mouthed RJs have started playing English songs having four-letter words and other profanities. Some six months back, I was myself outraged enough to call a Karachi station to protest against the playing of such a song. It seemed to help temporarily but things are getting worse now.
If a child goes out wearing a clean dress and joins kids who are throwing fistfuls of garbage at each other, he simply won’t be able to keep himself clean. So it is in the realm of the mind. A Chinese proverb goes: “A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every passerby leaves a mark.”
Those of us blindly copying western values and culture or, more importantly, allowing or even encouraging youngsters to do so are forgetting how insidious and destructive this is.
All the wise people everywhere have stressed the prime importance of purity of thought and words on ones mind and life.
Foremost are Prophet Muhammad’s sayings in this regard: “A man cannot be a Muslim till his heart and tongue are so.” This is explained to mean that the Islam of the heart is its purity and that of the tongue is withholding it from fruitless talk and profane language. Similarly, he had also taught us to “be chaste in thought and action” and that we become like those people whose ways we adopt.
A READER
Karachi
I AM a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. Students here are arranging a trip during a one-week school break to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The students’ travel, lodging and meals are paid for by the sponsors of the trip while the students don’t pay or receive anything. I was wondering if any such activities have been arranged for earthquake victims in Pakistan. We have been taking a lot of bad influences from the West. I think we should also take some good things from them too.
Specifically, I would like university rectors in Pakistan to arrange similar volunteer trips during the semester breaks in their institutions. This way we can get hundreds of man hours to help out in the quake relief efforts at virtually no cost.
There was a lot of energy and enthusiasm in the relief efforts initially, but we need to keep this spirit alive until we have helped people in the affected areas to return to normalcy.
MURTAZA ASKARI
Altanta,USA
THE RECENT statement by President Musharraf at the Pugwash conference in Islamabad echoes the only realistic perspective on the disputed region. A solution has to be found through the bilateral process between the two countries. The opinion of the Kashmiris should be articulated by the two countries and a solution cannot be sought through redrawing boundries. The only practical and conceivable solution lies in realization that the border is being made increasingly irrelevant.
The only approach to realize the goal is through increasing interaction between the people of the two countries and by opening borders including movement of goods from one nation to other.
The increasing interaction will resolve the issue with the passage of time.
A.D.MITRA
Ghaziabad, India
THE TWO letters titled “Imran Khan” (Dawn, March 10) present an interesting but confusing picture of the current political strategy of the Pakistan Tehriek-i-Insaf (PTI) under its leader Imran Khan.
Today the number one challenge facing the country is return to democracy as dictatorial rule is putting unbearable strains on the federation.
The insurgency in the tribal areas and the strife in Balochistan are just two livid examples of the threats to the federation which are a direct consequence of the policy of serving foreign interests to gain their support for perpetuating undemocratic rule. The PTI is neither a member of the ARD nor MMA.
It is, however, a part of the joint opposition that is united in its democratic endeavour to save the federation from further disharmony and discord.
Traditionally, political compromises are made for power. Under the leadership of Imran Khan the PTI twice rejected power through undemocratic means (1997 and 2002). Instead, the PTI chose the path of first gaining the trust and backing of the people and then entering the corridors of power as only than can it successfully implement its mammoth national reform agenda. In politics, when larger and more sacrosanct issues such as saving the federation are at stake, ideological and policy differences should take the back seat.
AKBAR S.BABAR
Central information secretary
Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf
IT IS standard practice in this part of the world to burn flags as a sign of protest. A nation’s flag is its most revered object; it represents its people’s shared aims and history. Thus in desecrating the flag by putting it to the torch, demonstrators hurt the feelings of an entire community.
My appeal to the protesters is to avoid such disrespect otherwise we will lose friends all over the world.
ALTAF HUSSAIN QURESHI
Hyderabad
SELF-STYLED Muslim leaders try to steal the limelight and become famous overnight by issuing fatwas.
Those who issue fatwas do so not with a view to targeting the evildoers but exclusively to draw attention to themselves. Do not let such publicity-hungry Muslims take the media or the public for a ride.
OMAR LUTHER KING
Delhi, India
I AGREE with Nasir Farooq’s letter (March 15) in which he has condemned the murderous, bloody legacy of Slobodan Milosevic, who caused the untimely deaths of thousands of European Muslims.
I think it would be fair and honest to also say thank you to us in the USA who came, together with our NATO allies, to the rescue and saved the lives of millions of Muslims in Kosovo and stopped Mr Milosevic in his tracks by our military actions against him and his kind.
Colonel (Ret.) GEORGE L. SINGLETON
Alabama, USA
THE shield which is the national emblem of Pakistan is supposed to indicate our four major agricultural crops which are cotton, tea, jute and wheat.
I am a teacher and while explaining the national emblem to students I realised that tea and jute ceased to be our national crops after the fall of East Pakistan.
I am really surprised that nobody has given serious thought to this issue and made the necessary changes after 1971. The original emblem is being used by the government authorities and the armed forces even today. It is time to incorporate other major crops such as rice and sugarcane in the national emblem that represents us internationally.
MAHEEN QURESHI
Karachi
AS A Pakistani I am deeply shocked by the president’s opinion about the US attack on our soil. In his reply to a question about the US attack on Bajaur Agency, the president offered a weak condemnation then asked the journalist why sovereignty was not made an issue when terrorists came into Pakistan.
US attacks on our soil cannot be justified by such arguments. The attack on Pakistani soil was carried out not only as part of the so-called war on terror or hunt for terrorists; it was also planned to demoralise the Pakistani people.
Pakistan has sacrificed its sovereignty by serving US interests in the region. The current Afghan government appears to be inimical to Pakistan.
President Bush’s recent visit to South Asia for a nuclear deal with India has also raised questions regarding the safeguarding of Pakistan’s national interests.
Power is everything in international politics. The country that lacks power cannot survive.
GULZAR ALI MEHBOOB
Karachi
FOREIGN exchange will flood into Pakistan in the billions if overseas Pakistanis are assured of rule of law in the country and the safety and security of their investment. The biggest threat is posed by the land mafia. The government would be well advised to root out this menace forever.
I am a direct victim of this menace. My plot in Quetta Town Co-Operative Housing Society, located along the Super Highway in Karachi, has been encroached upon by land grabbers. They did this right under the nose of the police and city administration.
The government is alive to this issue and the governor and chief minister have given warnings to the encroachers but no visible progress has been made thus far.
M. A. ULLAH
Madina, Saudi Arabia
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