Awards for work of excellence; Victoria on BB

HAS the world become so interdependent that it has become almost impossible for one country to remain aloof from the happenings in the other even if the two are separated by the seven seas? But then does this growing interdependence oblige one country to go into the other with its army and ideology to shape it into its own vision of civilisation and culture?

These questions made the underlying theme of the two main speakers at the glittering seventh annual awards ceremony organised here on Wednesday by the Muslim News, a London-based periodical.

Opening the awards ceremony, Ahmed J Versi, editor of The Muslim News, and organiser of the awards blamed not too subtly the West and the US for the unending bloody mess in Iraq and the keynote speaker Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for UK’s International Development, answered by emphasising the growing interdependence of the world, the globalisation process and the success that the ideology of intervention has achieved in the shape of girls going to school in Afghanistan.

As a speaker, Hilary Benn is a spell binder. And he cast his spell on some 700 guests at the ceremony. Mr Benn uses ordinary words to express grand ideas. He speaks with great passion but without being thunderous. With a minimum use of his body language he lifts his listeners up and down the line of his logic. And he punctuates his delivery with a perfect sense of timing expected of an accomplished stage performer. So, he got away with blatant justification of invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan without a whimper of protest from the audience most of whom are vehemently opposed to what the US and UK are doing in those two Muslim countries.

He extolled British Muslims as being “very generous” for donating to special causes.

“The UK is doing the same through its rising aid budget, as we help poor communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in other countries around the world to be able to build a better life,” he said.

He praised the contributions made by British Muslims to create a more just society.

“Like all great faiths, Islam urges its followers to create a more just society, and very generously British Muslims are playing their part by giving to good causes.

“The Muslim News Awards for Excellence celebrate the hard work and dedication of all those who are doing something practical to improve the lives of people in their community,” he said.

Mr Versi said: “If the media image of our community is warped, we must do more than merely hope for a more wholesome picture to emerge.”

And it was perhaps in an attempt to do more to create a wholesome picture of the Muslim community in the UK that the organisers had conceived the idea of the annual awards for excellence.

“If we fail to highlight what our community is accomplishing, we can be sure that others – for whom faith is academic, problematic or irrelevant – will throw up less constructive, but seemingly attractive, alternatives, ” Mr Versi said.

Awards were given for excellence in the arts, sports, good citizenship, community development, engineering, science and technology, the media and Islamic thought.

Nominations from Britain’s 1.8 million Muslim community are made by members of the public and the shortlist and winners are decided by an independent panel of seven distinguished judges.

I had two very interesting and illuminating discussions just before the start of the ceremony.

Mr Stewart Wallace of CareTech holdings PLC, a company engaged in the business of helping special persons thought that all Muslims speak Arabic and have a common culture and belong to one single civilistion. Interestingly, e is working for a concern co-owned by two Pakistani Muslims. He could not understand how it was that we all read the Holy Quran in Arabic and offered our prayers in Arabic and still did not know the language. He also could not understand how Islamic heritage of one country could differ from the other and that even the UK, Europe and the US had their own respective Islamic heritages different from each other and also different from that of Saudi Arabia. He said he had read his Holy Quran in English.

Mr Dilwar Hussain, a British born young Muslim who heads the Policy Research Unit at the Islamic Foundation based in the UK, agreed that the concept of multi-culturalism was good to a point but if it was practised beyond that point it ended up promoting ghettoism.

He said his foundation and particularly his research unit was engaged in finding out the point where the process of multi-culturalism should joined up with the mother culture of Britain and thus averted isolationism leading to ghettoism.

Tailpiece: Ms Victoria Schofield, historian and journalist, delivered a talk on “Thirty Years of Pakistan” as part of the celebrations of the 60th Anniversary of the independence of Pakistan at the High Commission. It was a very warm account of her Pakistan experiences.

Her reason for speaking about 30 years of Pakistan and not 60 was simple: Her first live introduction to Pakistan was in 1978 when she went there to attend the ‘murder’ trial of the father of her Oxford classmate Benazir Bhutto. She had also followed Benazir as the President of Oxford’s Debating Society.

But the curiosity of one of the questioners almost killed the cat. She had wanted to know Victoria’s opinion about her friend Benazir. The question was asked at the wrong place and at the wrong time. But Victoria could not have said anything other than what she had said about Benazir.

She called BB as a very brave woman, “knowing how she struggled against all those odds, I reckon she is a brave woman. She is still a force to reckon with. I have kept her friendship away from my profession. And she never put any pressure on me about what I write.

When I was writing my book on Kashmir she was the prime minister of Pakistan, but she never asked me to show her the script. On the other hand, the then Indian High Commission had wanted me to let him see the manuscript. It was my friendship with Benazir that got me interested in Pakistan.”

Police action in Sadiqabad condemned

THE police action against workers of the PML-F in Sadiqabad and the spate of kidnappings in Sindh are the major themes which the Sindhi press has dealt with.

Daily Kawish and Ibrat have editorialised on the incident at Sadiqabad in which the Punjab police stopped some workers of the PML-F, a partner of the ruling coalition, and opened fire, resulting in the death of three persons.

The Kawish criticises the police attitude, saying that of late, the law enforcers in Punjab have been setting new standards of brutality. The daily cites the manhandling of lawyers at the Lahore High Court and the attack on the Islamabad centre of a TV network last month.

“The Police are not doing all this on their own but on the instructions of the rulers,” the editorial alleges.

The paper criticises the decision to stop the Sindh PML-F workers from entering Punjab, alleging that on the one hand, the rulers were squandering millions of rupees on public meetings but on the other, the opposition parties were not being allowed to hold rallies.

“All claims of the government about democracy and decency stand exposed as a coalition partner was meted out such a treatment.”

The Kawish and Ibrat, commenting on the protests by minorities against the wave of kidnappings in Sindh, accuse the police of discrimination in investigations into the abductions of non-Muslims.

The Ibrat chides the administration for showing an 'indifference’ to the kidnap of Om Parkash, an eight-year-old boy.

It says that if the administration fails to trace Parkash and other members of the minority communities, they would not be wrong to think they are second-rate citizens.

The Daily Kawish extends support to the province’s paramedical workers in their protest against the alleged issuance of 500 appointment letters for vacancies in the Sindh health department even before the lifting of the ban on jobs.

The newspaper expresses an apprehension that 'merit would be bypassed as 80 per cent of the jobs will go to supporters of a political party sitting in the government, while the remaining 20 per cent to the other coalition partners’.

The Kawish calls upon the Sindh government to cancel all the appointment letters and conduct an inquiry to determine who was responsible for the issuance of the job offers in spite of a ban on recruitment.

Daily Koshish criticises the holding of two jirgas in defiance of a decision by the Sindh High Court declaring such meetings as illegal. The two jirgas – one in Ghotki and the other in Naushahro Feroz – were headed by the district nazims and they delivered 'verdicts’ in two murder cases. Both cases were pending with the courts.

The daily pleads with the Supreme Court to intervene in the matter.

Daily Ibrat feels that lawlessness has assumed alarming proportions in the province. Murders, kidnappings, rapes and other crimes are so rife in Sindh these days that they have ceased to shock us. The paper urges the provincial government to tackle the menace on a war footing.

Daily Khabroon is critical of the business of spurious drugs in Sindh. Quoting from a statement of the health minister in the Sindh Assembly, the newspaper says the government has admitted that some 25 to 30 wholesalers were responsible for the sale of 90 per cent of the spurious medicines. The daily goes on to say mere admission is not enough. “Action must follow words.”.