PESHAWAR: Scholars here are sharply divided over the reality of 9/11 episode and that’s why there is conceptual confusion on how to respond to its after-effects, said Prof Tajuddin Tajwar of the Department of Urdu, University of Peshawar, here on Sunday.

“The worst thing in evaluating the impacts of 9/11 on Urdu poetry and even on our whole social life is that we are not completely aware of the details of the 9/11, rather deliberate confusion has befogged the minds of our writers and they have no unanimous view on the war on terror,” he said during his lecture on “Impact of 9/11 on Urdu literature” here at the Research Library, Peshawar.

He said: “even the granting of Noble Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai is not liked by common people in the KP/Fata and it is considered as a western trick against Islam. This is the result of our societal confusion about war on terror. The 9/11 has become a ‘metaphor of confusion’ and colossal money is being used for it by vested interests of neo-colonialism,” he commented.

The speaker said that though enormous literature was being produced, it was just symbolic and due to confusion, no one had reached any answer to the problems the people here had been facing today.

Prof Sher Alam said that the incident of 9/11 and its aftermath was so piercing that people were suffering from physical and psychological frustration and that’s why the use of tranquilisers had increased in KP and Fata.

Prof Hanif Khalil of Quaid-i-Azam University said that not only Urdu poetry, but also literature of all local languages and almost all means of journalism and communication had been changed due to enormous foreign money and international pressure. “The 9/11 has changed our heroes into villains and villains into heroes, which is the saddest phase of our history,” he said.

Founder of the library, Dr Fasihuddin commented on the recent books of Dr Daniel Markey, Carlotta Gall, Bruce Riedel, Stephen Cohen, Robert Gates and Cristine C. Fair, that how Pakistan was depicted in international literature.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2014