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DID we really need more mayhem and another round of slaughter of unarmed civilians, this time in Nice, to remind us of the grim and bloody times we live in? After all, we were still counting the dead from Kabul, Dhaka, Istanbul, Baghdad, Madina and countless other places where there has been such mass murder.
There is, of course, the debate which sees such acts against the backdrop of Huntington’s argument advanced in the Clash of Civilisations, or views such murder and mayhem as being the logical outcome of the Saudi-funded spread of the Salafi ideology or a consequence of the neocon nation-building (read regime change) project that was initiated in the George W. Bush era.
In the global context, each of these theories may be valid — or elements from some or all of them may have combined to make up the lethal cocktail that continues to explode and devastate lives across the world almost every day now. But what about our case?
We have seen the US-led capitalist West using thousands of ideologically motivated (brainwashed, if you ask me) people as pawns, to dismantle Lenin’s dream in the form of the communist USSR.
With its objective achieved, the puppeteer may have moved on but we have become wedded to the ideology and methods that for the Western powers were merely a tool to be used and discarded. The puppet seems to have acquired a life of its own.
And what consequences we continue to experience, often in disbelief but always in extreme pain. We are at war with ourselves. How else can you describe what we are witnessing? If the sacrifices of an incredible humanitarian like Abdul Sattar Edhi can also meet with the disapproval of some of our leading clerics, then we can conclude how intense and merciless this conflict within us must be.
It was shocking to hear Mufti Naeem term ‘najayez’ Edhi’s donation of his corneas after his death which brought vision to two people.
Given how much madness has made its home in our wonderful land, one shouldn’t be surprised — though I must admit I am still shocked each time something shakes me, like a clip I saw from a two-day old TV programme a few hours before I penned these words.
Mufti Naeem is a leading cleric of the country and was on a panel being interviewed by the anchor of one of the newer entrants among the news channels which seems to be making a niche for itself by giving a platform to those holding the most bizarre of obscurantist views.
I sat up as the mufti proceeded to term ‘najayez’ Edhi’s donation of his corneas after his death which brought vision to two people who can now see and appreciate so many of the Creator’s beautiful creations.
“If someone is so brave and wishes to serve humanity selflessly, I will believe them when they gift their eyes in their lifetime rather than after death as it is not permitted,” he boomed. I am not competent to interpret what Islam mandates but find it difficult to accept that any action that serves humanity and is for the good of humankind can go against any faith.
Just look at Edhi’s attitude towards abandoned infants in a society where there have been instances of children born to unwed mothers wrapped up in cloth and left on rubbish dumps by none other than the mother, father or a close family member so as not to incur the wrath of the self-righteous.
While so many of the religious scholars remained silent it was Abdul Sattar Edhi who placed cradles outside his centres and launched a campaign urging people not to harm or abandon innocent infants and, instead, to place them in the cribs if they were unable to keep them.
Today, one report suggested, the number of children registered showing Bilquis and Abdul Sattar Edhi as their parents runs into the hundreds, perhaps more. Edhi used to diligently screen requests for adoption so that no child would be given into uncaring or undeserving hands.
The Edhis raised an even greater number of children including orphans with the care and love of biological parents as only people with extraordinary humanity can. I remember the eminent scholar the late Dr Eqbal Ahmed once described Edhi as someone with the greatest moral authority in the country.
And I witnessed it myself when a building collapsed in Karachi’s FB Area. A huge crowd gathered. It grew restive and angry and was not letting police officials through to assess the situation. Then Edhi arrived at the scene. As he got out of the ambulance he was driving himself and started to walk towards the collapsed building, the crowd parted and within moments a path was created for him to reach the rubble and start extracting the dead and injured from there. That was moral authority rarely, if at all, seen in Pakistan.
Another manifestation of this moral authority was the fact that everyone in the country gave to Edhi whatever they could afford to spare and though Edhi centres always insisted on giving receipts, most donors did not care whether or not they would get one. Edhi and his family’s lifestyle was a testament to how he believed in giving — and giving with no concern for his own well-being or comfort.
“Humanity has no religion,” he once said. Perhaps such views and the fact that people gave so willingly to Edhi, earned him the wrath of some of our clerics who wish to remain relevant, and well-funded, in the 21st century by adhering to an obscurantist agenda, without letting any semblance of compassion touch them.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2016
