July 31, 2005

Was Shakespeare thinking of London bombings when he wrote “Murder shall breed murder till the end of history always in the name of justice?”

Do we have to wait till the end of history for this game of murder dominos to collapse finally or is it in our power to break this chain of bloodshed? Perhaps we could wait patiently if we had any idea as to when the end of history is to come. But again, the end of history will only come when the end of the world comes, that is a fatal wait which we cannot afford. Naturally, I cannot suggest any remedies but I will narrate a story which may or may not help to understand the present situation as it did not develop overnight.

A distant relative of mine, settled in England for the last 30 years or so made sure that his children visited the country of his birth every summer so that they may not forget from where the Daddy dear originally came from. These children were born and bred in Britain and the annual visit to their ancestral land was a torturous trial for them, what with heat and dirt and so on, but they tolerated this forced exile from their country to please the old man. They forced themselves to hug their grandmother lovingly at lest twice, once when they arrived and second time when they were departing cheerfully. Naturally they bathed themselves properly after every hug as the grandma had a smell of sarson ka tel and desi soap all over her. The eldest daughter was at that time about 17, a thorough British teenager with jeans and a strong taste for hard rock. She was a cheerful kid, confident and intelligent, securing A grades most of the times. She did not mix with the boys or anything but enjoyed life thoroughly. Suddenly the ‘change’ came, a drastic unimaginable change. On her next visit to Pakistan, she was clad in a hijab and a long coat and her face expression had become very severe and forbidding, she admonished all and sundry for not following the true Islam, considered almost every second thing as haram and almost every male as a namehram. She even considered giving up her studies because the teachers and fellow male students were namehram.

Her father, a decent and honest soul was worried because she also criticized his lack of enthusiasm for the tenants of Islam. When she came to visit me she refused to use the foreign brand toothpastes, soaps and shampoos. During a discussion, she said that although I was her uncle but not being the real uncle I was also a Namehram. Hence she could not sit with me all alone in a room. This observation totally shocked me but the worst was to come. She declared that even if a single hair of a female is visible she will surely burn in hell.

“Your grandmother who covers her head with a dupatta but some of her 70 years old white hair is visible. What would become of her?” I asked jokingly.

“She will burn in hell for sure even if she is 70 years old and I told her so,” she said, dead serious.

“And what about all your ancestors whose hair was maybe visible sometimes under stress or need?”

“Hell is their abode”

“And who told you all this?

“The Maulana who comes regularly to deliver lectures on Islam from Pakistan, I have also studied some pamphlets printed by some local Islamic organizations”

I have lost touch with that family and do not know the final outcome of this ‘change’.

Unfortunately, this change phenomenon has become rather common recently. I met some young men who were born and educated in Europe but their concept of religion was frightening. They were totally critical of the Pakistani society where, according to them, tenants of Islam were not being followed rigidly. Who is responsible for this ‘healthy change’?

Way back in the 50s, the onslaught of immigrants from Mirpur and rural Punjab ensued, and they were mainly concentrated in the Midland industrial areas where they could easily find factory jobs as the WWI had taken the toll of British men. Although most of them were totally illiterate, they were an honest and hard working lot and they prospered. They managed to buy rundown properties on higher purchase and turned them in to ‘Day Night Hostels’ with at least ten sleeping places per dingy room, where the night shift people will return from their labours in the morning and wake the occupant of the bed who was to proceed to the day shift and make themselves comfortable till the evening came and the day people returned.

They specialized in the door to door business of selling ladies stockings and underwears. The gentleman carrying a huge trunk on his head full of lady’s stockings etc will knock at some door and as soon as the lady of the house opened it to peep outside, the gentleman will put his right foot in the door so that it was impossible to shut it on his face. The lady at times willingly and most of the times unwillingly would buy a stocking just to shut the door and rest in peace, the gentleman prospered. Then these immigrants were joined by their families, mostly rustic wives who had stepped out of their villages for the first time in life and then landed straight away in Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham or Bradford.

With them they brought their limited mindset and prejudices of their native villages. Even these days you will find in the local Urdu newspapers the advertisements of hakims, specialists of black magic and jinnat, pirs whose tawiz gunda has the power to enslave your husband or produce a male baby, magicians and all types of nefarious characters who do roaring business in these little Pakistans. These immigrants generally stayed away from the main stream of British culture unlike other immigrants from Jamaica, Africa and Poland. You will hardly find anybody worth his name in any sports or creative activity on the national level.

Recently, young Amer Khan by winning the silver medal in Olympics has made up to a certain extent. Naturally, the best doctors in Britain were Pakistanis and some engineers too, but they hardly had any interaction with their compatriots for obvious reasons. Then the second generation came and things started changing, this thoroughly British lot was totally frustrated. Amongst their class fellows and co-workers they were in the present times but as soon as they came home they were thrown back in to a mediaeval atmosphere and they could not reconcile with this duality. Along with magicians and hakims came the so called Ulema, mostly village maulvis who took over mosques and introduced their own very limited intellect in the name of Islam, preaching that only their particular sect was the path of righteousness and rest were kafirs.

Then the American sponsored Jihad of Afghanistan surfaced and you know the rest of the story. The younger generation, disillusioned by the limited intellect of their elders, without any identity in the land of their birth, found solace in religion. I do not claim to be an authority on Islam and thank goodness for that, but I do claim that Islam amongst all the religions is the most balanced and normal faith. Its liberality is far beyond the corrupted liberal concepts of West, and that is why even in these troubled days European and Americans are converting to this faith more than any other creed. So where did the British Muslims go wrong, we have to search our souls, souls which were corrupted by hate preachers and limited intellect.

There is going to be a backlash after the London bombings. It has already started and thousands of Pakistanis for the first time in their life are thinking of going back to their native land. Unfortunately, we Pakistanis are not in a position to complain because we are also experts in backlashing and at times without rhyme or reason. If a Christian sweepers on the orders of his Begum burns some newspapers, and some kids detect that there are some Arabic pages which they presume to be part of the Holy Book, the sweeper is chased. The police takes him into protective custody and declares him innocent, but a large crowd gathers outside the police station demanding that the man be handed over to them for lynching as was done in a similar case some times ago.

The West is bent upon proving their farfetched and ridiculous theses of clash of civilizations, and right now we are at the receiving end — thanks also to our bigoted approach towards religion. They believe in their idiom that give the dog a bad name and hang him. They are trying their dishonest best to give us a bad name. The question is, how do we avoid the hangman’s noose?

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