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Hazrat Usman: The leading light of Islam
HAZRAT USMAN, the third Caliph, occupies a prominent position and stands as a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of Islam. Since his childhood he was respected for his dignity refinement, generosity and service to human beings. No wonder he was immensely loved by his people.
As a young man he took to trade and did flourishing business. After migrating to Madinah, Hazrat Usman was in the forefront to advance the cause of Islam. In respect of financial sacrifices he was second only to Hazrat Abu Bakr.
Madinah had only one well of drinking water. When Muslims settled there it was in the custody of non-Muslims who charged the Muslims a certain price for water. Seeing this the Prophet (peace be upon him) desired that Muslims should purchase it and make it a public property. Hazrat Usman readily agreed and purchased the well for 20,000 dirhams, (according to another version, for 30,000 dirhams).
As the number of Muslims increased, the Prophet’s mosque appeared too small to accommodate the devotees. Again the Prophet wished someone to purchase the adjoining land and expand the mosque. It was again Hazrat Usman who came forward to purchase the piece of land and extend the mosque.
On the eve of the battle of Tabuk, when the Muslims were passing through extreme difficulties and a huge expedition was to be sent out against the Roman empire. Hazrat Usman contributed 10,000 dinars in cash and a thousand camels. Thus he bore the a great part of the expences of the army.
Hazrat Usman took part in almost all battles. He was not present when the treaty of Hudabiyya was concluded as he was deputed by the Prophet as an emissary to the Quraish who detained him as prisoner. Apprehending his murder, a pledge was taken by the Muslims who vowed that they would stick to the field, however great the battle may be. When all had taken the vow, the Prophet in person took a similar vow on behalf of Hazrat Usman placing one of his hands on the other. This displays the high position in which he was held.
As Islam spread far and wide people of diverse nationalities and languages came into its fold. This resulted in corresponding variety of Quranic recitations. Thus there sprang up copies of the Quran with difference in script. Hazrat Usman rendered valuable service in this respect also. It was he who had copies made from the only authentic copy of the Quran and sent them to important centres of Islamic empire. The authentic copy of the Quran prepared during the caliphate of Hazrat Abu Bakr was obtained from Hazrat Hafsah. This was an act of far-sightedness on the part of Hazrat Usman.
In an age when printing press had not yet been invented, no better arrangement could have been made to maintain the purity of the text of the Quran and he brought one single uniform edition of the Sacred Book for the Muslim Ummah. He appointed a committee of most prominent companions of the Prophet to supervise this work. Seven copies of the Quran were prepared; Hazrat Usman sent them to five cities — Makkah, Yemen, Basrah, Kufah and Syria. Two Books remained in Madinah — one for the people (citizens) and one for his personal use.
Hazrat Usman had to face seditions and revolts in various parts during his caliphate. But he boldly and with undaunted vigour suppressed them. Alexanderia was recaptured and Caesar’s troops were driven out. Not only was the territory cleared of all insurrectionary influences but as a measure of strategic necessity further territory was also added to the Islamic empire, such as Afghanistan, Turkistan and Khurasan. Roman hordes were driven off, and over and above this, such territories as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Asia Minor were added to the Islamic empire.
It was during Hazrat Usman’s rule that the first naval conquest commenced, and ships of the Muslim army captured the island of Cyprus. All this clearly indicates that the power of Islam was on the height of glory during the reign of the third Caliph. Even when he was martyred and there was an insurrection in Madinah, no foreign dependency had the courage to revolt. Such was the prestige and power of Islam during the rule of the third Caliph.
Hazrat Usman followed the administrative system of his predecessors. He maintained the constitutional setup developed by Hazrat Omar. The powers of the Caliph were the same. The Majlis-i-Shoora or Consultative Assembly continued and all affairs of the state were settled by this assembly. The Caliph kept himself informed about the current events and conditions of every part of the Empire. Every Friday he would collect whatever information he could, from the persons who congregated in the mosque. Everyone had free access to the Caliph for making complaints or express grievances against a governor or a public servant. The cases were promptly received for consideration. The machinery of the government worked with selfless zeal and devotion.
The revenue department was working with great proficiency generating considerable return. The subsidy from Egypt alone went up from two to four million.With the tremendous increase in income, stipends that were awarded from the public treasury also increased. Several new buildings were constructed. Roads, bridges, mosques and guest-houses were built in various towns. A huge dam was constructed to protect Madinah against floods. The Prophet’s Mosque was rebuilt with stones.
Hazrat Usman was gifted with a simple and pure nature. Islam brought lustre to this innate gem. In chastity and integrity, Hazrat Usman was as firm as mountain. During his reign when worldly wealth found its way among Muslims in abundance, Usman’s integrity, steadfastness and piety wavered not even by a hair’s breadth. Riches had as little fascination for him when he earned millions and spent in the way of God though he became the master of the richest treasury in the world. He scrupulously followed in the footsteps of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
Modesty was the most salient feature of Hazrat Usman’s character. During his Caliphate he himself conducted the five daily prayers and was regular even in his mid-night prayers, notwithstanding the fact that he had attained the age of eighty. In spite of his immense wealth, he contented himself with simple dress and simple food. Even his wife did not use costly dress.
With all these remarkable qualities Hazrat Usman had to face the sword of rebels and Munafiqueen who were spreading all sorts of calumnies against him and inciting others to challenge his authority. The Capital was almost empty, people having gone on pilgrimage (Hajj). The momentous hour had arrived, the hour to strike the blow. It was already the 18th Zilhaj, 35 A.H (June 17, 656 A.D.) The rebels entered the house and struck the Caliph. Hazrat Usman fell bleeding and died a martyr on the spot at the age of 82.
Look who is electioneering
ELECTIONEERING is but to be expected, particularly in an election year. Most candidates, as well as their supporters, understand the advantage of starting their campaigns early and few wait for the formal announcement of a schedule by the election commission or of their nomination by their parties.
The parties, too, eagerly await the opportunity and are often clamouring for a fresh election as soon as they have lost one. This time, however, the major parties are showing a remarkable reluctance. Out of the opposition parties who, despite the Supreme Court verdict granting a three-year respite to the military regime, had been demanding early polls, only the Pakistan People’s Party has asked its members to apply for party tickets. The PPP, too, has been at pains not to be ‘misunderstood’ and leader after leader has been explaining that this does not mean that a decision has been taken to contest the polls. While the centrist Grand Democratic Alliance and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal have decided to contest elections, the mightier Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and the All Parties Conference are holding out.
It fell, therefore, to President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Governor Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool (retired) to launch the campaigns. The president, arriving amid unprecedented security, set the ball rolling by endorsing Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaaf at a function meant to launching a non-partisan endowment fund. Gen Maqbool took the opportunity at Kasur to ask his audience at a public meeting why Gen Musharraf, who had done so much for the country, should not continue to be the head of the state after the polls. That, however, sounds more like a referendum question.
THE girl who brought to light sexual harassment by Punjab University faculty was finally charged with conduct unbecoming a student and expelled. An interesting allegation considering her complaint had apparently proved factual.
Press reports based on independent surveys of students and faculty had indicated the problem was known to be endemic and widespread. Only the subject was taboo. Given the social pressure on the victim, it required heroic courage to speak out. The message in penalizing her is unlikely to be lost on the students. Taboos are to be respected.
More to the point, perhaps, it is unlikely also to be lost on the erring faculty. They can feel secure in the knowledge that rather than doing the right thing their colleagues and the management are going always to stand by them. Who could have counted on so many accessories?
One of the two men named by the victim, a visiting member of the faculty, was removed. The other would remain on the department’s strength but was given a new assignment. Whether this amounted to exoneration, censure, warning, protection, amnesty or encouragement, was unclear.
The management position is not just a bit awkward. It is positively ridiculous. “Yes,” it seems to say like the emperor in Shafiqur Rahman’s tale of Hatam Tai, “I know the scoundrels I have chosen to exalt over my subjects. How dare you raise a finger if I choose to look the other way?”
LAWYERS and the city district Nazim, parties to a loud and heated argument over the use of District Courts complex, shared mixed fortunes during the last two weeks.
Having repeatedly asserted that an English medium school for the poor would start functioning on the premises from this year, the Nazim was forced into a strategic retreat over his ‘poor man’s Aitchison,’ claiming a consensus on the school project but admitting flexibility about the time and the site. The provincial law minister, meanwhile, gave a categorical assurance to lawyers that no school would be allowed to be opened on court premises.
While lawyers could derive satisfaction from this — a general body meeting of the Lahore Bar Association was called off —the Lahore High Court announced elevation of five judges presiding over accountability courts to the HC bench. The appointments were seen as a reward for delivering on a difficult front and criticized as violation of the lawyers’ quota and the rule of seniority. The LHC Bar was bitter and resolved to boycott the oath-taking.
And if he was disappointed on the school front, the Nazim was satisfied with the handling of Eid waste by his city government. He could also be happy about the real estate and construction boom to which his policies are doubtless contributing. The Pakistan Housing Authority’s decision, meanwhile, to halt expenditure on its housing schemes seemed out of synch with the trend but might actually be a welcome news for his constituency of private developers.
True to his cause, the Nazim was reported last week to have commented that land prices presumed for the purpose of stamp duty were exorbitant and would be slashed before the end of his term.
CONFUSION seems to have lingered about two things in Daniel Pearl case. The kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter, is finally believed to have been killed and at least one of the people who allegedly planned and executed the abduction is in custody.
First, a newspaper report suggested recently that President Gen Pervez Musharraf was deliberately misinformed on the progress of investigation. Amazingly the report went undenied. US envoy Wendy Chamberlin has since visited the investigators for an independent briefing. What did she learn?
Second, extradition was mentioned and Gen Moin was reported to have said the government was evaluating the request. But when extradited, suspects are sent to the countries where they are alleged to have committed a crime. That had been the basis of US demands for handing over Libyan suspects in Lockerbie case and handing over of several people accused of smuggling narcotics into the United States. Before the US could demand handing over of Osama bin Laden, it had to accuse him of masterminding and facilitating crimes in that country.
In Pearl case, the crime was committed in Pakistan. Should some of the suspects be known to have fled to other countries, the government of Pakistan would need to seek their extradition to be able to prosecute them here. Why governments of both the US and Pakistan think otherwise is far from obvious?
GOVERNOR Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool (retired) said last week the Women Police had been a failure. The remarks followed a leap from a third storey window by a woman in custody on suspicion of theft. Five people, including the station house officer of the only Women’s Police station in the city have been suspended from service and charged with several irregularities. The suspect, who has a fractured spine, hips and leg bones and is expecting her first baby, said mortified as she had been by the allegations against her, extortion and torture had driven her to suicide.
The SSP (Operations) clarified later that their had been no directive from the governor to disband the Women Police or close down the police station. The remarks amounted probably not to a policy decision but an expression of disgust. So be it. The feeling, of course, is understandable.
The SSP also implied that since it operated in similar conditions, the Women Police should not be expected to be any different from the rest of the police. He has a point. Who says corruption, highhandedness, ruthlessness and abuse of authority are gender specific? But why, as the governor had asked, then have a Women Police at all? He has a point. —ONLOOKER
Reflecting over community living
WITH Eidul Azha just over, it is perhaps an opportune time to reflect over such themes as the quality of community living and neighbourhoods, in the Sindh capital in particular. How considerate most citizens are about the environment they live in and how effective are the miscellaneous managing committees that seek to steer the course of events on a daily basis?
Having said that now focus on the residential dimension of our lives, be they a reference to apartments or bungalows, generally speaking. There are protagonists and antagonists for either of these categories of housing units; and without trying to sound either ironic or cynical it would be pertinent to keep in mind the slums of Karachi, the kutchi abadis of this affluent city; to keep in mind the wider sociological perspective.
Let us today look at the huge world of apartments in Karachi, a world that is still growing, and in a manner quite often that reflects disappointingly on the way Pakistani society urbanizes. The grey world of apartments? What is the image that comes to mind?
Is this the way Karachi is destined to go and grow in the years ahead? Is that what the town planners are visualizing, if they are visualizing anything at all? For what else can you with the fact of a rising population of Karachi, and the migration to this city remaining a constant and steady factor. Nothing seems to stop it, says a Karachi watcher, and adds that for all the crime and violence that this city has had, the movement in the direction of the Sindh capital hasn’t really slowed down. God alone knows what the statistics are.
There are apartments in all the districts of the city, and there are all kinds of apartments. Big and small, and medium sized, relatively speaking. Good, bad and indifferent, even ugly — relatively speaking. Well-maintained, ill-maintained, and indifferently maintained — again relatively speaking! Like with bungalows there are all kinds of people residing in them, and it is truly speaking frustrating to try and make out a case in defence of apartments, argue some senior citizens. One of them whose opinions I value, described it as a kind of “compromise” when it comes to dwelling in apartments — especially the way in which most of them are looked after these days.
It is this “looking after” that needs to be elaborated somewhat. Even those who live in these apartments do not care about the environment they create; and the assorted, inefficient, weak managing committees find their weary jobs far more frustrating because they are unable to do their task at all, at times. Resource constraint, because the apartment dwellers will not pay their dues or dispute them for varied stupid reasons. And like everything else in society often or at times, these governing bodies have their own axe to grind, with petty or partisan office-bearers, being mindless in their dealings, and “dishonest” whenever it is possible.
A citizen observes that even in the best of apartments in this city, in the most posh and protected of apartments, there are problems and frustrations that are found anywhere else. Defaulters are a terrible class that exists, at all levels in this society. Influential, and manipulative at times, and at times reflective of the trend to live beyond one’s means. With the result, that most managing committees in apartment complexes fail to collect dues from them, when needed, at times, never at all. Write off, here too. And so those who pay their dues suffer on this count too.
Then Karachi’s crime problem, sometimes almost condoned as being an inevitable fallout of our urbanization, is prevalent in the best of apartments, howsoever powerful be those who reside there. Like crime in the affluent areas of Karachi. Like Clifton and Defence or PECHS other adjacent housing societies. This is a subject that is both sensitive and complex, and interestingly when crime in these places is investigated the findings are revealing. Sometimes it has been committed by the “inmates” themselves, and or at times the police are unable to act. Have they connived?
For all the problems that apartment living entails, (water shortage and leaking sewerage lines, and messy walls, and deplorably unhygienic overall living conditions, etc), why is it that they continue to grow here? The reason is very obvious. It is a matter of economics as the financial status of families only makes this option affordable. Another reason, observers point out, is the fact that the traditional joint family system, regarded now as crippling and suffocating, is evaporating, and smaller family units (nuclear families?) has emerged. And they regard as “independent living” as the best option, which enables them to exercise the freedom of choice. Some choice!
Freedom of choice and apartment living? Some of those who have resided in these for the past two decades (having moved from living in bungalows to the “modern” option of living in an apartment) are of the view that life in apartments is far more stifling and suffocating, than living in “independent bungalows.” It is for them a feeling of being trapped especially if they have neighbours who are nonchalant, and or intrusive and noisy, to say the least. As the textbook would say the “rank bad neighbour.” To this, add the fact that this “bad neighbour” is sitting on your head (the floor above you) and staying up late regularly. Or if there are neighbours who flout all norms of community living, (watering a garden when Karachi’s water pipelines have begun to create a famine) or those who park their cars and block your movements, or children who create “virtual hell” on the staircase. There are a myriad ways of how residents in apartments can ruin whatever little peace and tranquillity a home is supposed to offer in the environs of this ill-planned city wanting to breathe!
There was perhaps a time when some apartments that came up in Karachi two decades ago, were regarded as clean, or elegant or good looking, and so on. With time not just the poetic amongst us, but even the prosaic around, have begun to question these concrete structures up in the air. But what’s the way out, with our population and economics being what it is. And the way it is going — more “posh slums” in the pipeline!
Balochistan needs more primary schools
THE first primary school was established in 1887 at Quetta and, pleasantly, it was a girls school. After the success of this school the erstwhile British government decided to open more schools in the province.
Since the government wanted that modern education should replace the traditional religious education, there was, therefore, no restriction whatsoever on admission to schools.
However, at present there are two categories of schools — public schools run by the government and private schools run by some NGOs or by commercial concerns. It is here that the admission policy differs.
First, in the public sector there are 7,808 boys primary schools and 2,131 girls primary schools that have 341,487 boys and 139,465 girls on their roll, and this for a population of six 6 million plus.
The pace of enrolment growth can be visualized when one finds that in 1990 there were 315,111 boys and 80,206 girls studying at the primary level. In comparison to other provinces, this pace of growth may appear slow because other provinces have greater number of people, started modern education much earlier and enjoy favourable social norms, plus they have made greater investment than has done Balochistan, a province of distances, with sparse and scattered population. Therefore, Balochistan needs enough schools to meet the requirement of admission at lower level.
To boost student population, the government has formulated a very liberal admission policy at the primary level. Students are enrolled in Kachhi class at the age of five and below that no one is admitted, because there is no concept of pre-school education in the normal system of the province. Admission in villages is never denied except when the child is below five or is mentally retarded.
The government has started a community support programme for progressive education in the province. Under this programme it is ensured that a school be established in a village where its success is certain. A woman from the village concerned is appointed teacher who can become a regular teacher only when she can enrol at least 30 children in her school.
For this, the teacher is imparted skills about how to convince mothers of the need to send their children to school and then ensure their regular attendance. The teacher so appointed goes from door to door to contact mothers about admission of their children, fills in the admission forms and gets them signed etc by the parents or the guardians. This has helped to increase the number of girl students in villages.
The government provides free of cost textbooks, takhtis, slates and other materials to the students in rural areas.
Moreover, in some areas of the province the government, with the assistance of donors, is providing cooking oil to the parents of girl students as an incentive for admitting their daughters in schools and keeping them there up to class V. This has encouraged parents to send their children to school.
In urban areas, particularly in Quetta, parents have experienced some difficulties in getting their children admitted because the number of schools have not grown parallel to the population. Classes are overcrowded and, hence, parents prefer schools where the class size is manageable.
No tuition fee is charged from students. However, a nominal fee is charged as admission fee. In case the name of a student is struck off the school roll because of prolonged absence, he or she is admitted immediately when they report back.
The government is looking forward to make primary education compulsory. A draft bill for presentation in the provincial assembly is ready. This bill provides that every parent who resides within a radius of one kilometre from a school / mosque school / madrassah shall be obliged to send his child to school, failing which he will be penalized both financially and in terms of imprisonment.
Secondly, the private schools, which number about 200, are functioning in the province. Some of them have been established by NGOs or on a commercial basis. Although these schools try to attract as many students as possible, they still observe some restrictions on admission that are as follows:
The child is admitted to the prep class at the age of four; a test is administered to know the level of the candidate; heavy admission fee is charged from the parents; the name of the student is struck off the roll on flimsy grounds and readmission is allowed on payment of a heavy fine and in some schools admission is restricted to the facilities available in the institution.
In towns like Quetta the parents would rather send their children to private schools because these institutions are well-disciplined, the medium of instruction is English, and the institutions have become a social symbol. The managements of these schools take benefits of the inclination of the parents towards them. However, if a public school shows better performance, it also attracts an equal number of students.
The admission in public schools suffers from the following factors:
— Since the benefits of education are still not properly known to the parents, only 33 per cent of the population send their children to school;
— The dropout rate in Kachhi class to class III is very high. This is due to three factors: the curriculum is not based on the needs; the school does not provide a conducive atmosphere to the young children and admission is not allowed to the children beyond eight years because of some social and academic factors (older students resort to bullying the younger ones, their cognitive level is higher);
— There is no advisory service available for the parents and
— The education is not linked with the world of work.
