The Sharia caveat
THE caretaker Frontier government’s draft regulation for replacing the existing law in the districts of Swat, Dir and Chitral with Sharia law comes infested with flaws, not least of which is the error of judgment. Setting aside the moral aspect of an interim, unelected and controversial government making such sweeping changes, it is the ramifications of the move that will haunt the governments to come in the years ahead. The proposed quick fix to appease the militants holding sway in the said districts must be resisted. Such moves based on political exigencies cannot offer a lasting solution of the problem at hand. Worse still, if the past is any guide, they compound the trouble even further. That’s precisely what happened in Malakand Agency in 1999. The ill-advised Shar’i Nizam-i-Adl Regulation, ostensibly based on the Sharia, and promulgated back then with the intent of calming down Sufi Mohammed and his fanatic followers, just backfired with a bigger bang. It egged the extremists on to seek more and more political power, not through the ballot, but on the back of their misguided zeal — ironically, in the way of God. The ongoing extremist insurgency in Swat now being led by Sufi’s cleric son-in-law Fazlullah is but the culmination of the wrong policy adopted in 1999 to try to appease the Islamic militants. The government’s carrot and stick policy with regard to growing extremist militancy failed then; no, it boomeranged, and it is doomed to failure now if tried again.
Since the time of Gen Ziaul Haq, the state has been a party to spreading obscurantism alongside the largely semi-literate and myopic country mullahs. Even mainstream religious and non-religious parties have lent a helping hand in perpetuating the unfair and unjust state of affairs. Most so-called religious laws put on the statute for whatever reasons have been made part of the basic law without having been properly debated in an elected legislature. This ad hoc approach must be dispensed with, not only because it has created a parallel judicial system, but also because such laws have been widely abused to punish the victims rather than the criminals, as is more than evident in the case of the Hudood Ordinances.
The religious extremists at best represent the fringe of society, as elections that were ever held have shown. Their demands do not find resonance among the public at large, less so in the absence of an elected legislature. Nothing could be more dubious than promulgating Sharia laws to lessen election-time volatility in Swat, Dir and Chitral districts. It will open the floodgates of such pressure being exerted by those with a divine mission all around. The federal government must stop its Frontier counterpart in its tracks and scrap the draft law. Now.
Beijing’s assurance
CHINA’S assurance to Pakistan that an improvement in relations with India will not affect Beijing’s traditionally close ties with Islamabad deserves to be welcomed. In the wake of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to China, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that Beijing attached great importance to its ‘strategic relations’ with Islamabad and that it would continue to make efforts to “deepen our bilateral, strategic partnership”. The Foreign Office spokesman in Islamabad echoed similar sentiments when he said Pakistan’s bilateral relations with China were not affected “by our relations with any other country”. The spokesman said Pakistan’s relations with its northern neighbour had developed from generation to generation and transformed into a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted relationship “encompassing cooperation in political, economic and security fields”.
In 1955 when Mohamed Ali Bogra and Zhou En-lai struck an understanding at the Bandung conference, the seeds of Sino-Pakistan friendship were first sowed in spite of the fact that Pakistan was then America’s ‘most allied ally’. There has been no looking back since then. Even though the end of the Cold War and the demands of globalisation have opened new vistas for all nations, with old rivalries and fears giving way to greater economic cooperation, ties between Islamabad and Beijing have remained on a steady keel. Against this background, an improvement in Indo-China relations is not an extraordinary phenomenon. Besides, Beijing has also consolidated its ties with Moscow, has a robust economic relationship with America in spite of the Taiwan and intellectual property rights issues, and is reaching out to Africa in a big way.
Over the last half a decade, Pakistan and India too have improved their relations to a degree that could not have been foreseen in the 2002 summer when a million men were involved in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation along their border. China has repeatedly welcomed the Indo-Pakistan détente, and has expressed its support for peace in South Asia. In this scenario, what should be of concern to us is Pakistan’s failure to make full use of the opportunity available to it since China ‘opened up’ following the reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978-79. While the India-China trade is likely to hit the $20bn mark this year, Pakistan’s trade with China is limited to an abysmally low $4.5bn. Continued economic cooperation between Pakistan and China as well as with Saarc members will help consolidate peace, reduce poverty and focus the governments’ attention on giving their peoples higher living standards. Moreover, China’s emergence as an ‘advanced’ developing country has ensured that it is set firmly on the road to becoming a superpower which has already begun to determine the shape of international politics. Had Pakistan played its cards well, it could have used its special relationship with China as a countervailing force to maintain a measure of independence in its foreign policy.
Another winter of discontent
AS if rising inflation and growing political instability were not enough, winter has struck with such severity in the northern and other regions of the country that routine life in many parts has come to a virtual standstill. At least six people have died in the bitter cold of southern Punjab while an unspecified number of deaths have been reported from the Northern Areas where hospitals admitting patients with winter-related ailments are without adequate heating. Heavy snowfall and rains have restricted access to better medical amenities, and the supply of basic facilities like food, fuel and water has been badly affected. Matters are equally precarious for the internally displaced. These include the 2005 quake survivors, many of whom, despite some progress in reconstruction, are still living in tent villages as construction work remains affected by the extreme weather.
While record low temperatures are being registered this winter at various places, it is not as if freezing weather is an unknown phenomenon in the country. Knowing its repercussions for populations ill equipped to deal with it, why didn’t the government ensure that its medical outlets, especially in remote areas, were stocked with sufficient medicine to administer to patients of pneumonia and other respiratory, winter-related illnesses, and that there was a regular supply of food? Prices of fuel, including firewood, have also gone up and the government has failed to keep these in check. Local communities may be able to brave this winter and get through it as they have been doing for so many years. But the government cannot afford to show complacency. It must have a crisis management plan in hand to ensure that such weather does not cause hardship to the people in future. Additionally, it should profit from experience and be making contingency plans for the time when the snows melt, worsening the threat of floods in riverine areas.
Science in terms of the Quran
THE Holy Quran is the book of guidance. This guidance is for the whole of humankind and covers all activities of human life. Science is an important human activity and is an essential one for the progress of human civilisation.
The Quran is not a book of science as such and hence one cannot hope to find all the principles of science embedded in it; nevertheless the Quran has its own style of dealing with the facts and principles of science. It deals with the essence of scientific principles and makes statements about a number of phenomena in a suggestive form hinting at the highest organising principles. In verse 3: 191, Allah has indicated that anyone pondering over nature will reflect: “our Lord! Not for naught hast thou created (all) this…..”
This assertion that nothing has been created for nothing is actually the most fundamental article of faith to the modern ecologist who realises that the universe has a fine-tuning and that we must not disturb it. There are about thirty million life forms. Only five million have been studied so far. However, many a time it has been found that man has disturbed the life styles of some of these forms and has paid very dearly for this. We should take all care to see that a life form survives, as its elimination may upset the overall ecological balance of the nature. Thus the entire basis of the science of ecology is no other than the Quranic assertion that nothing has been created for nothing.
Another example is the Quranic reference to the order and proportions of things. In verse 25:2 it has been stated: “It is He who created all things and ordered them in due proportions.” One would realise that the issues of order and proportions are in fact linked to the question of survival of living things. For example, man could not be drastically different in size from what he is now and yet be compatible with the gravity field of earth and other environmental factors.
Also within a given living body, the different parts follow different proportions. In the case of plants these proportions can be understood in the Fibonacci numbers. It is the proportions of things that lend beauty and symmetry to an object. Thus proportion is one of the most important aspects in the overall Grand Design of creation.
Still another fascinating example can be found in verse 92: 2 which refers to the creation of man from Alaq (that which clings) within the mother’s womb. The successive phases in the development of a human being from an embryonic stage to a full-grown foetus have been mentioned in the Surah Al-Muminun. These phases were mentioned in the Holy Quran in the seventh century when the science of embryology was not even born. Incidentally, embryology is a very recent discipline, developed over a period of not more than 100 years. Thus, it is indeed amazing that the successive phases of human embryologic development as mentioned in the Holy Quran have been discovered recently.
Allah has asked man to ponder over His creation and development so that man can go to the depths of biology and unveil the mysteries of science. Again, an explanation of the whole chain of biological phenomenon in a summarised form invites man to study medical science in all its details and also appeals to his mind to think of Allah, Creator of all creations. The Quran has a particular style of inviting attention to the craftsmanship in nature and, in this way, places great emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge.
The Quran never created any bifurcation between religion and science. Thus, talking in terms of modern perspectives of life, one would need both religion and science. Science imparts material knowledge, religion teaches us the ethics of using that knowledge. Religion invites man to ponder over creation and the Creator, science provides the language for understanding creation and it is the creation which acts as the signature of the creator. Thus, there is no real conflict between religion and science.
Unfortunately, men and women today are neither aware of the emphasis the Holy Quran puts on the acquisition of knowledge nor can they relate some of the statements in the Holy Quran to the fact of science. This lack of awareness of the scientific indications in the Holy Quran is firstly owing to the fact that many recite from the Quran but do not understand the meaning of the verses due to their poor knowledge of Arabic.
These preachers do not address the burning problems of the day like basic education, eradication of poverty, social injustice, etc., not to speak of scientific methods dealing with them. Thus the young generation gets a wrong impression that the culture of science and the culture of Islam do not go together. The Quran is based on absolute truth. “And indeed it is the book of exalted power. No falsehood can approach it from before or behind it. It is sent down by one full of wisdom, worthy of all praise”. (XLI: 41-2). The modern researchers have to bear one thing in mind that if a certain verse of Quran cannot be explained by the science of today, all they can say is that at the present stage of our scientific knowledge, that verse cannot be comprehended.
Further advances in science would probably shed some more light on the verses. The delightful experience is that as man dives deeper into the secrets of matters and gains more and more knowledge, his grasp of the message of the Quran becomes clearer and clearer. It is an inward joy, difficult to describe which a researcher of the Quran experiences when the meanings of the text enlarges even as his own capacity for understanding increases.
It was the practice of science which enables the early Muslims to carry the torch of learning and that’s why they led other nations. And it is the science again which if properly practised according to ethics of the Quran, can be used as an instrument of change in the Muslim society.
Thus in order to convince the Muslim youth that there is no conflict between science and the Quran and also that the deeper scientific understanding of nature, can lead to a deeper appreciation of the wisdom and powers of the Creator, it is essential that the scientific indications in the Holy Quran are understood and explained to the uninitiated.
OTHER VOICES - Pushto Press
Is it loss or profit?
ACCORDING to a survey conducted recently in the US, the people there consider the fear of terrorism to be increasing manifold with each passing day.
They perceive the US forces to be losing while terrorists are gaining ground in the war on terror. People in the US also feel that they have lost money as well as personnel in the war on terror. The US has spent $430 billion on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan while it has spent $250bn on their defence since 9/11.
The blame for creating fear in the minds of the American people and the overall degradation of world peace falls squarely on the shoulders of the American leadership. After 9/11, the US administration started a crackdown against Muslim territories in reaction.
With the passage of time, the world has come to be divided as Muslim and non-Muslim. The non-Muslim world, led by the US, is equipped with modern-war technology while the Muslim world has neither modern technology nor enough resources to develop technology. The West’s policies in Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq are considered by the Muslim population around the globe to be a conspiracy against the Muslims.
This impression has been the cause of resentment among Muslims across the globe. In turn, they have started hating everything that is western or American.
The situation has reduced the space for Americans to move about in the world and hence a serious sense of insecurity has resulted among the American masses.
The American masses have to ask their rulers about the consequences of the so-called war on terror. They have to ask the administration to stop pounding bombs on the civilian population of Muslim countries as this is returned in the shape of hatred and suicide bombings against the American population. — (Jan 22)
The ‘Islamic Republic’ is further exposed
WESTERN media published three news stories in the last week exposing the invaders and their stooges besides driving home the point that the sovereignty of the Afghan masses and their political destiny have been handed over to those who can only bring more disaster to Afghanistan.
The first story is based on an interview with the UK defence minister with Sky TV in which he said that British forces would continue to remain in Afghanistan to conclude their mission there. This shows that consultation with those in charge in Kabul is not even considered in the case of the deployment and departure of foreign troops.
The second story was in The New York Times on January 7, and says that the number of Afghan prisoners with the American military is increasing rapidly. The US army has spent $30 million to renovate the Bagram prison for the purpose but space is falling short to accommodate an increasing number of Afghan prisoners. This prison presently accommodates 630 Afghans who have become prisoners in their own land.
The third story comes from a French news agency which quoted an American official as saying that poppy was mostly cultivated in Afghanistan on government land. The official has further revealed that Afghan officials are engaged in activities that are against the interests of the Afghan masses.
The above news stories clearly indicate that the British and American governments virtually consider Afghanistan as occupied territory. They believe that Afghan sovereignty belongs to Britain and the US, and that those who have been given responsibility in Kabul are simply puppets in the hands of these powers. The claim of the Afghan government about the sovereignty of Afghanistan is as void as the American army’s charges on the basis of which they have imprisoned Afghans in Bagram jail. — (Jan 22)
— Selected and translated by Khadim Hussain