Unchallenged Hatred
Neither Hindu nor
Muslim
Sacrificing pride, let
us sit together.
Neither Sunni nor
Shia,
Let us walk the road
of peace!
(Bulleh Shah)
But things don’t
look like so among us proud Pakistanis.
We see God as the one who takes revenge against the betrayers of his mis-interpreted religion
(read dogmas)and his pleasure-seekers are doing the deed by violently and
mercilessly murdering those who have not an iota of an understanding of their
brand of Islam. Hegemony holds sway in
the land of blood. Hatred champions
itself in the land of the righteous.
Untried blasphemers are lynched and torched alive in this very land of
the pure. Women are disfigured and
defaced by acid throwing or are gang raped by orders of village elders for
honor’s sake. And then they say
speaking against all this as ‘Western
Propaganda”? How ironic. Who is a Westerner
here? Is common-sense related to Blackwater Co. here?
What if we see
God above all this who actually has come down, pleading his staunch followers,
for mercy and change in thought to stop humiliating Him like this? Is it not possible to see Him in human terms
rather than kill your sons and daughters in blind faith? And if one is indeed a
true Muslim, then what’s the point in reciting the First Kalma aloud time and
again? It doesn’t lessen any faith, and we all know that. Our sleeves are full of it. Piety here has
indeed become a curse and it’s good to see that Baba Bulleh Shah died long before he could witness all this. With the young doctors on strike, he’d have
died of a heart attack today and no one would be there to weep for this
blasphemer.
The language we
use today has become bigoted. The
offices we work at have become cesspool of anti-Shia, anti-Ahmediya, ant-
Christian, anti-Jew, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh and anti-human gup shup. An average child
who goes to a middle level public school believes that it is sin for women to
work outside their homes, and the best is that they actually lose their
virginity by driving cars, thanks to the Saudi fatwa.
So what has been
inclining everyone, even the ones who want to be considered liberals because
they wear Levi’s jeans, towards this
retrograde and moral degeneration. Moral
degeneration is not that we see Katrina Kaif on Billboards, but is the lack of
confrontation against the powerful radical
clergy that blacken the faces of
models on advertisement posters and posting violence-inciting messages in our residential
areas. The best example can be noted at
our universities where religiosity has taken such strong roots that many
professors and students have been harassed and attacked with gun shots at their
residences and yet no action has been taken by the concerned authorities for fear
of backlash.
For any culture,
preservations should be made on the principle of its inherent indigenous core
without it being oppressive or hegemonic on others. In our case, unfortunately, there are
conflicts of political interests, causality of which we see in our society that
suffers from its identity chaos and even, bloodshed in some cases. During Zia’s draconian era, major reforms
took place in the education curricula (allegedly prepared by University of
Nebraska) to harden it with Jihadi references, even for elementary students, to
recruit Mujahideen to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 80’s
during cold war. The literature
developed lacked any cultural or religious sensitivity. Moreover, tones of private editions were
published for the surfacing militant madrassahs
that brainwashed the adrenaline-rushed youth into something more destructive
than using their worth towards productivity.
Ever since the cold war ended, the US-Petro dollars didn’t stop flowing,
however, no serious effort has been made to reverse the education damage that
is to be blamed for ill-informed and biased populations that have been geared
towards more hatred. News papers and
current media are no exceptions in spreading biased opinions and lies. The alienation of the very people who are the
citizens of Pakistan is doing an economic harm of the worst kind and the fact
remains neglected politically. The first
such example of harming the nation lies in the very preamble of the Objectives
Resolution that was passed by the constituent Assembly in 1948 only after the
death of the Quaid, founder of Pakistan.
The second most damaging act ever done to Pakistan as a nation was by
Z.A. Bhutto through the formation of One Unit, which homogenized the variant
nature of all the diverse regions of Pakistan, thus causing resentment among
ethnic and minority groups besides damaging the institutions indirectly, in
particular, the education institutions.
Accepting the
fact that Pakistan is a multi ethnic diverse country is important for its
progress, otherwise, giving in to the demands of the nexus of radical clergy,
the powerful feudal lords and the army, will bring more resentment and disaster
than any productivity or protection of the assets that the ‘deep state”
considers important. This can only be
done through proper identification of the problems and the right political
lobbying for the right measures to be taken to address the growing problem of
the militancy and for an educational evolution that can bring us out of the vortex
of hate for other nations who live among
us too. Nothing, in our case, should
fall short of human dignity belonging to any religion, caste, creed or sexual
orientation.
Contributed by
Zeeba Hashmi and can be reached at zeebahashmi@hotmail.com
Photo credit: Google Images
