EOM TFUSA Worth watching! Please watch it. You might learn something important.
Shared by M. Shahid Yousuf
Dear All,
Some idea of the muck created by MUC can be obtained by watching “Among the Believers”
http://www.
The above is just a website but if you have Netflix you would be able to get some context if you are not living in Pakistan or have not lived in Pakistan since the
Afghan-Soviet war.
M. Shahid Yousuf
Written by Dr. Syed Ehtisham
My submission is that the Feudal system, Army, Bureucrats and Mullahs constitute the Evil Quad of Pakistan.
What do we mean by feudalism?
It has several facets – moral and ethical values, political and economic system, market economy integrating with it etc.
In my view all the above are a composite whole. Moral and ethical values get far more exposure as they result in cruel and medieval violation of Human Rights.
A typically sad story of “vani” was posted recently. A person was killed. The murderer was convicted and sentenced to death by the sessions court. An appeal was filed in High Court. But a compromise was reached by the parties. The murderer was required to pay the family of the victim blood money. He did not have it. The village punchayat decided that five girls from the extended family of the convicted murderer – all under ten at the time-be married off to boys from the victims extended family. The girls are now educated, the boys remain country bumpkins, and the girls refuse to live with the “spouses” they were “nikahified” to when they were babies. One cleric says that the Nikahs are not valid. But the victim’s family asserts their right under the “vani” scheme and the grooms, to bring the point home as it were, shot and injured two brothers of the girls. They, presumably, did not shoot to kill as they would, in turn, have to provide vani girls.
This story is very instructive and presents so many socially accepted norms of the society.
First, the High Court had to surrender its jurisdiction under the Law of Qisas. The murder was deemed an offence against a family and not the state. This would logically open the way, if a rich person was so inclined, to murder a poor person and reach a compromise to pay a bit of his ill gotten wealth. There is little chance that the compromise will be turned down. People when they are starving, in a State with negligible social supports, sell their daughters into concubinage. All the rich person has to do is to take care not to kill a person from an affluent family.
Second, we face the concept of the female human as commodity. Her body is for a punchayat to sell/barter or mortgage even under age girls. To my mind this is a greater atrocity than a punchayat ordained rape. In the latter case the victims are at least adults, not babies.
Third, babies can be legally wedded under parental/gaurdian consent.
Fourth, a cleric says that the nikah is not valid. This is a peculiarly “Islamic” fuddle. There should, one would have thought, be no controvercy on such a basic legal contract as a Nikah.
One could write a book on the moral turpitude of the feudal society, and people have done so, but parade of naked women through a village bazzar, first night of a bride in the chieftain’s bed (not the husband), “Honor” kliing, wedding to the Quran, bedding peasant’s wives routinely, forcing school teachers to leave the village lest the children be infected by the literacy virus, serfdom, bonded labor, feudal jails are a few illustrative examples.
Now let us move on to economic impact of feudalism. Land is not scientificlly utilized. With out ownership rights the tiller does not have an incentive to do his best. He is likely to be dispossessed any way, if he can not come up with his over lord’s share, as it would inevitably happen from time to time. An independent small farmers’ share of water is routonely usurped if the big man’s lands do not get enough of it.
But the biggest albatross is the instinctive resistance of large estate holders to modern farming techniques. They are apprehensive, and correctly so, that the advent of modern technology, though it gave them enhanced revenues, would sound the death knell of their privelege. They love their place in heirarchy, and rightly so from their perspective, their demi-god status, which no amount of money can offer.
And privelege gave monetary dividend too. Aggricultural income was tax exempt!!. They now pay a nominal tax. Buying barren land was a standard measure of tax evasion. I know a lot of doctors in Karachi who did that.
Inter related with their perogeratives is their sway over the local bureucrats and the police. Vast majority of their crimes are not registerred by the police, that is, if the victim dare approach the police station. If a dare-devil does, he is likely to have his mud hut ransacked and his women folk abducted.
They get away with murder, and weddings to the Quran to keep the property in the family (in country head of PPP has two sisters so married).
This, incidentally, works at the national level as well. Bhutto pointedly asked a recalcitrant High Court judge if his daughter still went to college.
The local Deputy Commisioner (now DCO) will back them up. It is a symbiotic relationship. The feudal will protect them by virtue of his seat in the parliament.
Election in rural constituencies, 80% of the whole lot, is a farce. Peasants are told off to vote for one or the other faction of feudals. It is a veritable musical chairs. Parliamentary seats are inherited. All political parties are patronized. It is a family affair. The most notable example is Abida Husain in ML, and her husband Fakhre-Imam in PPP.
Sawsan Morrar, a multimedia journalist at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, was chosen as a 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association Scholar.
Those who tune in to watch this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday will hear my name called as I take the stage to accept a journalism scholarship. They won’t see my portfolio of work, and they will likely forget my name. But they’re sure to notice and remember one thing about me: my headscarf.
Some may call it symbolic that a Muslim American journalist will be recognized at the annual dinner the same year that President Trump declined to attend. Trump is breaking from a long tradition of presidents meeting with the award recipients.
And as I prepare to attend, I know some at the event may not perceive me as a fellow reporter who, like them, relishes the thought of meeting journalists I admire. Muslims don’t have the luxury of being a fusion of their achievements, interests and uniqueness. Rather, in the eyes of others, we are only Muslim.
I’ve faced this challenge before. After doing some pre-reporting over the phone, I encounter surprise when I meet my subjects in person — Who is she, they wonder? Where is the reporter? Often an interview subject, government official or employer will grow cool once it becomes clear I am a Muslim.
On hearing that I will attend the dinner, a seasoned journalist asked what I think about Trump — not because I am a reporter, but because I am a Muslim who has made the conscious decision to wear my faith. Another journalist asked me whether the frequency of my negative experiences in the field has increased since Trump took office.
Just last month, while traveling to Malaysia on assignment, I was asked to board an empty plane only to be met by three Department of Homeland Security agents on the jet bridge. They took me through an inconspicuous, concrete stairway and asked me repeatedly who was funding my trip and why. Was it so hard to believe that a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf was sent to report on climate change?
posted by f.sheikh
Role of Religion in violence:
By Dr. Syed Ehtisham
A Historic review of its Genesis
“Organized religion is like organized crime, it preys on people’s weaknesses, generates huge profits for its operators and is almost impossible to eradicate”
Mike Hermann
The above quote is defeatist. It appears to advocate accommodation
Violence in the current day and age is regarded by most mainstream Muslims as a reaction to inequity, injustice, and disempowerment, real or perceived. Stronger nations attack weaker ones when the latter have either refused to be compliant with the objectives of the former or have actually managed to hurt their economic interests.
In Western countries, violence is attributed variously to fanaticism, clash of cultures, poverty, lack of education etc. Muslim residents of Western countries, by and large, condemn acts of violence against innocent people, but would want the people in the West to understand the reasons why a person would deliberately sacrifice his life.
Examples of violence by the strong on the weak are many and come from the very earliest times of known history. Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Persian, Arab, British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, and Russian empires come easily to mind. They invaded the weaker people to exploit resources of their countries. World wars were fought for the resources of colonies. Post WWII, with weakening of the Colonial powers, the USA took up the role and intervened directly by naked aggression and through surrogates.
Christians were persecuted by Romans, and Muslims by their own people. But violence in the name of religion was first definitively documented in the late fifteenth century Papal B which authorized the king of Portugal “to attack, conquer and subdue Saracens, pagans and other non-believers who were inimical to Christ; to capture their goods and territories; to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to transfer their lands and properties to the king of Portugal and his successors”.
The common thread that runs through all aggression is greed or fear that the new creed would supplant the old one and control mode of production. When resources were no longer at stake diverse beliefs were tolerated as during the period of Muslim rule in India. The British did send preachers to “spread the word of God” and when natives killed an odd missionary, gunboats followed.
Resistance to aggression against heavy odds is equally common.
All animals practice aggression against their own kind, and against other kinds, to a greater or lesser degree. The complexity of the practice appears to be directly related to intelligence. Lower orders kill, generally members of other species, for food. Others may injure/wound rivals for the affections of a female or to control several comely ones, but generally do not kill them.
Violence for greed is the exclusive domain of Homo sapiens.
I will be accused of committing heresy, but am not. All religions are based on the fear of the unknown. They were, and are practiced to propitiate the supernatural for the individual/common good. In any case religious persons do not require any rationale to castigate difference of opinion. All “non-divinely” inspired religions worshipped natural phenomenon, lightening, rain, storms, earthquakes, fire, floods, sun, and moon etc. Male dominance had not taken firm roots, so they had female deities in nearly equal numbers.
“Divinely inspired”[i] religions exhort us to fear God, the Day of Judgment, reward for good, retribution for evil, sight unseen. God has sent messengers with a set of instructions on a body of beliefs, code of behavior, on how to propitiate Him, with out a word on how to find or recognize Him. One is expected to believe in His existence with out reason or rationale. We are told that our faculties are not developed enough or God has not endowed us adequately enough to be able to do so. God remains largely unknown.
All religions reacted to the prevailing milieu, and confronted the established order. They appealed mainly to the disempowered, the destitute and the poor. The rich, the powerful, and the learned had all the privileges already. They ignored the emergent creed, did not see any good reason for change, which would, in any case, affect their interests adversely, and tried to suppress the new forces with naked force, bribes and temptation, whatever would work. The prophet of Islam was offered riches, women, and positions of authority, if he would only give up his “pointless” preaching. They failed in every instance with all the prophets.
Religions initially attempted to eradicate social evils, and economic inequities. The ruling classes took measures to preserve their authority. They controlled the “ administration, the legislature, and the judiciary”[ii]. They treated the poor abominably, indulged in slavery, tightened their stranglehold by such measures as exorbitant interest rates, forced and bonded labor, serfdom, and claim on the major part of the produce of the peasantry. The ruled had no recourse. All the levers of power were in the hands of the ruling class. If they ran away and were caught, the punishment would be worse than death. If not caught, starvation would be the fate of most.
It must be clearly understood that religion did not hit at the root of privilege. It only aimed at amelioration of the living conditions of the powerless. Private property remained sacrosanct. Slavery was not abolished; the owners were exhorted to treat them humanely. Women remained the underclass, though they were lulled with meaningless honors like the paradise is at the feet of mothers or that their word was law as in ancient India[iii]
Written and shared by Dr. Syed Ehtisham