Category Archives: Politics

“Dharnas vs Democracy” By Fatima Tassadiq

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(It is a worth reading article by Fatima Tassadiq who is currently completing a Master’s degree in Anthropology at Columbia University. The clarity of her arguments are very impressive. F. Sheikh )

In May 2013, I, along with many other Pakistanis weary of a system steeped in corruption, bribery and dynastic politics supported Imran Khan’s bid to power through the general elections.

I was deeply critical of his stance on the Taliban, the War on Terror and absence of a clear political ideology but nevertheless felt that his financial incorruptibility and integrity would be a welcome change from the clientelist politics of the PPP and PML-N.

I wasn’t naïve enough to think that Imran would win by a clear majority, because his appeal was largely restricted to upwardly mobile urban middle and upper classes, as evidenced by a report by Gallup Pakistan.

It was also highly unlikely that the PPP’s and PML-N’s historic stronghold over Sindh and Punjab respectively, would be destroyed in the course of a single election. This view was confirmed by opinion polls and surveys prior to the elections.

Also read: Open letter to Imran Khan, from a PTI voter

Nevertheless, I hoped that Imran would emerge strong enough to form part of a national coalition.

That didn’t happen.

I was disappointed but not entirely surprised and after making a series of embarrassingly elitist comments regarding the ‘illiterate masses’ I moved on.

That is how democracy works.

In a system of one person one vote, all opinions count equally – even if some of them are loud enough to dominate the public space through dharnas, while others quietly follow old political affiliations. In a democracy we have to be open to the possibility that the politicians we think are ill-suited for leadership may get elected, and we must respect the mandate of the people if democracy is to flourish.

It is the latter aspect of democracy that is, I believe, apparently difficult for many PTI followers to digest, with most translating any critique of Imran Khan’s tactics as support for corrupt veteran politicians.

The situation deteriorated with the PMl-N’s refusal to implement timely electoral reforms, address electoral irregularities, not to mention, the horrifying Model Town massacre that gave an undemocratic opportunist like Tahirul Qadri a place on the negotiation table.

But the Azaadi March and PTI’s single-minded pursuit of Nawaz Sharif’s resignation has lost many people with its convoluted ‘logic’.

The claim that PML-N’s victory was engineered through massive rigging has not been corroborated by independent sources like the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen), the EU Elections Observer Mission and the National Democratic Institute.

Undoubtedly, there were irregularities and causes for concern. But electoral law violations do not automatically translate to rigging at the scale needed to manufacture a landslide victory.

There is no ground for demanding a resignation in the absence of any judicial opinions or evidence from non-partisan experts. The PTI is trying to set a dangerous precedent by insisting that elected governments can be declared illegitimate and toppled on the basis of street power. Read Full article by clicking link below;

http://www.dawn.com/news/1127650/dharnas-vs-democracy

 

Imran Khan & Destructive Politics

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What a shame and disappointment. Once hero of young and educated class, Imran Khan, is acting like loose cannon determined to destroy the same democratic process in which he vested so much-and is opting for mob rule. His speeches are disjointed, ill-thought, full of hot air and self-megalomaniac with repeated references to his heroic days of cricket matches as if it was not cricket but Jang-e-Badar. Many times he sounded like a street bully trying to scare two street smart Sharif brothers. It is tragic that a political party and a leader that would have played a great constructive role for political process and advancement of the country, may meet its own demise by self-inflicted wounds. Although Dr. Tahir-Al Qadiri and his followers showed more discipline but its course of action is also no more than a heavenly inspired political circus. Below are some excerpts from the opinion piece by Zahid Hussain in Dawn.( F. Sheikh)

“If not macabre, at the very least the situation is bizarre. Imran Khan came to storm the citadel of power and destroy the old order, but may have killed his own and his party’s political future in the bargain. He is trying to rock the boat that may sink him too. His call for civil disobedience followed by the decision to resign from the assemblies is a high-stakes game that he may never win.

Imran Khan seems to have boxed himself and his party in a blind alley with no exit. One wonders if there is any logic behind this apparent madness. How can a leader of a major political party be so thoughtless in his decisions — decisions that not only threaten the entire system but also politically isolate him and his party?””

“Over the next five days, it turned into a part-time dharna with the protesters reassembling in the evenings — almost corresponding to prime time TV viewership — to listen to the unending rants of their leaders with the blare of song and music in the background. The atmosphere was more festive than charged with revolutionary zeal.

The disconnect between the leadership and the audience could not be more obvious. While the leaders would return to the comfort of their place of residence after the end of the late-night dharna sessions, those who came from other towns were left to spend nights in the rain. It was a chaotic setting for the struggle that promised to deliver change.”

“A powerful demagogue, Qadri has upstaged Imran Khan with his more radical pitch. He proclaims himself a revolutionary in the “cast of Marx and Lenin with a strong Islamic shade”. His ‘revolutionary manifesto’ presents the outline of a ‘utopia’ where everyone will be equal. In contrast, what has been lost on the kaptan is that politics is not a game of cricket. Not being in electoral politics Qadri has nothing to lose, whatever the outcome of this confrontation.”

A new political alignment is emerging as the threat of the winding up of the system becomes real. All major political parties have closed ranks as the country descends into chaos. Even the Jamaat-i-Islami, the PTI’s only political ally, is not willing to support its decision to quit the assemblies and call for civil disobedience.

The destructive politics of the PTI seems to have given Sharif some space to regain his initiative. The support of parliament still is the biggest strength for the prime minister provided he wakes up from his deep slumber. But it may already be too late. His options are running out as he gets more deeply mired in the turbulent waters. Even support from other political forces is not much of help. The balance of power is already shifted to Rawalpindi.

Once again Pakistani politics has taken a unique twist just when a feeling had crept in of a return to the democratic process. Whatever the outcome of the last episodes of the melodrama, it has broken that slow reassurance amongst most Pakistanis. This confidence, important both for citizens and our image internationally, has been broken by the kaptan leaving deep scars on Pakistan’s already bleeding politics.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1126378/the-last-episode

 

 

Is there something about Islam?

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(A worth reading analysis by Kenan Malik, an author, BBC broadcaster, lecturer, NYT columnist and a proud atheist. F. Sheikh)

“Every year I give a lecture to a group of theology students – would-be Anglican priests, as it happens – on ‘Why I am an atheist’. Part of the talk is about values. And every year I get the same response: that without God, one can simply pick and choose about which values one accepts and which one doesn’t.

My response is to say: ‘Yes, that’s true. But it is true also of believers.’ I point out to my students that in the Bible, Leviticus sanctifies slavery. It tells us that adulterers ‘shall be put to death’. According to Exodus, ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. And so on. Few modern day Christians would accept norms. Others they would. In other words, they pick and choose.

So do Muslims. Jihadi literalists, so-called ‘bridge builders’ like Tariq Ramadan (‘bridge-builder’, I know, is a meaningless phrase, and there are many other phrases that one could, and should, use to describe Ramadan) and liberals like Irshad Manji all read the same Qur’an. And each reads it differently, finding in it different views about women’s rights, homosexuality, apostasy, free speech and so on. Each picks and chooses the values that they consider to be Islamic.

I’m making this point because it’s one not just for believers to think about, but for humanists and atheists too. There is a tendency for humanists and atheists to read religions, and Islam in particular, as literally as fundamentalists do; to ignore the fact that what believers do is interpret the same text a hundred different ways. Different religions clearly have different theologies, different beliefs, different values. Islam is different from Christianity is different from Buddhism. What is important, however, is not simply what a particular Holy Book, or sacred texts, say, but how people interpret those texts.

The relationship between religion, interpretation, identity and politics can be complex. We can see this if we look at Myanmar and Sri Lanka where Buddhists – whom many people, not least humanists and atheists, take to be symbols of peace and harmony – are organizing vicious pogroms against Muslims, pogroms led by monks who justify the violence using religious texts. Few would insist that there is something inherent in Buddhism that has led to the violence. Rather, most people would recognize that the anti-Muslim violence has its roots in the political struggles that have engulfed the two nations. The importance of Buddhism in the conflicts in Myanmar and Sri Lanka is not that the tenets of faith are responsible for the pogroms, but that those bent on confrontation have adopted the garb of religion as a means of gaining a constituency and justifying their actions. The ‘Buddhist fundamentalism’ of groups such as the 969 movement, or of monks such as Wirathu, who calls himself the ‘Burmese bin Laden’, says less about Buddhism than about the fractured and fraught politics of Myanmar and Sri Lanka.”

“And yet, few apply the same reasoning to conflicts involving Islam. When it comes to Islam, and to the barbaric actions of groups such as Isis or the Taliban, there is a widespread perception that the problem, unlike with Buddhism, lies in the faith itself. Religion does, of course, play a role in many confrontations involving Islam

The tenets of Islam are very different from those of Buddhism. Nevertheless, many conflicts involving Islam have, like the confrontations in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, complex social and political roots, as groups vying for political power have exploited religion and religious identities to exercise power, impose control and win support. The role of religion in these conflicts is often less in creating the tensions than in helping establish the chauvinist identities through which certain groups are demonized and one’s own actions justified. Or, to put it another way, the significance of religion lies less in a given set of values or beliefs than in the insistence that such values or beliefs – whatever they are – are mandated by God.

And it is in this context we need to think about whether there is ‘something about Islam’.There are a host of different views that Muslims hold on issues from apostasy to free speech, views that range from the liberal to the reactionary. The trouble is that policymakers and commentators, particularly in the West, often take the most reactionary views to be the most authentic stance, in a way they would rarely do with Buddhism or Judaism or Christianity.”

The whole article is worth reading and he concludes his article with following paragraph:

“So, yes there is something about Islam that needs challenging. But equally, there is something about secular liberalism, and the blindness and pusillanimity of many secular liberals, the bigotry of many critics of Islam, and the cynicism of many secular governments in their exploitation of radical Islam, that needs challenging too.”

Read full article by clicking:

http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/is-there-something-about-islam/#comment-14603

 

BBC report on Baroness Warsi

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Baroness Warsi is a woman of principles and courage. She challenges the politics and the elite in the UK and the west to address the moral conundrums of the Gaza campaign by Israel. Equally her actions draw attention to the deadly virus of sectarian warfare afflicting many Muslim countries, sponsored by Iran and Saudi Arabia and their cohorts, for narrow ends that are leading to the destruction of the culture, history and cohesion of the region. None of these powerful states, whether Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Egypt, can escape the dark forces like ISIS unleashed by their strong arm tactics. As baroness Warsi states so eloquently the world needs a spirit of compromise where the basic values are uniformly observed. The alternative is a descent into the type of disintegration in Syria where all value systems are being wiped out in the name of god and religion.

Nasik

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-28656874

http://m.bbc.co.uk/search?q=Warsi