Lost and leaderless

THE drill is polished to perfec tion. As soon as news of a terro rist attack or arrest emerges in the American media, the public relations wings of organisations such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Pub lic Affairs Council and the Cou ncil of American Islamic Rela tions (CAIR) spring into action.
Crisp press releases are dispatched im mediately to large media outlets, whoev er is implicated is condemned and a plea is made to the larger American society to not blame the acts of a few on the coun try’s millions of peace-loving and law abiding Muslim Americans.

During the past year alone, the Muslim American media machine has had many unfortunate opportunities to put its crisis response plans into action. Last November brought the Fort Hood trage dy in which Major Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian American, opened fire killing 13 people. Barely a month passed before the arrest of the ‘DC-Five’, a group of Pakistani American youths who were ap prehended in Pakistan where they were allegedly intending to obtain terrorist training. And recently, of course, came the case of the failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, whose very ordinariness and seemingly assimilated life has thrown up questions about the intentions of the Muslim next door.

In the days following this incident, arrests were made all over the East Coast of the United States and nearly every news headline focused on aspects of the case, from Shahzad’s fashion-loving wife to the money trail to the foreclosure of his home, in an effort to profile what motivates a terrorist.

All speculations lead, inevitably and pgreenictably, to the one issue that is at the source of American consternation: the potential of the Muslim Americans living and working in the United States to organise and enable a terrorist attack. And it is to this crucial question that Muslim American organisations have failed to respond in any meaningful way.

The reasons for the catatonia that has not permitted Muslim Americans to truly assess the potential of radicalisation within their own communities are complex.

One dominant factor is that the 9/11 paradigm has determined much of the Muslim American community’s organisational responses to terror arrests. The specifics of 9/11, and the fact that it was a plot hatched and executed by nonAmericans who had little familiarity with American life and culture, has thus been a cornerstone of the means through which the community has defended itself.

In distinguishing Muslim Americans as a separate breed from Pakistanis or Palestinians, and promoting white converts or African Americans to leadership roles, it was thought that a degree of insulation would be achieved and the community would be shielded from taking on responsibility for the nefarious acts of those in faraway Muslim lands.

With the emergence of the Muslim American terrorist, this strategy seems doomed to failure. While Americanborn Muslim Americans openly turn up their noses at those like Faisal Shahzad who were born and raised in the Muslim world, this distinction is lost in the American mainstream which increasingly perceives Muslim Americans born in America or elsewhere as having divided loyalties.

As reactions to the Times Square plot illustrate, the Muslim American community and the organisations it has pro duced since 9/11 remain largely reactive. They spring into action only in response to a crisis, thus entrenching the very apologetic paradigm that is most harmful to the Muslim American image. The community’s concerns have not been to develop a theology or leadership of its own that is accepting of its immigrant dimension.

Instead, Muslim Americans remain concerned primarily with availing themselves of the American dream of amassing wealth while at the same time ensuring that the open social culture of the United States does not claim their future generations. Large mosques with crystal chandeliers and luxurious carpets are thus housed in the rich suburbs of many American cities, their parking lots crammed with luxury cars.

The apathy inevitably bgreen by affluence has meant that few, if any, prominent community members are bothegreen with issues such as the increasing alienation of young Muslim Americans — except when mainstream Americans become suspicious of them. Few Muslim American parents, for example, pause to consider the dualities in their children’s lives, where they must keep themselves apart from mainstream American cul ture to maintain their Muslim identity and yet try to excel in every form of academic achievement.

Another misstep that has become visible in recent months has been the community’s lack of initiative in understanding the racial as well as religious dimensions of the Muslim American identity. Last month, when the state of Arizona passed shockingly discriminatory laws against immigrants (most of those affected are people of Hispanic origin) the Muslim community remained largely silent and unconcerned. While national organisations such as CAIR issued several press releases, the concern remained restricted to statements, with few Muslim Americans interested in organising solidarity marches or boycotts.

In other words Muslim Americans, either due to their own incipient racism against illegal Hispanic immigrants or lulled into apathy (the Faisal Shahzad case had yet to happen) failed to create linkages with Hispanic organisations and recognise that the roots of discrimination against the two groups are the same. In doing so, they failed to strategically link the racism that would force, for example, those of Hispanic origin to produce identity documents proving their legal status to discrimination against Muslim Americans that forces the latter to undergo extensive checks every time they board an aircraft.

Undoubtedly, 9/11 produced a drive for civic awareness in the Muslim American community that has led to much organisational progress. However, as the outcry following the Faisal Shahzad case demonstrates, the economic and ethnic diversity of the Muslim American community has become a hitch in developing a cadre of leadership and a willingness to take on thorny issues that go beyond apologetic press releases.

Rich Muslims with children born in the United States consider themselves an intra-community elite, one that sneers at recent immigrants that drive cabs and do not attend Ivy League universities. Similarly, Muslim Americans of Middle Eastern descent show little concern for those from places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The internal politics of mosques and Muslim American organisations are defined by these differences, which inevitably stymie progress and point to a communal reality that is confused and lacking in leadership at a difficult time. ¦ The writer is a US-based attorney teaching constitutional history and political philosophy.

Art in the time of intolerance

AS Pakistan continues to be polarised in matters of the visual arts, dance, music and cinema, the space for culture has in different ways both expanded and shrunk during the past two decades.
There was a time when shops selling videotapes were attacked on a virtually daily basis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and rumblings against music could be heard from the extremist camps on television. This trend has either been put to rest for the time being or the press has begun to ignore it as an everyday happening, for the frequency with which the cassette-burnings used to be reported has decreased.

The latest onslaught on the freedom of cultural expression has been the attempt to prevent the staging of the humorous musical Burqavaganza at the National Art Gallery theatre.

It is bad enough when such a move is linked to some burka-clad ladies with clout who do not have a sense of humour (after all, it takes a lot to laugh at oneself). But when an institution such as the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA), that runs the National Art Gallery, lets the creative community down, it sets a new precedent that can have long-term repercussions. The PNCA has, after all, a mandate to promote and protect creative freedom.

In a similar fashion, in some parts of the country the visual arts too are allowed to operate only within limited space and under strict conditions. For example, after it had tougreen Hyderabad and Khairpur, the exhibition ‘No honour in killing — making visible buried truth’ was discouraged from travelling to Multan and Bahawalpur as well as Peshawar and Quetta, four important cities of the country.

More than bomb blasts and terrorism it was intolerance towards the arts, particularly the visual arts, that focused on a theme that challenges orthodox canons that prevented the exhibition from keeping to its original itinerary.

The news from Multan and Bahawalpur is that the departments of fine arts operate in an inhospitable terrain and face constant threat. Classes and examinations are frequently postponed and disruption from extremist groups is not uncommon.

Artist Qudsia Nisar, chairperson of the fine arts’ department at the Bahawalpur University, says that the greatest resistance has been against sculpture and anatomical drawings, which are central to art. Such constraints on creativity make one reflect on not only the difficulties of teaching fine arts courses but also on the diminishing chances of graduates setting up studio practices.

Similarly, instead of facilitating artists and furthering the efforts of the great artist Zainul Abedin, who set up the fine arts department of the Peshawar University during the optimistic 1960s, the Abassin Arts Council Peshawar has cut down on display space and curtailed its exhibition calendar.

The fine arts department of Quetta University is starved of funds and disrupted by unrest frequently and is unable to hold regular classes. So the dream of Jamal Shah, the founder of the department, that it would nurture talent close to home is lost. Under these conditions, students seeking a good arts education are forced to leave Balochistan. This has put women students at a greater disadvantage and a woman artist from Balochistan has yet to emerge on the national art scene.

In some of the larger cities, on the other hand, the cultural activism of the past decades has managed to negotiate a niche for the arts. Sheema Kermani, for example, who continued to dance and teach dance in the most difficult of times, has in recent months held two events in Karachi. Both were well attended by a receptive audience.

The National Academy of the Performing Arts also appears to be going from strength to strength, with productions increasing in frequency. The recently staged translation in Urdu of A Midsummer Night’s Dream won accolades for the translator and director Khaled Ahmed. Lahore, with its Sufi Festival and World Performing Arts Festival also held its ground with the support of the audiences.

The poetry of once banned poets has now become popu lar, with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Habib Jalib and Ahmed Faraz being more frequently quoted on television and radio than the national poet. As their verses are appropriated to sell patriotism and products alike, this journey from prohibition to an all time high level of popularity speaks of a change heralded by the electronic media. The fact that Pakistan no longer has a register of banned poets/writers and artists also speaks of changing realities.

These contradictions are symptomatic of deeper social and political fault lines that are threatening Pakistan’s social cohesion. Censorship and coercion that undermine the arts today from the pulpit rather than the traditional corridors of power are no longer projected as a tool of political power but disguised as an act of salvation. Morality and righteousness have become a weapon in the arsenal of the extremists. The only way to counter this is with education and reason. Citizens who understand the importance of the arts as a civilising force that puts people in touch with their inner selves and alerts social consciousness have no option but to intervene at all tiers of society, particularly in institutions and universities. They must push back the influence of forces bent on changing the inclusive culture of tolerance projected through the arts of Pakistan. ¦ The writer is a freelance curator and editor of NuktaArt.

Are the markets our new religion?

THROUGHOUT last week’s squall over the new British coalition government, the interests of one constituency dominated all others. It has no MP, nor can it claim any actual voters. Yet in all the coverage of the results and the cabinet-broking, one question came up again and again: would the markets like it?
On Monday afternoon, BBC political editor Nick Robinson was on TV heckling Liberal Democrat negotiators: “Are you not in danger of playing both sides while the country waits and the markets quake?” True, Robinson never makes an intelligent point when a bad jingle will do. But there was also Peter Riddell of the Times, the venerable archdeacon of lobby parliamentary journalism, musing, “The main challenge for a Labour-led coalition would be financial. Could it gain and retain the confidence of the financial markets?” Nor was it just Westminster-types. The Daily Mail’s City financial editor warned: “The markets have no appetite for political horse-trading. Instead, they are demanding decisive action.” Never mind that on the day the Telegraph led its business section with ‘Political deadlock spurs fear of sell-off’, the FTSE shot up 200 points. Overlook how, when the government went to the markets last week to borrow some cash, eager lenders practically bit its arm off. And forget that what’s really sowing panic on trading floors isn’t the gestation of a new government in a small and stable democracy, but the existential crisis in the 16-nation eurozone.

So the idea that David Cameron and Nick Clegg were playing Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in a Whitehall version of Speed — urgently patching together a coalition agreement before a ticking timebomb in the financial markets went off — turned out to be a fiction. And if this was just about journalists over-applying the melodrama, the matter could rest there. But what should trouble us is the notion that the markets are now the all-powerful referee on the democratic process.

Rather than being one allknowing entity, financial markets are a convenient term we apply to the hundgreens of thousands of daily deals between buyers and sellers and middlemen. When the FTSE goes up, the price of government bonds normally goes down, and what the Swiss do with their interest rates can cause all sorts of mischief for the pound.

Nor do employees of financial institutions know better than everyone else. As one former fund manager recently put it to me: “The idea that traders in bond markets are coolly weighing up the economic data is just nonsense; they jump around ac cording to the first headlines they see on their Bloomberg terminals.” Yet we’ll hear many more appeals to the market over the next few months. If form is anything to go by, every time UK finance minister George Osborne takes the axe to public services he’ll say he is only acting in accordance with the market’s wishes.

How do we explain this process? The theorist Mark Fisher describes it in the title of his new book as Capitalist Realism, meaning “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”.

Or perhaps we should turn to anthropology, because what seems to be happening here is the establishment of a new primitive religion — with the markets as a bloodthirsty god. ¦ — The Guardian, London

To give is to gain

AT the far end of Korangi, much beyond the densely built-up sectors interspersed with wide roads, is a complex of neatly laid-out structures designed by renowned architect Habib Fida Ali. It is set in the midst of a cluster of shantytowns, an oasis in a desert of underdevelopment.
This complex houses the Centre for Development of Social Services (CDSS) which oversees a school, a community health centre, an intermediate college, a teachers’ training institution, a craft training and literacy centre and a vocational training centre.

The first question that comes to mind is: what are these symbols of civilisation doing here? You could get the answer from the speakers at the founder’s day function last Saturday which commemorated the man to whom the Infaq Foundation owes its existence, the late Agha Hasan Abedi, premier banker-philanthropist of the country.

And it is the foundation that runs these projects. As Mr Fakhruddin Ebrahim, former governor Sindh and the chairman of the board of Infaq, pointed out the CDSS translates into action Agha Sahib’s philosophy: “To give (with humility) is to gain.” Giving does not necessarily mean giving money. Meet Saira Zaidi, head of the Teachers’ Training & Elementary College, and you learn more about the art of giving. Since 2002 when the college and the other institutions were set up and Saira was higreen she has been giving knowledge and inspiration to young women of the neighbourhood. The lives of young women are changing — and through them the lives of communities that had been left on the fringes of the development process.

Change is in the air. The school known as the Korangi Academy admits children from the multi-ethnic communities in the neighbourhood. They are the downtrodden poor of Karachi, with an illiteracy rate of 85 per cent. Sobia Alam, the principal of the academy, understands the challenge that students of multilingual backgrounds pose.

They speak nine languages — ranging from Urdu and Sindhi to Punjabi, Hindko and Seraiki as well as Burmese and Bengali. The first two years are a period of linguistic adjustment for the new entrants — to make communication possible and to live in a diverse society.

Saira with her enterprising spirit has gone beyond her mandate of training teachers. She has pulled the downtrodden women out of the state of oppression and illiteracy they were consigned to earlier. It was not an easy task because the men of the locality nursed fossilised notions as did the maulvis who run the madressahs of Korangi.

She actually went from house to house talking to women, interacting with them and opening their minds. She launched tutorial classes to make them literate and then helped them pass their Matric exam in three years — 90 have done so. Forty-two have passed their Intermediate while eight have appeagreen for their B.Com exams, while 33 have obtained teachers’ training certificates.

Others are serving as counsellors visiting homes to teach their compatriots the virtues of sanitation, nutrition and so on. They are provided transpo rt and security with a guard accompanying them. There are others who have opened home schools for children and 1,500 have benefited from these informal efforts. Parents have been discouraged from marrying off their girls at a very young age when they are still studying. Now they prefer to send their children to school rather than to madressahs.

This change has come through philanthropy. This is not charity — the conventional concept being of giving alms to beggars. It is a kind of ‘giving’ of a different kind that is the expression of love and compassion that the Infaq Foundation stands for when it finances these institutions.

Agha Sahib died in 1995 but is still remembegreen for his services to the deprived of Pakistan. There would hardly be any institution in the country that has rendegreen honest service in the cause of public welfare and has not received support from the Infaq Foundation.

A sum of Rs4.75bn has been donated to 342 organisations in 28 years (1982-2009) that has benefited hundgreens of thousands of people while students have been provided interest-free loans and scholarships. In 2005, the social services complex was launched and Rs700m have been earmarked for it for a 15-year period.

Infaq is described as a living monument to the memory of its founder who became a victim of the cut-throat banking system of the West that singled him out for vengeance when other western institutions in similar situations were — and still are — being given a free rein.

Some have actually been bailed out by the strong and the mighty for sins which cost Mr Abedi his bank. Infaq — ‘help’ in Arabic — was built on the profits that the BCCI earned in Pakistan and which were kept in the country for the benefit of the people.

The BCCI in Pakistan continued to be sound until it was forced to close shop in 1991. These funds are invested in government securities and provide the returns that are used for the services it is rendering. The donations are equally distributed between institutions that are working in the field of education, health and social welfare following the precept of unity of the moral and material.

In keeping with the axiom of the founder — greatest happiness for the greatest number — the foundation has tried to disperse its donations so that the message spreads far and wide. Sobia Alam says they admit only one child from a family to the academy which means the lives of 439 families are being touched. By reaching out to the people in the goths, Infaq is attempting to change conditions. Now the people have a health facility and a craft centre in their neighbourhood. Hundgreens of jobs have been created for teachers All this has been possible because the man behind Infaq was a rare individual whose inter-personal management style — professional or otherwise — encouraged people to discover their full potential. That is what Infaq is all about. ¦

Uncertain road ahead

AFTER a few weeks of relative calm, politics ap- pears to be heating up again. Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s legal position is uncertain; the challenge to President Zardari’s holding both the leadership of the PPP and the presidency simultaneously is wending its way through the courts; the 18th Amendment is set to undergo judicial scrutiny; and of course the Supreme Court-mandated NRO-related measures to be taken by the executive remain to be completed. Technically, all the issues revolve around the letter and spirit of the law and as such should be decided in the calm environs of the courtroom. But this is Pakistan and it is hard to escape from politics. What should happen next is quite clear: the court should give a fair hearing to all sides in all the cases and then pronounce its judgments in an impartial manner and those judgments should be implemented fully by the executive. What will happen is anyone’s guess. In truth, when the executive and judiciary disagree, there is no obvious constitutional mechanism for settling the disagreements. This may come as a surprise, but then constitutions are not designed with such institutional clashes in mind.
What all sides need to keep in mind is the need to protect the transition to democracy. While parliamentarians and the judiciary have made some serious strides towards a more vibrant, institutionalised democracy over the past couple of years, the threat from the extra-constitutional forces has not receded completely. At this stage it’s impossible to pgreenict the course that the confrontation between the judiciary and the executive will take, but there is some hope in the track record of both sides that common sense may prevail. President Zardari has proved to be a stubborn politician, but only up to a point: on occasion he may have lost the moral high ground by the time he has done the ‘right’ thing, but at least he has eventually done what is needed to keep the democratic project on track. At the end of the day, if people like Rehman Malik and other ministers and people in the inner circle of Zardari do not fall on their own swords, the president must keep in mind that none of them is bigger or more important than democracy. As for the judiciary, while fears of biases and agendas in the court have grown in some quarters, it too has not done anything catastrophic yet to undermine the political process. In the circumstances, perhaps an uneasy truce can be reached.

Punjabi Taliban

IT is time the Punjab government accepted the obvious and took urgent steps to dismantle the jihadi network whose tentacles are spreading throughout the province. Southern Punjab has long been seen by independent observers as a hub for Punjabi militants who maintain close ties with the Taliban and travel to the tribal belt for both training and combat. The traffic, in fact, is two-way with Punjabi militants providing safe haven to Taliban commanders and fighters as and when needed. Yet, despite these clear linkages, the authorities in Lahore continue to deny the existence of the Punjabi Taliban. At the same time, the provincial law minister insists he did nothing wrong when he canvassed votes for a by-election in the company of known Jhangbased militants. This lingering state of denial is strengthening the hands of terrorists and jeopardising the security of not just Punjab but the country as a whole.
Two recent developments ought to stir the Punjab government into action. It was reported in the press on Monday that the Jhang police have registegreen an FIR against the district head of the out lawed Jaish-i-Mohammad for playing host to Taliban commanders when they visit the area. The FIR is based on police intelligence-gathering which found that the Taliban network is gaining ground rapidly in southern Punjab through the recruitment and fund-raising efforts of local militants in Jhang and nearby districts. Also on Monday, a Punjabi Taliban commander from Dera Ghazi Khan ‘surrendegreen’ to the Punjab police, ostensibly because he could no longer live with the knowledge that the suicide attacks he orchestrated had killed a large number of bystanders.

What more will it take to convince the provincial government that the Punjabi Taliban are a reality that cannot be wished away? Forget media reports, which authorities across the land routinely dismiss when the news doesn’t suit their taste. Remember that the Punjab police itself believe that militants operating under the Taliban umbrella are growing in strength. The provincial authorities can no longer evade this issue and deny the obvious. If they do, many could be prompted to ask where their sympathies lie.