Panama president admits to offshore company in Pakistan and other unbreakable news

The Panama president has an offshore company in Pakistan. Also owns a flat in Karachi.
Panama City: According to an un-leaked set of papers which were to be leaked along with the notorious Panama Papers (but weren’t), the president of Panama, Jean-Claude Van Damme, has an off-shore company in Pakistan.

He also owns an expensive flat in Karachi.

This news was broken by one of Panama’s leading media groups, the Panama Leading Media Group (PLMG).

According to the newspapers and TV channel owned by the PLMG, President Damme, who came to power after the 2014 presidential election, opened an offshore company in Lahore in December 2014. The report also claimed that he owned an expensive flat in Karachi.

But the flat was bought by Damme in 1979 when he had arrived in Karachi to play in a local Karachi football league for the Malir All Star Football Club.

He had bought the flat (in Karachi’s expensive Clifton area) for 70,000 Panama Rupees. The flat is now worth at least 7.7 million Panama Rupees.

Interestingly, all this information was leaked to PLMG by president Damme himself.

PMLG’s English newspaper, The English Newspaper, quoted President Damme as saying: ‘I first told my wife. She laughed it off. Then I told my ministers, and they asked me where exactly Pakistan was? I then went to the Panama Supreme Court and filed a case against myself. But the judges refused to accept my petition. In fact, one of the judges asked me whether I could also get a flat for him in Karachi.’

When a reporter asked President Damme why he opened an off-shore account in Pakistan when Panama was a tax haven, he said: ‘I didn’t do it to evade taxes. I did it to evade all those things which are needed to evade taxes for which Pakistan is a haven.’

This statement finally convinced Panama’s National Assembly to form a committee on the issue. The committee’s main purpose will be to investigate whether the President was actually a moron.

Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan condemn US drone strike on militant in their territory. But say militant was not in their territory.
Islamabad/Tehran/Kabul: The governments of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have all condemned a recent US drone strike on a wanted militant.

All three countries have claimed that the strike took place over their respective territories, violating their countries’ sovereignty.

However, all three have also claimed that the militant was not travelling in their region.

The first statement on the strike came from a spokesman of the American government. The statement stated that on the 22nd of May, 2016 AD, at 1600 hours, US president, Denzel Washington, sectioned a drone strike against a wanted militant.

The statement said that the drone struck the vehicle of the militant who is believed to have been killed and is most probably now stuck somewhere in purgatory. The statement did not mention where the strike took place.

Six hours later, the Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) confirmed that a US drone had fired a missile over Pakistani territory (Balochistan) at a militant who was hunting rabbits in an area which is part of Iran.

The Iranian FO responded to the statement of the Pakistan FO and claimed that the US drone attack took place over Iranian territory killing a militant who was busy sightseeing in an area which is part of Pakistan.

The Afghan FO, however, contradicted both Pakistan and Iranian FOs by stating that the US drone strike took place over Afghan territory and targeted a militant who was briskly moving to and fro between Pakistan and Iran on the Pakistan-Iran border.

The media in all three countries was quick to pick up on the contradiction in the mentioned statements. It asked how a drone strike over their territory could hit a militant who was not in their territory.

The confusion was further compounded by another statement by the US spokesman in which he stated that the strike had taken place over Mongolia.

He said that the government and military of Mongolia had been informed of the strike. The spokesman added that as a response, the Mongolian government gifted President Denzel two lamas and a goat.

However, though the Mongolian government accepted that the US had informed it of the strike, Mongolia has condemned the attack as a blatant violation of Mongolia’s sovereignty.

A day after the strike, the Mongolian FO in a statement said that a Pakistani passport has been found near the site of the attack. After this the Iranian and Afghan FOs immediately released short statements, exclaiming, ‘See!’

The Pakistan FO in a proclamation stated that the passport belonged to one, Nooruddin Manan, who used to trade dry fruit in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran and had gone to Mongolia to explore new business opportunities.

The FO informed that Manan was not Pakistani but a citizen of Afghanistan settled in Iran with a Pakistani passport.

This prompted a joint statement from Iran and Afghan FOs: ‘WTF?’

The location of the attack and the identity of the militant is still shrouded in mystery and is being investigated by all three governments.

A statement on the issue also appeared from the El Salvadorian FO, but no one seems to figure out why.

Indian government changes name of road named after Mughal king, Akbar. Says there was never an Akbar who ruled India. Like, ever.
New Delhi: The government of Prime Minister Amrish Puri has changed the name of a road in New Delhi which was once named after famous Mughal king, Akbar.

Though most observers believe that the name-change took place as part of an ongoing effort of the current Indian government to erase all signs of India’s Muslim past, a federal minister, Madan Lal, told the media that one could not name a street after a fictitious character.

Talking to reporters at a press conference, Lal said that according to two of India’s most famous historians, Ratan Lal and Watan Lal, the belief that India was once under Muslim rule for over 500 years is a myth.

He said that the two historians have solid proof, which convincingly substantiates their revolutionary findings.

When a journalist suggested that no one had heard of Ratan Lal and Watan Lal, the minister got the pressman thrown out of the conference. The journalist was later arrested for storing beef in his refrigerator.

The historians were also present at the conference. Ratan Lal told the media that he and Watan have discovered that the myth of Muslim rule in India was planted in history books by a group of 18th century British nuns in collusion with a Muslim terrorist called Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.

Madan Lal informed that the two historians have provided the proof in a forthcoming book of theirs called, ‘Exposed! There was never any Muslim rule in India. Like, ever.’

Then, after showing the reporters a copy of the book, he said, Abhi toh party shuru hoi hai! (Now the party start is!).

When the eminent historians were asked by the excited reporters to share at least some of the evidence that they had unearthed, Watan Lal exhibited a fossilized bone.

He told media personnel: ‘DNA samples from of the bone prove that it belonged to a King, who was Hindu, ruled for 500 years, enjoyed fighting wars, riding elephants, eating radish and taking selfies. His name was Patang Lal.’

When a reporter inquired how he could have taken selfies in an era in which there were no cell phones, Watan Lal responded by saying that Indian scientists had actually created cell phones thousands of years before the west did.

‘This is a fact,’ Watan Lal said. ‘Every Indian knows this. We also invented the vacuum cleaner,’ he proudly added.

Ratan Lal meanwhile informed the reporters that the period that history books attribute to Muslim rule (12th to mid-19th century), a single king, Patang Lal, ruled India.

Rattan informed that Patang Lal was born in the 2nd century AD. After studying in a religious school in his village, he won a scholarship at the Oxford University in Mumbai where he studied astrology, palmistry, yoga and nuclear physics.

He then built a fleet of solar-powered spaceships with which he conquered all of India and parts of Mars.

He remained king for 500 years and passed away from the effects of the common cold after he was sneezed upon by a Muslim terrorist, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.

His body was stolen by British nuns who handed it over to British colonialists, along with the Oxford University in Mumbai.

The name of Akbar Road has been changed to Patang Lal Lane. Minister Madan Lal told the reporters that the road is being re-laid and will be designed to look like a runway because they believe Patang Lal’s atmah (soul) will finally return, flying in on one his many spaceships.

He said the government was already making the necessary arrangements for all good Indians to come here and take a selfie with the great king.

Brave anti-fascist Muslim girl joins not-so-brave fascist outfit
Brussels: A young Moroccan-born Belgian Muslim girl who, as a protest, had gatecrashed a rally of overweight Islamophobes and white supremacists in Brussels, is reported to have joined a party of overweight Islamophobes and white supremacists.

Last week, Aleena-bint-e-Baleena, a 20-year-old Muslim citizen of Belgium, became a social media celebrity after she gatecrashed an anti-Muslim rally organised by the far-right Belgian outfit, the Vlaams Blok Belang Hallelujah Oppenheimer.

There, she wittily mocked the participants by striking satirical victory poses in front of hateful banners and overweight Islamophobes and white supremacists.

Though she became an instant celebrity when she posted pictures of herself at the rally, she was eventually chased away by the militant members of Vlaams Blok Belang Hallelujah Oppenheimer.

Reports suggest she was about to be punched and kicked by the men who were chasing her, when she was taken to safety at the last minute by Spiderman.

However, two days later, Ms. Baleena’s heroic stunt was overturned when someone forwarded to the media some Twitter posts that she had made a few years ago.

In them she had praised Adolph Hitler – former ruler of Nazi Germany and an aspiring painter who had derived his artistic inspiration from gas chambers.

Yesterday, the leading Belgian daily, The Leading Belgian Daily, reported that Baleena was visited by the same men who had chased her away and wanted to beat her up.

They told her that she was a hero to them and it would be an honour to have her become a member of Vlaams Blok Belang Hallelujah Oppenheimer.

Ms. Baleena immediately agreed and was last seen spraying ‘Jews suck!’ on the wall of a synagogue in Brussels.

When she posted a picture of herself doing this on Facebook, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was outraged. As a response, he at once ordered the Israeli air force to bomb Gaza.

Source: The Panama president has an offshore company in Pakistan.
Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2016.

Smokers’ Corner: The West’s first jihad experiment

In his 2005 book, America and Unrest in the Muslim World, veteran ideologue of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Professor Khurshid Ahmad, wrote that the policy of siding with Western powers (especially the US) during the Cold War was a mistake by ‘Islamic forces’.

Across the 1960s, 1970s and, a lot more vehemently, in the 1980s, various right-wing Islamic groups in South and East Asia, and the Middle East, were constantly lambasted by those on the left for taking up the West’s fight against Soviet and Chinese backed communism, and, more so, against hybrid leftist innovations such as Arab nationalism.

Although JI’s founder and scholar, Abul Ala Maududi (d.1979), had explained this as a tact partnership between ‘believers’ (Muslims and Christians) against ‘non-believers’ (the communists), many years later his contemporary, Ahmad, confessed that the idea was largely flawed.

It is interesting to note that Maududi, a prolific writer, was as suspicious of secularism as he was of communism and socialism. But he saw the mentioned partnership as one which was between Muslim and Christian powers, and not between Muslims and the secular West.

History shows that Muslims have often been involved in jihad that has been instigated by the West
Nevertheless, Professor Ahmad, in his reassessment of JI’s policies during the Cold War, lamented the folly of siding with the West. But he did not ponder whether this also meant that the Islamic groups should have sided with the Soviet Union and leftist outfits instead.

Ahmad wrote that the Islamic groups had committed a tactical error which helped the West eliminate the Soviet Union and move a lot more freely to overwhelm the economic, political and social resources of Muslim countries. It is admirable that a scholar from a steadfast politico-religious outfit would expose his party to self-criticism, but the way out from the quagmire it found itself in after the end of the Cold War is not quite as well thought-out by him as is his self-deprecation.

Ahmad advises that the Islamic community (ummah) must now “purify its ranks and become a homogenous community that can mobilise against the American-Zionist-Hindu plot (to subdue the Muslim world)”. However, he does not quite explain exactly what would be the nature of the procedure which would “purify the ranks”.

In Ahmad’s self-criticism there is an overarching mix of the tragic and the grandiose. He argues that the Islamic forces had helped an ally to wipe out Godless communism but were betrayed once the Soviet Union collapsed. The truth is, such forces were politically feeble. Weaker forces in such a context are usually willing to derive strength and power from outside after they fail to find it from within.

Thus, these forces willingly became part of the plans drawn up by the US against its main nemesis, the ‘Soviet bloc’, during the Cold War. They saw such an alliance as an opportunity to gain political prominence.

States are entirely driven by self-interest. There are no real friends, just provisional allies, and, of course, a changing set of enemies. Much of the combative aspects of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union were demonstrated by outfits (both from the left and the right) operating outside the US and the Soviet Union, but backed by the two. But self-interest was also at the heart of those fighting the battle on behalf of these two states.

When JI and other such outfits in various Muslim countries allied themselves with the US, they did so only to bolster their own standing in scenarios in which they were electorally weak or had failed to gather any mass momentum.

The Western sides of the Cold War strengthened these forces (along with conservative Muslim regimes and monarchies), so that they would not roll towards the Soviet side of the divide. This became convenient to do because, again, weaker forces are usually willing to derive power from outside after they fail to find it from within.

For example, the ‘Afghan jihad’ against the Soviets was fought and fronted by such forces. Their interest in doing so had more to do with gaining earthly political power and monetary benefits. They were bankrolled by external powers whose interests, too, were entirely their own and had nothing to do with jihad.

But the whole concept of jihad, which was so vehemently propagated during the mentioned conflict by a verity of anti-Soviet entities and funded by a non-Muslim power, wasn’t quite such a unique phenomenon. It wasn’t the first time non-Muslim powers had stirred up the idea of jihad (with the help of Muslim allies) to counter a common enemy.

The first well-documented (but largely forgotten) episode in this respect took place during the First World War (1914-1918). As war clouds began to gather over Europe in 1914, a German aristocrat and adventurer, Max von Oppenheim, arrived in Berlin after his travels to the Muslim world. He met the Kaiser of Germany and told him that “Islam can become Germany’s secret weapon”.

Hew Strachan, a professor of history at Oxford, in his book, The First World War, writes that Oppenheim convinced the Kaiser that Germany’s enemies, Britain and France, could be weakened if Germany was to secretly organise an extensive pro-jihad campaign among the Muslims of French and British colonies in Africa, Middle East and South Asia.

At the onset of the war, Germany engaged the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul and asked him to fight on the side of Germany. But the Ottoman Empire was, by then, in shambles; it was militarily weak and corrupt. Viewing the German offer as an opportunity to win back the territory that the empire had lost in the 19th century, and fill up its almost empty treasury, the Sultan agreed — but only after Germany promised to pay a hefty sum of money.

The Sultan was asked to proclaim Germany’s (and Turkey’s) war as a jihad. The Sultan did just that, followed by Turkish clerics and officials who whipped up jihadist frenzy among Turkey’s population. In his proclamation, the Sultan insisted: “Know that our state today is at war with the governments of Russia, England and France and their allies, who are the mortal enemies of Islam […]”.

Apart from sending officers to train the Turkish soldiers, Germany also published pamphlets (in French, Persian, Arabic and Urdu) which called on all Muslims to kill Christians. One pamphlet assured the faithful: “The blood of the (British / French / Russian) infidels in the Islamic lands may be shed with impunity […]”.

These pamphlets were distributed among the Muslim populations of the British colonies and were expected to trigger mutinies by Muslim soldiers in colonial armies. But the plan, on which Germany had spent over three billion Deutsche Mark, ended in tragedy. By the end of the war in 1918, the Ottoman Empire lost Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem; and rest of the empire’s territory was distributed among its European counterparts.

More than 240,000 Turks were killed on the battlefield for a ‘jihad’ which was mainly propagated by Germany for ambitious imperial reasons, and sanctioned by the Sultan purely for monetary gains. The empire was left penniless, Germany, too, lost badly.

The damage also included the fall of the centuries-old Ottoman Empire. Turkey became a republic, led by secular Turkish nationalists who radically abjured and discarded the fallen empire’s narrative churned out during the war.

Source: The West’s first jihad experiment
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 29th, 2016

__________________
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

One man's terrorist... The tragicomedy of Pakistan's apologists

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) spokesman Naeemul Haque on Thursday defended his stance over calling Afghan militant Mullah Mansour a 'martyr', who was killed in a US drone attack in Balochistan last week.

"Fighting to liberate your homeland is a just cause," Naeem told Dawn.com, a day after he spoke on a TV show and called the head of an outlawed group a 'martyr'.

This should also mean that Mr Haque finds the violence associated with the group equally liberating and just?

Also, exactly how is it any less liberating and just than the one related to similar groups within Pakistan. Groups which are now locked in a mortal tussle with the military and the government of Pakistan.

Men such as Mr Haque and many like him really can't be expected to think about such issues beyond the stuff which can only gain them an instant headline or two.

On the other hand, many other more thoughtful men and women have wondered what makes a perfectly normal looking person take a life (or lives) and sometimes his own; secure in a rather convoluted knowledge that his act is sure to place him in the good books of the Almighty or find him pleasurably loitering in the gardens of paradise.

Sociologists, psychologists and political scientists have all often come up with various explanations. Some suggest that bad economics is to be blamed for young people to become desperate enough to be exploited by the violent patrons of faith and go on a killing spree for money as well as God.

But then, there are also those who remind us that if it was all about economics, how would one explain acts of faith-driven terror undertaken by young men and women from well-to-do middle-class families?

Faisal Shahzad, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 7/7 bombers in the UK, the men behind the gruesome Safoora Goth massacre — all of these came from educated, urban and middle-class families.

In such cases, it is believed that the mad urge to kill in the name of faith transcends political and economic compulsions and becomes a sheer act of criminal psychosis.

... another man's freedom fighter
What gets missed in this context is the role played by those 'non-violent' men and women in politics, media and the academia who actually end up somewhat justifying (if not entirely applauding) certain violent acts of men they believe are a product of bad economics, injustice and some kind of a noble war.

Such people who can emerge from both the right, as well as left sides of the conventional ideological divide are usually called apologists.

Funny thing is that when pressed to describe a person who has no qualms about strapping a suicide belt around his waist and then blowing himself up in a crowded mosque, a Sufi shrine or a congested market buzzing with men, women and children, the apologist would often strike a pose of the unbiased and objective thinker to suggest: You see, one man's terrorist can be another man's freedom fighter.'

How convenient.

What needs to be looked at and studied is the impact apologists are having on a society in turmoil.
Yes, bad economics and the vulnerability of faith to be exploited in the most violent manner is making many faithfuls actually sully the idea of the Almighty by committing unabashed acts of terror in His name.

But maybe such deluded souls are also finding justification from those who refuse to call them out, or go on to explain their ideas of glory as a reflection of some noble cause.

But the absurd ways of the apologists are such that they often turn into becoming tragicomedies.

Iran's torched glory
Back in the late 1970s, just before the revolution that toppled the all-powerful Shah of Iran, segments supporting Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, began finding the act of torching cinemas a rather glorified act.

Hundreds of cinemas were torched in Iran between 1978 and 1979, but only when there were no crowds inside the cinema halls. Iranian intellectuals and leaders who were supporting the anti-Shah clergy, instead of condemning the act of burning down public property, explained it as an attack on the symbols of the Shah's regime.

But the glory of torching 'symbols of the Shah regime' soon turned gory.

Hosien Takbali — a young drug addict from the Iranian city of Abadan — was buying and selling drugs on the streets of his hometown when his family and friends intervened and convinced him to travel to Isfahan and get admitted to a drug detox centre run by a religious organisation there. He did just that. The revolution against Shah was intensifying when young Takbali was in recovery.

Since this was also a time in Iran when religious, as well as leftist ideas were enthusiastically being absorbed by the country's middle and lower middle classes, Takbali was encouraged by three other young men at the detox centre to supplement his recovery with the study of his faith, which he was told he had neglected.

When Takbali returned to Abadan, he came back as a man who had kicked his addiction and had become pious. Nevertheless, he retained his love for movies, but unfortunately, these were the days when cinemas were going up in flames in Iran — an act applauded and rationalised by even the most educated anti-Shah members of the society.

In August 1978, Takbali's three new friends visited him at his home. They came with an issue of a British newspaper in which a few members of the clergy were quoted as saying that cinemas were a way to distract Iranians and make them ignore their religious duties.

Takbali's friends informed him that after being inspired by the way the clergy was explaining the torching of cinemas, they too had decided to set a cinema on fire.

"Everybody is burning down cinemas. But we'll do it in a way that will make us genuine heroes," said one of his friends.
This meant burning down a cinema while it was screening a film and was packed with people.

The young men all bought tickets to an Iranian film called, 'The Deer' at one of Abadan's oldest cinemas, Rex. The hall was packed with men, women and children when Takbali and his friends poured kerosene oil inside the hall and set it on fire. Over 350 people died and were turned into ash. Only a few people survived, including Takbali.

The incident is still considered to be one of the most horrific acts of violence and murder that took place during the turbulent years of the Iranian Revolution.


Of course, the apologists who were praising acts of burning down cinemas previously, now changed track. Fearing a backlash, they began accusing 'agents of the Shah regime' for torching the Rex.

A year after the imposition of Iran's Islamic government, some Iranians demanded an inquiry into the Rex tragedy.

Takbali, who was expecting to be hailed as a hero of the Islamic Revolution, was instead arrested and accused of being an agent of the fallen Shah regime. He was hanged.

The apologists, who had first applauded the burning down of cinemas, hailed the hanging as a great act of Iran's 'Islamic justice'.

Source: The tragicomedy of Pakistan's apologists
Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2016.

__________________
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Faithful obsessions

Recently, while on a flight to Dubai, from where I was to take a connecting flight to Germany, I had a short but rather telling encounter with another passenger.

A group of three women and two men entered the plane. Two of the women were in black niqabs. Only their eyes could be seen. The third woman (who was much older) was in a plain shalwar kameez. Both the men, who seemed to be in their early forties, had long beards, but one of them wore the long traditional dress usually worn by Arab men in the UAE.

No, these men were not Arab; they were Pakistani. The man in the Arab dress spoke fluent English and equally good Urdu. He sounded very courteous as he spoke to the two male attendants of the airline who helped him place the group’s hand luggage in the overhead compartments.

The media’s reaction to the council of Islamic ideology’s most recent rulings, suggests that majority of Pakistanis tend to agree
The women and one of the men settled in the four seats in front of me, but the man in the Arab dress kept standing. He was eyeing the empty seat in my row. In that row there was me in the aisle seat; on my right was a young lady who I presumed to be either Burmese or Thai. The empty seat was on her right and on the right of that seat sat an elderly Pakistani woman.

The man told the flight attendant that he would appreciate it if he could get me to move from my seat. Thinking that he wanted to be closer to his wife who was sitting right in front of me, I began to get up to move into the empty seat. But then he wanted the woman sitting beside me to move as well. He wanted her to move to the empty seat and me to move to her seat.

I was already midway of getting up, when I heard him tell the attendant: “Thank you, you see, I can’t sit with women.”

These words immediately stopped my slow accent, and I almost instinctively landed back on my seat. I told the attendant: “Sorry, I can’t change my seat. I don’t sit with men who can’t sit with women.” Saying this, I went back to reading my newspaper.

I didn’t see what happened next. Apparently the gentleman was given a seat right at the back of the 777-300 Boeing. From the corner of my eye I tried to gauge the reaction of the two women who were sitting on my right. They both had heard him clearly. The Burmese/Thai woman was just staring vacantly at the video screen in front of her. She had no apparent emotion on her face. Maybe she didn’t understand English.

The Pakistani lady, however, looked embarrassed. May be this was because the insightful man had anticipated her diabolical plan to test his moral uprightness? Or perhaps she was simply embarrassed because she was born a woman.

On a sober note, I wondered why he had to announce that he didn’t like sitting with women? It was a plane. And forget about the fact that women too travel, what on earth did he do when he was served by an air hostess? Did he refuse food served by her and instead asked a man to serve him? Maybe he went hungry, which, I’m sure was the right thing to do than having food that was morally contaminated by the touch of a woman!

He seemed to be cordial and educated. But I’m sure he is the kind of man who hails everything which comes rolling out from the wise minds of Maulana Sheerani and his league of gentlemen in Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology.

The council has recently become quite an object of ridicule and criticism in the media for its obsession with everything to do with women. When they should get married; how they should behave; and, more importantly, how, as wives, they should be willing to receive a ‘light beating’ from their husbands if he (in his better and more mature judgement) believes she has been unfaithful, or unwilling to meet his daily needs.

The irony is that the council —which is purely an advisory body with no legislative powers — was originally a creation of progressive intent. Today, it might have become an object of ridicule largely run by dogmatic clerics placed there by political parties to appease their religious allies. Yet, the council was originally conceived to liberate faith from exactly the kind of conservatism and reactionary convolutions it has become a bastion of.

The creation of the council was first mandated in the 1956 constitution which was authored by a constituent assembly entirely made up of indirectly elected members. Two highly competent scholars of Islam were behind this move: Abul Ala Maududi and Ghulam Ahmed Parvez.

Interestingly though, both men were often at loggerheads. Maududi advocated Islam as a radical political ideology engineered to eschew modern concepts such as secularism and socialism, whereas Parvez explained the faith as a rational philosophy which was compatible with science and with social and political modernities.

The purpose of the council stated in the constitution was to advise the National Assembly on any legislation based on ‘Islamic principles’. It was to be run by a group of religious scholars.

But the council was never formed. In late 1958, president Iskander Mirza scraped the constitution and imposed martial law with the help of military chief Ayub Khan. Richard Seabrook in his 1970 book, The Constitutional Quest, quotes Mirza as saying that the 1956 constitution was “the selling of Islam for political needs”.

In 1962, the government of Ayub Khan, who became ruler of Pakistan after sidelining Mirza in 1958, finally formed the country’s first council of islamic ideology. The stated goal of the council was to help the government “define Islam (in Pakistan) in terms of its fundamentals in a rational and liberal manner in order to bring out its dynamic character in the context of the scientific and intellectual context of the modern world”.

Ayub handpicked the members of the council and they included Justice M. Akram, historian I.H. Qureshi, and Maulana Hashim. All three held ‘progressive views’ about Islam. Also in the first council (as an adviser) was one of the period’s leading modernist scholars of Islam, Dr. Fazal Rehman Malik.

The council was in the forefront in facilitating the various social and religious reforms undertaken by the Ayub regime, even though conservative religious parties vehemently opposed these measures.

This council remained intact till 1968. It was disbanded after the fall of the Ayub regime in 1969. The council was reformed in 1973 by the populist Z.A. Bhutto regime of the Pakistan People’s Party.

The Bhutto regime too populated the council with members who were largely non-clerical. For example, chairman of the council between 1973 and 1977, was the progressive judge, Justice Hamoodur Rehman. The stated goal of the institution remained somewhat the same as it had been during the Ayub regime.

However, even though the Bhutto government inducted various Islamic clauses in the 1973 constitution, the council during the regime was far less active than it had been during the Ayub government.

Three more judges headed the council from 1977 till 1993. This period included 11 years of the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship (1977-88). Yet, despite the fact that the dictatorship initiated a number of draconian laws which were explained away as being ‘Islamic’, Gen Zia too chose judges to head the institution. But they were more conservative in their outlook compared to Justice Akram and Hamoodur Rehman.

Benazir Bhutto’s second government made the left-leaning Islamic scholar, Kausar Niazi, chairman of the council in 1993. But the council remained to be a purely ceremonial institution until the dictatorship of Gen Parvez Musharraf (1999-2008). He tried to give it the kind of impetus which Ayub had in the 1960s.

Like Ayub, Musharraf too inducted ‘progressive’ Islamic scholars in the council, which included renowned liberal Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmad Ghamdi. Musharraf chose a professor of Islamic studies who had obtained a PhD from Canada’s prestigious McGill University, as chairman of the council (Dr. M. Khalid Masud).

In 2010, the Zardari regime chose Maulana Sheerani as the council’s chairman to accommodate his regime’s pragmatic alliance with Sheerani’s party, the JUI-F. But even though the council continues to be an entirely advisory body, Sheerani and his team have been in the news ever since — especially due to some extremely reactive statements, mostly to do with the status of women.

The council’s rulings do not turn into law without the approval of the legislators or the courts. But many now believe that the council’s most recent statements have become an embarrassment to the country and to the faith as well.

In January 2016, the Senate of Pakistan actually questioned the worth and purpose of the council, stating that it had exhausted its tenure and purpose. And the way the media reacted to the current council’s most recent rulings, it seems a majority of Pakistanis tend to agree.

Source: Faithful obsessions
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 5th, 2016

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

A history of slander — Good language vs. bad language

Sometimes it is really tiring to explain the difference between good Taliban (GT) and bad Taliban (BT). It is actually self-explanatory and not so hard to decipher, yet, there are many out there who just can't seem to determine the fact that those fighting for a just cause are good Taliban, and those fighting against us on the behest of foreign powers are bad Taliban.

But, bear in mind that fighting in Afghanistan for a just cause on the behest of Pakistan does not mean the same thing as fighting in Pakistan on the behest of foreign powers.

You see, it all boils down to what cause both are fighting for.

GT clearly have a just cause. Their country is under occupation. So, obviously, blowing up things by them becomes an equally just thing to do; whereas when BT do the same in Pakistan, it is certainly not the same thing. It does not carry the same level of the just burst as the just burst of GT.

Nevertheless, I do not believe one should go to any significant length anymore to explain the difference between GT and BT. It is now quite apparent and should be clearly understood by all and sundry. This debate should come to an end for the well-being and interest of our nation, and the nation of Afghanistan, and (for some odd reason), the Republic of Estonia.

But never underestimate the ploys of those who still want to create confusion about what is good and what is bad. For example, after being defeated in the GT vs. BT debate, these people recently triggered a brand new debate, that of Good Language and Bad Language.

When PML-N legislator, Khawaja Asif, insulted his PTI counterpart, Shireen Mizari, by calling her a tractor trolley, the PTI was understandably outraged.

However, some folks refused to criticise Asif for using bad language against a fellow parliamentarian. Instead they suggested that PTI chairman, Imran Khan, often used such language against PML-N members too.

Again, how conveniently naive of such people not to be able to differentiate between good language and bad. No matter how crude the nature of what is said, the goodness or badness of it depends on what the cause was for it to be said.

Let me explain.

When Imran Khan called Fazalur Rehman 'diesel' or when he informed the nation that the Sharif brothers have wetted their shalwars due to the PTI's revolutionary ways, it was actually good language because it was used for a good cause. The cause being, political, social, psychological, philosophical, agricultural and theological change (tabdeeli) which the PTI is struggling for.

What is Khawaja Asif's cause? Corruption, corruption and more corruption. Thus, his was bad language.


All this should not be so difficult to understand by the PML-N folk. One should remind them that once their members had used crude language which was actually good language too.

Back in the 1990s, the PML-N men had used the filthiest of words against Benazir Bhutto. But that was considered to be good because the cause was just.

The PML-N and its morally upright allies such as the Jamat-i-Islami did not want Benazir's PPP to come to power because she was hell-bent on selling out the Kashmir issue to India, neutralise the good militants in Afghanistan, and, (for some odd reason) transfer Pakistan's expertise of growing superior mangos to the Republic of Bolivia.

And those members of the PPP who are criticising both the PML-N and the PTI for using bad language too should remember how their party's founder, ZA Bhutto, used crude language which was actually good.

In a televised speech in 1973, ZAB called the Bengalis 'swines.' Though his opponents castigated him for this, they failed to understand that this was actually good language because the cause behind it was just.

The Bengalis of former East Pakistan had betrayed the dreams of the country's founder, Muhammad Bin Qasim, and (in 1971), had conspired with Indian leader, Raja Dahir, to breakaway and form their own country. So when ZAB called them swines, his reasons were just and thus, the language was good.

It's all quite simple.

And if any of you still can't get it then you are all "swines who run on diesel and wet your shalwars when you see a tractor trolley".

Source: A history of slander
Published in Dawn, June 10, 2016

__________________
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Smokers’ Corner: The misplaced image of the warring Pakhtun

Adil Khan in his book, Pakhtun Ethnic Natio*nalism: From Separation to Integration, writes that in 1849, when the British captured the southern part of Afghanistan, they faced stiff resistance from the Pakhtun tribes. The British saw the tribes as the opposite of what the British represented: ‘civilisation’.

Khan informs that this is when the British started to explain the Pakhtuns as ‘noble savages’.

From then onwards, British writers began to spin yarns of a somewhat romanticised image of the Pakhtuns. An image that also became popular among various local historians.

Adil Khan complains that such an attempt to pigeonhole the Pakhtuns has obscured the economic and geographical conditions that have shaped the Pakhtun psyche. He argues that the image of the ‘unbeatable noble savage’ has been presented in such a manner that many Pakhtuns now find it obligatory to live up to this image.

A stereotype created by the British finds currency in the modern times
This image has also been used to build narratives by those who see religious militancy emerging from the Pakhtun-dominated areas in the north-west of Pakistan as a consequence of the state’s ‘callous’ handling of the traditions of the ‘proud Pakhtun tribes’. Such narratives, which are mostly applied by politicians and analysts who have frequently opposed military operations in the country’s tribal areas, suggest that they (the operations) have triggered the ‘historical’ penchant of Pakhtun tribes to indulge in acts of violence as revenge.

Interestingly, though today the left-leaning Pakhtuns somewhat support military manoeuvres in the tribal areas — mainly due to the fact that many such Pakhtuns have been regularly targeted by their more reactionary brethren — the same narrative was once also used by Pakhtun nationalists.

For example, the central architect of Pakhtun nationalism, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, banked on the myth of Pakhtuns being unbeatable warriors to construct the anti-colonial aspect of his Pakhtun nationalist organisation, the Khudai Khidmatgar.

But Earnest Gellner in his book, Myths of Nation & Class in Mapping the Nation, is of the view that though the Pakhtuns are an independent-minded people and take pride in many of their traditions, they are largely an opportunistic and pragmatic people.

When Pakistan became a participant in the United States’ proxy war against the Soviet forces that had occupied Afghanistan, the Gen Zia dictatorship — to whip up support for the largely Pakhtun Afghan insurgents — used state media to propagate the idea that historically the Pakhtuns were an unbeatable race that had defeated all forces who attempted to conquer them.

One still hears this, especially from those opposing the Pakistan state’s military action in the country’s tribal areas. But is there any historical accuracy in this proclamation?

Not really. The Pakhtuns have been beaten on a number of occasions. Alexander, Timur, Nadir Shah, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and the British, were all able to defeat the Pakhtuns.

In a (albeit controversial) 2008 paper, Losing the Psy-war in Afghanistan, the author writes: ‘True, the British suffered the occasional setback but they eventually managed to subdue the Pakhtun tribes. Had the British wanted they would have also continued to rule Afghanistan, only they didn’t find it worth their while and preferred to let it remain a buffer between India and Russia.’

Another rather convincing theory which began to surface almost a decade after the Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1988 suggested that the Russians too would never have withdrawn (from Afghanistan) had the Soviet economy not collapsed. And it didn’t collapse because of the war in Afghanistan. It was a gradual implosion which had begun years before the final collapse — mainly due to the fact the state-backed economic policies of the former Soviet Union just could not continue to generate the kind of capital and resources required to maintain a large army and nuclear arsenal to keep up with its Cold War nemesis, the United States.

Also, had the Americans not pumped in weapons and money to back the so-called mujahideen, the insurgents would have remained as tiny groups of ragged guerrillas. Or they may have just mutated into becoming anarchic outfits led by war lords. In fact, many of them did become just that after the Soviets left and the Americans withdrew their money and weapons.

In conclusion, the above mentioned paper observes: “… while [Pakhtuns] are terrific fighters for whom warfare is a way of life; they have always succumbed to superior force and superior tactics. ... The Pakhtuns have never been known to stand against a well-disciplined, well-equipped ... force.”

Source:The misplaced image of the warring Pakhtun
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 12th, 2016

__________________
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Smokers’ Corner: Stories of violence

Recently, while browsing through the shelves of Boston’s famous Harvard Book Store, I found a book on Pakistan which was first published in 1950. Although the name of the author was missing, the book was published in Lahore in December, 1950. It is a curious little book which explains Pakistan as a young country made up of various ethnic groups, whose Muslim members got together to create a Muslim-majority country to safeguard the economic and political interests of South Asia’s Muslims from the majority-rule of Hindus in India.

Interestingly, the book then goes on to suggest that Pakistan was also created to safeguard the interests of South Asian Christians and lower-caste Hindus of India who were also ‘under threat from upper-caste Hindu majoritarianism and nationalism ... ’

I compared this with a 1992 ‘Pakistan Studies’ book in which the author went to great lengths to explain Pakistan as a theological state surrounded by enemies. In fact, the book carried a separate chapter on these ‘enemies’ which was subdivided into sections on Hindus, Christians and Jews.

Ever since 1950, much has changed in the religious and ethnic demography of Pakistan, but the country still is a multicultural entity with numerous ethnic communities, languages, Muslim sects and sub-sects.

When hate is maufactured through textbooks the results are often generational
Although the country was conceived as a Muslim-majority state, according to scholar and educationist, Prof A.H. Nayyar, the idiom of Muslim majoritarianism started gaining more currency in the country’s ethos after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle. But whereas the 1950 book explained this majoritarianism as an entirely inclusive idea, it became more exclusive after 1971.

Dr Rubina Saigol is of the view that the attempt to enforce this ethos through school textbooks began in the early 1980s. In her paper and essay ‘Radicalisation of State & Society in Pakistan’, Saigol informs that in the 1980s, the syllabus was revised and textbooks were rewritten to create a more monolithic image of Pakistan as a theocratic state and Pakistani citizens as Muslim only.

According to Saigol, this clearly tells non-Muslim students that they are excluded from the national identity.

In an extensive 2002 study, conducted by Nayyar and Dr Ahmad Salim, the following themes emerge most strongly in post-1971 history textbooks:

That Pakistan is for Muslims alone; the ideology of Pakistan is deeply interlinked with faith; and that the students should take the path of war and martyrdom. All these are then put under the umbrella of the ‘ideology of Pakistan’.

Scholars such as Ayesha Jalal have argued that the term ‘ideology of Pakistan’ is an after-thought; it was absent at the time of the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

According to her, Jinnah never used the term ‘ideology of Pakistan’. Also, for over a decade after the creation of Pakistan, the term was missing from official narratives.

Jalal informs that the phrase ‘ideology of Pakistan’ has no historical basis in the Pakistan movement. It was coined much later by those political forces that needed it to sanctify their particular brand of politics: especially those political entities who had earlier been against the creation of Pakistan because they believed Pakistan nationalism was a secular concoction.

Yet textbooks (ever since the 1980s) insist that the ideology of Pakistan was first pronounced by the Quaid. But no textbook has ever been able to cite a single reference to Jinnah using this term.

Jinnah’s speech to the Constituent Assembly on Sept 11, 1947 is completely contrary to the so-called ‘ideology of Pakistan’ as it is presented in school history books.

Some time after 1971, the subject of Indo-Pakistan history was replaced with ‘Pakistan Studies,’ with the sole purpose now was to define Pakistan as an exclusive faith-based state. The students were deprived of learning about pre-Islamic history of their region. Instead, history books now started with the Arab conquest of Sindh and swiftly jumped to the Muslim conquerors from Central Asia.

As scientist and author, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, has often lamented, all history in these books is along religious lines, while social, historical and economic causes are missing. Pakistanis are not told that the rise of Western powers in the last 500 years was mainly due to the advances made in education, science and culture. This rise was not based on military might alone, and certainly not on any overwhelming religious doctrine.

After 1979, the themes of war and martyrdom in textbooks became strong. In this period, history and social studies books openly eulogised these.

According to Nayyar, in Pakistan the impression one gets from textbooks is that students don’t learn history, but rather a carefully crafted collection of falsehoods.

For example, in these books, Mohammad bin Qasim is declared the first Pakistani citizen. The story of the Arabs’ arrival in Sindh is recounted as the first moment of Pakistan.

Also, a widely taught history book insists that, “Although Pakistan was created in August 1947, the present-day Pakistan has existed, as a more or less single entity, for centuries.”

A history book published in 1992 has on its cover a Muslim warrior holding a sword and charging in on a horse, and a chapter called ‘The Enemies of Islam’. This chapter too is broken into various sections that define these enemies as being Hindus, Christians and Jews.

In their study, both Nayyar and Salim conclude that one should not be surprised at the confusion among Pakistani children and youth after what they learn at school; a state of mind that they can carry well into their adult life as well.

In her paper, Dr Saigol also stretches her study by looking at similar incidents of historical distortions in India. She suggests that Indian textbooks until the 1980s, avoided the economic and cultural reasons behind the break-up of India in 1947 and saw it as being purely a communal consequence triggered by the myopic religious impulse of Muslim leaders.

Saigol also informs how Indian textbooks also ignored the Hindutva dimension of Indian nationalism. As we can now see, this dimension has gradually become a predominant aspect of the Indian identity and, interestingly, its context and tone are mirror images of the belligerence found in the post-1980s Pakistani textbooks! The opposing twins have finally met.

Perhaps, the nature of the bloodshed during the Partition of India in 1947 was such that the official narratives on both sides of the divide decided to sacrifice the truth of partition on the killing fields. Instead, they created convoluted narrations in their still on-going attempts to blame each other for the bloodshed and its lingering consequences.

Both narratives are still trying to make sure that the truth remains buried where millions of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs slaughtered each other almost 70 years ago. As if these truths just might undo the continuing status quo of suspicion and belligerence between the two states. Something which is not good for politics, I guess.

Source: Stories of violence
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 19th, 2016

__________________
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Nationalism was a Western construct mainly designed and driven by the rise of the mercantile/trader classes. As an idea, it was a revolt against the feudal mindset and the traditional influence of the aristocratic sections who dominated Europe in alliance with the church.

The American and French revolutions in the 18th century were both prompted by the growing number of men and women sandwiched between powerful aristocrats and the downtrodden. This section would eventually rise as a separate and distinct class, described by Karl Marx as the bourgeoise and/or the middle-class.

The architects of both revolutions rejected colonialism, monarchism and political aspects of religion as central signifiers of a people’s identity. Instead, to express their growing political ambitions triggered by their economic successes, the architects of nationalism began to construct notions of identity based on shared political and economic interests, languages and cultural memories.

Is the notion of a ‘Muslim’ identity still rooted in the modern nation-state?
To American and French nationalists, this meant devising a system which would make the people direct participants in the state-building process; a people united by certain common political, economic and social interests derived through a consensus, which defined them as a single nationalistic entity.

In the Muslim regions, when Muslim imperial powers began to erode from the 19th century onwards, various concerned Muslim thinkers and activists responded by rejecting the decaying memories of a glorious imperial past.

They adopted notions of nationalism to find their peoples’ place in the rapidly changing paradigms of international order. For example, from within the decaying Ottoman Empire emerged the ‘Young Turks’ movement, which searched for a squarely Turkish identity based on a common language and cultural memories. Turkish nationhood was the result, which eschewed the imperial pretensions of the eroding Empire and defined Turkish nationalism as a modern, progressive component of Europe.

In the Arab world emerged a nationalism that was anti-colonial and revolutionary, but one that rejected old Muslim imperialism and notions of so-called ‘Pan-Islamism’ — a 19th century concept which attempted to stem the collapse of Muslim empires by advocating the modernisation of the concept of Muslim universalism and the caliphate.

Arab nationalism was strongest in Egypt, Algeria, Syria and Iraq. It painted its people and borders with exclusively nationalistic strokes but, at the same time, also adopted an Arab universalism based on the history and memory of a once powerful, enlightened and progressive nature of the Arab peoples.

In India, a region with a Hindu majority but with a 500-year history of Muslim rule, certain Muslim thinkers also adopted nationalistic notions after the demise of Muslim rule. Rejecting the decaying past, Muslim nationalism in India advocated the adoption of modern political thought and sciences so that an ‘enlightened’ Muslim nation could emerge in India to face the challenge of British colonialism, and, later, ‘Hindu majoritarianism’.

This nationalism was intellectually driven by the modern Muslim bourgeoise and bankrolled by the Muslim landed elite. It saw the Muslims of India as a separate nationalistic entity, united by memories of a once glorious past and an urge to revitalise its shared faith through a more rational, modern, and flexible reading and implementation.

Indian Muslim nationalism also largely bypassed Pan-Islamism because it believed that Muslim culture in the region had bearings which were separate from how Islam had evolved elsewhere.

Nationalism was the main engine behind the creation and liberation of various Muslim regions in the 20th century. But its influence and impact began to lose hold from the early 1970s onwards. Failed economies, and some disastrous wars, polarised the Muslim societies created on the basis of nationalism. And with the absence of democracy this polarisation began to be expressed by radical alternatives such as neo-Pan-Islamism, offered by a new generation of bourgeoise and petty-bourgeoise Muslims, and bankrolled by oil-rich Arab monarchies that had always seen Muslim nationalism as a threat.

Failed economies, and some disastrous wars, polarised the Muslim societies created on the basis of nationalism. And with the absence of democracy this polarisation began to be expressed by radical alternatives such as neo-Pan-Islamism, offered by a new generation of bourgeoise and petty-bourgeoise Muslims, and bankrolled by oil-rich Arab monarchies that had always seen Muslim nationalism as a threat.
The state in various Muslim countries tried to retain the status quo by rapidly adopting various aspects of Pan-Islamism, even to the extent of sacrificing many nationalist notions with which most Muslim liberation movements had originally been constructed.

The erosion of the nationalist narratives created wide open spaces. These spaces were rapidly occupied and then dominated by ideas initially rejected by the nationalists. These ideas were opposed to the nationalist narrative, criticising it for going against the grain of Islamic universalism and creating separatism based on indigenous cultures and languages in Muslim regions.

Ideas which offered alternative political and social models (as opposed to the ones based on nationalism) were largely based on a contemporary understanding of pan-Islamism. But some three decades after these ideas had managed to engrain themselves in the polity, state and psyche of various Muslim countries, from the 1970s onwards, these countries were left grappling with a new crisis.

For example, the new generation of Turks, Egyptians, Iraqis, Syrians, Pakistanis, etc, are now completely disconnected with the original notions of their countries’ nationhood and nationalist identities. In the past few decades they were more exposed to ideas of Islamic universalism, pushed aggressively by oil-rich Arab monarchies and their political allies.

In Pakistan, a young millennial is not quite sure what being a Pakistani now constitutes. Does it mean being a citizen of a Muslim-majority nation in South Asia, which evolved on the banks of River Indus and is part of the region’s 5,000-year-old history; or is he or she a member of some approaching universal Islamic set-up who should just see Pakistan as a temporary abode to mark time in, till that universal empire emerges? Is he or she first a Pakistani and then a Muslim, or vice versa? What about a non-Muslim citizen of Pakistan? Who or what is he?

Such confusion was triggered by the gradual erosion of the initial nationalist ideas in Muslim countries and the rise of a rather ill-defined and overtly ambitious notion of universalism in a world still defined by nationalistic boundaries. It made a whole generation vulnerable to the ways of those who promise the same universal utopia — but through unprecedented violence against the state and a number of imagined ‘enemies’.

Maybe the solution now lies in reinvigorating and updating the original notions of nationalism in Muslim countries so that future generations would feel more comfortable, sure and confident of being entities defined by their shared cultural heritage of a region that was carved, encapsulated and bordered by nationalist notions of state, society and nation — and not as some epic launching pad to jump-start a utopia from.

Source:The crisis of Muslim nationalisms
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 26th, 2016

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Smokers’ Corner: Turkey towards a neo-Kemalist mindset

Recently, Turkey has witnessed a series devastating terrorist attacks on its soil. Many believe one of the reasons for this is the gradual erosion of the Kemalist state. The erosion has opened up avenues of heated expressions which were once tightly closed. The complete collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War threatened to relegate Turkey to the status of a bankrupt and exhausted country, destined to linger as the ‘sick man of Europe’.

But the distraught nation somewhat managed to bounce back into prominence, mainly by adopting a completely new and unprecedented political and social framework (in the context of a Muslim-majority state).

After the fall of the Ottoman set-up, Turkish nationalism was constructed by an intellectual and military elite, which grabbed power and put Turkey on a radically reformist path.

Following the defeat of Ottoman Turkey at the hands of the anti-German Allies, military officer Mustafa Kemal repulsed further attacks by the Allies and then led a nationalist movement in Turkey, which overthrew the last remnants of the Ottoman Empire, and declared Turkey as independent republic.

As head of state, Kemal was given the title of Ataturk (father of Turks) as he introduced widespread reforms based on ‘six founding principles’: republicism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism and reformism.

With the country’s changing political culture, is a Turkish spring in the offing?
An urban group of intellectual, political and military elite subsequently implemented political, judicial and social reforms in an attempt to fast-track Turkey’s emergence as a modern European state. Ataturk’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) became the country’s largest political outfit.

Ataturk passed away in 1938, but the legacy of his reforms and initiatives (Kemalism) was carried forward. These reforms had also allowed limited democracy which let the more moderate Democratic Party (DP) come to power in the 1950s. But DP was firmly committed to Kemalism, though perhaps not as radically. In 1960, the Turkish military launched a coup and banned DP for ‘veering too close to religious politics’.

By the late 1960s, slow but sure economic growth and industrialisation began to give birth to a small middle class and petty bourgeoisie in Turkey’s semi-rural areas.

Members of this class began to move to the country’s main urban centres, they were conservative though, and found the ‘Kemalism’ of the cities alienating.

This class found a voice in the shape of a party formed by a university professor, Necmettin Erbakan. The party was the National Order Party (NOP). Though committed to the principles of Kemalism, NOP criticised Turkey’s wholesale adoption of westernisation.

As an alternative, it offered a system which was a synthesis of Kemalism, Turkish nationalism and certain aspects of the Ottoman Empire. It also called for loosening of Turkey’s radical secularism (called laicism).

In the 1970s, leftist violence erupted in Turkey and various Turkish cities faced insurgencies by far-left Marxist outfits. NOP sided with the Turkish state in the tussle.

In 1971, the military stepped in and imposed martial law. It claimed that the Kemalist state was being threatened by the left and from the right. It banned NOP in 1971 for politically using religion. However, in 1972, NOP became the National Salvation Party (NSP), declaring that it was committed to the core principles of Kemalism, but demanded that religious discourse be given its due space in Turkey’s politics.

By the late 1970s, NSP (also led by Erbakan), managed to win seats in Turkish parliament, its main voters being conservative middle and lower middle class traders and businessmen, and Turks living in the retrograde rural areas.

Leftist violence escalated and the military stepped in again in 1980 and imposed Turkey’s third military regime. It cracked down on leftist groups but also banned the NSP.

Erbakan was arrested and charged for using ‘radical Islam’ against Kemalism. In 1983, martial law was lifted and Erbakan was released. He reformed NSP as the Welfare Party (WP).

But the 1980s, belonged to the state-backed moderate-conservative party, Motherland, which repeatedly won elections between 1983 and the early 1990s, introducing liberal economic reforms. The military quietly backed Motherland Party because it seemed more adept at handling Turkey’s economic issues and facing the leftist threat.

Turgat Ozal, Motherland leader and prime minister at the time, advised the military that to counter the ‘leftist threat’, he be allowed to make Islam part of Turkish nationalism. The military quietly but cautiously allowed this. Thus, it was in 1984 that religion was made a compulsory subject in schools for the first time in Turkey.

After Ozal’s demise in 1993, Erbakan’s Welfare Party (WP) managed to bag the most seats in the 1994 election. In 1996, WP formed a coalition government and Erbakan became the prime minister. WP began well by introducing further economic reforms and bringing technocrats, traders and businessmen from smaller towns into the political system.

But when he initiated a programme to gradually dismantle Kemalist laicism, protests erupted in the country’s main urban centres. In 1997, Turkey’s constitutional court issued an order to ban the WP for violating the Turkish constitution and using religion as a political tool.

Erbakan was barred from holding any political office for five years. The new military-backed government cracked down on parties which it believed were working against Kemalism. This included the Virtue Party (VP) which was a reformed version of the banned WP.

The banning of VP split Erbakan’s men. One faction was committed to aggressively using faith as an electoral and doctrinal tool, while the younger cadres of the banned party wanted to solely concentrate on economic reforms. The younger faction prevailed and VP became the Justice & Development Party (AKP).

In 2002, AKP, led by the charismatic Recep T. Erdogan, managed to win that year’s election purely on an economic platform. It also promised to help take Turkey into the European Union.

The results of the AKP government’s economic policies were startling. Turkey became one of the few European countries to enjoy healthy economic growth in that period. This helped AKP to attract a wide coalition of voters in the 2007 election. Conservatives and secularists alike voted heavily for the party.

AKP continued to focus on economic issues and refrained from using religious symbolism or rhetoric. It was re-elected in 2011, still attractive for a wide variety of voters. But by then, Erdogan had begun to face severe criticism for becoming a ‘megalomaniac’and undemocratic. In 2012, the government tried to make constitutional amendments aimed to strengthen the presidency. Critics saw it as Erdogan’s attempt to maintain power unconstitutionally.

Rising criticism, the winding down of the economy, and resultant political turmoil saw Erdogan begin to use religiously-tinged rhetoric. When violent protests against his rule erupted in 2013, Erdogan claimed that the protests were ‘part of a plot by the Americans and Israelis’ to overthrow him.

In the June 2015 elections, AKP lost its majority. But no party could form a government and another election was held in November. Erdogan warned that AKP’s loss would cause severe economic downturns and political violence. He also suggested that only he could prevent Turkey from descending into chaos. Incredibly, his message stuck, and AKP regained its electoral strength.

But AKP today is a pale reflection of what it was when it first emerged in the early 2000s. Turkey is facing political and economic crisis and an unprecedented wave of religious militancy and Kurdish separatism.

Erdogan has continued to mutate into becoming an authoritarian figure, who sees conspiracies in every corner and is at best, ambiguous about his regime’s engagement with the dreaded militant Islamic State group. Many commentators in Turkey now believe the AKP is on its last legs.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 3rd, 2016

Source: Smokers’ Corner: Turkey towards a neo-Kemalist mindset
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 3rd, 2016

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

I used to open the batting for the cricket team of the college I studied in, in Karachi between the mid and late 1980s. One of my regular opening partners was a guy called Naveed.

Naveed was an excellent batsman and a lot more talented than me. He had a solid defensive technique. Bowlers always found it tough to beat his bat. I adopted the same technique from him but had to work harder to sustain it on tricky tracks. But I still managed to get more games than he.

Take a look: Of highs and lows — How Pakistani cricket changed forever

The problem was that Naveed, who was always at his best when playing within himself, would often abruptly lose his bearings, lash out and get out in the most dreadful manner.

Our captain would always cup his face with his hands and continue to remind Naveed that his strength lay in batting defensively and keeping one end intact.

You can take a man out of Pakistan but you can’t take Pakistan out of him
Naveed would just nod, and start off this way, giving the impression that he was there to stay, only to suddenly come out of his crease and try to launch the bowler over long-on or long-off for a six, or smash him over point for a four. He would often get caught in the deep, get bowled, or stumped.

Once when he was dropped from the side consecutively during a high-profile inter-collegiate tournament, he began to sulk. The captain and I took him out for some haleem at Karachi’s Burnes Road area.

This is what the skipper told him: “Naveed, you are a Geoff Boycott [England’s legendary opening batsman known for his solid defensive technique]. You are not Viv Richards [former West Indian batsman, famous for tearing apart bowling attacks] …”

Naveed would hate hearing this. He loved Richards and could not stand Boycott. ‘I like to bat aggressively and out of my skin,’ he once told me.

I was quick to respond: ‘But you are at your best when you are playing within your limitations and expressing your true talents, which lie well within your skin.’

But Naveed would have none of that. Once he constructed a brilliant century in a 40-overs game, staying at the crease for 32 overs. However, in the next two games, he got himself out trying to do a Richards. He just wasn’t good at it and was dropped from the side again. He quit the team in a huff.

Read next: Falling on my face and other hurdles: How I nearly missed the PSL final

I met him again three years later in 1990 at Karachi’s National Stadium. I saw him receiving a dressing-down by Pakistan’s Test opener Shoaib Mohammad.

Shoaib was telling Naveed that his technique was extremely solid and if he stuck to play to his strengths and understand his limitations, he had the ability to one day make his way to the Pakistan Test side.

Naveed was at the stadium to impress the selectors for the PIA team. He was never selected because he just refused to stay in and got out playing awkwardly aggressive shots.

In 2014, I met Naveed again. This time in Islamabad. With him was a teammate of ours, Arif. By then all of us were in our forties. Whereas I had joined journalism in the early 1990s, Naveed had managed to migrate to Canada. In Canada, he tried to get a place in the Canadian cricket team.

He qualified to be selected for Canada in 2000 and was hoping to represent that country during the 2003 cricket World Cup in South Africa. He couldn’t make the team.

Arif told me: “Wahaan bhi Boycott Sahib, Richards’s baney kay chakaron mein thay … [Even over there, Mr Boycott was trying to be Mr Richards]”.

Apparently, the Canadian coach loved his technique, but just couldn’t understand his sudden bursts of recklessness. Arif [who was also there with him in Canada] told me: “He [the coach] would tear out his hair, screaming, ‘you are such a naturally solid bat, why are you trying to be what you are not? You are not Richards! Know your limitations. These limitations are your real strengths.’

Naveed, who had given up cricket in 2002 and returned to Pakistan to work as a creative executive at an advertising agency, just chuckled: ‘What did the coach know? My real style was never allowed to grow.’ Now I wanted to tear out my hair.

True to form, Naveed, who had completed his MBA from Montreal, Canada, and was considered to be a ‘natural marketing guy’, quit a lucrative job at a Canadian chain of hotels because he believed that marketing was not his forte, but creativity was.

Unable to impress a number of advertising agencies with his ‘creativity’, he flew back to Pakistan and managed to bag a job as an assistant creative director at an agency in Islamabad.

His wife and children were still in Montreal. But this is not why when I met him he was planning to fly back to Canada. Arif told me that the agency had asked him to join its client servicing department, because he was just not good enough as a creative. His bosses were able to see that his talents lay in marketing.

But Naveed refused to make the move. He would construct some brilliant marketing strategies but then insist on turning them into creative campaigns himself. He was terrible at it.

So why am I writing about the not-so-remarkable eccentricities of an old friend?

Well, a year after Naveed returned to Canada, I bumped into Arif again, this time on a flight to Lahore. We almost immediately began to talk about Naveed.

During the conversation, Arif added a very interesting bit: “Yaar, Naveed is like Pakistan. He never liked his strengths and in fact is embarrassed by them …”

I encouraged him to continue. And he did: “Naveed was not conscious of his limitations. In fact, like our country, he chose not to be conscious of them. These limitations made him seem what he didn’t like.

He wanted to be what he could not be because that is not where his strengths lay.

He wanted to be what he idealised and was willing to sacrifice his strengths to become that.

He wanted to be a belligerent batsman, when his forte was solid defence.

He wanted to be a creative advertising guru, when his strength lay in drawing out brilliant marketing plans.

Like Pakistan, Naveed too was never comfortable in his own skin. So he kept striking out to become what he was not, only to lose what he was really good at.”

I managed to get Naveed’s email and described him exactly the way Arif had.

His response: “Haha. How can I be like Pakistan when I am an American citizen?”

He is not an American citizen. He is still Canadian. This time I really did tear out my hair.

Source: Smokers’ Corner: The man who lived out of his skin
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 10th, 2016

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !