Of Honor and Cruelty

Protest in Karachi for Rimsha Case (Source: Sunny Gill for Christians in Pakistan)

I missed talking about a recent case of public lynching that took place in Tando Adam, Sindh, recently, as I had not outraged about it half as much as I had done with the Sialkot incident. The Tando Adam incident is important because it is more offensive in so many ways. While the brothers in Sialkot were suspected robbers, the boys killed in Tando Adam were suspected by people of having sex with a girl in an “illegitimate” way, which was apparently not forceful. The young boys were brutally beaten in public and made to bleed to death. Sounds worse than Muslim Hell to me.

So now you cannot even have sex with some random person in Pakistan without getting killed. But thankfully, most of the people get away with it without meeting such fate. These particular individuals were not so lucky unfortunately. As usual the local police was nowhere to be seen but not sure if they were as much involved along with the primary offenders as in the Sialkot case. The video clip got leaked or was released with planning this time around as well and the media further propagated it. In any case, such brutalities of the society should not go unnoticed. The following video has extremely graphic content, posting for the record.

“Ghairat” which is roughly and pretty inappropriately translated to the word “honor”, has been a great domestic killer in Pakistan, though it is also a phenomenon prevalent in the rest of the sub-continent. Not long ago, the parents, the brother and the sister of a Pakistani-Belgian girl have been found guilty for murdering her “in the name of honor” and are now doing time. While some people have objected to the term “honor killing” for the righteous impression it could give and have called for changing it with something like “dishonor killing” or something (which sounds even more ridiculous), I think that keeping it this way busts the myth that something like murder could be associated with (false) honor.

Well so much for the copulation-preventing honor, but “ghairat” is a term with a much more broader meaning and it actually also applies to being empathetic and sensitive towards atrocities and injustice, believe it or not. So while our nation can be perfectly “ghairatmand” or “honorable” to kill its daughters for having their own way with their sex lives, it is perfectly “beghairat” or dishonorable for letting a little girl rot in jail for a “crime” that she does not even understand. Blasphemy.

Just after 3 days of the 65th independence day and 3 days before Eid, Rimsha Masih, a young girl of 11 or 14 years of age, and who happens to be Christian, was arrested by the Islamabad police on the charge of desecrating the Holy Koran in the G-12 sector of Islamabad, the nation’s capital. The girl has been reported to be suffering from Down’s Syndrome, a mental disorder which disables a child’s cognitive abilities. At that age and with that mental condition, I can hardly imagine if she would even be aware of the existence of Muslims or the Koran, let alone the thought of understanding any hatred fed to her by anyone, as is the impression on many people.

The child was reported to be caught by some locals with burned pieces of a children’s learning book for reading the Koran, so you cannot even be sure if the burned page had any Koranic verses on it. But let’s suppose there must be. Regardless of that, it was inhuman of some of the locals to try beating the child and to hand her over to the police and she is still rotting in their custody. Ironically, handing her over to the police is considered rather safe in this case. What’s worse, the Christians of the colony had started leaving for the fears of a Gojra like incident, in which Muslim mobs set an entire Christian colony on fire. The matter has finally come to the attention of mainstream media, after days of outrage in the Pakistani social media circles, which has actually led to somewhat shocking discoveries.

Hafiz Khaled Chishti (Source: PukhtoonistanGazette)

On Geo TV political talkshow Capital Talk, which is hosted by journalist Hamid Mir, the Imam Masjid, or roughly the pastor of the local mosque, Hafiz Khaled Chishti was interviewed. He admitted on TV that he had been urging the locals to drive the members of Christian community out of the area, “since we are an Islamic state”, and that their presence was causing a hindrance to allow them to perform their “religious obligations”. What I cannot figure out is why that Imam Masjid has not been arrested for such a sermon instead of that poor troubled little girl. I think you hardly need to say anything else about the state and government of Pakistan and the moral degeneration of its self-righteous society.

Furthermore, the most disappointing aspect of the talk show was that no one was ready to even discuss that blasphemy should be challenged as a crime or not, which is the reason why the tone of this post is so biased in favor of the child. Also it is shameful how condescending the attitude of some of the participants was towards the “minorities”. The anchor seeing the silver lining that people actually did not seek mob justice and did not set her house on fire and the Maulana on the panel bestowing the favor of letting Christians conduct their religious ceremonies and congregations. Well thank you very much. I find it utterly disgusting.

I think we have a long way to go, if there is any end in sight anyway.

The following is the talk show as available on youtube in Urdu.

This post is dedicated to all the people who claim that Islam is an all-encompassing religion which offers complete protection to non-Muslims in a society under its domain. It is also dedicated to the people who think that certain religious minorities such as Christians are not being persecuted in Pakistan and it also requires the attention of those who consider Muslims to be incapable of any such behavior.

But then again, why worry.

Rimsha is just another guinea pig to be sacrificed in Quaid-e-Azam’s laboratory of Islam.

The Ramadan Independence Day Post 2012

Source: The Citizens Archive of Pakistan/DAWN

There is something special about the independence day of 2012. It falls in the Holy Month of Ramadan.

Actually, it is one of the rare occasions that the anniversary of independence falls on the same day both in Gregorian and Islamic calendars.

Patriotic and religious people in Pakistan will tell you that Pakistan gained its independence from the British Raj on the 27^th of Ramadan, 1366 Hijri, which was on August 14, 1947. A Holy Night in the Islamic tradition. The night when the Koran was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad.

65 years ago, a massive communal migration took place across the borders of the then East Pakistan, West Pakistan and the modern Indian Republic. Everybody knows about probably the greatest migration in human history.

It was spectacular to some, hard to believe. A matter of faith and hope for others. Not a choice for the rest.

To me it was insane, brutal and tragic. With due respect to the immigrants and the cause of migration. They are certainly the bravest souls of the Indian independence movement. Not Jinnah or Nehru or Azad or Gandhi.

After 65 years, Ramadan coincides with the independence day again, almost the same date, the 26th maybe, and it seems that the communal migration has still not come to a halt.

Only days ago, there was news of Hindu families visiting India saying that they were unwilling to return to Pakistan as they feared for their lives. Furthermore, there has been pretty consistent migration of Sindhi Hindus from Pakistan to India, who have been a regular victim of abduction, abuse and forced conversion to Islam, particularly their women.

This seems to be a dream come true for the Muslim religious purist. After all, this country was made for Muslims.

The other day I overheard a child in a public transport van that I was sharing with a family. She was surprised on learning that Hindus and Christians lived in Pakistan too, just an innocent little child. The word Pakistani was synonymous to Muslim to her. Her mother had to explain to her how and why non-Muslims were Pakistani too.

I don’t blame her. That’s the way most fervent religious parents bring up their children in Pakistan.

I grew up hearing this slogan, like millions of other Pakistanis.

Pakistan ka matlab kya. La Ilaha Il-Allah.

What’s the meaning of Pakistan? No God except Allah.

Teach a child this and don’t expect them to consider any non-Muslim a Pakistani anymore.

My word, recalling this slogan just sent shivers down my spine. It always horrified me, if my memory serves me well.

I am shocked it never occurred to the able leaders of All-India Muslim League.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, was supposedly a secular politician. But apparently even he did not bother setting the record straight with that kind of slogans.

But his actions spoke much louder than his words or whatever principles he supposedly followed.

Some are worrying about the Hindu migration. Outraging. Complaining what the state is doing to protect them. I’d rather like to see them safe anyway they possibly can be.

But why worry?

So if Muslims were migrating to Pakistan from India in 1947 and Hindus were migrating from Pakistan to India, why be surprised that they are still at it in 2012?

Why even bother with the white band in the flag?

This was what we wanted and we are achieving the goal.

Slowly, but surely.

Source: Wikipedia

To a Hindu-free Pakistan.

The Real Pakistan.

The Pakistan of Allah.

The Pakistan of Ramadan.

The Pakistan of Layla-tul-Qadr.

The Pure Pakistan.

Happy Independence Day.

And

Allah-o-Akbar.

Courtesy/Artist: Sabir Nazar © 2012