Time to Start Rejecting Mosques

Source: AP/Dawn

Think about it. Why should we continue to support a group that is actively destroying our homes, cities, public infrastructure, lives and livelihood?

Why should we continue to support a group that is pitting brother against brother, citizen against citizen and promoting discrimination?

So let’s start rejecting their mosques, their sermons and their processions and give peace and love a chance. And if you cannot do without praying, at least stop funding them or donating to them.

Can we promise ourselves to hold back our charity whenever asked for a donation for a mosque?

There is no need to expect any different from them. You are not going to hear anything peaceful and sane out of these pulpits. All love that they reserve is for the Prophet, which always spells out as trouble for the sinful human beings living in the immediate vicinity of these utterances.

It is the students of these seminaries of hate and ignorance which bred enough hate to render a young man heartless enough to kill innocent Christian women and children. The same mosques have indoctrinated enough toxic hate in the hearts of millions in the name of love for the Prophet to call for killings and destroy public and private property.

Source: Metro Rawalpindi/Islamabad

The heartbreaking tragedy striking the helpless citizens of Lahore is nothing new from the enemies of this country. However, the disgusting display by the Sunni Tehreek, which should be declared a terrorist organization, and affiliated criminals in Islamabad on March 27 is an eye-opener to all. It has not happened for the first time and probably not for the last time, but the sheer audacity and absurdity with which completely unreasonable demands are made are unacceptable.

To add insult to injury, the Sunni Tehreek is distancing from the violence it unleashed on the capital and making the lives of its citizens miserable. Things get even better with their hideously ignorant and criminal demands it has put forth by gracefully offering to negotiate with the helpless government, whose leniency in letting these criminals wreak havoc is unforgivably disheartening and disappointing.

They are asking the government to glorify a convicted criminal and to give them a carte blanche to murder whoever they want in the name of the love of the Prophet. Not only does this challenge the highest courts of the state, but any standard of humanity and moral decency.

The fearlessness of these groups that is born out of never ever being questioned must be eliminated with an iron fist.

Why should we continue to be hostage to the mullahs who are hostile to our country, our law and our lives?

This is why we need to reject attendance in mosques.

There is a reason why I am saying this.

Personally, I have always considered mosques pulpits of hate and ignorance. However, religion is a necessity in a society like Pakistan, and if you deny that, odds are you don’t understand its makeup. Religion is closely linked with rites of passage and personal and social events such as birth, marriage and death.

Nevertheless, the more people continue to pray in mosques and listen to their hateful, blackmailing sermons, the more they are going to be under the influence. It is the constant exposure to the mosque and the sermon of the hateful mullah that has induced the tolerance of the liberties taken by religious extremists.

Liberals are busy trying to create a new Islam, particularly in the West, trying to fight extremism in their own way. While I wish them well, the realities of the faith in Muslim majority states are far from their utopian cherry picking and eloquent apologies. Therefore, perhaps aversion from the poisonous words of the cleric and religious scholar is a start to purge the venom.

So let the mullahs hear this message of rejection of their hateful mosques loud and clear.

At least until they can prove they are otherwise.

The post was originally published in The Nation blogs.

Cuba: The Best of Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy

Source: Fox Business

President Barack Obama has just made history.

He just became the first President to land in Cuba since the 1959 communist revolution.

He is a historic President on many accounts, but he has been particularly instrumental in turning the US foreign policy from a century of proactive hawkish interventionism. Some would argue that he is betraying the legacy of the ideals of his party’s foreign policy giants in the past, while in the view of others, he is actually acting in their tradition.

So what if his vision has left the Middle East in a cesspool? You can’t possibly be right about everything.

People around the world have been upset at the aggressive US intervention in the affairs of other nations since World War II. Others have been horrified by the Bush doctrine of preemptive strike. But probably the most terrible part of the US foreign policy has been reinforcing the isolation of a country that has pretty much imposed that on itself. Cuba.

It would have made sense during the years of Cuban missile crisis. It does not make an iota of sense ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

President Obama may have something in common with President Ronald Reagan in this regard. He helped the Soviet Union cave in by talking to them, contrary to the apocalyptic expectations from him. President Obama believes in doing the same with his adversaries.

There is one thing the isolation and protectionism of socialist economics and communism abhor. Freedom.

See how India and China have blossomed since introducing their close, protected, suffocating markets to the possibilities of free trade. Now the world is finding hard to compete with them.

Which is what both the parties have been getting wrong for a long time about Cuba, while knowing it all along, especially and ironically, President Reagan during the Cold War years. But let’s call it the Fidel Castro effect. He had a knack of boiling American blood, but once he is out of the way, things have become much easier to proceed in this direction.

Because believing in the principle of freedom requires acting on it, not just making inflammatory statements in a largely inconsequential legislature, at least in this regard. Why should anyone among the conservatives blame President Obama for taking action? Especially on a principle they so strongly believe in. Economic liberalism.

Yes, President Obama is right on Cuba and expatriate Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are dead wrong pursuing the age old ignorant policy of the not-so-principled opposition to restoring relations with Cuba.

You beat obscurantism, protectionism and restrictions with more freedom, not responding with the same approach.

Let’s welcome Cuba to freedom again.

The post was originally published in The Nation blogs.