Haroon Riaz
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons to oppose the government of the currently ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) political party has been its education policy. Seemingly egalitarian and innocuous if not revolutionary, this education policy is anything but. Championed by social conservative nationalists, even PTI urban liberals who come across as socially liberal, this policy has been more about turning secular education in private schools into madrassa education. While even the national ethos in Pakistan is not exactly the most exemplary in the world, the idea of unifying the diverse peoples within Pakistan under the same curriculum could only end in a disaster.
The main executor of the Single National Curriculum vision was Harvard graduate and Lahori liberal Dr. Marium Chagtai. Not only did she supervise this disaster unfold for the children of the country but also shamelessly defended it citing the Islamic provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan when confronted by
secular liberal intellectuals like Pervez Hoodbhoy. This reminds me of all the urban liberal nationalists who thought that a PTI government would be a good idea for the country. Though it really should not be a surprise because this is the “intelligentsia” that makes up the rotten idea of the (Islamic) Republic of Pakistan. They are true to the legacy of their communally-minded demented forefathers.
The Single National Curriculum is unfinished business from the Zia period as per academic A. H. Nayyar, and the hypernationalist theocrats making up the PTI hybrid regime are overzealously keen to complete it. As the process of this horrible transformation of the local private and public sector schools for the common citizen of Pakistan is underway, you can still find nationalist urban liberals defending the Single National Curriculum. They are still defending the celebration of the Hijab on state textbooks. And they will continue to do so as long as their safe spaces are not invaded by the theocratic extremists.
If you are having children or already have who are supposed to grow in a schooling system in Pakistan, be very afraid. The irony is that these urban PTI liberals will send their children to the Cambridge education system, which is completely isolated and safe from these “revolutionary changes.” They would rather satiate their hideous sense of patriotic national cohesion by imposing madrassa education on the lower middle class who want to pursue some semblance of quality education in a hopelessly theocratic society.
The PTI urban liberal experiments on the lower middle class for their stupid nationalist projects must stop.
Filed under: Commentary | Tagged: conservative, Constitution of Pakistan, education, Islam, liberal, Mariam Chaghtai, nationalists, Pakistan, Pervez Hoodbhoy, politics, PTI, Secularism, Single National Curriculum, SNC, theocracy | Leave a comment »
The Truth Journal 
You are free to burn their temples
Liberal Pakistanis are again ashamed of the state of religious freedom in Pakistan. And they often seem to wonder where things go wrong. Unfortunately, many of these unsuspecting patriotic nationalist liberals will never figure out that everything went wrong since the foundation of their beloved country.
A country that was supposedly built for the rights of a communal minority turned out to be a theocratic hell for its own minorities. Who is even surprised?
Ironically, in the month of August, and days before the “national minorities day.” So what was the “real cause” this year, you would wonder? Oh yes, must be another property dispute. What really happened was that an 8-year-old Hindu child either defecated or urinated in a mosque and the Sunni mob unleashed their wrath on the first Hindu structure that they found. Here is the Urdu language report from the almost-state-run news channel ARY News.
As usual, there was some lip service from the “liberal faces” of the ruling PTI, namely Interior Minister Fawad Chaudhary and the Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari, who has the most pointless portfolio of all Pakistani ministers.
However, it is important to remind that these same hypocritical figures were leading from the front with the ruling party’s Hinduphobic propaganda against India regarding the annexation of the Indian State of Kashmir. Both PTI and their liberal nationalist allies cannot deny responsibility for all the flames of Hindu hatred that they have stoked throughout their term. Of course, Pakistani conservatives are Hinduphobic by definition but the intellectually dishonest facade of PTI liberals must be challenged.
Surely, Pakistan has always been a terrible country for anyone who is not a Muslim. This is the very foundational basis of this Muslim Supremacist theocratic republic. However, the kind of disgusting Hinduphobia state propaganda that the PTI government has unleashed has not been seen in recent years. At least not since the 1999 Kargil War and its aftermath. The state-backed emergence of the Tehreek Labaik Pakistan which has now gotten out of control of their original masters has not helped the situation either.
It is too late for the disingenuous and ideologically confused PTI liberals and corrupt bureaucracy babus to do the fire-fighting against the damage done by the religious fundamentalists that they have enabled. It is too late for half-hearted efforts to fake a soft and enlightened image of a theocracy with mob rule.
It is only laughable when these nationalist liberals quote Jinnah on minority rights. They completely seem to miss the irony when they fail to see the consequences of creating a state motivated by communal hate. Probably what Jinnah really meant by his well-meaning August 11 speech was this.
You are free to burn your temples.
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Filed under: Commentary | Tagged: arson, blasphemy, burning, fascism, Hinduism, Hinduphobia, human rights, Islam, Jinnah, Kapil Dev, liberals, mob, National Minorities Day, nationalists, Pakistan, PTI, Rahimyar Khan, religious freedom, Secularism, Shireen Mazari, temple, theocracy | Leave a comment »