Salman Rushdie on Pakistan

[Utalk]

rav I will respond to your question later on tonight mate.

[Desi Cartman]

you mean what they did in indian occupied Kashmir?

Lol rassi jal gayi pur bal nahi Gaya. Sara Pakistan is occupied (or has been bought) by either US or Taliban but still worried about "occupation" of Kashmir. Lage raho

[ganeshran]

I cannot generalize that every Madarassa preaches hate against people belonging to other religions. But yes some of them do. BBC recently conducted a program about Madarassas in UK, I know its not in Pakistan but still can we can at least come to an agreement that some religious schools do have elements who profess hatred 2wu6skFaRsw

[cricfan001]

Mean you never been here at ICF before? Welcome then :) read your 1st post, just few little Qrs 1. How do you feel that religion is used for hatred purpose in Pakistan? 2. How india is different in spreading hate for Pakistan? what we see or observe here is each indian kid used to hate Pakistan since birth :) 3. Any few examples of such madrasas? or have you or your any friend/relative ever visited or watched any of such madarase which "provoke hate for non-muslims?" or in other words how you actually believe that such madrasa exists here?

Asim, thanks for the welcome. I have read several articles on how people are educated on those madrasas and how they foment hatred. Is it not during Zia's period, when these madrasas became employment centres for recruiting the Jihadis to fight the soviet union. Is it not correct that Benazir after her election in 1988 continued to support these centres as a counterweight to India in Kashmir. If your honest to yourself, then I do not need to explain it further. Please understand this, I never ever would want Pakistan or for that matter any country to be ill, BUT I expect the same from the others towards my country. India is a very liberal society and at the same time largely secular. In spite of Hindus being the sufferers at the hands of the invaders, we still have the souls to let anyone live here with respect. Which country in the world would do like India, where majority community suffered brutally at the hands of the invading minority community for hundreds of centuries BUT still it treats them with respect and with equal rights. That is the soul of India. That is what Hindu religion teaches, it never boasts of being a "true religion", or "the final religion" and other stuff which some of the other religions have in their religious texts. This is the reason, you can find people here respect others irrespective of their religion. I have analysed enough to conclude that the majority of the problems faced by most muslim nations is due to their concept of "muslim ummah" and "muslim brotherhood". Once, you replace that with "Universal brotherhood", then most of your problems and other problems would be solved. Please note, I'm not generalizing the Pakistanis but most of them would fall into the categories I have mentioned earlier. This could be due to lack of proper education and religious fanaticism they are gaining. Religion should guide a person spiritually, BUT when that is used by a state as a strategic asset to nail an enemy then it will face devastating consequences. Turkey could be a good model for Pakistan to follow. A liberal and secular society. I hope, some sane political party comes to power in your country, may be PTI led by Imran. That political part hopefully should not be a puppet of either US or any foreign nation/Army/Mullahs. In India too, there are people who hate everything and anything Pakistan does, which again is bad and I do not approve of that. We want friendly relations but is Pakistan doing enough and honestly for that relation? Anyway, wish Pakistan to come out of this current trouble and hope it mends it ways, so India too can reciprocate in a positive way.

[Asim]

Lol rassi jal gayi pur bal nahi Gaya. Sara Pakistan is occupied (or has been bought) by either US or Taliban but still worried about "occupation" of Kashmir. Lage raho

Sach hamesha karwa hota hey bro!

[Desi Cartman]

Sach hamesha karwa hota hey bro!

Lol bro sachai from a Pakistani. Btw is Osama really dead ?

[Asim]

Lol bro sachai from a Pakistani. Btw is Osama really dead ?

Bro Pakistan janay, Osama janay aur USA janay, aap kyu tension laitey ho? :cantstop:

[ravishingravi]

I cannot generalize that every Madarassa preaches hate against people belonging to other religions. But yes some of them do. BBC recently conducted a program about Madarassas in UK, I know its not in Pakistan but still can we can at least come to an agreement that some religious schools do have elements who profess hatred 2wu6skFaRsw

Unbelievable !! Or maybe not. If this is happening in UK, you can only imagine what is happening in Pakistan.

[Desi Cartman]

Bro Pakistan janay' date=' Osama janay aur USA janay, aap kyu tension laitey ho? :cantstop:[/quote'] apkay Yahaan to bomb bhi fat tay tab bhi koi tension nahi leta. Kya adat pad gayi kya bro ?

[ravishingravi]

Rushdie is definitely exaggerating India although it definitely is in a better situation.

[panther]

I cannot generalize that every Madarassa preaches hate against people belonging to other religions. But yes some of them do. BBC recently conducted a program about Madarassas in UK, I know its not in Pakistan but still can we can at least come to an agreement that some religious schools do have elements who profess hatred 2wu6skFaRsw

firstly you should not judge a religion by its people you should judge it by its source i.e. the Quran if i want to learn about hinduisam i should read the scriptures and text etc i shouldn't judge a religion by its followers because everyone is different

[someone]

firstly you should not judge a religion by its people you should judge it by its source i.e. the Quran if i want to learn about hinduisam i should read the scriptures and text etc i shouldn't judge a religion by its followers because everyone is different

You cant have it both ways, judge good people by religion and then be proud. And the problem is that for some reasons all muslim terrorists seems to say their action is justified with the religion

[achilles]

Lol. Seems like his emotions got the better of him. And the next thought which crossed his mind was, "Oh lord, here comes a fatwa". Hence, his tone changed immediately if you watch 1.30 onwards.

[Indiawin]

How dare he talk sense in today's world. :hysterical:

[ganeshran]

firstly you should not judge a religion by its people you should judge it by its source i.e. the Quran if i want to learn about hinduisam i should read the scriptures and text etc i shouldn't judge a religion by its followers because everyone is different

No No. I am not judging Islam there at all, nor am I criticising the religion itself, We were discussing about Madarassas there, and the fact that some Madarassas are preaching hate doesnt mean that Islam is bad, its means that the people who are running these Madarassas are bad. Filling hate into impressionable young minds is the vilest thing anyone can do. It will be with them for the rest of their lives.

[ravishingravi]

Wrinkles in youth The most convenient understanding of the phenomenon of Pakistani extremists that one hears being echoed from TV studios and their favourite ‘guests’ suggests that young Pakistanis turning into religious fanatics has something to do with illiteracy and unemployment. Though not entirely incorrect, this notion however is a complacent explanation. It fails to explain the emergence of young religious extremists such as Omar Shaikh, Shahzad Tanveer, Hasib Hussain and Faisal Shahzad. Each one of these young men came from educated middle-class families. Saying they were products of western societies that they were raised in is a weak retort. This attitude simply refuses to seriously address the issue of educated young Pakistanis falling for a myopic and nihilistic brand of the faith — something that was once explained as a vocation only of the illiterate and the financially desperate. There has been an alarming rise in the number of young, educated middle-class Pakistanis (here and abroad), embracing the most reactionary and anarchic strains of the faith, believing it to be a justified and logical portrayal of ‘true’ Islam. The state and the government of Pakistan will have to thoroughly investigate and rectify this alarming trend. While actors like the 7/7 bombers and Faisal Shahzad are obvious embarrassments to Pakistan and to the Pakistani communities in the West, so are the growing number of rabid, tech-savvy young people floating around various interactive websites to mouth the most obnoxious ideas about Islam and politics. There are websites out there glorifying utter mad men and propagating most twisted conspiracy theories, and many of these are owned, run and frequented by Pakistanis who work and are comfortably settled in western countries. Just as the sudden rise of certain crackpots (via TV) in Pakistan was keenly followed and supported by a chunk of young, urban Pakistanis, various cranks are happily catering to the already confused religious and ideological bearings of Muslim Pakistanis living abroad. Much has been written about people like Zaid Hamid, Aamir Liaquat and Zakir Naik — men who cleverly represent (and glorify) the increasingly chauvinistic mindset of the current generation of young urbanites. A recent book on Farhat Hashmi’s organisation, Al-Huda, (written by a Pakistani woman), accuses her of spreading hatred against Christians, Hindus and Jews among Pakistani women living in Canada. In the wake of the Faisal Shahzad episode in New York last year, the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), a group of liberal Muslims living in Canada, accused American Islamic organisations of refusing to distance themselves from the doctrine of armed jihad waged by extremists, as did the Deobandi ulema’s conference back home late last year. The MCC goes on to state that many young Pakistanis living in the United States and Canada regard Pakistan as a safe haven for their preparation and training for waging wars against the West. Organisations like the MCC have also come down hard on outfits such as Al-Huda, refuting their claim that they are on a mission to convert westerners to Islam. Nevertheless, even in liberal countries like US, UK and Canada, organisations like the MCC are coming under direct attack and threats from their more myopic counterparts who, it seems, are free to peddle away hatred and confusion to Muslims living abroad. But, of course, the situation is more alarming in this respect in Pakistan. Political Islam – a mid-20th century philosophy that advocates the creation of a theocratic society and state through the Islamisation of politics – was once the prerogative of conservative scholars and established political parties such as Abul Ala Mauddudi and his Jamat-i-Islami. However, ever since the late 1980s it has rapidly disintegrated into a bare but populist entity with two prominent strains. One strain has striped off this philosophy’s more scholarly aspects and left only its violent jihadist aspects to work with. This strain can now be found in the barbaric ways of extremist organisations like the Taliban and many of Pakistan’s sectarian outfits. The other strain has been working to turn political Islam into a populist set of easy-to-digest ideas through which, either elections can be fought or the military-establishment can be infiltrated and used as a patron. The JI tried flaunting the populist aspects of political Islam during the 1977 and 1993 elections, but failed. Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N did so throughout the 1990s and somewhat did succeed but only with the help of the military-establishment. Political Islam’s historical drubbling in elections in Pakistan has increasingly made this philosophy the vocation of certain powerful sections of Pakistan’s military and its many mouthpieces in the popular Urdu media and in so-called Islamic evangelist movements. Its most recent advocate (again with a more than a little help from certain sections in the military establishment) is cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. Though Imran’s party, the PTI, has been quite a disaster in the two elections that it took part in, he has suddenly been propped up by an aggressive right-wing electronic media and an increasingly confused number of young middle-class urbanites. Though, quite like Imran, most of his followers’ lifestyles are rather ‘westernised,’ these are no liberals believing in concepts like democratic pluralism or in the importance of tolerating and promoting religious, sectarian and ethnic diversity. By the looks of it, they see democracy as a threat to Pakistan’s imagined existence as a monotheistic state and society based on a single (state-sanctioned and clergy-approved) strain of the faith. Imran fans, like the pro-Musharraf ‘moderates’, have, at best, sound like 21st century versions of Ziaul Haq. Instead of a sherwani and a stern frown, they can be seen in modern, western clothes and designer shalwar-kameez spouting the most worn-out rhetoric and narrative that was started by the state under Zia and his politico-religious sidekicks. It’s the usual beat: Pakistan and democracy are not compatible; democratic pluralism promotes ethnocentricity; secularism is akin to atheism; religious extremism and violence are the handiwork of the ‘anti-Pakistan’ and ‘anti-Islam’ elements (mainly foreign), and the state and intelligence agencies of Pakistan have nothing to with it. Also to these Ipod carrying ‘revolutionaries’ there is only one correct version of Islam but most Pakistanis follow a corrupted and adulterated version because they are illiterate and superstitious; anyone questioning these assumptions is a traitor and that only politicians are corrupt, and we need a strong leader who cannot come through democracy because most Pakistanis are ignorant. Furthermore, anyone also questioning the obvious and yet padded extremism and soft authoritarianism peddled by the Imran brigade is a ‘liberal extremist’ who is undermining religion and promoting ‘corrupt politicians’. And should I even get into their take on the need of a worldwide caliphate? Maybe not. Don’t want to turn this piece into a black comedy, if you know what I mean. http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/29/smokers-corner-wrinkles-in-youth.html

[achilles]

^ Superb article. Dawn is one of the only media from Pakistan that talks sense.

[ravishingravi]

Pakistan is descending into extreme DENIAL which borders on collective psychosis... http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/05/29/world/asia/AP-AS-Pakistan-C onspiracy-Theory-Nation.html?hp May 29, 2011 Amid Bombings, Pakistan Turns to Conspiracies By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ISLAMABAD (AP) — Facing a surge in violence after the killing of Osama bin Laden, Pakistanis are taking comfort in conspiracy theories that allege Indian or American agents — not fellow Muslim countrymen — are behind the attacks, especially last week's brazen assault on a naval base. Lawmakers, media pundits, retired generals and even government officials often hint at suspicions of a "foreign hand" in the violence, despite there being no evidence and often explicit claims of responsibility by militant groups like the Pakistani Taliban. Aired on television talk shows and in newspapers, conspiracy theories are everywhere — underscoring the challenges facing the United States as it seeks to convince Pakistan's overwhelmingly anti-American population that it faces a shared enemy in the Taliban. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fought back Friday against the stories flying around. "America cannot and should not solve Pakistan's problems, that is up to Pakistan," she told reporters. "But in solving its problems, Pakistan should understand that anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories will not make problems disappear." While tales of malign intervention by foreign powers exist in other developing countries, in Pakistan they come with a heavy price. They confuse the country as to who it is fighting and complicate efforts to defeat militants and counter their extremist ideology. Shifting the blame away from Islamist militants and onto foreigners helps protect the powerful Pakistani army from an uncomfortable truth: its long association with militants that are now turning against the state. Right-wing Islamists who support the Afghan Taliban and share the Pakistan Taliban's hatred of America and calls for strict Islamic law are also put in a difficult position by the terror being unleashed on the country. For them, it is easier to blame foreigners out to destabilize the country than acknowledge the slaughter carried out in the name of Islam. No evidence is ever reported to back up the claims, but unsubstantiated rumors make it into media coverage: the bodies of suicide attackers were uncircumcised, for example, implying they were not Muslims, or Indian-made ammunition was found at the scene. Ironically, the Pakistani Taliban share Clinton's dislike of the conspiracy theories — but for different reasons. "Those who are accusing us of working for anyone else's agenda should ask themselves what they are doing," Waliur Rehman, the Taliban's No. 2 commander, told The Associated Press. "We are neither working for CIA, Mossad, RAW nor any other organization," he said, referring to the Indian spy agency. "We work to get the blessing of God." The attack on the naval base in Karachi was one of the most brazen in more than four years of militant violence. A team of gunmen infiltrated the base, destroying two U.S-made surveillance planes and killing at least 10 people during a 16-hour standoff. The fact that the attackers destroyed planes that are believed to be used mostly to guard against India and do not appear directly related to the war against militants has given grist to the conspiracy theorists, as has the supposed sophistication of the assailants and their weapons. India and Pakistan have waged three wars since 1947 and exist in a state of semi-hostility. Left-wing critics accuse the army, which has ruled the country for much of its existence, of indoctrinating the country with mistrust of India to ensure that it keeps getting a large share of the country's budget. Ruling party lawmaker Liaqat Ali Khan said it was only natural that suspicion should fall on "India if our army installations are attacked." "My mind too goes toward RAW. India wants to demoralize the Pakistani army and a demoralized Pakistani army suits India well," he said. One especially potent conspiracy theory is that the United States wants to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Those who spread the story say the U.S. raid on bin Laden in an army town on May 2 was a practice run for such an operation and the latest bomb attacks are to destabilize the country so Washington has a pretext for moving in. A Pew opinion poll released in April found that just 10 percent of Pakistanis had confidence in President Barack Obama, while 69 percent judge India to be a very serious threat — far higher than either the Taliban (57 percent) or al-Qaida (41 percent). That such suspicions should abound is not really surprising. Such is the unpopularity of America here, that the government has never publicly acknowledged collaborating with Washington in the fight against militants. Militants are normally referred to as "miscreants" and there is no serious effort to discredit their extremist ideology. "We are always telling the world about the losses and sacrifices we have sustained in the war on terror, but at the same time we never see any explanations of who is doing the killing," said Cyril Almeida, a liberal columnist. "It infinitely complicates counter-extremism efforts. They can't happen if poison is being pumped into the veins of Pakistani society." Hamid Gul, a former head of the country's main intelligence agency and a supporter of the Afghan Taliban, is a prime conspiracy theorist. Since the bin Laden killing, he has appeared on television repeating a popular rumor: The al-Qaida leader was really killed in Afghanistan and brought to Pakistan to humiliate the country. "My feeling is that it was all a hoax, a drama which has been crafted, and badly scripted I would say," he told an Indian TV station recently. "But they shouldn't make a scapegoat of Pakistan in this way. This is very wrong."

[achilles]

Americans seem to be slowly agreeing with what we have been saying since the past 20 years.

[Guest Gunner]

firstly you should not judge a religion by its people you should judge it by its source i.e. the Quran if i want to learn about hinduisam i should read the scriptures and text etc i shouldn't judge a religion by its followers because everyone is different

It is not about Islam or muslims son, this has to do with our Paki bros across the border. They have essentially perverted the religion and brought the whole word to the situation we are in today. No one else is to blame other than their insanity.