Daily Archives: 14/09/2010

Pakistan, Politics

Feudal-mullah alliance – Dr Manzur Ejaz

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The combination of rising mullah shahi and feudalism has produced the most corrupt and inhumane systems in human history. From mediaeval Europe to India to modern Pakistan, the feudal-clergy alliance — in most cases the clergy was the feudal — has devastated social development

The last time I checked the history books, it was clear to me that the British gave lands to our feudals. I had to check it again during the last week and I did not find anything contrary to my previous assessment. The cause for doubting my own recollection of history was due to an e-mail response to one of my articles from a reader.

The reader had serious problems with my emphasis on abolishing feudalism and enforcing a strict land reforms programme. The reader asserted that the land was given to the feudal class by God and that land reforms were akin to negating religion and the will of the Creator. The reader had suggested that we should plead to the rich to be kind to the poor and not indulge in methods negating the essence of our religion.

There is nothing new about this reader’s critique. Such arguments were common in pre-industrial Europe where the Catholic Church was part of the ruling classes in exploiting the poor serfs. …

Read more >> WICHAAR
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Balochistan, Pakistan, Politics

The question of Balochistan

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By: Urooj Zia

If you see the flag of Pakistan in Balochistan, you are either on the Balochistan University campus in Quetta or at the provincial assembly – or, more alarmingly, within metres of a checkpost manned by the Frontier Corps (FC), the paramilitary force that controls the province. Nowhere else in this, the country’s largest province by area, will you see the national flag. On the contrary, flags of Azad Balochistan are a dime a dozen, adorning shops, houses, streetlights and random poles. Schools in the province – even those administered by the government – start their day not with ‘Pak ser zameen’ (the national anthem), but with ‘Ma chukki Balochani’, the anthem of Azad Balochistan. Here, the Pakistani state, army and paramilitary forces are figures of hate, while the sarmachar (Baloch ‘freedom fighters’) are considered heroes.

Read more >>- HIMAL

Life, News

Nurse finds her long-lost dad

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Nurse Discovers Patient Is Her Long-Lost Father

– David Knowles

Wanda Rodriguez, a 41-year-old assistant head nurse at New York’s Calvary Hospital, had not seen her father since she was a baby.

Raised by her mother in the Bronx after her parents broke up when she was less than a year old, Rodriguez didn’t know much more of her father than his name, Victor Peraza, and her mother’s recollection that Rodriguez looked a lot like him.

But as fate would have it, on Aug. 25 a new cancer patient was admitted to Calvary, a hospital that administers care to the terminally ill. When Rodriguez learned his name while discussing his case with a colleague, she froze up.

“I thought, if he’s my complexion, if he has green eyes, he could be my dad,” Rodriguez told ABC News. …

Read more >> AOL News

Pakistan, Politics, Religion, Thoughts

Barbaric punishments are in fact the only part of Islam that appeals to the Taliban and their supporters

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Stoning to death —Ishtiaq Ahmed

The well-known English journalist Robert Fisk has presented a detailed investigative report, ‘The crimewave that shames the world’ in The Independent, September 7, 2010, about so-called honour killings. Not surprisingly, the highest incidence of such crimes is in the Muslim world, though even some non-Muslim Middle Eastern minorities and Hindus in India practise it. What I found particularly shocking was that after murdering a daughter or sister, a Muslim culprit can walk away scot-free because the Islamic law of qisas (retaliation) allows heirs to pardon the criminal. Thus, other family members can pardon the offender. All such relics of barbarism have to be done away with. Already in the 19th century, Maulvi Chiragh Ali wrote that the Quran is not a book of law. Justice Munir has also advanced similar arguments. Privately, most of the educated Muslims I talk to agree with me that hudood laws, blasphemy laws and many other such laws are anachronisms that have no place in the 21st century. More such voices need to be heard in the public space.

The task in hand for modern Muslims is to separate the spiritual, moral and ethical message of Islam from penal laws reflecting the sensibilities of tribal society of the seventh century.

Stoning to death is practised as a routine punishment for adultery in Iran and Saudi Arabia. When the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, they too imposed it with a relish and did it with the same enthusiasm in their enclaves called Islamic emirates when they ruled in some pockets of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Swat valley. There is no doubt that the origin of this barbaric punishment is the Old Testament of the Jews. The Jewish Torah prescribes it for a host of other offences as well. It is not mentioned in the Quran. However, all the five schools of Islamic jurisprudence — Hanafi, Shafai, Maliki and Hanbali of the Sunnis and the Ja’afri of the Shias prescribe it for adultery. On this point of law, there is complete unanimity of opinion. I believe the Khawarji school of thought adheres to it as well. …

Read more >> Daily Times