ISLAMABAD: The government apparently remains in a state of denial regarding a massive threat posed by the Middle Eastern terrorist group Daesh (Islamic State), which recently announced its set-up for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Read more » DAWN
Learn more » http://www.dawn.com/news/1160813/
Soon after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, Islamist sympathizers on social media unleashed familiar rhetoric. AlQaida and ISIS supporters used Arabic language hashtags like “our revenge for the messenger (Muhammad)”, “Paris is the messenger (Muhammad)”, “Paris is Burning”, “Paris under Fire” and “Lions of Tawheed (monotheism)”. One self-styled jihadi tweeted, “This is the first reaction. You’ll not live in safety again.” Another said: “This proves that the Islamic State can strike deep in Europe whenever it wishes.” Someone styling himself as Abu Sari alIraqi put up a graphic of the Islamic State’s black flag on the Eiffel Tower, with the slogan in French: “We are everywhere.”
Such bombast reflects the emptiness of the Islamist dream. The killing of unarmed cartoonists and journalists is hardly an act of courage. Paris did not, in fact, burn and this latest act of terrorism mobilized the French against the jihadis just as terrorist attacks in New York, London and Mumbai had united people against them in the past.
More important, terrorism is unlikely to dissuade anyone so inclined to refrain from insulting Islam, its prophet or Muslims. Like followers of any other religion, Muslims do not like insults to their faith or to their prophet. But threats and actual attacks of the type witnessed in Paris last week have been limited to Islamists.
Contrary to the assertion of some, such violence has nothing to do with recent wars or the policies of great powers in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. A man named Alam Din from Lahore was proclaimed a ‘ghazi’ for killing a Hindu publisher of a book insulting Prophet Muhammad in 1929. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ prompted fatwas and violent protests 50 years later. These incidents cannot be attributed as reaction to US military intervention.
Of course, not all of the world’s over one billion Muslims react to real or perceived insults to their religion in the same manner. Believers in different deities and prophets have often slandered each other’s faiths. Islam has endured its share of criticism and abuse over the centuries, especially from Christians, against whom they fought the Crusades and the Ottoman wars.
But in earlier times, Muslims responded to religious affronts by pointing out flaws in other religions and outlining their own perfect faith. Their armies were violent but so were the armies of others. When Muslim emperors ruled over large non-Muslim populations, preachers and Sufi mystics worked to win converts to Islam. There is no record in those days of targeted attacks in retaliation for blasphemy against the prophet or Islam in distant lands.
The phenomenon of violent outrage over insults to Islam seems to have started during western colonial rule, with Muslim politicians seeking issues to mobilize their constituents. Contemporary jihadism seems to have grown out of the slogan ‘Islam in Danger’, which has been periodically invoked as a rallying cry for Islamist politics.
Ironically, it is the Islamists who draw attention to otherwise obscure attacks on Islam and then use those to muster popular support. The reaction makes more people aware of a book like Rushdie’s or a film like ‘The Innocence of Muhammad’. Charlie Hebdo regularly published only 45,000 copies but will likely be read by hundreds of thousands now.
The violence over ‘Islam’s honour’ is a function of the collective Muslim narrative of grievance. Decline, weakness, impotence, and helplessness are phrases most frequently repeated in the speeches and writings of today’s Muslim leaders. The view is shared by Islamists, who consider Islam a political ideology , and other Muslims who don’t. The terrorists are just the most extreme element among the Islamists. As a community , Muslims are obsessed with their past pre-eminence, which stands in stark contrast with their current weakness. The bravado of beheading blasphemers and thinking a terrorist attack can change the global order are ways of reclaiming a glory that is vividly recalled but not seen by Muslims in recent centuries.
Like all national and community narratives, this one has elements of truth. But it is equally true that Muslims have made no serious effort to understand the causes and remedies of their decline over the past 300 years. Outrage, resentment and violence -and the conspiracy theories that inform them -serve as palliatives for an Ummah that reads little, writes even less, hasn’t invented much in recent centuries, and wields little political or military power in the contemporary world. Dealing with the causes of Muslim decline, not random or orchestrated acts of terrorism, would be the real way forward in saving Muslims from dishonour.
The writer is former Pakistan envoy to the US.
Courtesy: The Times of India
Learn more » http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/all-that-matters/Terror-attacks-cannot-save-Islams-honour/articleshow/45839372.cms
It seems that Pakistan is set on the path of becoming a country where all critical decisions will be either taken or influenced by the military, and the civilian leadership will merely fill in the blank or be the guinea pig to go after when someone is needed to blame. The security apparatus might as well be in charge since the combined leadership, irrespective of party affiliation and relative respectability, politely hummed and hawed and accepted military courts as fait accompli. It is almost humorous to think of parties who claim to have agreed to the solution after being promised that these courts will not be used against them, or that their use will be controlled. An even sadder fact is that barring the enlightened civil society, which understands the long-term impact of such developments, the bulk of civil society, or even the general public in certain parts of Pakistan, has a ‘can’t-be-bothered’ attitude towards democracy, which they now consider to be of secondary importance. In the words of an acquaintance, “First, let’s have security and we will take care of democracy later.” The obvious problem with this system is that responsibility will be divided and one wouldn’t know who to blame.
Pakistanis are still grappling with the tragedy of the Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that left at least 141 people, most of them children, dead and scores injured. There has been an outpouring of grief internationally, and the Pakistani public is visibly outraged. But the question being widely asked is whether Pakistan’s military and political leaders can transform grief and outrage into a clear policy that would rid the country of its reputation as both a victim of and magnet for terrorists.
Even before this incident, Pakistan had one of the highest casualty rates at the hand of terrorists. About 19,700 civilians and 6,000 security force personnel have been reported killed in terrorism related violence in Pakistan since 2003. But the country refuses to develop a comprehensive approach to fighting or containing the 33-odd terrorist groups believed to be operating on Pakistani soil.
“The question being widely asked is whether Pakistan’s military and political leaders can transform grief and outrage into a clear policy that would rid the country of its reputation as both a victim of and magnet for terrorists.”
The latest attack is the Taliban’s response to the Pakistan army’s military operation against the terrorist safe haven in North Waziristan, part of the tribal region along the border with Afghanistan. Jihadis from all over the world had congregated in the tribal areas to fight as Mujahedeen against the Soviets during the 1980s. After the Soviets left, Pakistan used the militants for its own objectives of expanding Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, leading to the rise of the Taliban.
Read more » Huffington Post
See more » http://www.huffingtonpost.com/husain-haqqani/pakistan-school-attack-jihadis_b_6337112.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Jeremy Scahill’s new documentary reveals how dirty wars take innocent lives and make us less safe.
The United States deems Kabul, Afghanistan the center of the “war on terror.” The press corps and other embedded reporters, then, are limited to these borders.
But beyond these green (meaning safe, according to the U.S. govt.) streets of Afghanistan, lies a sea of red (dangerous) and black (Taliban-heavy) streets that go largely unexplored by journalists.
Yet, that’s exactly where investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill begins to delve in his new documentary Dirty Wars, directed by Rick Rowley.
Read more » AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/media/review-jeremy-scahills-new-documentary-dirty-wars
by Omar Ali
My take on the Pak army’s current position oscillates between Taqi’s opinion and the opinion of Dr. Manzur Ejaz. I was fully behind Dr. Manzur Ejaz this morning. But its getting late at night and I just saw Kamran Khan and so maybe its time to put on a more pessimistic hat…
Rationally, Dr. Saheb is one hundred percent right. The army has a huge stake in Pakistan’s economy. Pakistan’s economy has no future if we are in a state of near-war and proxy war with India, Pakistan’s economy has even less of a future if NATO regards Pakistan as an enemy instead of an ally. India’s economy is growing rapidly. Peace will allow Pakistan to attach on India’s growth. Given its lower population density, reasonable infrastructure in Punjab and Karachi, relatively homogeneous heartland,and favorable location (Iran-India pipeline, central Asian transit trade, easier to ship things from Karachi to East Punjab than it is to go via Gujarat, etc.) Pakistan can actually start making serious money relatively quickly and that means the army will make money. China is also focused on economic growth and trade between India and China is exploding. Pakistan can get a share in all that. The peace dividend, in other words, is real and almost immediate.
Meanwhile, the jihadis are certifiably insane and are already a huge threat to the Pakistani state. America, NATO, Japan, Korea, all will pay good money to go after them and the job will take so many years, the army has no reason to worry that its “war on terror” gravy train will dry up anytime soon. Socially, Pakistan is not really ready for Jihadists rule. The jihadis have absolutely no workable program for a modern state….the case for ditching the jihadis and making peace with India seems open and shut. (Of course, INDIA may not cooperate either, but we are focusing right now on what the Pak army is thinking).
So are there some reasons to doubt this rational analysis?
1. The army may calculate (miscalculate in my opinion, but who said they cannot miscalculate?) that peace with India will deprive them of their ability to keep everyone else in Pakistan under their thumb. Or (even more stupidly) that it will deprive Pakistan of its reason for existence.
2. Some geniuses in NDU spend their life looking at rivers on the map and writing position papers about how Pakistan will shrivel and die if we don’t “have Kashmir”. Outsiders tend to think this his just the usual institute of strategic studies bullshit, but I have yet to meet an army officer who did not wholly or partly believe this.All sorts of other gory details about evil devious Hindu Brahmans and their determination to eat every last Muslim baby are added as needed. Again, outsiders tend to think this is “just propaganda” and expect that the army can distinguish between genuine maniacs like Babu Bajrangi and mainstream Indian politicians, but maybe the outsiders are giving the army too much credit? As you may know, even senior army officers seem to believe this propaganda by the time they have had a few drinks. This is an old hazard in the world of propaganda: the propagandists tend to fall for their own propaganda, especially when they live in some echo chamber where alternative views don’t get in anyway.
3. Some in the army and its “think tanks” (Shireen Mazari?) may think that it is more rational to destroy India before it becomes a serious power, and they may imagine that their BFFs in China actually want the same. It does’nt matter if Wen Jia bao doesnt actually think in these terms. What matters is that Shireen Mazari and General Tinpot bahadur imagine that the Chinese want this to happen. Dr. Manzur Ejaz is a sane person, but far too many Pakistani army officers are listening to Zaid Hamid and Ahmed Qureshi, not Dr Manzur Ejaz. What if they take those nutcases seriously?
4. The problem of true believers. Again, outsiders tend to think that Islam and the whole neo-wahabi paradigm are basically means to an end. Tools used by the Pak army to get its goodies, just like Republican candidates use evangelical Christianity. But what if a lot of people in high places actually believe that Allah is waiting for them to unite the Ummah and lead it in its eternal struggle against the infidels?
5. There is the issue of some events that don’t make a lot of sense if the jihadi option is actually being shut down: the determined refusal to launch frontal propaganda against the jihadis; the fact that ISI mouthpieces are constantly working to stir up anti-American and anti-Indian feelings and spreading confusion about the jihadi menace; The attack on Mumbai and the determined effort to present it as some kind of Indian plot;The mysterious survival of all senior jihadi leaders; Masood Azhar; Daood Ibrahim; Ahmed Saeed Shiekh; Haqqani network; Fazlullah, etc. And the line taken by army spokesmen like Kamran Khan; Shireen Mazari….too many loose ends…
5. Finally, there is the issue of nutcases. Every nation has some maniacs who need to be kept in asylums or employed in low level police jobs or as prison guards in Texas. If this kind of person makes it to some place where they can plan another attack on Mumbai, then all bets are off.
Dr. T has mentioned the Nazis. The sophisticated, highly civilized German nation ruined Germany and all of Europe in 12 short years of Nazi rule. At some level, Hitler’s initial actions seemed rational. Rationalists fully expected that he would also know where to draw the line. They were proven terribly wrong. What if the true believers are not thinking of means but ends?
I look forward to being proved wrong.
Courtesy: CRDP, Fri Jan 1, 2010
by Khalid Hashmani, McLean, Virginia, USA
Taliban beating the girl mercilessly, click here to see the video
This is shocking and makes me ashamed that this is happening in the same country of which Sindh is also a part. I am angry as hell! These beasts and their supporters have no shame and their hearts are devoid of peaceful teachings of Islam. Beating mercilessly the poor woman on the pretext that “She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband” is barbaric and it is obvious they do not live in past and are bent upon destruction and treating people with such cruelty.
May Allah punish these beasts if the government lacks the courage to save the wretched country of Pakistan from these barbarians.
Continue reading Taliban Justice- A pashtoon girl flogging by Taliban
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