Cheer the assassin! – by Khurram Husain

Cheer on my friends! Cheer on the assassin! Smile and clap your hands, chant odes to the ghazi’s bravery! Go ahead, applaud the darkness that is coming your way, because once it has taken you into its embrace, there’ll be no cheer left in your life.

Hail the assassin as your hero! Lift him up on your shoulders and show his brave deed to your children! Tell them to emulate his example and follow his footsteps! Kiss the ground he walked on! Congregate outside the prison that holds him and shout slogans so he hears your support through the walls. Because soon, the only heroes left in your life will be those with blood on their hands and death in their hearts.

Denounce the fallen governor! Denounce his licentious ways! Mock his speeches and drag his grieving wife and children through the dirt that is in your mind, your eyes! Question his faith: Was he a secret atheist? Fling all manner of filth and dirt on his name and his ways, for soon there’ll be nothing left in your minds, other than the filth of a faithless piety and the dirt of prejudice.

Sanctify the assassin’s bullet! Distill all your hatreds and frustrations into it! Place it on a pedestal and recite psalms of solemn servitude to it! Let it be the one fixed point in your life, your north star by which you navigate yourself towards your destiny! Let its line of travel, from muzzle to victim, be the straight and narrow path you seek to your salvation. May you find your victim one day too, just like the bullet found its. Yes, sanctify the bullet because soon it’ll light the way for you towards that destiny where you hold the knife in your hands and your hapless victim struggles vainly in your clutches.

While you’re at it, make a game out of it all. Clap, laugh and sing songs while the darkness falls all around you. Tell yourself silly little tales of how it’s all for the best because, after all, politicians are corrupt and deserve it all. Let the madness ooze into your puny minds without a struggle, since struggle in the path of what is right can get you killed.

Kiss the pages of the document where the ‘holy’ laws are written. Don’t read them, don’t think about what they say. Don’t ask questions about them, such as what the rules of evidence are under these laws or how the court is supposed to tell the difference between a true and false allegation. No, don’t do any of that, because soon these will be the only laws left in your life.

Do it, my friends! Because there is no ‘silent majority’ any more, only a frightened and confused flock hemmed in by the darkness, trembling at the howling of the hyenas around, huddled together under a vanishing light, barely enduring the great dark absence beyond.

No words will soothe their fears, no courage will call them to action. No strength exists any longer to lift this cowering multitude into the ranks of humanity, no mind’s eye to light the way for them.

So do it! Celebrate all manner of bloodlust because soon there will be nobody left in your life who can call murder by its name.

Courtesy: The Express Tribune, January 6th, 2011.

Link- http://tribune.com.pk/story/99546/cheer-the-assassin/

Mullah Shahi and their opponents – by Dr. Manzur Ejaz

What are it that Mullah Shahi has and their opponent don’t have:

1. Mullahs have a concerted ideology which may be called twisted, but they have it. Their opponents do not have a central ideological theme: they are collection of individualists who are against Mullah Shahi due to different reasons.

2. Because of ideological strength Mullah Sahi has people who are willing to sacrifice their life for their cause. Their opponents do not have such committed people.

3. Mullah Sahi has been supported by Pakistani state in organizing themselves and through an educational system that produces pro-Mullah Shahi crowd. Now, Mullah Shahi may not need state support and function on its own.

4. Pro-Mullah Shahi mass has infested all the state institutions including all kinds of security agencies. Therefore, Mullah Shahi has a significant control over the state with or without Islamabad’s help.

5. The new rich class, backward in its world outlook, is more likely to fund Mullah Shahi than its opposing modernist forces (if there are any).

6. The liberal minority–that is what it is–has no commitment to enlightened ideals. They are just a small crowd of ever-mourning people.

Courtesy: http://www.wichaar.com/news/285/ARTICLE/23516/2011-01-07.html

Jamat-e-Islami sees Taseer’s assassin in ‘seventh heaven’

JI sees Taseer’s assassin in ‘seventh heaven’

By Shamim Bano, Karachi

In a shockingly blunt endorsement of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination, Ameer Jamat-e-Islami in Sindh Asadullah Bhutto has declared that the assassin will directly go to the “seventh heaven”.

He said this after a press conference addressed by JI Ameer Munawar Hasan at Idara-e-Noor-e-Haq on Tuesday. The press conference ended abruptly when a JI spokesman Sarfaraz Ahmad broke the news of Taseer’s assassination to Munawar. “Is he alive?” was his first reaction.

“Whoever has killed him is a pious man and will go directly to heaven,” replied Bhutto to a question put forward by this correspondent.

He even went on to say that Taseer would not have got killed if the government had replaced him. “Aasia Bibi will suffer the same fate if the punishment awarded to her by the court for using derogatory remarks against Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa (PBUH) is not implemented,” he added.

Earlier, during the press conference, Syed Munawar Hasan said that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) should also clear its position in Sindh after parting ways with the government at the Centre. …

Read more : The News

Salmaan Taseer: assassinated on a perilous path – Dr Mohammad Taqi

Salmaan Taseer dedicated his personal fortune to the cause of publishing the unvarnished truth and the people’s right to know this truth. It would not have been possible for this paper’s editorial board to carry itself independently were it not for Salmaan Taseer’s personal commitment to not only this project but to the very freedoms of speech and expression.

“The sorrowful smell of the mist,

Lingering over the Indus,

Gentle waves of rice, dung and rind,

This is the salt cry of Sindh,

As I die let me feel,

The fragrance of tears”

— Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.

“It was a Sindhi poet, Shah Abdul Latif, who captured the forlornness of his country in this haunting verse,” wrote Salmaan Taseer in the opening chapter of his 1979 book, Bhutto: A Political Biography. I have read these words many times but had never once thought that the forlornness might get deeper than the deepest depression one could feel. But the assassination of Salmaan Taseer has left many of us even more devastated and depressed than what Shah Latif could depict.

I do not mourn Salmaan Taseer alone but I also mourn those who have been killed before him on the perilous path of speaking their mind, and those who will be killed in the future on this journey. Ayesha Siddiqa, Kamran Shafi, Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Sherry Rehman,  and so many others are living on borrowed time. It is not a matter of if but when an indoctrinated bigot let loose by the deep state will get to them or, for that matter, any of us who decline to follow the rotten creed that it has been peddling for decades.

However, I have a feeling that Salmaan Taseer would not have wanted to be remembered with melancholy. His illustrious father, Dr M D Taseer, once said:

“Parwana jal kay dil ki muradon ko pa gaya, Aur shama reh gayi rukh-e-zeba liay huay” (Translation: The light-loving moth has died caressing the candle flame. The candle thus remains alone in all its elegance).

It is nearly impossible to accurately translate the above Urdu verse, which my father, Malik Rahat Ali, had quoted while writing Dr M D Taseer’s obituary for Edward’s College, Peshawar’s magazine Tajjali (light) in 1951. The obituary was titled ‘Aik raushan dimagh tha, na raha’ (an enlightened mind is no more). It is amazing how references to light and progressive thought keep popping up when discussing the Taseers and in the work of the Taseers themselves. Pakistan, and the liberal thought within Pakistan, is the candle that Salmaan and M D Taseer loved to the extent that to see it remain alight, they would dedicate their lives to it.

When thinking of Salmaan Taseer, two images come to mind. One is of a political activist and the second is of a patron of progressive and liberal thought. Perhaps senior members of the Indo-Pakistani leftist movement will recall that Dr M D Taseer, along with Abdullah Malik and Rajindra Singh Bedi had pioneered a liberal publishing house called Sangham Publishers in 1947, before the partition. I would not be wrong in assuming that the Daily Times and its media affiliates came into being due to Salmaan Taseer’s desire to follow in his father’s footsteps. …

Read more : Daily Times

Religion has made Pakistan a schizophrenic society: Ayaz Amir

In a time when obscurantists and terrorists have tried to silence our voices and strike off the heads of those who dared oppose them, Taseer spoke without fear, condemning the blasphemy law and those who stood in its defence, despite the very real threat of violent retribution.

Source Link – You Tube

Sindh Needs to Stand Up against the Religious Extremism!

By Dr. Ahmed H. Makhdoom, Singapore

Salman Taaseer is killed! So…? Nawab Akbar Bugti is murdered! Did anybody care? Benazir Bhutto is gunned down! Who are the killers? … Who bothers? There are countless innocent Balochs becoming victims of target killing! Any justice for them?

Pakistan at knife’s edge

Karachi – Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) is organizing the launching ceremony of the book “Pakistan at knife’s edge” by late M. B. Naqvi at Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA), Aewan-e-Sadr Road, Karachi on January 9, 2011 at 3.00 pm. Former diplomat, Former Union State Minister for External Affairs, Ex-Member of Indian Lok Sabha (lower house) and central leader of member of the Indian National Congress party Mani Shankar Aiyar will the chief guest on the occasion.