Be critical – By: Nadeem F. Paracha

In spite of the gradual infiltration of ubiquitous religious symbolism and mentality in the social spheres of everyday life, Pakistan has managed to remain afloat as a dynamically pluralistic society comprising various ethnicities, religions and Islamic sects.

However, starting in the late 1970s, an anti-pluralistic process was initiated by the Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship that soon spiralled beyond mere posturing and sloganeering.

With the ‘Afghan jihad’ raging against the former Soviet Union, Zia, his intelligence agencies, and parties like Jamat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam started embracing a narrow and highly political version of Islam.

This was done to radicalise large sections of the Pakistani Muslims who had historically been a part of more apolitical strains of the faith — the kind that over the centuries had evolved within the largely pluralistic milieu of the subcontinent.

The ‘iron hand’ mentality – Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

The iron hand mentality has been the bane of the establishment and rulers and it is not something inadvertent, spontaneous or random; it is the natural consequence of the deeply etched religious and racist bias

The Balochistan Cabinet, reports say, in order to maintain the writ of the government, has decided to clamp down on anti-Pakistan elements “with an iron hand”. This ‘earthshaking’ decision implies that previously the Baloch people were being dealt with with velvety hands and utmost compassion. The art of dissembling and deceit should be learnt from this ‘establishment’; they should open another university similar to their ‘strategic depth university’, which teaches the finer points of terrorism in its ‘strategic assets’ department.

Myths Monsters and Jihad

– Myths and monsters – by Nadeem F. Paracha

In spite of the gradual infiltration of ubiquitous religious symbolism and mentality in the social spheres of everyday life, Pakistan has managed to remain afloat as a pluralistic society comprising various ethnicities, religions and Muslim sects.

However, starting in the late 1970s, an anti-pluralistic process was initiated by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship that soon spiralled beyond mere posturing and sloganeering.

With the ‘Afghan jihad’ raging against the former Soviet Union, Zia, his intelligence agencies and parties like the Jamat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam started embracing a narrow and highly politicised version of Islam. This was done to radicalise large sections of Pakistani Muslims who had historically been part of a more apolitical and tolerant strains of the faith.

Most Pakistanis related to the shrine culture and the sufi traditions of the subcontinent, and thus, were least suitable to fight a ‘jihad’ that Zia was planning to peddle in Afghanistan at the behest of the CIA. Pakistanis’ beliefs were not compatible at all with this new strain of a political Islam. To compensate this ideological ‘deficiency’, the Zia regime (with American and Arab money) helped start indoctrination centres in the shape of thousands of jihadist madrassas.

Almost all of them were run by radical puritans. These were preachers and ‘scholars’ who had become critical of the strains of the faith that most Pakistanis adhered to. Accusing these strains of being ‘adulterated’, they advocated the more assertive charms of ‘political Islam’, of the likes recommended by Abul Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb and Khurram Murad. …

Read more : DAWN

A voyage into the intolerant mind – by Amajd Nazeer

Who is next? Shall we read this from the pamphlet flown besides the bullet ridden body of Shahbaz Bhatti or somewhat more too? Something deeper and disturbingly pervasive around us? Something partly brutal and bloody and partly preachy and persuasive but it has been there for decades difficult to deny. Fanatic and fundamentalists play it with bullets while the soft-spoken suffocate every breath of freedom and fragrance with their voluminous oratory. The pamphlet is the dossier of death and intimidation, the manifesto of a blinkered mind scripted in red and must not be read as an isolated act of murder or an ignorable statement.

Dehumanize and gun them down. This is what the religious dogmatism does or intends to do to the non-Muslim minorities for they have a mission to purify arz-e-pak from all those worshipping God differently or a different god. The very phrase of “eisai kafir Shahbaz Bhatti maloon” amply manifests the hateful mentality of the murderers, damning and casting a human soul aside in a single breath, just because he was ‘a Christian’. Immune from guilt, the wilful words are deployed to dismiss the ‘humanness’ of a person and justify the heinous crimes, opening up their genocidal intent against the followers of ‘other faiths’. In its worst form, once the ‘inequality’ and ‘sub-humanness’ of a group is made tangibly or tacitly ‘natural’, the horrible assaults become acceptable and quickly pass into oblivion. …

Read more : View Point