Sunday morning at church. . .

Not exactly, but. . .

This morning rather than lamenting over the political situation (which I will still do, hasb-e-m'amool) in Pakistan and the world, I decided to try and follow the advice of my mother and dearly departed Naniji: "Subah savere khuda ka naam liya karo." I'm not certain I voiced khuda ka naam first thing in the morning, unless my mother is God, but I did go to YouTube in search of some zaboor I grew up listening to. I couldn't find what I was looking for but part of a journey, as it was for Candide, for Quixote and the little Prince, among other characters fictional and real, is to come across the unexpected.

I had no idea there was such a thing as JCTV (Jesus Christ television) in Pakistan, since religion is not the main topic of conversation in the brief exchanges we have with family back home. Is there still such a thing as JCTV and is it still operating out of Lahore?

I've never been a big fan of evangelists on television, and I am always wary of triumphalism, but I think this can be good, only. This video snippet is interesting, the captions when the song come on are cheesy but the lyrics are taken from Jesus' preachings teachings.




***

I thought if JCTV is based in Lahore, and available to a "wide" audience in Pakistan, then it is a choice that one can take or leave when watching television, but a commendable step in the right direction re: freedom of expression. If it still exists. I would not support it if any of its programs were triumphalist in denouncing other faiths within the country.

One of the priests at the church I used to go to, in one of his sermons, said something that was negative about "the Muslim community". I cannot recall what he said but I cringed when he said it. I went home thinking about the best way to react to what he said. Life got in the way, and I had all but forgotten about Sunday. I went to church at the end of the week, and before beginning his sermon, Father apologized to those he may have offended with his remarks the previous week. There were churchgoers in our midst including myself who are related to Muslims, and someone must have complained.

The problem I have with people generalizing about Arabs, and saying death to Palestinians is that they almost always render the minorities as irrelevant, they almost always render the secularistas as irrelevant, and when they do that, when they discount the fact that there are Palestinians who are not "Islamists", who aren't even Muslims who have decried the Israeli occupation for years now, and have suffered just as brutally as the Muslims and NOT because of them, I wonder how much better are the minds of these folk who make such generalizations than those "Islamists" and extremists who see us as irrelevant and "fodder?"

I wonder about those Pakistanis who are insistent on treating what is happening in the North as a "local" matter. In doing so, are we not rendering those in the North who are against the Taliban as irrelevant. Obviously, the situations are different, but the presence of the Taliban, and its effect on a population cannot be ignored as a "local" matter.

Sarhad, Sindh, Baluchistan
Teenon hain Panjab ki jaan
Aur Bangal hai sab ki aan
Aai na un ke lab par aah
Pakistan ka matlab kya
La Ilaha Illalah…

--HJ

Well, "Bangal" is now Bangladesh, so no more aan, and he wasn't talking about the teenoN as being subservient to the Punjab. He was writing in this poem about the interconnectedness of all of us, and that freedom and justice go hand in hand. Something that supposed lovers of democracy don't always grasp, from the "liberal" to the "conservative."

And I thought I wanted to avoid this today. . . . the keyboard has a mind all its own.