Please back off, Benazir!

#170 Hamidm2 (further thoughts)

Sir, although it is redundant to bring this to your attention, I am sure you are able to see how similar democracy is to sex!

For those who have easy access to it – usually the older folks – they think that “hey, it is no big deal!” In fact, when they get to that stage of vaanprastha – which I have a feeling you (and the Tauheed) have already arrived at – they say

“I am not interested!”

They go like this…

“yaaaaaawwwwwn!”

But please do indulge the younger folks, sir! Those younger folks who have so cruelly been and are deprived – why, those folks think that democracy in Pakistan, like sex, is the greatest, sweetest, most fulfilling experience they could ever hope to have!

And without causing you too much pain or anguish, sir – don’t you too, in some long-forgotten corner of your heart, feel a bit – if only the merest, the tiniest bit of spark of those same almost-forgotten feelings and – between bouts of incessant coughing and frequent trips to the gushalkhana, mutter…

“kabhie hum bhi waisey hi socha kartay thay!”

TFT

Two competing waves over Pakistan

Khaled Ahmed
Because of the death of Pakistani culture, normalisation with India has become more crucial than most of us realise

After 60 years Pakistan is helplessly witnessing the destruction of its culture by elements arising from within its society. The mission of purifying society to make it a fit vehicle for Islam has passed from the state. This process has been incremental, but after Talibanisation, the culture-destroying process has accelerated. The state seems to be getting cold feet over something it did earnestly since 1947 in the name of its ‘purifying’ ideology. Now worried about its global image, it is face to face with religious anarchy and wants society to become ‘tolerant’ and ‘moderate’, which is the function of culture.

It is entertainment, stupid! It is always difficult to define culture. People insist on its aesthetic aspects, but much of what people do in the name of culture is simple entertainment. The sophisticated man wants to separate aesthetic pleasure from vulgar entertainment, and that is where the people get a raw deal. People do a lot of things to lessen the burden of living in a difficult environment, and much of this ‘defensive’ routine of pleasure-seeking becomes creative and assumes the title of culture.

Is pleasure-seeking acceptable to religion? There was a time when Christianity would have nothing short of self-mortification as a way if life. In Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, the Church allowed Aristotle’s treatise on Tragedy but locked up his other book on Comedy, covering its pages with a fine film of poison. Comedy was vulgar entertainment and could not be allowed!

Writing in Jang (26 March 2006) Ataul Haq Qasimi referred to a statement made by ‘vulgar’ Punjabi pop-singer, Abrarul Haq, on the question of music as a source of peace of mind. A lady had asked if namaz was not the only source of this tranquillity. The columnist stated that the ulema were not united on the concept of entertainment in Pakistani culture. Were music, photography, singing, painting, poetry and cinema allowed as entertainment or not? That was the unanswered question. But today Talibanisation has removed all ambiguity and introduced us to the certitudes of amr and nahi.

It all boils down to entertainment in the case of Pakistan. If you don’t have consensus on the items listed by Qasimi, then you have only calligraphy to fall back on. The folk tradition has to be rejected because it is intertwined with entertainment. It appears that the masses express their culture only when they want to be entertained.

Culture as ‘fahashi’: Under General Zia-ul Haq, the state began to judge entertainment as fahashi (obscenity). The mela (fair) began to change. The great Mela Chiraghan of Lahore, with its fertility-rite tota and bhang -sodden dancing fakirs, was ‘cleansed’ of all un-Islamic accretions. All dancing (dhamaal) at the tombs of the Sufi saints was also ‘reformed’. Accounts of saints began to emphasise their adherence to Sharia. Sufism was viewed increasingly as heresy.

With the rise of jihad and the empowerment of Deobandi Islam, the Barelvis, who had actually celebrated the Sufi saints, in addition to supporting the Pakistan Movement, went into decline. Culture was threatened by the hard Islam General Zia was borrowing from the Arabs. His first Zakat and Ushr Ordinance was framed by an Arab scholar.

When the state becomes harshly anti-entertainment, the people rely on what is termed as ‘liminalism’, a kind of reaching out to neighbouring cultures. This is what happened when the state under General Zia began to judge entertainment as fahashi. The people, closed off from entertainment, reached out to India. Zia’s Islamisation drove the urban populations to watching videocassettes of Indian films and buying satellite TV dishes.

Interestingly, the dishes were bought only after Indian programmes became available on them. Understandably, the state of Pakistan was more upset about the ‘cultural invasion’ from India than with the American one that came in through globalisation.

Two competing waves over Pakistan: After the rise of the Taliban with the support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Pakistani culture came under threat. Mullah Umar began getting rid of whatever little culture remained in Afghanistan. He fell upon the ‘pleasure-seeking’ cities away from the austere Pushtun hinterland and tried to kill their culture. In Kabul, he found that India was filling the cultural gap left by faith with its song-and-dance movies.

The Taliban banned the films and banned the TV and the videocassettes too. They went into Mazar Sharif in the north and tried to set right the city steeped in ‘sinful entertainment’. The city revolted and massacred the Taliban army. Thwarted in the north, the Taliban turned to the Durand Line and found the best carriers of their virus of hatred in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. Today Pakistan is under siege from Talibanisation. It is a wave that punishes people’s pursuit of entertainment. And it has hit the entire country, including Islamabad. Culture is now pursued with a feeling of guilt and as a crime.

If Talibanisation is the wave that destroys culture in the name of Islam, another wave borrowed by the people as a countervailing force is coming from India. This second wave is less and less the furtive cultural function of the Zia period. It is carried on the groundswell of the process of normalisation with India set on foot by President Pervez Musharraf, the one policy over which the people of Pakistan support him. They will not say that all they want from India is what an ideological Pakistan and the Taliban are not willing to allow.

The music shops attacked by the Pakistani vigilante madrassa groups are mostly filled with videocassettes of Indian films and songs. Islamabad has no intellectual understanding of the fact that it is providing the people of Pakistan a chance to survive through normalisation with India. But who cares as long as we can survive Talibanisation? Because of the death of Pakistani culture, normalisation with India has become more crucial than most of us realise.

Before 1947, Muslims offended with the fahashi of Saadat Hasan Manto took him repeatedly to court, only to hear the Muslim judges under British Raj say that what Manto wrote was high culture, not obscenity. After 1947, every time he was dragged before the court for obscenity, he was convicted! The judge in Karachi gave him tea in the evening and told him he was the country’s greatest short story writer, but convicted him for obscenity in the morning. Now the state wants to stop killing culture, but it is too late.

#170 Hamidm2

[i have nothing to say about the events in pakistan]

Aah, but despair not, O Hamidm2! Your reluctance to say anything meaningful at this juncture in Pakistan’s life – when so many young bucks are salivating – imagining what democracy would taste like – your reluctance is fully understandable in view of your advanced years and those faculties losing their sharpness. :( But you can count on the rest of us to make up for your laziness…and then some! :)

......... and by the way, i have nothing to say about the events in pakistan - it is only something that is discussed by expatriates and horrible hindoos and other fools who don't have a dog in this fight (and that includes mike vick - he is even more stupid than masadi!)

will somebody please take masadi and put him out of his misery (and spare us the agony of putting up with him) ...... i am not a violent man, but i feel like slapping the crap out of this guy .......... is it just me ?

#166 IB

Without reflecting in any way on the future prospects of the BB, it needs to be recognized that there are strong parallels between the ZAB and the MAJ:

(1) Both pretended to be the “uniters” of their land – and yet proved to be its worst enemies and the vivisectionist of the same.

(2) Both thought of themselves as super smart – but both came way short on the common sense score.

(3) Both took their followers on the path to destruction.

(4) Neither of the two believed in the equality of all men and both proceeded to make a distinction between groups of men based on their labels.

masadi:
"aglay vaqtoan kay hain yeh loag, inhaiN kuchh naa kaho"
tr:
Backward old-fashioned folk atre these, lay not the blame on these.

What else you expect from the kennrels of Cantonments. Their minds are trained & programmed to be loyal to anyone who hires & pays them. Mercenary mentality. They were "educated" to take orders, follow policies & work & get paid. They look down upon protesters, reblels, fighters, radicals and "terrorists". Their religion is whatever is in-vogue. They are always wtith establishment..Once the "terrorists" win they immediatle adjust, compromise & become pragmatic...anything they will do to "survive"

They are face of the personified tragedy called Pakistan. Without lineage or pedigree they rea the ones documented to be the only looters during the 1857 uprising.

Re: # 159,
Manto - tell me something - with all what ZAB did for Pakistan ( Constitution of Pakistan , Atomic Bomb , OIC ) ; he undo lot of good things he did -
a) Making Qadyanis - Non-Muslim
b) His Nationalization Policy
c) Amendments in his own constitution

As far as Masadi is concerned - its better not to comment . We need more jokers here on chowk.

Re: # 159,
Manto - tell me something - with all what ZAB did for Pakistan ( Constitution of Pakistan , Atomic Bomb , OIC ) ; he undo lot of good things he did -
a) Making Qadyanis - Non-Muslim
b) His Nationalization Policy
c) Amendments in his own constitution

As far as Masadi is concerned - its better not to comment . We need more jokers here on chowk.

tahmed writes to echo "the Turkish government is in fact seeking memebership of the European Union. So, by your definition, this is not an Islamic government but a secularoon one. "

The country is defined by its people who have spoken, not by the maneuverings of power within the structure of the state in which the "people's will" gets reduced to an incremental percent. You are wrong tahmed, and a worshipper of the West [ threaten to take me to court for libel because I called you a "worshipper of the West"! = ) ]

Echo mian, amazing isn’t it how the oons are making buffoons of themselves with every new post the make

echoboom: Your view of "Islam" begins and ends with turning one's back to the west. On the other hand, the Turkish government is in fact seeking memebership of the European Union. So, by your definition, this is not an Islamic government but a secularoon one.

But dont let me disturb your celebrations...

Manto, By the way, thanks for pointing me to the site bhutto.org, lots of reading material there though like GWB your zeroed in at the photo only.........you miserable rat...

Being stumped by reason and the facts the miserable fcuk Manto is reduced to threat mongering and Ad Hominem attacks against ZAB, in the Mullah fashion, and presenting copy pastes of "secret" conversations among people as if that is any kind of "evidence". What happened as facts that made history bear witness to what I wrote, as against the dimwit mentality that describes Manto when he copy pastes with not a sentence of reason to state why his point (which are mostly non existant) are more valid than mine...

Has the news yet reached the westoxicated scum in SLAVELANDS?

The 2-number maal in slavelands, the pirated copies of their white masters, will never ever understand how the cantonment & colony culture blocks their minds.

The developments in Turkey are encouraging and The Secularoons & the Ata-Secularoon would soon join Marx & Lenin.

It is also encouraging to note that the word "SECULARISM" in not used as frequently and with as much "pride" on CHOWK as it once was used. Similarly the anday-bachhays of this word like "free-thinking" and "liberalism" and "humanism" all code words for the Kanjaroon to insult Allah & Muhammed(pbuh)] are not being used with impunity anymore.

The subconscious indeed works in mysterious ways..and tells the human who the Driver of the universe really is!

DEATH OF SECULARISM
I came across this compelling Oz Guinness quote today:
-------------------------------------------------------------
Americans with a purely secular view of life have too much to live with, too little to live for. Everything is permitted and nothing is important. But once growth and prosperity cease to be their reason for existence, they are bound to ask questions about the purpose and meaning of their lives: Whence? Whither? Why? And to such questions secularism has no answers that have yet proved widely satisfying in practice. Few of the great thinkers of the twentieth century have remained loyal to secular humanism. Secularism in its sophisticated form rarely flourishes outside intellectual centers where the mind is the organizing center of life. In its more "popular" Marxist form, it is keeling over arthritically. The very emptiness of our secular age is its deepest spiritual significance.

It is even conceivable that our generation is standing on the threshold of a rebound of historic proportions. The collapse of the great counterreligious ideologies - Freudianism's failure to recodify the private world and Marxism's to recodify the public - clears the greatest obstacle to this possibility. Philosophical denials of faith have become affirmations that need denying. Social permissions have become constrictions from which we need liberating. Secular iconoclasms have become idols that need debunking. Moral inversions have become blind orthodoxies against which we need new heresies. Critical deconstruction has become destructiveness against which the need is to build and rebuild. Even secular humanism turns out to be, not the bogey its enemies fear, but an oxymoron its supporters regret - for secularism does not produce humanism; humanism requires, not secularism, but supernaturalism.You might need to read that more than once. I did. And each time I read it, it made more sense than before.

Oz Guinness, The American Hour: A Time of Reckoning and the Once and Future Role of Faith (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 398.

This is the picture I am trying to post:

http://www.bhutto.org/images/p0916020301.jpg

The arab shaikhs and Bhutto shared a common vision: of converting middle east and Pakistan into the hedonistic paradise of the East...

But while Bhutto's casino unfortunately makes sorry viewing in Karachi's clifton, Al-Nayan's UAE has within the Union the prostitution's eastern capital i.e. Dubai.

I don't know if we are able to post pictures or not but here is Classic Bhutto: