Religiosity, National Ethos and Governance

The Good-Cop and the Bad-Cop Game


The Islamists are back with their game of playing a "good cop- bad cop" in the current crisis. The "Good Cop" critcizes the "Bad-Cop" (the radicals) to ensure that their program of Islamization of Pakistan is complete.

They are condemning the Bad-cop (radicals) - while at the same time ensuring the Shariah and the Sunnat remains at the BASE of a modern nation state.

They want "elders" to re-work the constitution - that is un-believable!
I would say let the "youngsters" re-work the constitution and throw these "elders" in their old age homes.
The "youngsters" would ensure that Shariah and Sunnah remains within the private lives of citizens and does not try to collapse the democratic civilian structures.

Un-believable to think these guys are now even thinking of a "Khilafat" ???

Pakistan is certainly under the grip of Islamists!!

"..............it is wholly pertinent and very apt to accept the ‘Charter of Madina’ [or ‘Constitution of Madina’ / ‘Mēēsāq-e-Madina’] as a beacon for setting out a fresh Constitution; or, review the 1973 document to bring it in line with the suggested requirements afore-mentioned."

OMG.......the idolators have to re-work their charters as well now!!!

We hindu idolators are looking at this carefully and preparing our selves for the eventuality in case these Islamists succeed in their goals.

I think everyone has mixed feelings about what is happening to our country. I stand by Mushy in this situation but I do have very grave concerns about so many things:

1. In the US, after GWB controversially won his first election there were threats of court battles and the situation could have gotten ugly...but they have a tradition of rallying behind the person whom is in charge. I wish we had more of this in us; even if we disagree with our leaders, we should never take democracy to mean that destabilizing the entire situation is an expression of our democratic rights....its just not right for the country. Its not easy to make another country, we should cherish what we have and protect it with our dear lives.

2. Mushy has made some terrible mistakes and he should be held accountable for those, but not while he is running the country and we have so many problems to take care of. The war against our own people cannot go on. No matter how much we think they are extremists, we cannot forget that they are our own flesh and blood and we cannot declare war on them...it will lead to civil war in Pakistan and dismemberment of the state. This is an American agenda and Mushy and all other "leaders" should steer clear of the US agenda in Pakistan.

3. Bibi seems to be even more eager than Mushy to push the American agenda. She even disgracefully said in the press that the Americans should use all leverage, including aid, to pressure Pakistan into compliance. Rather than fight for our sovereignty, Bibi is more than willing to sell us down the river to save her legacy and looted gains. I fear that Bibi will lead us to civil war through the US agenda in Pakistan.

4. The Americans seem hell-bent on destroying Pakistan from within. Iraq and Iran still require and outside force to invade and destroy. In Pakistan they have found that internal fractures don't require them to even set foot on the ground; they are having us fight one another. The recent batch of soldiers sent to SWAT was screen to ensure no pashtuns were included. How can we start discriminating amongst ourselves like this?

5. The judiciary should always remain independent and the Chief Justice did many great things. However, he should not have gone in the same current as the opposition which sought to destabilize the country. In this, he committed a grave offense against the country. In all democracies, national interest is weighed heavily against idealistic concerns of the legal community and often national security prevails. In the west, specially the US and UK, you have countless examples in recent years. Why did the CJ not give a damn about destabilizing the entire country? He should have left Mushy's democracy agenda alone and let Phase 3 take place. Idealism fails to realize that stability, not democracy, is what we need. We cannot have democracy because we dont have enough free people to vote. Feudalism and Feudals must be eliminated before true democracy can happen in Pakistan.

6. The media has been absolutely disgraceful. They simply thrive on controversy and negativity. I have not seen anything positive about everything good that has happened in Pakistan in the last 8 years. And if they do show something positive, they will never credit the government for it. People like Ayesha Tammy Haq simply have no sincerity for the country and are out there for photo ops. Where the hell were they during Bibi or Nawaz's terms? They know that Mushy will not lock them up for their behavior on TV so they take unfair advantage and openly display a disgraceful bias without any information that balances their disinformation. Just pick up Dawn and you have Mr Social Elite's (Hameed Haroon with his british accent) newspaper demonstrating its impeccable "Civil Society" credentials by ensuring that nothing positive is allowed to make it to the front page. No sir, criticism of the government is a sign of enlightenment amongst the GT magazine crowd and they love to show how pro-democracy they are and how much they represent the forces of moderation in Pakistan. Do the really represent anyone in Pakistan except themselves? The point is that the media has been a disgrace and should have been more responsible and people like Hameed Haroon should finally stop taking their monthly stipends from the CIA and show some loyalty to the country of their forefathers. Western media does criticize, but it does not cross and break every boundary as does Pakistani media. New freedom has been totally abused and I am glad that some rules will be put back in place.

7. The war on terror is a war not only on Islam, but all muslim countries one by one. We should steer clear of it and tell the Americans and their Zionist masters to go Screw their themselves. Enlightened moderation is bullshit. Please stop trying to come up with a new Deen-e-Ilahi and stick to your job as the leader of the country, not the faith. Meddling in this will get you killed and there will be no sympathy for you in any quarter except the sellout GT magazine crowd and bastard/prostitute infested "Civil Society".

8. The army really should get the hell out of everything. In fact, we should cut our budget down completely and declare unilateral peace with India. What the hell are we fighting for anyway? Its costing us both much more than its worth and there really shouldn't be any enmity anymore. The army should also be kicked out of banking, fertilizers, land development, DHA's and everything else. They should be stripped of their perks and sent back to the barracks. No more DHA, no more Askari corporation, no more the country existing for the army rather than the other way around! The armed forces should also be forced to give up all lands in and around the cities and be kicked out into the outskirts. Army people should not be compensated with land and the army should never be allowed to build DHA-like areas. These should all be returned to civilian rule.

9. Federations can only function properly if all the provinces are more or less equal. Punjab really throws all of this out of balance and steps should be taken to correct this mistake once and for all. Punjab should be split into 3 provinces; South, Central and North. This would give Pakistan 6 more or less equal provinces and Balochistan, NWFP and Sindh may have fewer legitimate complaints in the future if we take this bold step. The army should also be de-punjabized. It must represent all of Pakistan and this monopolization should be ended. I realize that many top generals come from NWFP and even amongst the Urdu speaking people, but everyone knows that the army has a punjabi culture and we must change that to make everyone feel that it is theirs.

10. Benazir, Nawaz, Altaf, Fazlur Rehman, Qazi, Bugti, Pir Pagara, and all other leaders that we have seen so far are all traitors. I wish the extremists would take them out instead of innocent people. The people should finally wake up and come up with a new set of people to represent them. PPP is a party of feudals. MQM is a terrorist party. PML is a punjabi party, not a Pakistani party..they always did what they did for Punjab and Lahore and didn't do much for Karachi with taxes mostly paid by Karachites. Qazi and FazlurRehman are munafiqs who misuse religion for their own gains while they secretly party it up in Dubai with underage hookers and gigolos. Not kidding!!

11. There is an exercise taking place right now to destabilize Pakistan in which Bibi, the lawyers, the media and others are all participating for their own ends. This will probably end up taking us to civil war. As drastic as this sounds, I think Mushy should have taken some tough decisions and actually really come down hard on these elements before. Now its almost too late. He should have executed a few of these elements for treason and all of these photo op people would have immediately backed off to their normal positions. Now, he has no choice but to try to smooth things out and hope for the best. He will probably compromise with Bibi and seal all of our fates with this witch from hell.

12. Mark my words, Bibi will cause a civil war. She is arrogant, a slave to foreign interests, totally insincere, completely misguided, surrounded by feudals/thugs/prostitutes/social climbers, unable to work with others, easily makes enemies for life, hated by the army, hated by most people who remember what she and her husband have done to our country.

God, I pray for a miracle!

Laddu....have you even asked yourself what Khilafat is? I mean, people seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to Shariah or the concept of Khilafat. Tell me how wonderfully democracy and capitalism are working out for 30% of America's poor. Tell me how capitalism is the most stable system that doesnt almost collapse once every 10 years. Tell me capitalism doesn't cause extreme disparities in wealth.

We should have a little more pride in our history and heritage and not be so quick to reject it for the experience of another nation on the other side of the world that has historically told us that they are superior and we are the dark skinned lesser humans. Maybe if we took these ideas of Sharia and Khilafat and spoke about them amongst ourselves and made them our own and viable in our lives, we would have more connection to our own history, more pride in our way of life, and less strife within our communities.

Democracy as we are being told by the Americans is their idea of this concept, and we should have our own that suits us. In the evolution of society and ideas, can we ever say that such and such an idea (Democracy/Capitalism) is the and the final solution to all our questions? I don't think so. We should be willing to question democracy, capitalism and the western way of life just as much as we tend to question Islam and Sharia.

I definitely do not support talibanization, but I really question the knee-jerk reaction against these ideas. People seem to have been brain washed to reject anything related to religion and that is simply a shame.

BTW, do you realize that even Dubai has a Sharia based system of law? They have made it their own....why can't we?

Re: # 1

laddu jee,

Did u read the entire article? If u did, I salute u.

PS: Sooner we get rid of this political islamist fascism, the better.

Dear rf786,

Islamo-fascism is a term mostly used by the likes of Jerry Falwell and other right wing bible thumping christians and fanatic zionists, but has now made it into the mainstream after years of repeated use by these fellows. It serves no purpose except to lump all of the poor and uneducated classes amongst the muslim world's rural communities into one enemy (in place of communism) for the western world.

The actual fact is that no such thing exists and I urge thinking Muslims to recognize these things. Certainly there are plenty of misguided and backward muslims amongst us who need to be educated, but we should not fall into the trap of our enemies who have always divided and ruled us. Have we not learnt anything from history?

Re: # 6. Yes, have you read even the basic premise of why the re-structuring is being suggested? Leave alone reading the whole article [and I'm sure, rf786 will be spared the saluting!], you may not even have assimilated the very concept of the "Khilafat"!
Re: #s 3, 4, 5 and 7: Thank you, Zyxius! Let me add three more points:
1) Please understand that the system is based on many components of which the Shariah [as given in my write-up] is a foundation on which stand the Hadees, followed by Ijtehad and finally is the collation, consideration, discussions, acceptance and decisions.
2) Flowing from all this is the 'Tareeqah'; ergo Islamic Concept of State and Governance! If this is not democracy, please tell me what is?
3) As brought out in many fruitful articles available on www.Islamonline.net and reading/assimilation of the excellant translations/commentaries of Maulana Maudoodi, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Muhammad Asad, Dr. Bilgrami, Maulana Jallandhari, Maulana Muhammad Ali et al, one can have a fair idea that the real Faith is anything as damning as made out by M/S Fazlur Rahman, Qazi Hussain Ahmed and the lesser mortals who also strut around flashing their "islamo-fascism" {again, with you non this Zyxius!!] to the delight of screwballs like GWB and the neo-cons of USofA.

mateen mian,

......... i just read the last line and decided this article is simply islamofascist propaganda written by a mardoodite ...... no? .. tell me i am wrong ... if i am, i will go back and read this obvious rubbish .....

.... what the muslims really need to do is to get their heads out of their posteriors, see the light of day and stop muttering gibberish in arabic

Dude, Hamid...that just sounds incredibly closed minded of you. You are passing judgment on an article without reading it, pronouncing all islam as "gibberish in arabic", and see the light...what light are you referring to? I think the only way forward is to understand one another instead of trying to force upon one another without even listening to what the other guy has to say. And lets not forget one thing, if Pakistan has ever been protected by sons who are willing to die for her, it hasnt been from this secular pooftas who would be on the next plane out of here in such a situation. When our soldiers die protecting our country, they are called Shaheed! So I would highly recommend having respect for the religion and its followers who are first in line to defend this country from outside forces. AN army of secularists in Pakistan would consist of corrupt, debauched, and cowardly individuals who wouldnt stand a single battle....what for? What is Pakistan if not a Muslim country?

Zyxius: Religious fascists are Musharraf's ticket to power. Pakistanis are like the boy who cried wolf - Maulvis harping about "Islam khatray maiN hay", nonmaulvis harping about "western conspiracies" and taking to the streets over stupid things like cartoons, becomeing more arab than the arabs about palestine and israel, twisting and turning Islam into a mockery of Islam (e.g. thinking they are doing their islamic duty by praying and hajj, when in fact their islamic duty is to do the opposite of what they do when they engage in sectarianism, act as if muslims are a "chosen people", make a de facto god out of human beings (including the prophet himself), and so on.

In the meantime, Indians and Chinese strengthen their national institutions by learning from the west (e.g. the "secular" Indian Constitution) and use the western economies to build up their own economy.

So: when the real wolf comes (i.e. the military general), the world is silent. The tinpot general then uses these maulvi fools as an excuse to go after his real enemies - the "secularist" lawyers and human rights activists.

Where are the maulvis now? Half of them are still begging to be given a "deal", the other half are busy trying to attack Pakistan and carve out separate fiefdoms for themselves (as in case of fazlulah in swat). The only ones standing up for the basic rights of Pakistanis and for Pakistan are the "secularists" wearing western suits who are braving the lathis of a brutal dicatorship.

Re: # 7

My dear well intentioned chowkie, maybe you have not followed the Al Qaeda trail across the globe. If you have and yet choose to ignore their political ideals, then there is a difference in interpertation of events. Political Islam is alive and kicking, those who ignore it while opposing it will suffer the most.

Islamo fascism has become popular post 9/11 agreed, but that term was being debated and condemned much before the occurrence of 9/11. Had you studied in Pakistan in the seventies-eighties you would have seen strains of political Islam being studied and debated. Political Islam turned into fascism post Zia ul phuk when Islamic/Arabic laws were imposed. Since then, Pakistani liberals/moderates/socialists/nationalists have bore the brunt of Islamo fascism in form or another. Therefore, no matter how good your intentions maybe, but u do seem to lack the grasp of Pakistani ground reality.

#11....there is no such thing as Islamo-fascism...that is a bullshit term coined by the nut cases in the west who are hell bent on bringing about an Armageddon with a clash between the good christian folks and us dark skinned Gog and Magog folk....look in a little more depth and see where the words you are using come from and which agenda they represent. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is open knowledge that Jerry Falwell and the Christian right believe these things about us and use these terms.

The whole anti-maulvi thing is really getting old though. It hasnt been maulvis who have been robbing the country for the last 20 years, it has been the two main secular parties; Nawaz and Bibi. It is the secularists who brought this country to disaster in recent history, not the maulvis who have at best been minor players/irritants. Who defended us from a Soviet invasion...a bunch of faggot secularists? No...it was Muslims! The lawyers are no example, so I don't want to bother commenting on that. I have never heard of a nation being defended against its enemies by the people of this profession.

Also, you lump all people who believe in religion together when you say things like, "thinking they are doing their islamic duty by praying and hajj, when in fact their islamic duty is to do the opposite of what they do when they engage in sectarianism, act as if muslims are a "chosen people", make a de facto god out of human beings (including the prophet himself), and so on." Rather than being so ashamed of our Muslim identity, my point is to make it our own and use it to strengthen ourselves rather than divide. No matter how much you fight it, Pakistan will always remain a Muslim country and those who wish to change that will likely tear it apart in the process because those of us who do believe in religion being a major part of our identity and governance will fight tooth and nail for their right to live the way they feel is right.

Also, for rf786....if you try hard enough you will always find someone who knows someone who is a part of any of those organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbullah and Hezbut Tahrir...but I have never come across anyone, even 7 degrees removed who even remotely has even met someone who is Al Qaeda. Neither I, not many of the people I know in Pakistani intelligence (on a friendly basis) believe that Al Qaeda even really exists. You are saying that political Islam turned in fascism in the 70s in Pakistan, but I am telling you that these are the terms used by those who wish us the greatest harm. You think Jerry Falwell and his Armageddon crew care that you are a secular Muslim? The probably want to wipe you out just as much as they want to get rid of the rest of us colored non Christian folk.

A TRIBUTE TO MY BELOVED & PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkMD56bHsog

Re: # 13

Dear Zyxius,

We have a difference of opinion, we both can agree to disagree and that is the civilized thing to do. But, when people are massacred, beheaded because they differ in their political view, then that is fascism. What is happening in Wazirastan, Swat and was attempted in Lal Masjid are good examples of people using religion to impose their ideals on others. Now u r free to call it whatever u like, but in common language and historical context it is called Islamo Fascism, nothing to do witht he religion itself but those who practice such abhorrent views.

Re: # 13


"The whole anti-maulvi thing is really getting old though. It hasnt been maulvis who have been robbing the country for the last 20 years, it has been the two main secular parties; Nawaz and Bibi. It is the secularists who brought this country to disaster in recent history, not the maulvis who have at best been minor players/irritants. Who defended us from a Soviet invasion...a bunch of faggot secularists? No...it was Muslims!"

And your point being those who profess to be secularists are not muslims?

By the way, it was the proud and mighty US$ that was the reason why Soviets left Afghanistan and please correct yourself, they chose to leave, they were not defeated.

As for the corrupt B & NS, well my dear naive chowkie, u should first try and understand who was the main beneficiary of US$ and Saudi riyaals? Secularists who were hounded and marginalized Or the Maulvi+Army nexus?