We, The Muslim Americans

YLH

Salam was one of the equals of Einstein in particle physics.

I was told that he insisted on attending -- or attended -- the Nobel Prize ceremony with his two wives?

Is that true?

Shammi #214: It was an attempt, by me, at double-sided humor. It seems to have achieved its purpose :-)

Let`s see how temporal reacts to it.......

Hamidm Boss, the Field Marshall`s short-sightedness will come back one day to bite him in the butt. In the meantime, the Hindian Army is practicing with the Americans in Alaska to perfect its techniques in Siachen:

India, US forces to train together in Alaska

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/280302/dLnat34.asp

Shankar

Wy do peasants keep voting for the feudals? Because when one owns a large chunk of land, one also own the peasants (actually serfs) with the land. There are people who actually own entire towns that fall in or around their land.

An example is Larkana - has anybody but a Bhutto ever won from there?

This argument about feudals being ``farmers`` is is obfuscation.

Hobbyty, tahmed321, and others

Thanks for the information on Cardoba. All of us ought to know more about such a tolerant and progressive civilization. Any society in which people lived together in peace without discrimination, pursued knowledge without fear of persecution, and created prosperity without being threatened with hellfire, is a common heritage for us all.

Three cheers for cardoba!

Sad to see that the Cardoba civilization was destroyed by Muslim barabarians who thought Cardobans were not Muslim enough, just as India is being destroyed by Hindu barabarians who think Hindus have not been Hindu enough.

shankar #228: Very good questions. In these questions, lies the core of nearly all the problems that Pakistani society faces.

Hamzad Alavi article highlights some of the answers.

The first fact that needs to be understood is that the feudals always dominate Pakistani elections. Just take a look at the members in the Assembly. So somehow or the other they get in. The other fact is that it is always the exact same last names (in most cases the exact same people). The areas that have an opposing powerful feudal, tend to take turns between the two feudals. But it is always the feudal who gets in. And in many cases the competing feudals are related. For example Abida Hussein stands in elections against her nephew Faisal Saleh Hayat in the Jhang area. Her kids recently returned from Harvard and immediately competed for the Nazim elections. I think the time they spent working at the Cambridge Dunkin Donuts (if they even worked) trained these kids well in becoming Nazims (equivalent to mayor, almost). Luckily they lost the election. Unfortunately they lost to the relatives of Faisal Saleh Hayat (so to their own second cousins).

The above is the tragedy of Pakistani politics in a nutshell. This happens in every nation, but in Pakistan it happens in nearly 2/3rd of the whole country.

1. ``Why do these poor peasants keep voting for their feudal masters?``

Because they have no choice. The feudal controls their livelihood. He/She owns the land they live on. He pays them to work in the fields. He usually gets his own man appointed as the local Assistant Commissioner and policeman. He limits the access of the peasants to facilities on his land like schools, etc. In many, if not most cases, he doesn`t allow these facilities to even be built. The peasants thus have no marketable skills, and no personal assets to rely on for a living. Nor do they have access to the impartial Assistant Commissioner or Policeman.

Even though the peasants live on the land, and constitute 99.99999% of the population, while their feudal master doesn`t live on the land (lives in Defence Karachi, and writes about women`s rights and equality and religious extremism, and attends charity balls), the peasant`s whole future is in the control of the feudal.

Under such a situation, if the peasant doesn`t vote for the feudal, the peasant is doomed. This is no different than the problems feudalism has caused anywhere in the world.

2. ``Do the feudals ensure that no non-feudal can stand for election in their constituency?``

Yes. How can a non-feudal win an election in a constituency, whose land is literally owned by the feudal (or by a group of the feudal`s relatives). If you owned all of Michigan, and the literacy rate of Michigan was 10% and people had no other option, but to work in Michigan, the chances of your becoming the Senator from Michigan would be pretty high.

There have been far more cases of assasinations of feudals by frustrated peasants, then cases of the feudal losing an election to anyone, but to another feudal.

3. ``Do the feudals tell the peasants that they will check on their vote & if they dare to vote for someone other than the feudal candidate, they will be killed. Isnt voting in Pakistan secret?!

Votes are secret. But it is a given that the feudal will win. There are usually no other non-feudal local candidates. Even if there are, they have no influence over the feudal lands and hence the feudal`s peasants.``

If the feudal did not win in his own land, it would be very easy for him to take any of the voting public to task, if he wanted.

4. ``Are elections so blatantly rigged, that it doesnt matter who the peasants vote for, during the vote counting process, the feudal candidate wins anyway, eventhough he/she has got less than 10 votes?``

This stage hasn`t even been reached. There is no need to rig the elections. Who else will the peasants vote for? They are locked into the feudals for their livelihood.

Unless and until the peasants livelihood and future is freed from the feudal`s clutches, how can they vote for anyone else? The peasants` lives are 100% dependent on the lands they work on. These lands are owned by the feudal. As long as this is the scenario, the peasant has no option.

Even if all the peasants rose up against the feudal, the feudal could legally kick them off his lands. This is the tragedy of Pakistani feudalism. The feudals commit their moral crimes legally. This is why they rush into politics. Because they know that if an urban-dominated assembly is elected, they will take away the feudals lands (thereby their hold on the peasants), and give them to the peasants; much like what happened in India. This will liberate the peasants, and will allow them to vote freely.

5. ``If either of the above 3 are correct answers, then it can be changed very easily by correcting the election process. If there is a different answer I would really like to know it.``

Yes, this can be changed very easily by changing the election process. But who is going to change the election process. That is the big problem. The feudals themselves always control nearly 2/3rd of the assemblies. This is specifically why they get into politics. To make sure the election process isn`t changed. Why would they themselves change it?

That is why I always argue that elections in Pakistan under the current process are useless. This has been proven by Pakistan`s political track record. Election after election may clean up the urban political leadership, but it will never clean up the rural political leadership. Just look at the same names that keep appearing from the rural areas.

Someone has to forcefully change the system. That is why I support Musharraf. He is trying to do so. Although he has yet to take on the feudal. (that shows how powerful the feudal is). There are now reserved seats for peasants in the local elections. As well as 33% of the seats are reserved for women. The executive power has been devolved extensively, from the Provincial and National Assemblies (which a single small feudal could easliy dominate for their constituency), down to hundreds of local bodies. The feudals are deparetly trying to dominate these local bodies also, but I think there are too many of them now for the feudals to dominate. This is why the feudals completely oppose this devolution plan.

This is also why, Pakistan`s two main political parties (both dominated by feudals), PPP and PML, have united against Musharraf. These two parties consist of opposing feudals, who hate each other. They never unite. Yet they are now united, and want, ``democracy`` to return. Why?

Actually they just want elections to return, so they can get back into power, to ensure, no one takes away their lands (and hence introduces true democracy). I have a feeling the first thing they will attempt to do is to get rid of the devolution plan.

This is not to say that democracy is bad. It is great and must be practiced. But not the kind of democracy which does not allow a feudal to be voted out.

``Jeeze, I thought Islam is a very egalitarian religion. But the master-servant/slave relationship is very well preserved in a muslim society like Pakistan.``

There is nothing Islamic about the feudal. He/she is the most unIslamic thing around. I have lived in these backwards areas. After seeing the peasants` lives first hand, I have devloped such a strong hatred for these feudals, that it is difficult to put it into words. The religous extremist cannot force people to follow him. He has to motivate them, and they go on their own free will in the wrong direction of the extremists. However the feudal can force even the unwilling peasants to follow him. Hence the fedual is much worse than even the religious extremist.

The feudals have legally enslaved little boys and girls and forced them into miserable lives of cotton picking and fruit planting. Their lives make the mexican strawberry field workers look luxurious.

On top of that, feudals legally pay no or very little tax. In essence, they have so much power, that they have legalized corruption for themselves. If the industrialist doesn`t pay tax, he is considered corrupt and becomes a criminal. If the feudal doesn`t pay tax, he is just following the laws (laws that he has himself set up).

What is even more disgusting is the new slick face of the feudal. And all the people who run to support him/her (some on this site). It is US-educated, liberated, activist, article-writing, and democracy-loving. But there should be no doubt in anyone`s mind that it is hyprocritic and built on the sweat and blood and tears of little girls who no one will ever hear about. Whose lives are completely in control of their feudal masters and queens. And when the moment of truth arrives, the feudal will never allow those little girls the freedom every human being should have, while he/she will be simultaneously writing an article in support of women`s rights in Pakistan.

There are very very few people/groups that I hate unconditionally. Feudals are probably the only group that fall into this category. And I am not an ambitious man. But after seeing, first hand, the feudal`s sophisticated approaches to legally enslaving their peasants, I can only say one thing:

I hope some day I get the opportunity to put my hand deep into the slavery-filled souls of the feudals and rip out their cold hearts and rub them over all the hypocracy-filled statements they make about a progressive Pakistan and women`s rights. I will do so in the name of the little girls on the feudal lands who will never get a chance to go to elementary school, while the feudal kids pack off to Yale and Stanford to give lectures on the plight of these same little girls that they themselves have legally enslaved.

Amen.

There is no such thing as a good feudal; just various levels of bad ones.

If there is one thing India should be proud of, it is the fact that it has put its own feudals and Nawabs into the business of running hotels on their ancestoral lands; rather than owning these lands outright and thus dominating Indian politics. It is this fact that has allowed India to establish democracy.

Re: Romair #47

Sorry for the delay in replying but I`ve been unbelievably busy for the past few days.

So, here goes:

``...Afghans, who never unite with each other for anything, ended up united against the Soviets.``

I would disagree with you somewhat here. Many (not a majority but many) Afghans sided with the Russians by supporting the Communist government. Afghans were far from united in their opposition.

Total Russian casualties in Afghanistan were on the order of 35-45,000 killed and wounded. The Americans suffered over 300,000 casualties in Vietnam. In contrast, Pakistan had less than 10,000 casualties in both the 1965 and 1971 Wars. So the Russian casualties were pretty low for almost 10 years worth of fighting.

Eric Margolis notwithstanding, why would the Soviets want a base at Gwadar? They had port rights, not that they did much with them, in Mogadishu and Aden for years. The Soviets never showed any inclination to expand on these in any way shape or for whatsoever. Why, for Heaven`s sake, would they suddenly want a massive base in Gwadar umpteen thousand kilometres from their The Soviet Navy, other than their nuclear subs, never were a real priority for the Kremlin and its highly unlikely that a financially strapped Soviet Union was going to (a) build gigantic naval bases in Gwadar or (b) build a massive road and rail network to link it the Soviet industrial hearland or (c) create a blue-water navy capable of challenging the USN in the Indian Ocean.

``I have a feeling, you are only looking at Army and Naval movements during those invasion days. If you had spent a day in Sargodha airbase, you would seen the intensity of the Soviet threat. ... I was in Sargodha during those days. Pakistani F-16s were literally flying day and night, to engage Soviet aircraft intervening into Pakistan airspace. If I remember correctly there was an all out
active CAP over Kahuta. Meaning two F-16s would go, and not come back from Kahuta until two more replaced them.``

There are still F-16s on two-minute alert (if I remember correctly) for Kahuta. The real threat was not from the Russians but from you-know-who. The Soviets were attacking the FATA areas pretty regularly trying to interdict Mujahideen resupply convoys and some minor supply depots there BUT the Russians never, ever, attacked the major supply depots/bases well inside Pakistan. Ojhri Camp would have been a perfect target for them, as would dropping an IRBM or two, non-nuclear of course, on GHQ, or maybe sending a couple of hundred Bears to carpet bomb Pindi and Islamabad. Did that ever happen? No, because the Soviets did not want to attack Pakistan or a warm-water port, conquer Afghanistan, want the Communist coup there, etc, etc.

``The reason the Soviets did not attack Pindi, etc. is because they couldn`t. Plain and simple. They tried their very best.``

IF they had really wanted to, the Soviets could certainly have attacked Pakistan v. easily, and w/out seriously weakening their Warsaw Pact front, by simply having the Indians escalate military tensions on Pakistan`s eastern border and then launch a series of large-scale attacks, not invasions, on Pakistani positions and Mujahideen supply camps in NWFP and Baluchistan. As long as it wasn`t a clear invasion of Pakistan, Uncle Sam wouldn`t have intervened (that`s assuming the US would have intervened in the case of a full-scale invasion--unlikely IMHO). Pakistan wouldn`t have dared to move troops from the eastern borders in case the Indians decided to take advantage of our weakness there. One of the reasons why Gen. Zia was so bold in taking a big punga with the Russians was because he was pretty sure that they wouldn`t actually do anything, NOT because he really believed that the 101st Airborne was standing by to rescue him.

``The Soviet didn`t count on getting bogged down in Afghanistan. Their original plan was to cut through Afghanistan in months, if not weeks, and lauch a massive land invasion of Pakistan, along with air cover, at some stage (maybe immediately, maybe in 20 years, after destabilizing Pakistan).``

Again, same point. Why would they want to? What possible purpose would it serve? A warm-water port for the Soviet Navy? I`ve already countered this point. Stop the flow of oil to the US/Western Europe? Bases in Aden and Mogadishu would have done this as well if that was the point of taking Gwadar. Are these bases more vulnerable to the Americans at Diego Garcia than Gwadar would have been? No, of course not.

The Russians/Soviets never wanted Afghanistan, did not want Pakistan, did not want Gwadar, did not want to antagonize the US. They went into Afghanistan out of fear of what would happen to the rest of their empire if they ever ``lost`` a country to the West (remember the Brezhnev Doctrine?). The Russians were desperate for western wheat, technology and loans, all of which would have been jeopardized if they really attacked Pakistan and threatened the oil lanes.

It was the same US anti-communist paranoia that drove Ho Chi Minh right into the arms of the Soviets (he was an anti-Chinese anti-French nationalist more than he was an instrument of Soviet World Domination and he really couldn`t understand why the US--his anti-Japanese allies in WWII--had now suddenly abandoned him) and a desire to avenge Vietnam that led people like Brezinski (sp?), Reagan and Casey to fight the Great Game, Round II, in Afghanistan. Gen. Zia joined in this great crusade because it saved his sorry behind.

Sorry, I would address more of your points but I just ran out of steam.

Regards.

Re: Romair

That was a powerful article on Pakistani feudalism. I suppose that it is referred to the now-banned-on-paper practice of zamindari system in India. I do not profess to know how successful land reform in India has been, although there are contradicotry studies on the subject. Some studies indicate that land reform in India has essentially failed. Nearly 43% of rural households in India have no land (http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/Networks/ESSD/icdb.nsf/D4856F112E805DF4852566C9007C27A6/C65D28221188084785256961006F6050)

Others show that land reforms have been associated with poverty reduction (http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/BibEc/data/Articles/tprqjeconv:115:y:2000:i:2:p:389-430.html)

`Someone has to forcefully change the system.`

Forceful change has led to revolutions. In India we have the People`s War Group in Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalites in Bengal and Bihar, and other similar violent groups who go about killing the `establishment`. Mao killed the land-owning class in China. What do you think will happen in Pakistan?

Romair,

Hailing from a village dominated by our own ``feudal,`` and having kicked feudal asses all my life, both in village-level electoral politics and in school, (thanks, in large part, to the only man in Indian politics, Mrs. G.), may I ask a question?

Won`t matters improve if Pakistani Election Commission was made so powerful that feudals could not imagine influencing it?

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How the top Pakistani generals enrich themselves

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2002-daily/28-03-2002/oped/o5.htm

romair

......the feudals are convenient whipping boys but for how long ?

..... i am afraid beating up on the feudals to justify military dictatorship won`t cut it any more ..... it has been going on for too long ......if the kennedy`s dog can get elected from boston, what is wrong with bb getting elected from larkana ..... one thing that you conveniently forget to mention is that bb can also get elected from rawalpindi, lahore and peshawar where she doesn`t have any haris or serfs to stuff the ballot boxes........ and it shouldn`t come as any surprise to you that a lot of military officers have voted for her in the past and will vote for her again inspite of what the chief says ....... same is the case with nawaz sharif and shahbaz sharif - they can get elected from any city in the punjab ......the only person who can`t get elected is musharraf who has to resort to referendums and other silly shenanigans like storming tv stations ......

...... like i said before, the feudals did have an inordinate amount of power in the past but things have changed and the line between feudals, technocrats and industrialists has blurred ..... sure some bad habits linger on, but nothing is as bad as the feudal attitude of the military which has come to believe that the public are a bunch of idiots who only the generals can save from themselves.......... the army has hijacked the political process and has made sure that the poor people of pakistan remain in awe of the generals, their begum sahibas, their orderlies and their runny-nosed progeny ........

.... spring is here and mrs coas, mrs corps commander and mrs air marshall are out their inaugurating chrysantemum shows and meena bazaars and getting their picture on the front page ......that, and getting shiny new toyota crowns is what this is all about ......

........and you don`t have to worry about abida hussain and her daughter any more - both of them cannot run for elections in october because mushy (who has a ba in wt and rwr from the univeristy of kakul) has decreed that only graduates (and army officers) can run ...... rumour has it that abida`s daughter is taking thirty hours a semester to meet the deadline .... mama hussain can`t run but the chief of sipah-i-sahaba can ......

..... the current country chief executive for citibank is a soomro and before him it was a mazari..........supposedly they are both feudals ....but both of them have been in banking all their lives and know what they are doing ........unlike the chief executives of wapda, the railways, nlc, fwo, and the cricket control board who spent their careers planning on how to conquer delhi and get another plot in defence or get their sister`s family on the next C-130 flight to karachi .....

Romair,

Anyone who read Hamza Alavi is admirable and a friend of mine. It was through the foundation of his work that I came to understand the intricacies of Pakistan`s problems.(By the way, he too is an Ataturk admirer and a secularist Pakistani. Read his paper of Pakistan, Islam ethnicity and ideology.)

In any event, let us `feudal-haters` be open minded .. for after a close examination of Sameer Jb and Bina`s posts, I have drawn radically different conclusions and so am forced to re assess the role of `feudalism` in Pakistan`s dilemma.

-YLH

Sameerjb,

`In Punjab at least, it is really the continuation of Muslim League`s caricature of Unionist party during 1936 (?) elections.`

Had the `Unionists` had their way, the entire wealth and power would be concentrated in the hands of Muslim Landowners and Hindu Industrialists... to characterize the Muslim League`s campaign (no doubt urbanite in nature given the composition of AIML as UP Muslim `Salariat`) as essentially a show down between (i) urbanite (ML) vs rural (Unionist) and

(ii) communal vs cross-communal, is in the final assessment a grossly unfair representation.

Part (i) is true given the leadership of men like Jinnah who were urbanites and anti-feudal in their personal thinking, but it takes away from the fact that in the aftermath of 1939, the feudals increasingly saw that their own political future and survival lay in supportng the Pakistan Movement under an Urbanite League.

Part (ii) is irrelevant to our discussion here but still lets talk about it, it doesn`t take into account the fact that the cross communal alliance of Hindu industrialists and Muslim land lords was aimed at both the league and the Congress, both of which were seen as the representatives of the Urbanite classes, one purely Muslim and the other a wider range though mostly Hindu.

The fact is that the Unionist Party was one of those sad parties created as the creature of imperialism to ensure the rights of Punjabi aristocracy be it urban or rural. Take it from me, my own great grandfather was originally a leader of the Unionist Party from Khushab district, converting to the Punjab Muslim League in 1939.

Pakistan`s `Butcher of Bengal` Dies

http://in.news.yahoo.com/020328/64/1jzli.html

RE: Fuzair

``...They had port rights, not that they did much with them, in Mogadishu and Aden for years...``

And just this week, Russia has walked out of a lease with the Vietnamese over Cam Ranh Bay -- perhaps the finest deep water port in Indo-China, and a former USN base.