Towards Greater Tolerance

Yaseer Latifey

``In any event I don`t have time for this, and now I will bid you farewell :) ``

Great! you haven`t yet grown over your old habit. Once you start getting thrashing you will start pleading for ``no time``, ``too many courses``, ``ivy league college`` and in the end ``dear mummy``.

You can certainly go back to your mama`s bossom to think of new load of cr@p. Come back whenever you are ready.

ralph ............

..... i don`t know if there are any roads named after abdus salam in pindi or islamabad, but he is still revered by all educated pakistanis (excluding the god-crazed madrassa students and other people who needlessly pray more than twice a year) ........ on the other hand dr qadeer khan, the self proclaimed father of the bomb, gets mixed reviews and is derided by many for his avarice and self-promoting ways ............. and if yasser says there are things names after abdus salaam, then i would believe him instead of jay who, along with arjun, seems to have gone over the edge ...........

...... and naming roads in pakistan doesn`t mean a dang thing ............ the main drag through pindi was once renamed from murree road to sharah-i-reza shah pehalvi .......... people kept on calling it murree road and over the years it has miraculously been officially renamed murree road ......... they tried to rename canning road after some dead arab and that didn`t stick either ........and after all these years we still have gurdat singh road, abbot road, beaton road and toba tek singh ............of course all that can change if the lunatic mullahs keep on winning in the elections thanks to the follies of the idiots in khaki .............

re:#160 by YLH2
Ylh,
``Long Live Khushwant Singh`s India...

Long Live Behram Atashband`s, Justice Bhagwandas`, Deepak Perwani`s, Yousaf Yohanna`s, Ardeshir Cowasjee`s, Bapsi Sidhwa`s, and Jinnah`s Pakistan !!!! ``
Those words are no doubt well-intended. If you respect even one of the above people you have named, you should read Coasjee`s recent article, which i quote below: Url: http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm.

1. ``Personal freedom, says Fali, is like oxygen in the air. We don`t realize its worth until it is withdrawn - and then it is too late. Few citizens of India realize that if Article 31C in its extended form, under the 42nd amendment, had remained a part of their constitution and not been struck down in the Minerva Mills case, not only parliament, but more realistically any state legislature, by ordinary law could have effectively censored the press and prohibited public speaking on any topic unless a police permit was obtained on the specious declaration that it was to implement directive principles of State Policy. This is the liberty that Nani Palkhivala helped save, and for this all the lawyers of India and all its citizens must forever be grateful and beholden to him. ``

2. ``Now to the mangled and mauled Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan under which it is so effectively misgoverned. Proclaimed on August 14, 1973, whilst its proclaimer, the president converted to prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto....``.
Read on. Why should i spoil your fun.
The important thing is not whether Jinnah or Cowasjee or this guy or the other guy is great. The important thing is: what kind of legacy have these people left behind?
Sridhar

re:#169 by ahmadzai
When i read that your family supported the Red Shirts (also known as Khudai Khidmatgars), i suddenly have a lot of respect for you and your family.
Did you see the movie Gandhi? In that movie, when Gandhiji declares that he is going to Calcutta to help bring peace, he is shown to be standing near a tall Pathan. That man was Khan abdul Ghaffar Khan, also know as Frontier Gandhi. A man of great courage and principles. It is difficult to hold on to the principle of non-violence (the BJP goons are a living proof!). It is even more difficult for a Pathan (who is fiercely independent and violent by temperament) to make non-violence a creed. Just as good things do not last long, Frontier Gandhi`s ideals were short lived in Pakistan. Gandhians have become a rare breed on this side of the border. The last time India remembered Frontier Gandhi was when he fell sick and was treated in India for sometime. That was India`s last brush with the great man.
Sridhar

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Romair #78

{However due to civilian politician`s influence, now religious minorities cannot become COAS - I don`t think the soldiers would care if a non-Muslim became the Chief. After all, there are thousands of soldiers being commanded by Christians and Parsi officers etc. right now. Religious minorities do go to the rank of General however. }

{In the 65 war, there were six Christian fighter pilots in the PAF. Five of them recieved the Sitar-e-Jurat medal. That is amazingly high ratio. The most highly decorated war hero in the PAF ever, is a Christian (died in 71).


Romair #116

{The number of Christians I met was signficantly high - in the hundreds. I would count quite a few Christians as my good friends. I had Christian colleagues as my bosses etc. in the military. }

Interesting indeed. Apparently the PAF had no shortage of personnel - and competent ones, at that - who were Christians.

So tell us - in the last twenty years, how many Pakistani Christians in the PAF have made it to the rank of Air Commodore or beyond? Care to name the highest-ranking such officer?

hamidm #158 With the mullahs now forming governments in the frontier and baluchistan, there is indeed a concern that they may organize mobs in the Modi style to murder ``infidels`` (the shias and ahmedis and christians in this case). So far they have been picking off individual shias only, and they have seemed content (touchwood) to stop with declaring ahmedis to be kafirs and not by attacking them too. Attacks on christians too have been limited to terrorist like attacks and harassment through the damned blasphemy laws. This is bad enough, and all this could become much worse if the mullahs were to use their new-found authority to organize mobs in the Modi style.
One can only hope the Musharaff government realizes the mess it has made by interfering in politics and thus putting mullahs in power, and comes down hard on any mob violence before it starts.

What is the truth? Are there in every major Pakistani city roads, halls, institutes, schools, and libraries named after Dr. Abdus Salam, as Yasser Latif Hamdani claims, or none as Jay claims?

The answer to this question should settle the debate about Pakistan.

What is so difficult about answering this question?

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Yasser:
This is a pointless exercise, but I will do it anyway...when I said check yourself...I meant read what you write and think about it. I haven`t commented on the rest of your article...I focused on that paragraph specifically because facts and figures aside, there is no misconstruing as you put it...I`m sure you meant well, but simply put, that was just badly phrased, and doesn`t reflect well on moving towards `a greater tolerance.`

Speaking of tolerance, clearly you have little to no tolerance for me as a person, which is fine, because I will be able to sleep nights knowing that...as for me gleefully mentioning your thrashing, well Yasser the problem with you is and has been the fact that you don`t read very well, or should I say you misread very well. There is nothing gleeful in any thrashing...and there is nothing gleeful for me in saying any of the caustic things I say to you because there simply is nothing gleeful about a person not using his/her intelligence to the best of his/her capabilities. And I will beat you to the punch by saying that I am guilty of that myself, thank you!
And I thought I might add one more thing...Yousaf Youhanna`s Pakistan is not the same Pakistan for every Christian...it is certainly not the Pakistan of some of my relatives, and it is not the Pakistan of those Christian people whose village was looted and rioted in by thousands of Muslims six years ago, this week, who are STILL recovering from the effects of that, and some of whose lives have changed forever because of that. And that riot was not of a global nature, it was done by ignorant and bigoted Muslims who heard the call to destroy churches, houses, and water supplies just as strongly as they are called to prayer. Such attacks may be far and few between, but the effects last a long long time. Some of these people want to leave, because they grew up (and old) in a Pakistan which they felt was their home because that`s where their roots were long before Pakistan came into being and they were made to feel that those roots meant nothing. That is their Pakistan...that is my Pakistan. These sad realities continue for quite a few of us, and while it`s great that some non-Muslims have made it `big`...some of us are still continuing to pay the price of `intolerance`. So, yes...long live Youhanna`s Pakistan, and yours. My Pakistan...if it should ever come to be, will be a Pakistan where we can realize that Partition was in 1947, and not prolong the situation by our insistence in regards to Kashmir, a Pakistan where the blasphemy laws and laws harmful to women are abolished, a Pakistan where the army and mullahs are removed from power and decision-making vis-a-vis our lives, and a Pakistan where we pay more attention to our own people, and improve the lives of all...not just the rich. When that happens...my Pakistan will be mine again.

YLH: ``we should strive to prove that we Pakistanis and our ideology is the most enlightened, the most tolerant and the most aware. ``


If u start any intellectual pursuit with this belief, then it is propaganda not an intellectual exercise.

That is the core fallacy in the whole argument of this propaganda right-wing artcile.

rsridhar:

I would like to respond to your various posts, but to tell you honestly I did not have any interest in Jinnah till some time ago. I come from an ethnic bachground and a family that supported Gandhi` s student in the NWFP - the great Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Batcha Khan).

I don`t think that Jinnah might have gotten any encouragement from the British. OTOH, I believe that he might have been influenced by the cut off from the reality pan-Islamists in the Muslim League. Recall that these stupid pan-Islamists were running a pro-Khilafat movement at a time when Turkey itself was putting an end to it. After reading various biographies, I also have a strong feeling that when he sat in the Muslim League for the first time in 1906, it would have been easier for him to relate to the pan-Islamists within the Muslim League rather than other uneducated pan and cud chewing Mullas. Iqbal, who was also a pan-Islamist and traveling to all parts of the world could have influenced him too.

The point remains that he started his political career with being the greatest messenger of Hindu-Muslim unity, but in the end got himself a country in the northwest of sub-continent that the pan-Islamist could use as a base for exporting/importing the philosophy elsewhere.

No, I don`t agree with the last part of your post too. Once Pakistan was formed, he had extremely little time to do anything. He was banished to the under-developed city of Ziarat for recovering from TB by the powers that be.

The pan-Islamism went into hibernation till 1979. Subsequently, it re-emerged from its strong base of Afghanistan when former Soviet invaded that country. Of all the ethnic groups in Pakistan now, Pakhtoons are the most pan-Islamist. We have marginalized nationalist forces in the NWFP and this also explains emergence of Islamic parties in the NWFP and northern Pakhtoon dominated belt of Balochistan province.

Although this last para will be target for `hate-Pakistan` Indians on this site, I believe that if Indian Government continues to be hostile to the current Government of Pakistan and the USA continues to put unnecessary pressure on Pakistan, the Islamic parties will gain more and more momentum. Since these Islamic parties will not be able to convince the eastern provinces of Sindh and Punjab on the fundamentalist Islam through good governance, they will instead destabilize them militarily. Subsequently, they will destabilize western India and finally the Indian heartland just like what the Mongol hoards were doing to the Muslim Sultanates of Central Asia and Russian Kingdom initially. Finally these sultanates and kingdoms were totally destroyed.

re: hamidm #158

...the reason pakis can kill only a handful of infidels at a time is because there are only a handful of infidels left in pakistan...