The Alternative Muslim Identity

Re: # 243

hp,

...... i beg to differ with you on the word ``izzat`` - it is not the same as self-respect or self-esteem; take a look at some common usages of the word :

1. ``wo nihayat izzat dar log hain `` : they own their house and their daughter has not yet been caught flirting with the boy next door and even though the man takes bribes he has not been caught (yet)....... they probably own a late model honda civic (VTI)..........

2. ``us nai hamari izzat par haath dala hai``: the boy followed my daughter home from college and now i am going to kill both of them ...... this usage is sometimes confused with ``ghairat mandi`` and often leads to violence and murder

3. ``unhon nain hamari buhut izzat ki`` : they fed us very well and when we left they loaded us with gifts (never mind that they cursed us as soon as we turned our backs) ........... most patwaris and lambardars get this treatment from their victims (clients) .........

4. ``yeh hamari izzat ka sawal hai``: this is a excuse used by pimps in heera mandi to beat up their women who dare to run away with a client ...... sometimes the client is killed

5. ``allah taala nain aap ko bari izzat di hai``: you have made a lot of money by taking bribes or selling drugs, but i don`t care and will do anything to marry off my daughter to your son ...........


.............. so you see, the term izzat is not the same as self-respect ............ no?

.......... and that is why i wish i was white ..........that, and the fact that white people look better - michael jackson is an exception...........

#215 KauRay, read his Autobiography...the story about the black woman is a true oen from Khushwant Singh`s life....although he did not sleep with her...that part he said he amde up.

kauRay, Balwant Gargi said white woman`s skin smells like ``bakri da dudh``..he was married to one for years.

US Policy Changes under Condi Rice

By Jim Hoagland

WASHINGTON, June 24: A straw breaking the camel`s back, a pebble triggering the avalanche, a drop causing the cup to overflow: Choose your own image for Mukhtar Mai and the troubles she creates for her country`s frightened and duplicitous leadership. If there is justice, any of those images will fit.

Mai is the courageous Pakistani woman who has refused to be silenced after being gang-raped as a tribal ``punishment.`` She has also refused to knuckle under to the unconscionable shut-up-or-else treatment inflicted on her by President Pervez Musharraf`s government.

By standing up and getting her story noticed at this particular moment, Mai may have dealt a crippling blow to the credibility of Musharraf, who has buffaloed the Bush administration into deluging him with fulsome praise, money and arms in return for Pakistan`s incomplete help in fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The sordid details of the campaign to break Mai`s will are emerging at a moment of strategic change in South Asia. The Bush administration is greatly expanding the bet it initially put down on India, while beginning to hedge its investment in Islamabad`s military-dominated regime. The effect is to free US relations with India from decades of ``tilt`` toward Pakistan.

So the ears of Bush officials are more open to hearing about the limitations of Pakistan as an ally. It may also count that Musharraf no longer deals with a fellow career military officer, retired Gen. Colin Powell, as US secretary of state. Instead, Condoleezza Rice, a woman sensitive to the humiliations and personal destruction aimed at Mai, who is in her early thirties, now runs US diplomacy.

In this easily understood case, Musharraf`s eagerness to cover up the reprehensible behavior of other officials cannot be escaped or glossed over, even in Washington.

President Bush has decided not to call Musharraf on his fairy tales about Pakistan`s reckless nuclear proliferation being the work of one man -- scientist AQ Khan -- or to press the general publicly on Pakistan`s support for terrorism in Kashmir or its manifest unwillingness to do everything it can to capture Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies.

What Bush would not do in those cases, Mai has done in hers. She has spoken truth to power and let the consequences fall where they may. Aided by Pakistani reformers in her village and abroad, she has challenged the inhuman conventions of her country`s misogynist rural society, forcing Musharraf to take sides. To his eternal shame, he backed the primitive conventions instead of her.

In June 2002 Mai -- whose name is rendered Mukhtaran Bibi in the outstanding, detailed opinion columns on this case by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times -- was raped by four men. They had been given license to assault her sexually by a tribal council charged with retaliating against an alleged social infraction by her brother. In the normal course of things, Mai would have been murdered by her family as a matter of ``honor`` or expected to commit suicide.

Instead she went to court and secured the conviction of her rapists. They were briefly imprisoned, then freed after Mai accepted an invitation to speak in the United States this month. When this intimidation did not work, the central government put Mai on a restricted travel list and confiscated her passport.

Musharraf acknowledged his involvement in blocking the trip to reporters on Friday, two days after the Pakistani Embassy in Washington implausibly denied that and much more. Rice authorized a tough scolding of Pakistan by the State Department`s spokesman, and other officials finally began to speak critically of Pakistan`s tolerating al Qaeda`s presence in its border regions with Afghanistan.

These are signs that the State Department is breaking out of an old pattern. It no longer holds US policy in South Asia hostage to the Indo-Pakistani confrontation and a perceived need to cater to Islamabad. The Bush administration seeks a strategic partnership with India independent of what the United States does or does not do with Pakistan.

Pakistan is the ultimate hard case for US strategy: As a persistent critic of the Bush team`s hype about Musharraf and of the general`s own shortcomings, I have to acknowledge that the Pakistani leader is less corrupt and more courageous than the weak civilian governments that preceded him, including the one that forced him to take power in 1999 to save his own life.

And Musharraf does put limits on the extremists who control Pakistan`s malignant intelligence services. A new and revealing-if-true account of Pakistan`s active role in jihadist terrorism is contained in an interview with former intelligence officer Khalid Khawaja that is posted on the Asian Times Online site. But one Pakistani woman has shown that, like all autocrats, the general needs to be constantly monitored and challenged, not conspired with and consoled with rewards. Getting Pakistan to face and change its own grim reality should be an urgent American priority.



[The writer is a well known columnist for the Washington Post. This column appeared on June 23, 2005 when a demonstration was held in front of the Pakistan Embassy to support Mukhtaran Mai. Email: jimhoagland@washpost.com]

Re: # 233

godot

``Self-esteem and self-respect `` are overrated concepts - more often than not they are euphemisms for egotism and, in some cases, ignorance .............

...........my father, god bless his soul, used to get very upset at me when i said that the concepts of ``ghairat``, ``izzat`` and ``kudi`` were at the root of all problems in pakistan ............. echoboom is a prime example of a man who suffers from this horrible affliction ...........

Re: # 235

Hamid -

You say ``Self-esteem and self-respect `` are overrated concepts - more often than not they are euphemisms for egotism and, in some cases, ignorance .............”

Self-esteem and self-respect are built on being comfortable and in tune with oneself. It’s the ``ghairat``, ``izzat`` and ``khudi`` that are overrated and misplaced concepts which inevitably lead to egotism, myopia and ignorance. There is a fundamental and a huge difference between these two concepts.

Re: # 241

godot,

...... the literal translations of ``self-esteem`` and ``self-respect`` are probably the same as ``ghairat``, ``izzat`` and ``khudi`` ........... it is the cultural context that makes the difference - one is the construct of a successful culture at ease with itself, while the other is a desperate attempt by a decadent civilization that is in denial .........

............ and that is why i wish i was white (``white``, being a state of mind) - there is nothing to be gained from being comfortable with your miserable wheatish condition ...........

Hamid – Don’t get me wrong. I like you. You’ve a great sense of humor, and, as Bawa Wawa said, “I’ve never met someone who was funny and stupid.”

It’s just that your “I’m white” or “I wanna be one” was too much for me to stomach. You should know better than that. Self-esteem and self-respect is free of those kinds of thoughts. It does say quite a bit about the person making that statement. I would’ve ignored it if it did not come from you.

closest i have been to brazil is f... mexico. biggest bunch of racists i ever saw this side of the dsubcontinent: those with ``spanish-blood`` are considered king of the heap, native indians (who are so uncouth as to not even speak spanish!!) are at the bottom, with all shades of mestizos (mixed blood) forming the middle.

but nice guys otherwise if they took more fiber (to take the cue from hamidm`s post below defending my and temporal`s nice-ness in the face of totally unjustified attacks by Raw Dust). :-)

Re: # 232

tahmed,

......... you are right about mexico - it is quite segregated and the rural indians, specially from the south, do get a raw deal in the cities ........... however, it is not nearly as bad as the black-white divide here in the us and the mestizos seem to be overwhelming the thoroughbred europeans .................

............. nobody is perfect and i am sure they have some of that in brazil too but i didn`t see anything of that kind in the ten days i was there - i think it is primarily because of the fact that most people are of mixed race ............. at least in sao paulo, which has eighteen million people and a gzillion cars and buses, everyone seemed to get along just just fine even though the rich live behind ten foot walls and seem to take helicopters to the toilet .............. it is remarkable what sex can accomplish ......... unfortunately religion is the great spoiler and can divide people even if they have the same genes ........

...... and i still maintain that it is better to be white - iman, and bilal (ra) are exceptions ........

godot,

.... but seriously, if you remember my first interaction on this board was based on my brazilian experience ......... and of course it is true that it would be nice if we all had a better complexion ............ come on, admit it, the bushman from kalahari and the man from madras are not exactly a comforting sight for sore eyes ! ......... we all know the truth, only michael jackson was man enough to do something about it .......

Hamid – nice cover!

I see you are squirming to get out of a tight corner and your friends bought it!!! Change the subject, eh! So, how’s Brazil? Or Argentina? Oh, oh, Guatemala? Belize, anyone?

hamidm: i have a Q
why do you even care to talk and relate your points with echobooms, tahmeds and temporals.. these people are irrelevant... how many of such peeps you get to see in your real life? ... thats like giving them a little too much relevance than their views deserve.. seriously..

Re: # 228

raw dust, nobody is irrelevant and temporal and tahmed are real nice guys once you get to know them - fellow curmudgeons who need a little more fiber in their diet ............ echoboom has gone over to the dark side, but i seriously believe he can be saved by a preacher`s daughter ........

......... no i haven`t been to buenos aires but the argentinians seem to have something of a bad reputation with the brazilians who think they are rather stuck up because they think of themselves as ``high class`` thoroughbred europeans and look down upon the mulattos .......

.......... but this racial/religious/cultural identity business is rather complex with everyone stuck on the notion that the heeng in their curry does not stink and their music was handed down from mount olympus ........... there are even some people who think that idlee and sambar are real food ........ and let`s not even begin to talk about the muslims who are in a class by themselves .............

errmm.. i was gonna agree with Hamidm thoughts on Brazil, i have just become aware of the racial pissings going in full flow on this board.. none o` that..

hamidm sir: amen to Brazil !

Re: # 227
Soccer anyone?!?!??!?!?!?!