Growing Up Red

Ali Hashmi,

thanks for sharing this writing with us.


Q) Who was your Nana?

A) Just one of the finest writers the 20th Century had ever produced.


Last December I was showering rose petals on his grave in in Lahore.

There are few Pakistanis or writers that I respect more than Faiz Sahib.

It is only because of him and two singers Madam Noor Jahan and Iqbal Bano

singing his poetry that I still retain a strong attchment to Urdu and the past.

People in Pakistan will continue to visit the Lahore Fort and pay their respects

to the national poet (Iqbal) buried there.

But on my rare appearances in the same city I will continue to visit

the grave of the ``Dahria`` out of respect, affection and awe.

One of my biggest regrets in life is not having met Faiz Sahib. But through his writing

a generation of idealists can be considered related to him.

A talent like his can only be considered a gift from God.

``Dahria`` my foot!

Ras H. Siddiqui

Just look at urstruly`s obfuscation he says islamists admire the ``prose and poetry`` of faiz, faraz, qasmi (he could have added Sahir and Ghalib too) so atheists should acknowledge the ``scholarship`` of Maududi and qutub, mind you not the poetry of religous poets like Iqbal, shibli etc which they admire, this is like agnostics asking them to acknowledge the scholarship of Hitlar, Golwalkar or Arun shourie or Aurobindo Ghosh or Savarkar.

He takes war`s whose origin lay in nationalism and puts it at the door of agnosticism/atheism, forgetting that Iqbal himself said: ``in taaza khudaon mein....... ``. extremem nationalism is more dangerous than religion but that does not mean that agnosticism should be ditched.

Then he puts up a mythical straw man that all morality is derived from religion, being ignorant that morality along with religion is a derivative of man`s biological neccessity of being a social animal even at the stage of hunter gathere and the imperatives of technologies such as agriculture with led to settled living and civilization, with its attendend needs of rules and social structure to maintain a functioning system.

he also states that devoid of religion man turns to a beast, forgetting Russell, Nehru, Faiz, sahir, Shaw, churchill and countless others.

since he believes that the opposite of god and religion is the devil he probably also believes that all those departments of anthropology, history, archaeology, evolutionary biology, economics and sociology/psychology at thousands of the world`s universities, which do not take the existence of god as the basis of their research are being run by the devil.

Can you beat such a warped mindset, i know you can match it after having read the views of Indian right wing coders on this web site, but beating it? Nay, impossible.

Infact if this man hadnt been the best writer of fiction on this web site i wouldnt have bothered this with a response.

very nice.beautiful style.
Ali ,It means you are related to Shohab Hashmi?

It’s all relative. Better that than being a Mirzai growing up in Pakistan around the same period. The only difference is that the label will follow you until your head is firmly placed up some Molvi’s ass.

Jazak Allah for sharing Ali. I am a big admirer or your Nana (and who wouldn’t be?).

Qafas udaas hai Yaaro, Saba se kuch to kaho
Kahin to Bahr-e-Khuda aaj Zikare-yaar chale

NEAT! I thought this was just a story at first, the way it was written. Read an english translation of some faiz poetry once, not bad at all. It`s always a boon being related to someone famous; you seem pretty modest about it, so that`s doubly neat.

Re: # 5

I`m afraid I don`t know if that couplet is by Faiz.

Re: # 14
Yes, Adeel and I are brothers.

To some of the objectors of my earlier post:

These are the words of God:

Cattle 6.125

Those whom Allah (in His plan) wills to guide,- He opens their breast to Islam; those whom He wills to leave straying,- He makes their breast close and constricted, as if they had to climb up to the skies: thus doth Allah (heap) the penalty on those who refuse to believe.

It means that true guidance is form Allah alone. Some people are blessed with it by birth, some are blessed with it sometime later in their lives and then there are some who are never blessed with His guidance. But there is a third category as well, which I think is the most unfortunate of all. It is those people whom were once guided, but then Allah takes His guidance away from them.

Not many people would know that Faiz Sahib was a Hafiz-ul-Qura`n i.e. he was blessed with the opportunity to memorize Qura`n by heart. And if my memory serves me right his father was a religious scholar too. But what happened later in Faiz`s life that he spent all his life leading the people astray to a vile political and economic ideology that not only denied Divinity but out rightly promoted hatred against Him.

Same thing could be said of Mirza Quadiani. In his days of youth he was a Muslim zealot who actively debated Evangelical missionaries that had come with British to convert us. These Evangelists would challenge Muslim scholars at public places such as playgrounds and schools to ``debate``, but instead used this opportunity to insult Islam and sometimes Hinduism. According to such staunch pro-British as Sir Syed Ahmad this vile behavior of Evangelists was the core reason that caused the ``Indian Mutiny`` of 1857. But when Allah took His guidance away from Mirza, he started his own religion and rest is history.

Communism had a great appeal for all the oppressed nations of the world, in its earlier days. These unfortunate and helpless people and nations were suffering under the vassalage of colonial powers for centuries. In communism these people saw the emancipation that they have been searching for. The two core reasons that communism attracted these huddled masses to itself was its promise:

1. To abolish colonialism and free the slave nations all around the globe.
2. To establish an economic system that had a potential of being fair and just.

These two promises appealed all the people under oppression, including Muslims, like no other, so much so that they were even willing to overlook the fact that in Europe, Communism had emerged in reaction to three oppressive forces:

1. Unbridled Feudalism and Monarchy whose only morality was to stay in power at all costs.
2. Laissez Fair Capitalism. Which had no morality at all except that money should be generated at all costs and human beings were nothing but a means of production
3. Christian Clergy, which exploited the human beings using the power of religion. This exploitation cannot be challenged, because any challenge would mean defying God.

So in short, Communism was nothing but a reactionary extremism to the above mentioned challenges. Since it denied God in its reaction it rendered itself devoid of any morality whatsoever. So without a moral guidance, as the time progressed, Communism itself turned into the monster that it once promised to slay. It promised to end colonialism but it itself turned into a brutal colonial power. Just like Capitalist colonialists it also started installing its proxy puppets upon oppressed nations. It attacked defenseless smaller nations and captured them. Only in Afghanistan one million Afghans paid with their lives for its expansionism.

Just like the Clergy that it hated, Communism turned into the Clergy itself indoctrinating and exploiting people all around the globe promising them a Red Heaven which was nowhere.

The oppressed people of the world could tolerate all that because they had been tolerating it for the past two hundred years at the hand of colonialists., but they could never tolerate the animosity to their God. So this vile ideology had to be destroyed. And since this monster was standing on nothing but hollow foundations with no moral backbone at all, it collapsed in the matter of days.

May God keep us all on His righteous path always. We must beg Him everyday to keep us from going astray because when He sets someone astray ``He maketh their breast close and constricted, as if they had to climb up to the skies``

Faiz Sahib is dead. Now the matter is between him and his Creator. As all human beings Faiz Sahib did some wrong things and some right things. May Allah forgive his faults and bless his good deeds. As far as his behavior with his fellow human being is concerned I think everybody has a positive opinion about him. Probably because Faiz could put God`s message aside but he couldn`t get rid of the morality that had formed his moral genetic make up in his early days.

Re: # 24

Urstruly, what a load of crap are you on about? This is not about your bigoted beliefs. It is story of Hazrat Faiz Ahmed Faiz (PBUH), and his grandson, who encountered bigotry at the hands of his Muslim brothers, not different from what the Grandsons of Mohammad experienced.

Here’s one for you:

Viraan hai maikada, Khum-o-Saaghar Udaas hain
Tum kya gaye ke routh gaye din Bahaar ke

Urstruly #24:

bhai aik baat batao

Allah kay paigham `ootertay` rahay...akhri paigham aai hu`aye bhee 1500 saal ho ga`aye...humaiN yeh bataiiyay...kay is sub kay bawajood...aaj 2005 maiN bhee....cheh billion main say muslamaan srif aik hee billion kyun haiN?

rgds

t

Ali Hashmi…
You write with such ease and simplicity that I can only marvel at your craftsmanship. You are very lucky to have had the advantage of a liberal household and education. As to atheism, if - as Urstruly claims - it is a religion then it is surely an easy, undemanding one. I’m spared attendance at temple or mosque, untroubled by either catechism or ritual and, thank god, I’m not subservient to either prescriptions or to proscriptions. (You see, Urstruly, I even give you a point on which to impale yourself.) How wonderful indeed if religion causes people to be more tolerant, more understanding, more forgiving of their neighbors. Yours truly doesn’t seem to work that way, does it Urstruly?
mirmir

Urstruly (#24),

You may not realize this, but your description of Mirza Sahib actually applies to all prophets of Allah. That is, they were considered honest, righteous men by everyone … before they claimed prophethoood. And once they claimed to be prophets, they and those who accepted them were violently persecuted by the old guards.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) too was considered an honest, pious man by all. But this changed when he claimed to be a prophet ... and was then considered a misled madman, a lunatic, and an opportunist by the corrupt elements of the society. Quran attests to this. And today, same identical terms are used against Mirza Sahib! Sheer coincidence? I don`t think so ... and tragic deaths of your kings ... Faysal, Bhutto, and Zia ... attest to this truth.

Everything Mirza Sahib taught is rooted in Quran. Your failure to accept Quran is your main problem. And this is precisely the reason why Allah raises prophets … to warn and to remind people as they go astray.

And your Quran-based self-righteous morality is useless … nay, dangerous … if it requires killing those who leave Islam. And this is just one example of hopelessness of your ullema in this day and age.

RE: UrsTruly
``But when Allah took His guidance away from ``

so when Allah willed someone to become a Dehrya; shouldn`t Allah, like ordinary mortals, be taking responsibility of his actions and go and burn in His own Hell whenever if ever that judgement day comes. You know for the extreme charges of straying people off of the path of Guidance through his surrogate Shaitaan? hmm, hmmm? :-)

Pakistani Dehrias are 2 number.........

- Have you read the the Hamd/Naat in Nushkaha-hai-vafa? Its on the last page I think
- Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi has been to Hajj
- Munnoo Bhai has been to Umra

Jab maut nazar aati hai to khuda yaad aata hai.......

I see hamidm, Kacha_Jullab and other resident chowk dehrias visiting Raiwind in their twilight years!

Re: # 30

Arz kiya hey

Jab Gandh lagi Pathnay
Niaz lagi Batnay

#31 kulharee, buddy... how come you get away with murder :)