Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #138 Posted by Maharana on December 15, 2007 7:48:45 am


It is good to have humorous stories in one's mythology.


"One man's religion is another mans' belly laugh." Robert A. Heinlein

and with hinduism, that's a lot of belly laughs...

BTW, I read Stephen Colbert's book I am America(and so can you). It has a chapter on religion. All religions are savaged, except islam, the religion of peace(and blowing stuff up)..There's a one very deferential reference to islam and mo...even comedians know muslims go ape shit at every real and perceived insult to mo or his camel. probably didn't want ROPers to go killing each other and burning down KFCs.

The Good Monster: Musharraf\'s Cultural Legacy damn..they used the same playbook...literally..

On Retainer in Pakistan, to Ease Military Rulers’ Path
By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

AT 84, Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, mysterious, influential and scorned by Pakistan’s protesters, fixes things when military rulers take over here, scripting temporary charters and new oaths of office as constitutions are shredded and judges dismissed.

Mr. Pirzada is the lawyer for President Pervez Musharraf, who turned to him when he decided he would get rid of a Supreme Court that was threatening to derail his re-election for a second term.

By Mr. Pirzada’s account, delivered as he sat on a brocade-covered couch in his living room, he met with Mr. Musharraf and his cabinet on Nov. 2, the day before martial law was imposed.

The emergency decree to replace the real Constitution had already been dusted off. Mr. Pirzada made some final touches on the document, which was familiar to him: he had composed it for Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977. “They always keep things ready,” he said of his handiwork.

The emergency order that Mr. Pirzada wrote is expected to be lifted Saturday. But at the same time a new raft of provisions devised to enhance Mr. Musharraf’s presidential powers, particularly over the courts, will be enacted without Parliament’s assent. “Why should we wait for Parliament?” Mr. Pirzada said.

To those who complain that he has perverted the course of democracy in Pakistan by easing the path of military dictators — first Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan in 1958, then Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan in 1969, followed by General Zia, and now Mr. Musharraf — Mr. Pirzada says he is just a lawyer for hire available to anyone who wants his services.

He even helped the opposition leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on several cases when they were civilian prime ministers, he said.

“The question of conscience in law hardly matters as long as you influence the authorities to be moderate and exercise restraint,” he said. “Otherwise they take extreme steps.”

An interview with Mr. Pirzada is a bit like a drawing room boxing match, a jab here, a polite jab back, an offense there, a defensive move in rejoinder. Confident and cool, short in stature, he offers an occasional smile, and a slight underlying charm that must comfort needy clients and reassure knowing judges.

IN making no apologies for his role in Pakistan’s troubled history, Mr. Pirzada does not deny the mordant view that he once expressed about himself and his homeland.

“Accept me as I am with warts, blemishes, briefcases and all,” he told Ardeshir Cowasjee, a veteran columnist for the newspaper Dawn. “If it were not for all the weak and corrupt governments of Pakistan, I would not be where I am today.”

Asked if he had indeed said that, Mr. Pirzada said evenly, “That is substantially correct.”

Mr. Cowasjee spoke with a chuckle on the telephone about his friend of many decades: “He can play any game by any rules — which he makes most of the time,” he said from his home in Karachi, where Mr. Pirzada also lives most of the time.

Pakistan’s lawyers, scandalized by the imposition of military rule and the arrest of judges and prominent lawyers under the Nov. 3 decree, continue to protest. Several lawyers, including the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, remain under house arrest, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and other Supreme Court justices are being kept behind barbed wire and police guard at their homes.

There is no secret about the poisonous relationship between the polar opposites, Mr. Ahsan and Mr. Pirzada. The former is flamboyant, out front, a Cambridge University graduate. Mr. Pirzada is reserved — “very suspicious by nature,” wrote one of his early bosses, President Ayub Khan, in 1967 in his published diaries — born and educated in Bombay, now Mumbai. He came to Pakistan after partition in 1947 as a poor young man.

“He stands out as an example of all that a lawyer and a jurist must not be,” Mr. Ahsan wrote three years ago when he declined an invitation to join a committee on constitutional reform that Mr. Pirzada was a member of. “Pirzada has the unique distinction of having been a willing partner in each one of the four military regimes.”

After being reminded of Mr. Ahsan’s characterization of him, Mr. Pirzada retorted that any mention of his enemy within earshot was off limits. “I would not like to hear his name at all.” The comments were “improper and malicious,” he said.

Mr. Pirzada stresses his early pedigree as an assistant to the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the lawyer-politician who insisted on a separate country for the Muslims of British-ruled India. He often mentions his association, and plays up a 1944 photograph he says was taken of him standing between Mr. Jinnah and Gandhi, even though his friends insist the photo is a fake.

“He told me to become a lawyer,” said Mr. Pirzada of the man he calls his mentor. “I wanted to be a writer, something like that. If I had, I would have ended up on the streets.”

His first major posts in a military government were as foreign minister and then attorney general for General Mohammad Ayub Khan. It was under General Zia that Mr. Pirzada got his first big taste of power. “Zia took over July 5, 1977,” he recalled. “He inducted me as attorney general. I got the validation of his takeover by the Supreme Court.”

Mr. Musharraf first sought Mr. Pirzada at 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 13, 1999, a few hours after he seized power. Mr. Pirzada says he received a phone call from the general, asking him to come immediately with him to Islamabad. So confident was Mr. Pirzada in his indispensability in the general’s hour of need that he replied that he needed his sleep. “I said, ‘No, I will come in the afternoon.’ I took the midday plane, then I met him.”

ONE of the standard deviations used by Mr. Pirzada when smoothing the path for a new military government is to demand that judges take an oath that omits the phrase “to protect, uphold and defend the Constitution.” In this way, his critics said, Mr. Pirzada and his masters are able to get rid of judges not to their liking.

Mr. Pirzada put the oaths to work on Mr. Musharraf’s behalf in January 2000 when the Supreme Court justices, numbering 13 at the time, were asked with little warning to take the new oath of office. One judge, Wajihuddin Ahmed, recalled, “Six of us refused,” and were forced out.

Last month, Supreme Court judges were again required to take the oath Mr. Pirzada devised. This time, 12 of 17 judges refused. But, unlike those who did not oblige in 2000, the recalcitrant judges were arrested.

Mr. Pirzada has been rewarded for his services to Mr. Musharraf with a post on the National Security Council, a role as senior adviser in the Musharraf cabinet, and several trips accompanying the general on visits to Washington to see President Bush.

As much as Pakistan’s opposition lawyers speak with disdain of Mr. Pirzada, he replies in kind. “They were acting as politicians,” he said of the protesting lawyers.

Anyway, he asked, what has civilian rule contributed to Pakistan? He answered with the note of a practiced cynic: “The trouble is the people of Pakistan. They were merely spectators. Half the time there has been military rule, and half civilian rule. Both were alike in despotism and corruption.”

Fall of Dacca
extremely adverse conditions of (1) being very badly out-numbered in men and material – 3 Indian Corps against One and that too lame



HAHAHA...when paki soldiers sneak up on peaks vacated by indian soldiers, that's a tactically brilliant move..when pakis are forced to drop their chaddis and surrender, there's always a ready excuse.


propagating the imaginary atrocities against the Bengalis and particularly the Hindus of East Pakistan


yeah..imaginary atrocities...

Fall of Dacca why is there a video ad from freedom's watch, a bunch of neo-con iraq war supporters, on the article?

The Good Monster: Musharraf\'s Cultural Legacy #122 Posted by zeemax on December 15, 2007 7:10:23 am


The emergence of the United Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan is a huge development though and not to be underestimated.


yeah....the paki army needs to import white phosphorus ASAP and allah need to keep more virgins ready...

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? masadi, the fountain of knowledge and mo's annointed interpreter of islam, has declared the saudis apostates....

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #115 Posted by abu_safwaan on December 14, 2007 3:06:18 pm


many of our scholars have said that its something where ijtihaad can take place n this can be looked at.


taking credit for actions that may or may not happen in the future? That's like giving props to the saudis NOW because the issue of women driving could possibly looked at in the future.


3)Women inherit half property because women r not responsible for taking care of financial matters of the household


So a son is automatically the person responsible for financial matters and the daughter is excluded?

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #112 Posted by masadi on December 14, 2007 12:50:49 pm

why isn't this the place to discuss women's rights?

Let's take a simple example. The Saudi ban on women driving. Either it's islamic as per the koran or it's not. If it's not islamic and the saudis are still discriminating against women, doesn't it follow that the saudis, the keepers of mecca, are following unislamic practices?

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #101 Posted by masadi on December 14, 2007 6:50:49 am


Islam has absolutely nothing to do with lack of women's rights


If you're saying islam gives women rights while the reality is that women have the fewest rights in muslim countries in general and in islam's birthplace in particular..so the obvious conclusion is that most muslims don't follow islam..

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? saudi arabia has all the money in the world.

It could build modern schools and colleges all over the islamic world but it doesn't. Instead, it builds islamic academies and madrassahs that indoctrinate the next generation of islamofascists into rioting on every real or perceived insult to mo or his pet camel...including one in my own county.

And muslims all over the world who riot at the first sighting of a mo cartoon in a danish newspaper give them a pass.

The Good Monster: Musharraf\'s Cultural Legacy #93 Posted by nasah on December 13, 2007 2:10:25 pm


Pakistan was not a fundamentalist Jahiliya state before Musharraf


yes...lashkar-e-toiba, jaish-e-mohammed and the taliban are all cultural societies..

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? Even the chini masters think purelanders are going the extremist route

Pakistan cautioned against extremism

SHAIQ HUSSAIN
ISLAMABAD - China has cautioned Pakistan against the surge in extremism while expressing desire for the broad alliance of ‘liberal political forces’ to counter the grave threat.
The Special Envoy of the Chinese government and Senior Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on President Pervez Musharraf here on Thursday.
“The Chinese envoy lauded the President’s steps that he is taking for transition to democracy. He said his country fully supports Pakistan’s endeavours against the menace of terror while expressing desire that the liberal forces should be brought together to tackle the grave threat of extremism,” said an official here requesting anonymity.

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? neembu: when was the last time you protested the saudi treatment of women?

hmm...how about never...?

why do they always get a pass?

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #24 Posted by masadi on December 13, 2007 6:52:18 am


the nature of that colonization in that it was more inclusive


yeah...that colonization was a kinder gentler colonization...

sure..

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #20 Posted by Dash_Dot on December 13, 2007 6:36:20 am


Why is he not eulogissed in todays muslim world?


It's funny...the reason he's not eulogized is the reason why there are so few of him

bat-shit-crazy adherence to islamist dogma..

Where is Ibn-Sina of the 21st Century? #14 Posted by masadi on December 13, 2007 6:16:59 am


Where are the Newtons and Albert Einsteins of 12th and 13th century Europe?


masadi..in our universe, time moves forward...and human progress too..i doubt even the US elite can change that..