A Different Lens

I have been struggling for the past couple of weeks to pen down something. My mind boggled, my emotions fried and my life distracted. My insides are in turmoil. I have always been amazed by this miracle of Allah Suhanahu wa Ta’ala of how in fills our hearts with the love of other people, who are not our blood relations, not our friends nor our acquaintances. Every single person’s ordeal seems like etched in my heart, every person’s tears has moved me to tears, I know I can never understand their pain, anguish, heartbreak or the burden they bear, I feel something in my heart that these mere words can never do justice to.

I have the understanding of things now that I could hardly understand in the past. I remember how the Quran says to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), to not let these people denying the truth, consume you. And I always used to wonder why was the Prophet so consumed by that, why did he felt so… I only realized just now that when people can see the Truth as light as the Day and you know that they know it, and yet they don’t testify it or acknowledge it is very frustrating. In the current times, when people everywhere, don’t want to acknowledge that war crimes are taking place, over 7000 children have died, that IOF kills, kidnaps, blows up hospitals and time and again refers to turning Ghazza into a ‘football field’ or ‘parking lot’ and are in complete denial of a genocide and a holocaust taking place right in front of their eyes, makes you realize how heart wrenching the situation must have been for the Prophet (saw). He preached the Quraish and the people of Makkah for 13 years, and for 13 years, they knew he was telling the truth and yet they didn’t accept it. As the Quran says, ‘ it is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts’. How can one see all these modern warfare tech weapons unleashed on civilians and yet turn a blind eye to the atrocities that the state of Israel is committing. So much so that these people think that bombing hospitals and doctors is acceptable. How sick and how much of a psychopath one has to be to accept that and not bat an eye.

The people of Ghazza were denied food, meds, water, fuel and basic necessities. In the current times, when human beings think that they are on the pinnacle of civilization and where human rights are for all, such behaviour puts a question mark on the intellect of the so-called human beings. The struggle they went through in the past one and a half month, is unquestionably, not only horrendous, horrific but it also raises questions as to what is this so-called-civilised world have come to. Are we even human to deny basic human rights to more than 2 million civilians. The human rights organization, the women’s rights organizations, UNICEF, UNESCO, feminists, children’s rights organizations, all were silent and are still silent. The hypocrisy of all these people, who wail at the fully covered women because they think their rights are breached, where are they when the women, pregnant women and girls were bombed to bits, when they were being amputated and when C-sections were performed on them, without anesthesia. Where is UNICEF, when the school board cancelled the year because all the kids were killed, and when the Israelis chanted that,’ There are no schools in Gaza, because we have killed all the babies’.

The insanity has cross all limits so much so that I can’t wrap it around my head. We feel angry , anguished, heart broken and depressed everyday. Why can’t the world see it. Why are people so heartless and so emotionless as to look at the atrocities and just turn a blind eye towards it. Everyday, brings new pain, new low and new destruction, yet the people, to whom Allah has given power, sit and do nothing except for paying lip service, doing extreme disservice to everyone around them. The respectable, don’t seem respectable now. There is NO freedom of speech, where people so proudly used to boast that they are the flagbearers of freedom of speech.

Blood on Their Hands

As the death toll mounts, and the world looks at it with horror, the insanity and the foolishness is revealed. I thought we have seen the low of humankind when they killed indiscriminately in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. But with the events unfolding with every passing moment, we realise that we discover that we were wrong and it’s a bottomless pit and these ministers and leaders are racing to show us how horrendous their insides are. Every time has it’s own Pharoah. Musa (AS)’s Pharoah killed babies too, then there was Abu Jahl, the Pharoah during the times of Prophet Muhammad(SAW), and today, it’s Netanyahu, Biden and Sunak. Their brutality knows no border.

When 9/11 happened, I was in school. The events that followed destroyed not only Afghanistan but Pakistan too. If you take out the interviews, the media, the news, articles, anything from those times, the words, the narrative, the propaganda is still the same. When Bush was asked to try Osama Bin Laden in a neutral country, he said that he wanted to go on a ‘Crusade’ and hence, bombed the country to bits. The soldiers there did every inhumane thing they could have possibly do; keeping parts of Afghan’s human bodies as trophies, raping girls, and killing off whole families at point blank, and all of this was during the ground invasion. They blew up houses and killed innocent civilians through drones in Pakistan too, claiming militants were hiding there. The Blackwater organization was on its feet working in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq killing whoever they wanted whenever they wanted.

The war crimes that happened in those days came to light years after they had taken place. The people were kidnapped, and abducted from various parts of the world, and were sent to Guantanamo Bay Prison, Bagram Prison and Prisons in Iraq. The pictures are still on the internet and the testimonies are there of how these prisoners were treated, and were kept in prisons for years and years without any charges and they were subjected to worst kinds of tortures that anyone in this world could ever imagine. The so-called harbingers of peace and the flagbearers of justice, turned out to be savages with no morality whatsoever. They didn’t have any humanity, they didn’t have any moral values, and certainly were not the best of the people as they claimed to be.

The so-called freedom of speech turned out to be a hoax too because in US now it is illegal to ban Israel and go for BDS but it is okay to condemn the people of Palestine to a genocide! They are now proposing bills to expel Palestinians from their country. So much for free speech and freedom and the American Dream and what not. If you want to expel them from your country then rid their country from the occupiers. But no, they can’t even do that. The very fact that these countries, the best countries in the world, who have the moral high ground, thinks that chanting pro-Palestinian slogans is also ‘hate speech’ and want to turn around the tables and are propagating that this is ‘antisemitism’! When you scroll around your social media, you come across these people, and the talking points only revolve around the events that happened on October, the seventh! And how appalling it is that there are no pictures on the internet whatsoever of ‘decapitated’ babies and children. But everyone turns a blind eye to the babies, that are not even days old and are killed by Israeli airstrikes, the pictures of children killed and mutilated by the bombs. Have you seen the father who was carrying parts of his children in a polythene bag?! Do they count for anything? But the most appalling thing was when the Israeli minister screamed in the cabinet that these children are not equal to our children. If this was a statement of any Muslim minister, the West would have bombed that place saying that these people are terrorists and are a threat to their ‘national security’ and their existence.

There in no moral background of the US or the West’s policies. The people, who caused Holocaust, dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killed millions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, everywhere, say that Muslims are terrorists and a threat to their existence. How ironic! As the world watches in horror and the leaders, be it democratic, or dictatorship or whatever, I have come to this conclusion, wherever there is evil in this world, US, UK and the West are in compliance with one another in abetting to those crimes and stand steadfast in those values that only harm other people mostly because they are not the same race i.e. white!

Now the West, and the world stands with Israel, with it’s so called notion of ‘right to self defense ‘. Imagine how comical it is that the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is wailing like a child over some stones that were thrown by some teenagers at their fully armored tanks. And in retaliation killed over 10,000 innocent civilians, most of whom are kids. Now their cultural minister is asking for a Nuclear bomb be dropped on the city of Ghazza, because carpet bombing was not killing enough of the Palestinians and they want that piece of land for themselves. It seems to me that the times have not changed yet, some people are always more equal than the others. The idea of being ‘white supremacist’, ‘white man’s burden’ and ‘others’ will always be there. The US and Europeans, the British and the Israelis have very beautiful notion that they are the supreme race. US President Biden saying that US is the greatest country and is responsible for the world (bully of the world). These countries have this notion that they are untouchables and will never be held accountable for the crimes they committed because all of them would veto one another in the UN and get away with everything.

The reality is that the supporters of genocide and ethnic cleansing that is happening in Ghazza, will face dire consequences in the future. You cannot do injustice in this world and sleep like a baby. There will always be consequences. And Insha’Allah we will see who will win in the Hereafter.

Modern Day Colonialism

The first ever department of English was established in the colony of the subcontinent. And do you wonder why? To make us into better slaves. And if you still cannot understand what it means, you can just listen to Rishi Sunak, the PM of UK. He is of an Indian descent and India was a British colony up until 78 years ago. When you look at him, stating his stance on the ceasefire, his refusal to consider the ceasefire and letting humanitarian aid into Gaza, you understand that he still has that mentality of a people that were colonized years ago and still can’t break out of this colonial mindset where you cannot steer away from what your “master” wants.

The colonials have always believed that the whites are a superior race and everyone else is touched by the devil and are cannibals. Everyone else is less human and are animals and have to be treated as such. One would have thought that this is the twenty first century and human beings will not be judged by the colour of their skin or the country they are born in or the religion they follow. It turns out that you are wrong! Even when there are millions of immigrants in the European countries and US and Canada, Muslims are not equal human beings and will never be treated as one. The people of colour will always be the people of colour. The constant repetition from the Israeli Ministers, calling Palestinians, as ‘human animals’ doesn’t come as a shock. This has always been the case with the colonizers, oppressors and occupiers. The Western Media, who claims to be the upholder of human rights and free speech, is not disgusted, or shows any remorse into supporting the idea that ,’Yes! They can say that to the people of Palestine, as they are not “white skinned, blue eyed, Europeans”. There is no backlash as such from the so called human right activists that how can one human life be less worthy as compared to a fair-skinned European.

The language, the lexicon that has been used in the news by the anchor persons or the interviewers or the leaders of the world shape the way they want people to think about a certain situation and the events. There are always sides. The right and the wrong side. What these small ‘slip of tongues’, deliberate use of certain words and the words that construe a certain image in the minds of the masses, do is sometimes completely change the way a person might be thinking. Let’s start with a context, when 9/11 happened, Bush, on the TV called war on Afghanistan, ‘ a crusade!’ This word ‘crusade’ have a religious context and this is exactly what they tried to implant in the minds of people. The kind of phrases that followed were, ‘whether you are “with us” or “against us” driving people into thinking that there is only one way to handle this situation and that be to wipe out a country where “others” live, who in turn are a threat to our existence. The constant need for asking the Muslims to condemn what happened on 7th October has become a crucial part of how the media starts their day but the same people are not saying a word of condemnation on the killings of 7000+ innocent civilians, because these innocent Palestinian civilians are “the others” and not “humans” and are “lesser beings”. They have started calling it a war between Israel and Gaza. What hypocrisy is this?? Israel, having ‘weapons of mass destruction’, the best intelligence agency, sophisticated and trained army, against innocent civilians without water, food supply, electricity and medicine… There is NO COMPARISON!

I don’t personally think that it’s colonialism. This is pure ethnic cleansing as the US minister said that they will turn Gaza into “parking lot”. Time and again the Israeli minister has said that we will “kill” everyone of them. The Israeli Minister saying on TV that drive them out into the Sinai Desert. The Israelis chanting in Jerusalem that ‘ there are no schools in Gaza, we have killed all the children’. This is not colonialism, this is a GENOCIDE! This is their mindset, this is their aim. The so-called flagbearers of peace, are all murderers. The journalists sided with the oppressors. The news channels aided the massacre of innocent children, unborn babies in the wombs of their mother, the mothers, the fathers, and the innocent people just because they lived on the “other side”!

“You Will be Able to Marry ‘white-skinned’ Kashmiri girls Now!”

We are looking towards another genocide, and this time around the victims are Muslims of Occupied Kashmir. And no one will bat an eye because it is the MUSLIMS of Kasmir, had it been another nation, the state conferring to this would have been deemed terrorist state and the western countries would have formed an alliance to bomb that state to nothing as they did with Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Western world has always been like that when it comes to genocide against Muslims, the world that looks in retrospect at the pictures of Jews being tortured and killed by Nazis and says ‘never again’, is silent on the mass killings of Kashmiris because they are Muslims. The West and the feminist movements that go wild that the women who wear burqas are opressed and should be liberated, are silent because women in question are Muslims and from Kashmir and even if they are raped, it is okay. The double standards of the West is just ‘WOW’ when it comes to Muslims and Muslim women. We didn’t see any reaction from all those feminist movements when the BJP announced that you will now be able.to marry ‘white-skinned’ women. Even the human right’s activists went silent on the ‘racial’ remarks.

The Muslim world has again shown how low they have stooped to when it comes to standing with your Muslim brothers. UAE says it is with India for the mass killings of the Kashmiris. The rest of the Muslim world has no voice whatsoever. They live in their little bubbles of happiness and wouldn’t really care about the rest of the Muslims. Muslims, living in Muslim countries are opressed, so we shouldn’t really be shocked any ways. This episode will be written down in history as a massive failure of the Muslim ummah, where they couldn’t stop a massacre, rapes of women and children and massive ethnic cleansing. The world doesn’t stand with Syrian people, doesn’t stand with Palestine, doesn’t stand with rohingya and Chinese Muslims AND THEY WILL NOT STAND WITH KASHMIRI MUSLIMS!!! BRAVO!

The most bizarre of reactions came from the leadership of Pakistan. They talk little of Kashmir. Prime Minister claimed a few weeks back that U.S. has agreed to be a third party in solving of Kashmir issue and yet this happens after a few days! The news is filled with racial slurs of party leaders against one another. OIC has not been called yet! Even the role of OIC has been compromised since they called in India as a guest in the previous session. Will OIC now intervene in this new move of the land grabbing act of India. What we see is the same old attitude of the politicians, hurling insults at one another and showing not a single speck of seriousness.

This is just heart breaking that no one really cares!

Leap Year

I was going through my page, which I don’t usually, and found out I rarely write now unless it is a big eventor something. I guess having kids around don’t give you enough time to concentrate and write because you are constantly being distracted. Anyhow, tjis was a leap year, and it did create a lot of ripples around Pakistan; Mumtaz Qadri was hanged, and Sharmeen Obeid Chinoy won an oscar. You might have guess by now that I am here to create some ripples too…

Anyway, I am not going to dwell on whether whatever Qadri did was right or wrong or if he is going to hell or heaven and stuff. I am just going to dwell on the scene set up by everyone around. Strange as it is when Saulat Mirza was about to be executed, we saw long debates on the television screens, his last moments, his confessions, his wife and later everything was aired on live television. But this time around it was all hushed up and it seems as if being brushed under the carpet. Why was there a need to do an execution with such secrecy and hushed tones? One might wonder what is cooking that this was to be done with such urgency. I would call it urgency because the reason behind the whole Taseer murder case was one lady and she still has her case pending for soo many years! Anyway, people have reacted as we would have expected but the reaction not being shown on the television shows that something really is fishy. Anyhow, this is what happens when the leaders are corrupt, the judicial system is flawed and justice is denied or delayed! All I am going to say is that his execution has set motives and there is something really fishy going on behind the camera!

About the Oscar winning spree, I agree that Pakistan has its problems and issues but the only issues the ‘white browns’ highlight are either women being subjected to violence, rape and are not allowed education and we have people like Chinoy, Malala and Mukhtara Mai in the global picture. We don’t see any doctors, teachers or social workers anywhere. It is weird that the women’s protection bill is being passed in Punjab where the rural population is slave to Chaudhries and Waderas and they are not allowed to get even proper education! Remember how they corrupted Hudood Ordinance bill, that the rape victim has to provide four eye witnesses and all other evidences(medical, etc.) were invalid, giving the rapist more free hand than justice to the victim! The idea is that the amendments of all these laws only provide the powerful with freedom to do anything and victim doesn’t get any justice. The laws are made for poor people only, whereas, rich are above the law! I just do not understand the fact that when we fail to change the whole system from way up to the grass roots, how can  we be able to say that passing a bill will make all tge difference!?

And people do not realize that implementing the law of Allah will make things smoother and it will give justice to everyone.

Freedom

Freedom? What is freedom? What is freedom of expression? Are these terms relative? Do they have different meaning for some people, and different for others? How do you define terms that men have made soo complicated just so that they can get whatever they want? Which definition would you want to adapt yourself to? The classic version? The modern or the Post modern version? Soo many versions of just a simple question or is it just a simple question?

Anyway, so what is obscenity? The definition again would come under heavy discussion as to what really is obscenity. The trouble with our media and our so-called liberals is that they have become so much delusional and are suffering from such critical identity crisis that they have forgotten that we do not have to exhaust ourselves into the debate of what is allowed and what is not.

Whatever that is happening today around the world and in Pakistan, it just breaks my heart. We see people around us who would talk about how we shouldn’t have law of blasphemy in Pakistan and how it is cruel and everything and it is sad that the very people would not open their lips about the cartoonists and the movie makers who think they have every right to do whatever they are doing. Such hypocrisy. Do these people think that we should remove this very law and put those blasphemous cartoons and movies on a show for the people of Pakistan( in the name of freedom of expression, of course). Instead we should have a law to put people on trial who say a word against the Holocaust, Europe has it, why not us.

It is ironic that though we live in the Post modern world, the boundaries have become more distinct when we put people into categories, specially Muslims. The fundamentalists, or the liberals and the middle section that was there some decades back, has become extinct. Whatever that is happening around us, either good or bad or in that grey area, is what is shaping us inside out. If we feel for Muslims around us,or if we don’t care what’s happening, every moment, every day, every event, everything is effecting us in so many different ways that we are either ending up becoming “the liberals” or the “fundamentalists”.

It’s been 11 years since 9/11 and since then thousands of innocent civilians, women and children have lost their lives in the name of the freedom that the US deludes itself in practicing. What kind of freedom have they provided to the people of Afghanistan, or Iraq? Freedom from this world perhaps.

 

The Avengers

What is wrong with the super hero kinda movies is that they show that the whole world is under attack, and no one else gives a damn about it except for, of course, Americans. They have the best technology, the best character and the best people and they have super heroes (people who are mutants and have super powers and are holier than the rest of the world, who only care about the well being of others and would sacrifice their lives- they don’t die though- and will save the world). Anyway, so only Americans can and will be able to take the rest of the world out of this misery and chaos and whatever. And the rest of the world looks up to them as if they are gods and are only hope.

When you read classics, you get the idea that dark skinned men are all touched by devil and it’s a white man’s burden to ‘de-calibanize” them, to teach them the way of life as the white race is the supreme and chosen race and the rest needs to be their slaves in order to be a part of the civilized world. I mean remember how Macaulay thought the Eastern Education system is all rotten and therefore, education (the English style) should be implemented in the East which resulted in the first ever department of English in Calcutta. The whole idea of making us more civilized by teaching us their literature and language as if whatever the Indians were doing before that was killing flies.

Anyway, back to where I was. So, this team of English/American people with white skin (one was black, maybe just to ensure that the film wont give rise to racist riots), will save the day! White man’s burden all over again!

The book, Umpire of Illusion, draws upon all these factors that have been fed the general population that the world needs US to solve the issues of the rest of the world. Having all the technology and warfare equipment, when they meet the enemy in the front lines, they realize how courage does not come from the movies that they have seen. And when they come face to face with reality, they get all roughed up and surpass the boundaries of humanity and ironically adopting cannibal ways, such as raping them (unarmed civilians), keeping part of their bodies as trophies, killing for no reason and not even sparing children and women when they move from town to town. And when these stories come to light, one wonders if they really are civilized and if they themselves are not right in the heads, how are they supposed to do things right for the country that they have bombed and destroyed?

As Edward Said argues in Orientalism that now the imperialists use power as the last resort, one might understand the need for the movies like The Avengers. Because these movies are watched by the educated class of the Orient and are a very good way of spreading the message of how the world will always need the Americans (superior race) for saving the world and all that crap. And since the brand culture has taken it’s roots in the East and now is a huge tree, and everything American and European is ‘the best’, even if the tag says, ‘made in china’, the brand ‘Marks and Spencer’ makes it all classy and amazing.

And by the way, I haven’t watched the movie but I bet it’s just as stupid as any other super hero movie. 😀

Words Fail Me

So now that the Norwegian Fundamentalist Christian is out in the open and has killed so many people in the name of Crusade and the fear of Muslimisation and “Pakistanization of Europe”, would anyone from the International or National media cover it the way they covered the attacks carried by Muslims? Since medressahs were blamed for the “extremist Muslim mentality”, would anyone call the churches or night schools the same? Would Christians be checked again and again and again at the airports?

http://www.express.com.pk/epaper/PoPupwindow.aspx?newsID=1101296388&Issue=NP_ISB&Date=20110727

Following is the link of one comedy show which has exposed the “unbiased” media of the US.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/393042/july-25-2011/norwegian-muslish-gunman-s-islam-esque-atrocity?redirect=true

Such authentic and investigative journalism.

Why I Didn’t Want The Pakistani Team To Win

I wished and prayed with all my heart that Pakistan should win But there was this rational side of me which didn’t want the Pakistani Team to win today. And you might be wondering why… Well the answer is easy: the whole prediction business! I mean all the energy was consumed in calling all those astronomers and fortune tellers on the TV shows and the poor parrots dying because he predicted that Pakistan will win!

All I want to say is, I read this Hadeeth in Sahih Bukhari. I don’t have the book right now with me, or else I would have given the reference. When it rained before the battle of Badr, there were Muslims amoung the lines who said that such and such star appeared at such time that is why it rained, the Prophet (SAW) said that these people have committed shirk because they believed in the movements of stars as they did not say that it is Allah Subhanahu Wa Taala who sends down rain from the skies.

Many people would say that we don’t believe in such things but what is the harm in listening to all this or reading zodiac signs and stuff. The thing is when people get desperate and they cannot see a possible solution to their problems, then they fall prey to such things as these start to give them hope instead of Faith in Allah Subhanahu Wa Taala. And not only that there are people out there who easily fall prey to such things as their eimaan is not that strong, if Pakistan would have won the match, all these people would have easily switched their eimaan and that be without even knowing that it is gone.

One other thing that was shocking to me was what I saw on the recorded programs today. One was that of Jawed Chaudhry, in which he was talking to all these fortune tellers as if they hold an important position in the whole affair. I mean I had respect for him earlier but now… The second program that was quite disturbing for a person like me was “har lamha Purjosh”. The infamous Dr. Liaqat Hussain was sitting on the same panel as that of the fortune tellers. Now this is something that one can call subliminal message being passed out on to the general public. Dr. Hussain’s presence there legitimatized the fortune telling business and the astronomy for a lot of people who have weak faith. And there is a huge viewership of Dr. Hussain, to all those people who follow him blindly, this message has been passed out onto them that it is okay to follow all these predictions, and the astronomy business. These are not mere coincidences that these programs were held and these fortune- telling- people were given so much importance in recent programs and shows.

This only shows how the media is playing with the faith and eimaan of the people. I do not watch these programs, it was a mere coincidence that my husband was watching them and I sat down to see what was happening, and this is what I was shocked to see. Many of you would say that whatever, we don’t believe it and all but there are kids, youngsters watching these programs, their minds are easy to mold, so this is alarming and shouldn’t be taken lightly!

But who am I kidding? If our media was soo responsible, it wouldn’t have promoted all the bad things in our society!

Azaab-e-Ilaahi

Recent events have made me stop in my tracks and think again and prioritize again what is most important in my life! Whatever that is you see around you, you feel as if the fitna (trial and afflictions) that have been foretold in the Ahadeeth are actually happening around us! Death, suffering, calamities, lies, deceit, zulm,etc. everything as they’ve been explained more than 1430 years ago.

The plane crash, the floods, and then famine, diseases, and then people in other cities killing one another as if there isn’t enough suffering and death all around the country without the gunpowder! Plus LIES! I mean there has to be a limit for how much you can lie shamelessly! I remember writing an article few months back that media should confirm and then say something on any news that’s been brought to them. Why was there a need to say that six people are taken out alive and are injured in the plane crash?! Why is there a pack of lies on tv all the time. Then you see all those tv men going in the places of calamities and plane crashes and they just go there for reporting and not bringing about any relief to the people living there who have suffered so much! I remember tv people reaching earthquake hit areas in helicopters and were not there to provide relief but just for reporting purposes!

Anyway, forget that. Imagine a minister on tv saying that for rehabilitation of all those flood struck people, we should provide them with LOANS! hadd hai! Later they’d ask those poor people to return it with 13% interest rate? And they would sit in their air conditioned rooms and eat away all our tax money and become fat! Where are those stupid NGOs who have been funded by US to work in Pakistan, maybe they are just entertaining blackwater army in here.

Time and again Quran says that “yahood-o-nasara” can never be your friends, but the leaders of this country would go on licking their boots and bowing to them for funds and loans and then eat away all that money and put the pressure of more tax on the poor people of this country!

These natural calamities, these sufferings, these deaths that we experience everyday, they are not a test! The test we have failed! This is the harvest of what we’ve sowed for so many years! It’s time that we stop in our tracks and we prioritize our aims in life! Because we don’t have time now… These are the times that we should stick to the “Rope of Allah” or else we’ll be washed away by the trials and afflictions that have hit us so hard!