Socio-Political Culture of the Muslim World

New South Asia Website Launched

2007-06-30T03:06:00.000-06:00

Southasia Magazine launches a website dedicated to Social and Political analysis
http://www.southasia-online.com/

June saw the beginning of a new endeavour on behalf of Southasia Magazine as it decided to take its content to the world of cyberspace. Southasia Magazine had been published from Pakistan for the last 30 years and has previously concentrated on the presentation and analysis of news from the Indian Sub-continent.

The primary foci for the magazine has always been the economic and political world, with a keen target towards the business world. Therefore, where in the past it has published issues pertaining to the rise and fall of Zia-ul-Haq, more recent news items have included analysis of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, as well as power politics of WAPDA and KESC.

The news venture into cyberspace, gives the editorial staff more room to maneuver. It hopes to not only address its current topics of interest (political economy and business), but also revitalize the subjects of analysis it addressed at the time of its inception. The online sections will include articles ranging from critical theory, political philosophy, military and policy studies, and arts and aesthetics, to name a few.

The magazine, or the journal, can be found at:
http://www/southasia-online.com/

From the Frontline State

2007-05-28T16:18:00.000-06:00

S. Wamiq Jawaid recently sat down with Zahid Hussain, the author of Frontline Pakistan, in New York, to talk about his new book and the future of Pakistan.

Given your most extensive journalistic background, what motivated you to write this book?

I have been covering issues pertaining to terrorism for a while, and the focus of my recent writing has been on the Afghanistan-Pakistan situation that has arisen after Sept 11th. I have investigated the rise of Islamic militancy and also witnessed its patronage by the State of Pakistan. Therefore, I wanted to write about this key issue especially since it has become the focus for the international community and incredibly crucial for Pakistan’s own dynamics.

In the last five years so much has happened in Pakistan. Several hundred Al-Qaeda operatives and especially the masterminds of 9/11, were arrested and handed to the United States. In this backdrop we notice that Pakistan was going to war with itself, especially since all the elements which were patronized by the State during the Cold War, have come back to haunt us. This is also an important juncture for us, since the international change after 9/11 has directly affected the domestic dynamics by intensifying the war within which I see crucial for the very soul of Pakistan. The future of Pakistan will be decided by the Global War on Terror, and it is these internal and global ramifications which made me undertake this project.

How do you see your book contributing to the literature already present in the market on the War on Terror, Afghanistan, and Pakistan?

In the past year a lot of books on Pakistan have come out but most have examined the Pakistani situation in a historical context. Most works relate to the 50 some year history of politics in Pakistan, but this is first time that a book deals with the domestic internalization of the September 11 situation and that makes it different than books which have historically examined the rise of Islamic extremism in Pakistan, but which have not been able to establish the link between the State and the rise of Islamic militancy in a post 9/11 world. There is great work on the post Soviet-Afghan war and the rise of militancy then, but my work starts off where others have left off.

Your main thesis has stressed upon the militarization of Pakistan, but what do you say to policy analysts who argue that the lack of governmental control of extremists makes Pakistan the most dangerous nation where the potential of nuclear capabilities landing in the wrong hands is escalating day by day? How true do you think this perception reflects reality?

I think that this is a bit exaggerated. Given that Pakistan is going through a very serious crises, let me stress that there has never been a danger of Islamic takeover of the State. Yes, there are certainly times when it seems that the Pakistani State will fall apart due to internal contradictions as well as the ethnic, economic, and social polarization which has taken place, coupled with the huge role of the Pakistan army in the social strata making the situation untenable. But these are the greater dangers today, rather than a threat of Islamic takeover of the state.

In part it might be correct that if Pakistan falls apart or is fragmented, then it will be a classic example of a collapse of a nuclear state, as seen with the Soviet Union. But the argument of fundamentalist take over of the nuclear arsenal is completely not true because the Pakistan army is still a very disciplined army, it’s still a solid institution and whatever they have done in the past as a policy to support the militants, the Army itself is still very secular. There might be Islamic elements within them, but there is no threat of them coming forth. I think that fear is fundamentally baseless.

So is it safe to say that Islamist factions within the Army are controlled in spite of the policy of supporting militants in the past?

There maybe Islamic elements in the lower-middle ranks who have a very Islamist-nationalistic mindset, but overall it remains a secular army even though they developed a huge economic vested interest in the country. But it continues to be secular and that’s why I never see a possibility of a lower ranking officer launching a coup, it’s not possible at all, especially since it is sternly controlled and hierarchical.

We have seen the past under Zia as the Pakistan Army collaborated with the West, the influence of the U.S. on the function of the military establishment of Pakistan has been immense, regardless of the volatility of the relationship. And in spite of the skepticism of U.S. supporting Pakistan in its dire need, the threat of transforming the Pakistan State into a theocracy is baseless.

Like a Talibanization…

No, it’s not possible at all. What we are seeing today is a part of the country being Talibanized since those regions share similar ethic loyalties with the Pushtuns. It is these frontier areas which have been influenced by the Taliban. And to say that this trend will permeate to the urban centers of the Country is not possible because immense social development has taken place and where education is much higher. One has to examine the Afghan society itself when the Taliban were able to control it, which was a backlash from the tribal areas to take revenge on the more westernized pockets in the region. It is not the case in Pakistan.

Observing these various regions of turbulence, do you think that a military control then helps to control the insurgency to bring about stability?

Western perception is that since the WOT can be fought militarily, a military dictatorship in the context of Pakistan can thus offer more. But what they are forgetting is that this War is a political battle and a battle for ideas, where a political structure would be able to provide much better returns. Military option only escalate problems, and post 9/11 battles are more of like battles of ideas which need a soft intervention not a military option.

You write in your book that, “Despite the backing of the army and America, Musharraf is living on borrowed time…He has spawned a system that is a hybrid of military and civilian rule. It is not a democracy." What does this say about the future of Pakistan?

Musharraf is going from crisis to crisis, and this has further deepened into a multidimensional situation. If you look at the domestic position, Musharraf’s position has become significantly weaker and particularly over the past few months we have seen that he has become more constricted since (a) the democracy he has introduced has not produced results since it is inherently an artificial system where there is a façade of democracy and parliamentary structure; but in fact all power is concentrated in the hands of the military. And (b) this has huge implications on Pakistani society, as when we speak of power, it has broadened the economic disparity.

So all these factors have weakened the Pakistani civil society and democracy cannot function in this kind of situation. For it to function one needs a strong civilian constitution. I am not saying that the opposition is so strong that it can bring down Musharraf but instead I am suggesting that the system is collapsing under its inherent contradictions.

Contradiction between?

Contradiction is huge, as the system is neither a democracy nor a military dictatorship, there will always be an element of uncertainty. In the long run there could be a huge resentment since it is not a completely representative government. Those contradictions have become much more intensified and since we are looking at an election year, it is very difficult for Musharraf to sustain himself especially since he needs a constitutional amendment which – especially now due to the Chief Justice fiasco – won’t be easy to obtain.

The other thing is that the separation and consolidation of powers has created a vacuum, and pressure from the United States is growing because there is a feeling that Musharraf is not able to completely contain the militancy which is a serious threat to the Western nations. Musharraf is kind of a belligerent leader where there is a no win situation for him. Since the crisis is so deep and complex, that is where I feel that it will be difficult for him to survive for long.

How have the Musharraf years, been any different than previous military regimes in Pakistan?

I think that the major differences between the present and the past lie with the domestic environment and the international situation. The past cannot be compared easily especially given the way the military has been operating since the 1999 coup. During the Cold War, Zia-ul Haq extended is office term due to the situation in Afghanistan and because the United States provided security to his regime, since there was no divergence of views between the leaders of the two nations. At that time radical Islam suited the Cold War designs against Communism. Thus I argue that the Zia-ul Haq period was different since he was a creation of the Cold War period, quite different than the factors which have given rise to Musharraf’s era.

Musharraf cannot have the same policy, since unlike Zia – where Islamic militancy perfectly aligned itself as a force against the encroaching communism – Musharraf is full of contradiction since on one hand he perceives himself as a progressive leader with hopes for an “Enlightened Moderation,” but he is also a prisoner of the situation pertaining to extremist militancy.

But with the recent military opposition to the freedom of thought and expression, how is the erosion of the middle-class intellectuals during Zia’s regime any different now?

It is impossible to foresee a time worse than Zia’s crackdown on intellectual freedom in Pakistan. It was a period where we saw the destruction of the civil society and rights of individuals taken away. It was a much more regimented society where the nation had become an intellectual wasteland due to his Islamization policies. And the people who came out of this period are incredibly conservative, so the long term effects of Zia have been devastating for the heart and soul of Pakistan.

But in-spite all this, Musharraf wants to distance himself from the legacy of Zia-ul Haq on various issues especially the women’s rights issues and the freedom of the press, we are approaching a relatively more liberal environment. So differences between the two are vast, yet regardless of the color and policy of the military, it always is a serious problem for the country in the long run.

Aside from the political fragmentation, is there a strong economic polarization in the class structure in Pakistan, which many analysts have argued is a classic case for Marxist Socialism?

There are different kinds of fragmentation such as social, political, ethnic, religious, etc. all which have been intensified by the economic policies of the government. And as one part of the country goes in one ideological direction and the other half goes an opposite way.

You mentioned the women’s rights issues and human rights in rural Pakistan, why has it been hard to implement those laws and is this difficulty a reflection of the tribal jirga system?

Pakistan is a unique country where a large portion of the population has remained outside the main stream of the legal structure of the State. And that has complicated this issue deeply in the parts of the Frontier which is almost an autonomous area ever since the British, and then there is a other region in Baluchistan which lacks the basic infrastructure and mechanics of law, crucial to any modern state. That has made the kind of a country were the sectarian law has never been imposed.

Is it that is hasn’t been introduced, or that the tribal areas are resilient to accept it?

Basically when a state is weak then this kind of situation occurs. If a legally rooted, autonomous State cannot establish itself in its own constituencies, that is when you have deviant elements trying to assert themselves. And this is an indication of the weakness of the State, where elements start relying on the old system by going back to their traditions and what they understand as their historical past, simply because an alternative option for them is missing

Just to wrap up, for political and security analysts concerned about Pakistan and her policy towards tribal regions of Waziristan, what do you think should be pivotal in their understanding of the region?

I feel that they have to deal with the situation not only militarily since there is no military situation to this problem. But instead to have some kind of political and economic alternative to their historical traditions. Pakistan has purposely termed this area as an autonomous region in order to support the various wars it has fought, and you cannot get rid of this unless you bring these regions into the main stream instead of deliberately keeping a lawless area. Assimilating them into the State and then investing funds to build a proper infrastructure in the region is crucial for a people who have forever felt like outsiders. These areas are very poor societies where unemployment is high, and you have a culture of militancy since that is the only form of employment they know of. Only by eliminating these problems can you then enforce law in this region and thereby curb the militancy and extremism.

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S. Wamiq Jawaid is a political anthropologist, conducting research at Columbia University in New York. He has written extensively on the cultural histories of South Asia and the larger Muslim world.

Gay Pakistan - 'less inhibited than West'

2007-04-02T22:37:00.000-06:00

Appeared on BBC Online on Thursday, 2 June 2005, 20:29 GMT 21:29 UK

Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4583911.stm

Throughout South Asia, homosexuality has been a taboo subject. But there are signs in some areas that gay people are now becoming more open in their behaviour. In this column a gay man in Pakistan talks about the advantages of being gay there compared to the West. He prefers to remain anonymous.

It is all too common to hear examples of the repression of sexuality and oppression of sexual minorities in South Asia.

But the problem with sweeping generalisations about sexuality, or anything else for that matter, is the exceptions.

I am one such exception - a gay man who grew up in Pakistan, became aware of his sexuality while studying in the US, had most of his early experiences of love and sex there, and yet decided to come back home to Pakistan.

It will surprise many when I say that I actually feel more comfortable about myself while living here than I was in the West.

It was not always so of course. Before my return, I felt quite aggrieved when my straight brother downplayed my apprehensions about being gay in Pakistan.

I cannot remember a single occasion in almost 10 years that I have felt threatened with regards to my sexuality in Pakistan

It really was not a problem, he suggested. How insensitive and naive of him, I thought.
My brother has won the point since though. While I maintain discretion in many respects, I have come out to most of my family, with their loving support. I have also come out to all my friends, and rarely meet anyone aggressively hostile to gay individuals.

I have lived with a lover independently without anyone raising an eyebrow.

I have attended gay parties more uninhibited than any I have seen in the West.
'Differently configured'

In fact, I cannot remember a single occasion in almost 10 years that I have felt threatened with regards to my sexuality in Pakistan.

An entirely unrepresentative experience to be sure, as far as the experience of a majority of Pakistanis is concerned.

But there is no representative sample that I can think of.

Sexuality itself is so much more differently configured in Pakistan than in the West - which is where the language of the sexuality debate comes from.

This is especially true in terms of people's perceptions of their identity and behaviour, in terms of class, with regards to family and religious obligations.

I would not for a moment suggest that it is easy being gay in Pakistan.

Homosexual acts are illegal, and conservative religious and cultural attitudes mean many gay people are afraid to openly acknowledge their sexuality.

They face ostracism by their families if they do. But in a sense the American military's approach of "don't ask, don't tell" is applied throughout this society.

'Taboo matter'

True, there is a fine line between discretion and suffocating silence. But being straight is not that much easier, and is in fact sometimes more difficult when it comes to physical relationships.
What is perhaps closer to the truth is that overt expression of sexuality itself - both gay and straight - is a taboo matter in Pakistani society.

But whereas heterosexual courting and coupling is all too obvious, gay socialising can take place without attracting as much attention - with brazen abandon in a society where many forms of overt physical and emotional intimacy between members of the same gender are tolerated and even admired.

The opposite holds true for such public expression between members of the opposite sex.
Just as everywhere else, however, things are changing, driven by the exposure to information via technology.

The internet, satellite television and films all combine to give a new generation of gay men and women context to their emotions, a sense of identity, an outlet for expression and perhaps most importantly, the ability to communicate with each other.

No wonder, then, that I met my boyfriend on the internet.

Shashi Tharoor on Cobert Report

2007-04-02T22:34:00.000-06:00

Shashi shines on the Cobert Report

Talks about his job with the UN as the Under-secretary of Communications, and also sheds light on the role of the UN as a peacekeeping force, and on Bolton's mostache.

REMEMBER THE DANISH CARTOONS?

2007-02-04T19:16:00.000-05:00

February 4, 2007

Prophet Cartoons Row has Silver Lining in Denmark

By REUTERS
Filed at 3:28 a.m. ET
New York Times

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A year after cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad sparked violent protests, Danish Muslims say some good has come of the row -- dialogue has improved with their fellow Danes, who now understand Islam much better.

``We talk about the problems between Muslims and Danes like we never did before,'' said Yildiz Akdogan, spokeswoman for the Democratic Muslims, a group formed by moderate Muslims in the aftermath of the cartoon crisis.

``The debate is broader and more pluralistic. More people and different kinds of people are active and the level is more sober and nuanced.''

Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published the 12 cartoons in September 2005 about Prophet Mohammad, including one depicting the founder of Islam with a bomb in his turban, saying it did so in defense of free expression.

Protests in the Middle East and elsewhere flared in early 2006 and peaked a year ago.
Then, Abu Hassan, an imam at a mosque in the Danish city of Odense, was insulted by the cartoons but now says he is glad the row gave him the chance to educate Danes on the Prophet.

``We have had much positive dialogue with Danish people,'' he said. ``They now know more about the Koran and about the Prophet Mohammad and I think that is very positive for us.''

Most Muslims consider depictions of the Prophet blasphemous, and the link some of the cartoons seemed to imply between Islam and terrorism was especially insulting to many.
More than 50 people were killed in demonstrations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and several of Denmark's diplomatic missions were attacked by protestors and set ablaze.
Death threats were made against some of the cartoonists and newspaper editors at the height of the row, but these have not been repeated since.

THAWED DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS

Denmark's diplomatic relations with Muslim countries iced over because of the cartoons but have thawed significantly.

A senior Foreign Ministry official told Reuters excellent relations had been generally re-established, with Muslim governments emphasizing the need to leave the issue behind.
But things are not quite back to normal yet.

Arla Foods, a dairy food exporter hardest hit by a Muslim boycott of Danish products over the cartoons, said sales in the Middle East were improving but were still only half what they were before the row, and that only by cutting prices.

Also, any discussion of the cartoons still reveals lingering resentment among many in the Middle East.

The Danish foreign minister or senior diplomats have embarked on fence-mending visits to several Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Muslim states.

``A shared understanding is emerging out of the crisis: we need to improve our ability to handle these kinds of value clashes, because they will reoccur,'' the ministry official told Reuters.

He cited as examples rows over comments on Islam by Pope Benedict XVI and over a Berlin opera.

One of the 12 cartoonists -- whose drawing poked fun at the newspaper itself and was not controversial -- said the crisis changed the way average Danes view foreigners and had made them more aware.

``Danes have awoken and now see Muslims are as different from one another as Danes are, that they're not all fanatics,'' said Lars Refn.

COMMENT on Young and Restless

2006-11-21T20:39:00.000-05:00

koldkulfa said...
Fascinating and totally bewildering. I saw a programme on a Pak tv channel which had 4 participants: a girl aged about 17,two men in their forties and a lady psychologist. they were discussing rave parties and the lives of today's youth. they were considering introducing an age of consent such as 18 below which a child would not be allowed in to such a rave type party event. how ridiculous! as if that would work in the era of private parties. they also discussed how parents and their children were indulgin in the same behaviour the latter at teenage parties and the former at balls. I read aother article after this one by Shimaila its called 'the opiate of the elite' about farhat hashmi schools and another about teenage gangs called gangs of new Karachi. each read is more disturbing! Your thoughts? This writer has really done some serious research.

Wamiq writes:
Are you serious? Enforcing an age limit on rave parties? Ludicrous. Lets think about why it would not work.
a) Like traffic lights, it wont
b) like police corruption, it wont
c) as you mentioned exactly, who will enforce an age limitation at a private party?

The reason why this is a problem, is it becomes a problem even when we start to think about it. Clearly having an age limitation is derived from the idea that IDs in the U.S. are checked at gas stations when a kid asks for Camel Cigarettes. IDs are checked when you even order an apple martini at a restaurant. IDs are checked when you are waiting in line for a night club. IDs are checked when you go into the liquor store to buy Bud Light for your party in one hour.

All these instances have two things in common. 1) they are government issued IDs whose power is respected and thus enforced. How many Pakistani IDs cards are respected as a common medium for identification. Maybe Nadra has made it easier, but I want to know how much does it speak for someone's identity? I don't know this answer. 2) these places where you have to show an ID to buy or get into a place that sells alcohol or utilizes alcohol are all public places. WHY? because it is a society that does not have a law against alcohol and hence uses it in the daily life. Therefore it becomes easier to administer. On the other hand a place like Pakistan where alcohol is a taboo like sex, it takes an alternative route to access markets because simply...where there is a demand there will be have to be a supply to make a profit. Such is not a capitalistic notion, but human greed. We have come a long way from moralistic retribution and in a society where things move so quickly, ethics and morals have been left aside with traditions, scripture, and religion (this is not an opinion, just an observation whose argument is too long for the current discussion at hand...perhaps next time).

But as I was concluding, legal measures can only be enforced on events and objects which are legally representable, not in the underground market of alcohol. I have yet to see a notion of "honor among thieves". Government issued cards won't solve the problem.

My only problem is, why do youth want to indulge in alcohol and why are parents complacent (as Shimaila Matri Dawood reports it) to send their kids to rave parties? What is your identity? Why are the youth so adamant to replicate the west? Is their notion to the West only in terms what what mixed drinks they can consume, since I don't see a movement (in terms of the Civil Rights movement in the United States) of giving equal opportunities to minorities in Pakistan? HELL...why are Bangladesh nationals and Bihari nationals still persecuted in society and its workforce? Why don't we borrow those ideals from the west? Y only the rave parties...and mind you this is only private parties...since no one has the guts to open a night club now do they?

So what is this new culture? You want to be free but you won't reform. You want to consume alcohol, but are too scared to open a bar. Most importantly...you are too excited to eat the fruits of the other culture, but are too scared to lose your own. This is frustrating for a people and a culture which finds itself in an interesting dilemma and confusion. And those are two things you definitely don't want right now amidst the WOT and the rising internal threats.

But you have to decide. And don't tell me that its not a black and white decision, where the Pakistani culture can form a new identity balancing Islam and Westernization. Yes, they can form a new identity...confusion and frustration. That's where Lebanon and Tehran found themselves in mid-70's. Oh Hell...that's where Pakistan was under Bhutto and the early days of Zia before the resurgence of Islamization. We were confused about ourselves, and nothing has changed. Religion should be a matter of faith, and not a political movement. Seperation of Church and State is essential. Why do you think people dont want that? It's not about how the Prophet embodied both the theological and the political/military power. It's simply about religious parties not giving up their hold on power. If we take religion out, it makes life easier.

The Pakistani youth have to make a decision. Either they are a traditional society which abhors alcohol and rave parties. Or its a replica of the West...in which case you have to erase the Islamic part of "Islamic Republic of Pakistan". If you try to have both...its hypocrisy.

AND if you do take that road, one has to realize that it is not a happy go lucky road. It's filled with hurdles, wars, civil strife, revolution, and a whole can of problems. Freedom is not easy, you have to pay the price. As a society we might be living complacently, but if you want change, it does not come whilst sitting on the couch...because couch potatoes make the worst leaders.

Furthermore, you have to change your skewed perception of the West and the United States. Some people view it as hedonistic, some people as idealistic. It is neither. If you choose to see the U.S as a place that personifies Baywatch, one should also see it as a place that provides free health care to senior citizens, free education to the youth, a strong and stable legal framework, and most most most importantly...a legal security to women. We are on our way with the Hudood Ordinance debate, but that should not even have been an issue to begin with.

Coming back to IDs, you cannot borrow a concept from the West such as age limitation and women's liberation movement, without a strong legal safeguard in place. You cannot instill and reform a society if whatever you say is not protected by freedom of expression. How can you reform a constitution, when you cant even say anything against the supreme Court? I mean how? Are they not government officials, responsible to the people? Well if so, why was Cowasjee called to appear before the Court for something he wrote about them in the papers - in passing? You want to replicate the West...then why only in rave parties? Why not a more critical citizen body?

Just some thoughts.

NEWSLINE: The Young and the Restless

2006-11-20T15:08:00.000-05:00

by Shimaila Matri Dawood
December 2003

She could be any doting parent's teen princess, except 16-year-old Zahra is hooked on to a variety of drugs, and is sexually active, making her much sought after by the boys in her class. Rearranging her school kameez to show me the butterfly tattooed on her back, she asks, "It's pretty, isn't it? I had it done abroad when I was on holiday last summer. Don't tell anyone, but I also had one of my nipples pierced."

These, however, are not the only distinguishing marks on her body. According to friends, Zahra was in one of her drug-induced stupors when she fell from her second floor balcony, irreparably damaging her nose. When I ask her about it, she shrugs nonchalantly and tells me she has been sent to rehab three times. However, she steadfastly refuses to accept that she may have a problem: "I'm a teenager, we're supposed to be out of control sometimes," she says. "Besides, my parents don't really care what I do, as long as I don't embarrass them."

Sixteen-year-old Asif has a similar history. Addicted to cocaine when he was 12, Asif has twice almost died of a drug overdose, once even breaking his doctor's nose in a drug-induced rage while the latter was attempting to pump Asif's stomach. Unable to cope with their out-of-control son, Asif's parents decided to enroll him in a boarding school specialising in problem children in the heart of the Punjab. Two years and 11 yellow disciplinary cards later, he was asked to leave, despite being the smartest child in his class. "I was very precocious," he says, "but a complete wild child."

Asif's fast and furious lifestyle had a devastating effect on his family. Already plagued by financial difficulties, his parents decided to move to Karachi, and separated soon after. Severely depressed, Asif took to binge-eating, putting on 100 pounds, and was subsequently prescribed Prozac at the age of 14. "I was very depressed, and angry about my utter helplessness," he says. "It wasn't easy witnessing my mother suffering a nervous breakdown, and my father drinking himself almost to death. I realised that I was on a fast track to destruction only when I was expelled from my fourth school." Asif decided to make a go of his life. His parents have since reconciled and he is now clean of hard drugs. But despite his traumatic substance abuse, he extolls the virtues of what he calls "new experiences." He also continues to drink with his friends, and speaks highly about party drugs. Claiming to have been obsessed with sex ever since he found his father's Playboy magazines at the age of eight, he tells me he lost his virginity just two days shy of his thirteenth birthday. He also continues to regard casual sex as acceptable. Cases like Zahra's and Asif's are not unusual. A large number of new generation Pakistanis have similar tales to tell, far removed from those of wholesome shows like The Wonder Years. Almost 90 per cent of the boys I speak to, as young as 10 years old, admit to having experimented with drugs and drink, if not sex, at some point in their lives.

Approximately four in 10 indulge themselves regularly, either alone at home, with a group of their friends, or at parties. And depending on who one speaks to, it is estimated that approximately 30-50 per cent of the girls attending the city's top private schools, have experienced a drug-induced high - most commonly, on dope. While most school authorities I approach are hesitant to discuss the subject, others have started to recognise drug abuse as a serious problem. Raheel Khan, co-principal of L'ecole, is one of them. She admits that there is a substantial increase in problem children today, and that substance use among teenagers is on the increase. "Two of our children were constantly on a drug-induced high at school," she says.

"A 16-year-old girl called Sana was a particularly sad case. She was addicted to multiple substances. Her parents had split before she was born - the mother had remarried and her father is currently on his fourth wife."Behavioural problems are a natural consequence. Khan blames the parents. "Shockingly, in Sana's case, her own mother encouraged her dysfunctional attitude," she says. "When even their own mothers have no time for them, kids become very independent. They grow wildly and without any moral, academic or spiritual direction." Even those parents who are actively involved in their children's lives, find themselves boxed in a corner when trying to set clearly defined limits. "Increasingly, more and more kids are being allowed to stay out late at parties or raves, often until the wee hours of the morning," says one such parent. "Karachi Grammar School and American School parties used to be infamous for heavy-duty fun, but these days kids from all the elite schools - and dozens have sprung up in the last decade - attend the same parties which are notable for their excesses." And unwilling to seem unreasonable, or out of desperation to ensure their kids 'fit in,' a substantial number of parents have taken to revising curfew times until later and later. "We don't want our children to be social outcasts," says one parent. "The world is becoming a very competitive place and given that kids today face a tremendous amount of pressure, one has to allow them to let their hair down on occasion."

Allowing them to "let their hair down," however, can be as risky as a game of Russian roulette. "Parties often serve as a safe house for those eager to experience a drug-induced high, especially for young girls. As dealers can't sell drugs to girls at their homes, many girls indulge themselves at all-night raves or even at casual get togethers. "I know a lot of girls who ask for booze and dope," says Ali, a former leader of an elite youth gang. "A lot of my friends encourage their girlfriends to do drugs," he adds, "especially if they plan on getting physical. Sex on drugs is fantastic." He continues, "Friends of mine wanted me to encourage a girl to take cocaine so that all three of us could have fun with her. I liked the girl, so I would not have any part of this scheme. I tried to protect her and I tried to warn her. But she was a willing victim. Eventually I got rid of the friends and the girl."

Getting physical meanwhile, is now increasingly par for the course. Says a girl from a Defence-based English-medium school with branches across the country, "More and more teenage couples are going all the way. There have been a few instances when girls have had to have abortions, which are paid for by their boyfriends. I even know of a girl who went on a six-month vacation abroad, had her baby, gave it up for adoption, and returned to school for her finals."According to an independent estimate, almost five out of 10 school-children now come from broken homes. "Divorces are definitely on the increase," says Khan. "I would say 25-30 per cent of the students are those of divorced parents, but if you combine them with those who are separated, the number of troubled homes in the elite class can be as high as 40-50 per cent." As almost six of the 15 kids I have spoken to are the progeny of divorced or separated parents, this seems like a reasonable statistic. Kamran's parents, for example, have been separated for the last four years. Fifteen-year-old Mozzy's parents split when he was 10. Both his English mother and Pakistani father are now remarried - his father for the third time. Mozzy now lives with his grandparents.

Ameena is 16. Her parents are also divorced and she lives with her mother. "I was my parents' love child," she says wistfully. Then there is Faiz, whose British mother and Baloch wadera father divorced just six months after his birth. Slaves to social pleasures or the demands of high-profile careers, many parents resort to throwing obscene amounts of money at their kids in place of quality time. Faiz is one such example. He is unique among his friends, as he has enjoyed almost complete independence ever since he turned 13. Subsequent to his English mother's remarriage, his father, who spared no expense in his son's upbringing, installed Faiz in a three-bedroom flat in London's Knightsbridge. Faiz lived there, on his own, until his eighteenth birthday. When news of his son working in one of London's trendy gay bars trickled back home, his father insisted Faiz return to Pakistan, where he was enrolled at a posh school and told of his impending nuptials with a cousin. Needless to say, Faiz's life was thrown into a spin. "I have all the luxuries that money can buy," he says, "but no sense of belonging. I am gay, and though Pakistani by birth, that has not been my life experience. Now I have to adapt to life in a country that is homophobic and strange." In a classic attempt at keeping up with the Jones', parents often resort to buying inappropriate gifts for their offspring in the form of cars, designer gear - even guns.

"We all want to provide our children with the best that money can buy," says a psychologist at Aga Khan University. "However, sometimes this desire takes on an unhealthy dimension, especially among the nouveau riche, who give their children all sorts of inappropriate items just to massage their own egos." Whereas in the west a child learns from an early age to earn his own way, parents from elite backgrounds in Pakistan feel it is shameful to deny their children luxuries, thus encouraging a culture where life becomes little more than a collection of status symbols. With substantial funds at their disposal, kids decked in international designer wear - Nike, Gucci, Burberry, Versace, even Armani - and several hundred dollars worth of accessories, are now common sights in Karachi, and almost indistinguishable from kids in any big cosmopolitan city from New York to London to Tokyo. "Boys as young as 14 drive their own jeeps, and are allowed to stay out as late as they like," says a school teacher. "Unhampered by any parental restrictions, they cruise the city streets like little princes, and pastimes like egging and 'charpai palti' are common."Almost all of Karachi's top schools now contain organised gangs (see Gangs of 'New' Karachi). And most children in the city's elite schools can be broken down into two distinct groups - the mailas, as the conservative kids from Urdu-medium backgrounds are dubbed, and the English-medium 'burgers.' Ameena and her boyfriend Ali are a good example.

Although Ameena considers herself part of the burger elite, boasting a liberal business-class lineage, her boyfriend, a former leader of an elite street gang, is not. "The two groups don't mix very well," she says. "In fact, they have a healthy disregard for one another." She points to a set of tables in the student cafeteria set apart from the rest. "That's where the mailas sit. They look down upon our liberal lifestyle. Some of them may be jealous that we're allowed to go out to parties late at night, and that we are comfortable mixing with the opposite sex. For the most part its the fact that the maila kids, believe our outlook is just too westernised." Generation Y kids, are now, more than ever, confused about the choice between east and west. Cut off from meaningful relationships with their parents, and indoctrinated on a heady mix of western liberalism and a rapidly emerging Pakistani pop-culture, they exist in their own little bubble, divorced from the different social stratas around them. Often, their only mentors are their own peers and the generation above them. And life for them, is a party that simply never stops.

“We're gonna party, like it's your birthday" - 50-cent resonates over the calm waters lapping the shore of the French beach. The scene is an exclusive party for 500 of the country's 20-30 something elite, hosted by a prominent male fashion designer. All the who's who are in attendance. Scores of youngsters are gyrating intimately on the carefully constructed wooden dance floor, but few really know whom they are boogying with. Couples, flying high, are sprawled on the beach in various grades of dress or undress, yet others are making out with multiple partners. And if half of them look as if they're tripping, they probably are.

Rave parties are sweeping Karachi like a tidal wave. For those socially unconscious for the better part of this millennium, a rave party, more often just called a rave, or free party, is an all-night dance event where rave music - psychedelic dance tunes, most notably acid house and techno - which emerged in the clubs, warehouses and free-parties in London, is played, mostly by a DJ. Although the first rave involved the baby boomers at Woodstock in 1969, it is their children - the American and British generation x-ers - raised on a heady mix of libertarian values such as free love, who became the first mainstream ravers. As such these parties are synoymous with experimenting with psychedelic drugs, most commonly ecstasy ('E') or the more lethal LSD - drugs of choice even in the land of the pure.

As secrecy is of paramount importance, most raves are held in places like warehouses and outdoor locations. The dance floor is the nucleus of the party, which ravers flock to, on various degrees of substance-induced highs. Says 25-year-old Amir, "Initially, the feeling 'E' induces is more a sense of universal love than sex. You just want to hug everyone. You can literally fall in love with a lamp post!"

As the effects of the drug get more pronounced, however, sex is a natural consequence. "Sex is great on 'E,'" he says, "as the body becomes extremely sentised to outside stimulus." It is not unusual to find men in various forms of undress sponging each other off with hot water in pursuit of blissful sensation. Men may make out with men, and women with women.
After a while, when 'E' starts to wear off, party-goers take refuge in dark rooms, where they can come down. This is followed by a light show. Often ravers wake up to find themselves sprawled out in private gardens, lounges or in bedrooms, next to complete strangers. Nights may just mesh into one wild orgy of dance, decadence and debauchery. In the words of an avid socialite 'a pre-party of the bigger pre leads to the main event, which goes on to the post-party, which ends with an after-hours and post-party mortem in the morning.'

Be it at parties or schools, after the witching hour or at noon, on the beach in Clifton or the sleepy suburbia of Islamabad's F7, life for the bold and beautiful Pakistani youth is an endless joyride. And drug abuse often goes hand in hand. Many, like popular Indus TV VJ, Faizan Haq, rave about it: "I am the sort of person who, when I pop Ecstasy, will ask my mother to try it, just once!" Waking up on a chemically induced brighter day, Tara - another media executive - is on the pill, not birth control - but Prozac. "It is a great way to feel as high as the Habib Bank Plaza," she says. "Popping pills is almost as acceptable as taking vitamins. Prescription drugs are commonly mixed with alcohol if one cannot afford the harder drugs." These include Melatonin (a hormone-based cure for jet lag), Zoloft (an anti-depressant) or valium.

However, with the prices of designer drugs crashing, these are becoming less popular. Whereas one tablet of 'E' could cost upto 4000 rupees a few years ago, it is now available for as little as 600 rupees. "It's easy to smuggle these drugs into Pakistan," says a dealer, "even college boys know it's a quick way to make cash. Who will be any wiser if anyone flying home from university in America or Europe substitutes Ecstasy for calcium tablets?" Tara admits to rolling a joint of hash almost every evening but says some of her friends smoke up to ten times the same amount. "I don't do Cocaine, as my nose started to bleed the one time I tried it," she says.

"However, my husband is an occasional user and would probably indulge more frequently were it not for the fact that it is just too expensive."
But are these exploits of the footloose and fanciful the face of a more liberal Pakistan, or simply a manifestation of extreme disillusionment and despair?

"I don't mean to be an angst-ridden turncoat but there has got to be more," writes Kamiar Rokni, Man Friday, elite designer of his own label, Karma, and avid socialite, in his weekly column in The Friday Times. "Tell me there's more to life than glamour, glitz, PYTs and parties. The thought of getting stuck in this rut is beginning to scare me. I look around and see people 20 years older doing the same thing. With a chill down my spine, I feel like I've stepped into a horror film: Long night of the undead socialities. Maybe we're just genetically decadent. Or are we just shallow?" he questions.

Mir Ibrahim Rahman, the 20-something CEO of popular news channel GEO, offers this simple explanation. "After 9/11 there has been a considerable level of 'brain influx' as opposed to the brain drain we Pakistan faced for the past two decades. CAPs (Confused Americanised Pakistanis) may have taken over most of the more promising job opportunities, but they are extremely dissatisfied with what they have, compared to what they left behind. The ones who did not go abroad think wistfully of what they could achieve if they were in the west. In both cases, they are not happy here. Disillusioned, and struggling to create an environment combining the best of both worlds, they chose to import the obvious: the raves, the fashion, and the parties. Ironically, these were elements they almost ignored in the west."

The easy scapegoats in this looming social crisis are westernisation and cable TV. With the mushrooming of independent cable channels and the ubiquitous internet, Pakistani society has opened up to the world. However, the increased exposure to the western values of individualism and freedom has not been accompanied by an understanding of responsibilities that come along with that freedom. Judging by the lifestyles of today's generation x-ers, the slippery slope of escapism, blind materialism and decadent indulgence is the name of the game. Unlike the denizens from the middle class, who are becoming increasingly media-savvy, those from the upper echelons seem uncaring about the real world, as long as they are updated on the fashion headlines to be discussed over a Starbucks latte at one of the latest trendy dining haunts, Evolution.

While psychiatrists such as Dr Musa believe that the cliché that the media has played a role in shaping society does ring true, Geo's Rahman disagrees. "Like all forms of education and entertainment, what is being absorbed, depends on the user and the student," he says. "There is a lot out there which is good for the mind, soul and body. But TV should never really be taken too seriously, the medium is not the message. The idiot box becomes just that when we start giving it too much credit."

The problems inherent in the hedonistic, often narcissistic, lifestyle of the average gen x-er run deeper than the movies regurgitated ad nauseam on TV. "Everybody is affected in their own way by the cultural bastardisation of today," says Faizan Haq. "Pakistanis as a whole generally suffer from a lack of identity. The new culture in our country is learning your MTV before your ABC. You learn how to dress like a heavy metal rocker before learning the guitar. So you could say we are upstarts in that respect." Take Faiz's elder sister Saima, a young woman in her late-twenties, for instance. She is wearing a form-fitting white, viscose shirt, probably from Labels, a tight black pair of Levi 501s, and the latest pair of Samia Shahzada shoes costing 2000 rupees.

Designer sunglasses are perched atop her dyed blond hair, which show brown roots. The strap of an alligator skin Gucci handbag stretches across her body. She walks out of Smart De Spa, deactivates her car alarm, and slips into the driver's seat of her BMW. Clutching a crisp paper shopping bag from Agha's, she quickly flips through her reading purchases: The Friday Times, The Sunday and Marie Claire. She epitomises the lifestyle of Pakistan's generation x-ers, who form the face of the new liberal Pakistan. Trained from birth to be pathologically unconcerned about anybody except themselves, theirs is an existence captivated by labels and appearances. And it is the choice of the new generation. As the catchy Pepsi jingle goes, yehi hai right choice baby!

Times have changed and in an increasingly superficial society, working at physical perfection is considered de riguer for men and women who want to go places. As more and more yuppy husbands hanker after the luxurious lifestyles as viewed on pirated western DVDs and TV, their eager-to-please wives (sometimes just eager to please themselves) are party-ready at any given moment. One regular at a local salon claims that she gets her make-up done before her husband wakes up, as she has to look her best for him - not to mention like her husband's favourite actress, Sarah Michelle Geller - at all times. And it is not just the women who feel the need to be 'up there' with the best of them. "Beautification? It is a part of my life," exclaims a famous male model. Judging by the numerous unisex salons in Karachi alongside those catering to grooming for men, he's among a cast of millions.

Encouraged by the new generation's economic buoyancy - and profligacy -today's entrepreneurs have realised that gen x is the key to future industry, which cannot continue to ignore the demand pull of such a growing segment of the population. Exploiting this prêt-a-porter opportunity, business approaches have now shifted to luring and keeping the young. Take Jalal Salahuddin and Omar Satti, for instance. The son of Lahore's host with the most Yusuf Salahuddin, a scion of generations of landed gentry, Jalal gave up investment banking to start up an event-management company, catering to among others, yuppies looking for a good time, demanding the event of the season, but lacking the inclination - or the wherewithal - to organise it. "People are now awakening from their slumber," he says "and want to be entertained. That's where we come in." Charity balls now reign supreme on Pakistan's social circuit. For the die-hard socialites among Karachi's elite, decked in diamonds and marinating in Dunhill, attendance at flagship events such as the December Sindh Club Winter Ball, the MALC new-year fundraiser or the OGS annual in the summer, not to mention the weekly Fez Night at Sindh Club, is a must.

Many pay approximately 15,000 rupees for charity ball tickets priced originally at 10,000. Waiting lists run to the hundreds. For those not considered part of the A-list, it is a perfect way into the closely guarded world of the elites. In the words of a newly married couple from Lahore, "We don't want to be social outcasts." And be it fashion shows or foreign music, chocolate from Sweden or cheese from Switzerland, orchids from Thailand or candles from England, scores of event managers compete to offer their own distinctive, exclusive services.

Ghouse Akbar, owner of the first McDonalds to open in Pakistan, and President of Nike and the Princeton Review, agrees that foreign brands are a great investment for Pakistani businessmen. "I want to bring in the right brands, so that people can enjoy them at an affordable price, just like foreigners can," he says. "Why should we be deprived of a particular good just because we are in Pakistan?" According to Ghouse, Nike Pakistan imports one million dollars worth of inventory (and exports 30 million dollars), speaking volumes for its demand. Dismissing assertions that western goods impose an alien culture on Pakistani society, and displace indigenous culture, he states, "It is not my intention to bring in the culture, just the product."

But can the two really be divorced? Not according to Zahir Rahimtoola, CEO of Labels. "There
has been an increase in women buying our clothes, as more and more are now shifting to western trends," he admits. With the opening of foreign franchises like McDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC, one doesn't want to step into such places looking like a desi!" He claims an average of 200 customers a day, with a 60 per cent buying rate. And encouraged by the profits to be made, Zahir has gone on to franchise Levis and Dockers, opening stores in the trendy Park Towers and The Forum. Says Deepak Perwani, designer of his own label, "Fashion is all about the fantasy." Favouring the sleek minimalist look, Deepak's philosophy is simple: more is less. Fresh from a trip to China, he says, "Even in the rural Chinese backwaters, girls were dressed in the latest western fashions," he says. "I hope I can see the same happening in Pakistan during my lifetime."

Says Dr Musa, "If you don't have religious foundations, a code or a sense of yourself, you have to put these fake clothes on metaphorically. Immersed in elite obsessions like clothes, drugs or particular types of music, today's youth seek an intangible fulfilment. Unconcerned about those on the periphery, they choose to live in a precarious bubble, divorced from the reality that surrounds them. And so they party on...until the bubble bursts.

Largest Women's Emancipation Rally in Pakistan

2006-11-18T17:17:00.000-05:00

KARACHI: Big women turnout at pro-bill Rally
By Shamim-ur-Rahman
DAWN Group of Newspapers
November 18, 2006

KARACHI, Nov 17: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain on Friday declared that his party would oppose any legislation that would curtail rights of women, and challenged religious parties to prove if the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, passed by the National Assembly, was repugnant to Islam and Shariah.

Mr Hussain was telephonically addressing participants of a massive rally taken out by his followers to celebrate passage of the bill.Mr Hussain described it ‘a referendum against mullaism and religious extremism’.Carrying party and national flags and holding portraits of their party chief, participants of the rally, organised at a 24- hour notice, saw one of the biggest turn out of women at any single public meeting.

From Tibet Centre intersection to the Numaish intersection, it was a milling crowd of jubilant people having converged on the venue of the rally from all over the city.Many of them were also holding aloft portraits of President Musharraf.The entire route of the rally, from Guru Mandir (the starting point) to the Tibet Centre intersection, was decorated with MQM flags, banners, buntings and illumination.The participants burst into cheers repeatedly as Altaf Hussain denounced mullaism and termed it being ‘outside the ambit of Islam’.

Most of the participants had travelled to the rally venue in busses, cars, motorbikes and other means of transportation.Addressing the rally, the MQM chief said that passing the Women Protection Bill into law was beginning of the elimination of all those laws which deprived women of their fundamental rights.“MQM is against vulgarity… the Hudood Ordinance passed in the Zia regime was un-Islamic and had been passed on the wishes of Gen Zia and those mauvlis who wanted man’s domination on woman by depriving women of their fundamental rights.”

He challenged the religious parties leaders to point out any clause in the newly passed bill if it was repugnant to Quran and Shariah.“The maulvis have always betrayed their followers… they have never been sincere to the nation,” he claimed, and said: “Today’s mammoth rally shows that majority of Pakistan rejects extremist forces and that there is no room for religious extremism in Pakistani society.”Mr Hussain observed that religious parties wanted to introduce their own brand of Islam in Pakistan and prevent womenfolk from benefiting from education and health facilities as well as attaining economic empowerment.

He said that MQM had made it clear to those who matter in Islamabad that if any amendment was made to the bill put forward by the National Assembly’s Select Committee, the MQM would totally reject it.Mr Hussain said that after the passage of the Bill, MMA leaders should have resigned from the national and provincial assemblies because they had pledged to do so.He said that if MMA leaders would resign, MQM women would contest election in these constituencies. He said that MQM believed in liberal and tolerant society and wanted women’s rights to be restored in accordance with the Islamic teachings.

MQM’s parliamentary party leader in the National Assembly Dr Farooq Sattar, its coordination committee members and joint in-charge and in-charge of different set-ups also addressed the rally.While the party’s activists and supporters celebrated what their leaders called ‘the day of deliverance’ commuters on a working day faced difficulties as over zealous traffic police closed many roads around the time for Juma prayers.

Some of the worst traffic jams were witnessed on Sharea Faisal and in the periphery of the rally route.Many schoolchildren were also caught in the jam for many hours. Many markets in Saddar remained closed. Visitors and patients in hospitals and clinics located along the M. A. Jinnah Road also faced difficulties during the rally.

http://www.dawn.com/2006/11/18/local1.htm

Comments on Modernity in Pakistan

2006-11-16T15:06:00.000-05:00

interested said...

I did not completely understand some points you make about the original article printed in Newsline, authored by Ms Dawood. Are you agreeing with her or disagreeing? Is the point that the original article makes that the ultra-modern elements of Pakistani soeciety do not, in fact, have an identity,just a borrrowed one, and that the PAKISTANI identity is in fact a redundant concept? could you also post Dawood's article mentioned?

9:44 AM, November 16, 2006

Wamiq Responded:

The NewsLine Article can be found here:

http://www.newsline.com.pk/newsMar2005/cover1mar2005.htm

The problem you re probably facing is that perhaps I was not clear in depicting my adherence to, or censure of Shimaila Matri Dawood's NewsLine article. And I don’t need to agree with her or disagree. There are some very interesting points she brings up and there are some ideas I do not cater to, therefore to agree with her as you are most eloquently suggesting, would be for me to agree to the points I don’t concede with her.

Like any literary piece, I utilized the Dawood article to bring to light those of her ideas I think are most singificant, and to use some her quotes as a means of saying things which I think she says better than I can put into words. It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with her, and as a culture we are always bogged down with whether an author agrees or disapproves a cited piece. You need to move beyond it and see if the quotations used yield to the argument at hand.

Coming to the argument, you are totally correct to say that the Dawood piece tries to show the ultra-modern Pakistan is a borrowed concept and I am arguing that as well. However, I am trying to show why that is so, what the factors are that are playing into modernity, who the players are, how are they different, who do they attack, what prior background they have whereby they try to replicate the West. And most importantly, how skewed this is in terms of their understanding of the West. I mean what the hell is this…Westernization?

That is the main thesis question of my piece, and I think the argument that Dawood most intelligently hides in her piece as well. Do read my other works on Women’s rights and fashion shows. I am all for women’s’ rights, but the way it is playing out in the Pakistani society and the larger Muslim world is not the way to go about achieving equality. If Victoria’s Secret will be used as a symbol, women will never be taken seriously. Seriously!!

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

Wamiq

Depicting Mohammed

2006-11-03T07:09:00.000-05:00

Why I'm offended by the Danish Cartoons of the Prophet
by Reza Aslan
Slate Magazine
Posted: Wednesday, Feb 8, 2006

Not long ago, as I was strolling through the sprawling bazaars of the holy city of Qom in Iran—a city often referred to as "the Vatican of Shiism"—I came across a cramped, catacomblike shop that sold religious trinkets to tourists. Hanging in the shop's window was a poster depicting what looked like a beautiful young girl with large, bright eyes and a cherubic face lit up by some unseen source of light. The girl wore a loose headdress, like a turban she had carelessly let unravel, from which peeked thick strands of lush, black hair. She looked skyward, her rosy lips parted in a shy smile.

I was thrilled, thinking I had found a poster of the Prophet Mohammed's beloved daughter, Fatima, whose veneration in Islam (particularly Shiite Islam) is matched by that of the Virgin Mary in Catholicism. Most stores in Qom carry prints depicting heroic Muslim figures like the prophet's son-in-law, Ali, or the prophet's grandson, Husayn. But a portrait of Fatima is exceedingly difficult to find.

I rushed into the store and breathlessly asked the shopkeeper how much he wanted for the poster of Fatima hanging in his window.

He clucked his tongue in disgust and shook his head.

"That is not Fatima!" he cried sternly. "That is the Prophet Mohammed!"

Read on at Slate.Com...

Reza Aslan is a research associate at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.

IRAN: Government bans daily

2006-10-27T23:12:00.000-05:00

26 October 2006
Government bans daily
SOURCE: Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Paris

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has said it was appalled by the Press Surveillance Commission's decision to ban the pro-reform newspaper "Rouzegar" ("Time"), which had just increased its print run and expressed a desire to cover political issues after being reinforced by an influx of journalists from the banned daily "Shargh".

"The ban on 'Rouzegar' is absurd," the press freedom organisation said. "Not content with censuring newspapers when they are slightly critical, the Iranian government has now established prior control. 'Rouzegar' did not have a chance to upset the regime, but it is viewed as a potential threat, especially at election time."

A social and cultural daily with a small circulation, "Rouzegar" had shifted its editorial line in a pro-reform direction by including journalists from "Shargh" on its staff. After its 16 October 2006 issue included political articles, it was seen as a new moderate publication that could fill the gap left by the banning of "Shargh" in September.

But the culture ministry targeted "Rouzegar" on 18 October 2006, expressly banning it from covering politics on the grounds they did not come under the range of subjects it specified when it originally requested its licence from the Press Surveillance Commission.

"Rouzegar"'s reaction was to provisionally suspend publication the same day. But it reappeared two days later, on 20 October, with an issue that had its political section replaced by general-interest and cultural articles.

Nonetheless, it was finally banned altogether on 23 October. Culture ministry spokesperson Alizera Mokhtapour said the decision was based on article 33 of the press law, which provides for "an immediate ban on the publication of a newspaper that replaces a banned newspaper with a name, logo and format that is similar."

In other words, the Iranian authorities saw "Rouzegar" as "Shargh" in disguise.But it was clearly "Rouzegar"'s new editorial team, rather than its format or logo, that scared the authorities. In this case as in many others, the Press Surveillance Commission and the culture minister usurped the role of the courts in controlling the media. In July 2004, the moderate dailies "Vaghayeh Ettefaghieh" and "Jomhouriat" were shut down in a similar fashion (see IFEX alert of 20 July 2004).At the time, "Vaghayeh Ettefaghieh" was employing many journalists that had come from the daily "Yas-e No", which had been banned at the start of 2004.

The order closing down "Vaghayeh Ettefaghieh" mentioned that fact that most of its editorial staff were from "Yas-e No".Before closing "Jomhouriat", the authorities unsuccessfully pressured its publisher to fire the editor, Emadoldin Baghi, a figurehead of the Iranian pro-reform press and a keen defender of free expression. The daily was finally shut down on 18 July 2004.President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are on the list of press freedom predators, which Reporters Without Borders compiles each year.

------------------------
For further information contact Hajar Smouni, RSF, 5, rue Geoffroy Marie, Paris 75009, France, tel: +33 1 44 83 84 84, fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51,
Internet: http://www.rsf.org/The information contained in this alert is the sole responsibility of RSF. In citing this material for broadcast or publication, please credit RSF.

DISTRIBUTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM OF EXPRESSIONEXCHANGE (IFEX) CLEARING HOUSE555 Richmond St. West, # 1101, PO Box 407Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 3B1tel: +1 416 515 9622 fax: +1 416 515 7879

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Maybe the Jew is right!

2006-10-18T14:56:00.000-05:00

Stephen VS. Colbert - video powered by Metacafe

Islam Vs. Christianity --Hillarious!

Distorted Beautification

2006-10-17T00:45:00.000-05:00

Model Evolution With Makeup And Photoshop - video powered by Metacafe

Reginald Pike's Tim Piper & Yael Staav take us from model to billboard in under 60 seconds in this impressive new spot from Dove.

Pretty incredible how tecnological advancements have permeated into culture, that they no longer are observers or transformers of norms, but rather the very derivations and structures fundamental to a society's survival. Just look at the proliferation of beauty and its ramifications, in setting standards all around the world.

It is great for the women and their liberation though. Why should it not be the case that beauty in the form of a Woman, is not celebrated in society today. Why should a woman always be shun aside as a housewife? Does she not have dreams of grandoir? Or is it that the paternalistic society is too insecure to share its power with a fellow member which forms the very basis of its existance and survival? Some Power!!

Yet, Beauty without safegaurds to its Power, is futile. Laws to safegaurd the women excersizing the power of Womanhood and Beauty, have to be strongly enforced and there is no question about that.

Comments:
This video is from campaign for real beauty.com It appears to be a Politically Correct (gag), Left Wing (heave), Liberal (vomit) website operating under the guise of defending plain girls from the evil modeling industry society. They just about can't write a sentence without the phrase "self esteem" in it. by ‎catrike , 17th October

TRUE FAKE
Just to tell you that society makes reality scary. Where will they stop so that our teenagers will stop trying to look like a fake and thinking all the way that is how you are suppose to look in life. So many young girls are dying of eating disorders just because the high asministration wants to make money on fake. by ‎Dada59 , 16th October

From PBS Frontline

2006-10-17T00:25:00.000-05:00

US Soilders Destroy A Taxi - video powered by Metacafe

A Matter of Image

2006-09-29T08:26:00.000-06:00

Syed Wamiq Jawaid
Dawn Group of Newspapers
September 29, 2006

This is with reference to the letters published on Sept. 28 and 29, regarding the publishing errors of ‘In The Line of Fire’. Speaking from a publishing background, it is quite often the case that we editors don’t know the extremely miniscule details of texts. Although it is our responsibility to see to it that the text is coherent and clear, as a matter of trust, responsibility over detailed accuracy is usually bestowed upon the author, who after all is the one writing the book. This is especially true given the prestigious caliber of authors who are experts in their profession.

The errors pointed out by Ms. Huma are miniscule since the dates vary only by one day. Let me emphasis that dates, correct quotes, issues of plagiarism are all faulty errors of the expert writing the book – in this case the Author. If publishers were experts - on Pakistani history so to say, why would they need to pay outside authors to compose the text? That’s why authors usually have researchers working for them who do the fact checking.

Concordantly, issues pertaining to flow, grammar, sentence structure, and jacket design are all errors that fall within the domain of the publisher. Not many people understand, but if there are fact problems or plagiarism, the issue should be taken up with the expert who has written the work.

We publish works of individuals who have received excellence academically or experientially. Musharraf brings a unique perspective to the market, especially since there is no other sitting President of Pakistan more qualified to write about the War on Terror. The book is number 4 on Amazon’s Bestseller List, and via efforts of this author, Pakistani people should maintain this new image and be exuberant that their positive regional importance has been outlined poignantly to the American thinking circles.

The larger issue at hand is why Musharraf even published his memoir in the United States. The argument here is that it was meant for a different audience, an audience which seldom hears about the accomplishments of Pakistan fighting the War on Terror. Unfortunately, a key trait of Pakistan is to disparage people who have gained international recognition; such as Abdus Salam. Instead of cynically searching for factual flaws, this seminal work should inspire Pakistani analysts to publish their own perspectives; rather than scorning whatever little has been accomplished already.

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LETTERS PUBLISHED IN DAWN NEWSPAPER

Self-respect is priceless
September 28, 2006

OFFICIALS were aghast and journalists were incredulous when Gen Musharraf turned a White House press conference into a book promotion, helped in some measure by President Bush who was only too happy to have his ally duck the question pertaining to the reported threat by Mr Armitage to bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age.

For President Musharraf some extra book royalty dollars are more important than the 'izzat' of the proud people of Pakistan, as he ridiculed his own country publicly. The latest revelation macks of cowardice and submission.

No Indian leader would like to do or dare to do such a thing, as sovereign people of India would just get rid of him or her. They taught Indira Gandhi a lesson for declaring even a brief spell of emergency. The people of Pakistan, while individually brave and with care for honour, are impotent in front of the guns of their own army.

India's main political parties have unanimously criticised President Gen Pervez Musharraf's version of the Kargil conflict as detailed in his autobiography as more lies from Musharraf. President Musharraf's attempt to undermine the Indian army to save his personal reputation from self-inflicted damage will come back to haunt him and Pakistan. In this he has performed another disservice for Pakistan.

VIPUL THAKORE
London, UK

(II)

PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf's book In the Line of Fire is no doubt written in a very readable style though its contents are highly controversial.

But what simply cannot be forgiven, considering the fact that a publisher of repute has published it, are the many errors in the dates of important events. Here is a list of some of the errors I detected:

Iskander Mirza's coup: Oct 8, 1958 (it was Oct 7) - p. 156

Ayub Khan's coup: Oct 28, 1958 (it was Oct 27, 1958) - p. 156

Year of Benazir Bhutto's second dismissal: 1997 (it was November 1996) - p.162

Census in Pakistan: 1997 (it was 1998) - p.169

Any good editor familiar with Pakistan's history could have corrected these dates immediately.

HUMA
Karachi

(III)

With reference to Ms Huma's letter (Sept 27) pointing out the errors in dates in President Musharraf's book In the Line of Fire, I may add one more. On page 16, the author writes, "Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy, persuaded London that Britain could not hold on till then (June 1948) and had the date moved forward to August 1947. This was announced in April 1947." That is wrong. It was the June 3 plan (1947) that announced that India would be partitioned and the British would withdraw from the subcontinent.

President Musharraf is also reported to have defended in New York his move to write his memoir while in office. He says this is not unprecedented and cites the example of Nelson Mandela. The president would be well advised to revise his history. The Long Walk to Freedom was written earlier and published in mid 1994. South Africa's first all-race elections were held in April 1994.Mandela was inaugurated as the president of South Africa on May 10, 1994. That is the cut-off point for the book. He didn't write any book while in office.

Akber
Karachi

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Musharraf's Tactfulness

2006-09-27T10:53:00.000-06:00

When asked, who would win a popular election in Pakistan: Bush or Osama, President Musharraf most eloquently replied that none of them would. The President appeared on the Daily Show last night in New York to promote his book, and displayed an incredible amount of diplomatic poise and incredible tactfulness when answering questions about political perceptions in Pakistan, the recent Armitage fiasco, relations with Afghanistan, and most importantly, pointing out to the world the imperativness of stability in a nuclear Islamic Pakistan. A much needed awareness to show the regional and international importance of our nation.

[See Musharraf on the Daily Show]

But I just ask, why did you have to salute to the audience at the Daily Show and to the students at George Washington University? Oh Why? But Why? Is it some Freudian thing? Mush didn't get Jon's quirkiness though!! A Must see Interview.

Naguib Mahfouz laid to rest

2006-09-24T20:51:00.000-06:00

The funeral of Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, who died aged 94, was held at the historic Hussien mosque in Cairo’s old district. The location was apt as the old district took on a life, much like a beloved character, in his novels.

In accordance with his wishes a public service was held at the Hussein mosque, before his coffin was moved to another mosque for a military funeral.

Mahfouz’s death dominated Egyptian media, and tributes poured in from world leaders and literary figures. Hailed as the father of the Arab novel, Mahfouz spent several weeks fighting for his life after a fall.

The writer had often angered conservatives with his calls for religious tolerance and in 1994 was stabbed by an Islamist extremist who was angered by his portrayal of God in one of his novels. Mahfouz is the only Arab writer to have won the Nobel Prize for literature, which he received in 1988. He wrote more than 30 novels, short stories, plays, newspaper columns, essays, travelogues, memoirs and political analyses.

Copyright: Books & Authors, Dawn Group of Newspapers, 2006

Musharraf's Pope

2006-09-24T04:10:00.000-06:00

A rare window into Freedom of Expression in Muslim thinking
-A Case Study

As adequately pointed out by James Forsyth, editor for Foreign Policy, the recent public statements by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf are contradictory in their logical framework. As the Forsyth indicates, the President denounced the recent speech of the Pope saying the comments were "irresponsible" and that nobody "has the right to hurt anybody[s] sentiments...even if [one] believe[s] otherwise, even if you believe something to be true, but you don't have to speak the truth if it is hurting about one-and-half billion people around the world."

But on the other hand, is it alright and legitimate to hurl slurs at the United States and burn Bush effigies around the Muslim world? Does tat not offend millions of Americans around the world? If burning of the American Flag and disseminating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is protected by the Freedom of Expression precedence, then the Muslim world should realize that so is the Pope's speech, so are the Muhammad Cartoons, and so is Tom Hank's movie The DaVinci Code. Forsyth brings to light Musharraf's recent defence for the anti-U.S sentiments, "If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views." How conflicting is this perspective?

Problem with people from Pakistan is that they have become so infatuated with naming ideas like: moderates, enlightened moderation, ground realities, grass-root-levels...that they really have no linguistic sense of what the word actually implies. English is not their mother tongh, and becasue they lack an insight into U.S culture and traditions, certain thinkers lack the correct usage of the language which itself is derived from an insight of the culture it belongs to. How can you hope to potray an idea of 'enlightened moderation' to the West, where (a) you lack the understanding of the words themselves, which (b) little to your understanding, potray a totally different if not ambigious perception to the target audience - in this case the United States. Thereby, this Pakistani idea looks foolish at best. No one is asking, what these words mean in the first place, and instead citizens of Pakistan are just infatuated with large, incoherent words which just sound and look impressive in speech. Unfortunate is this facade.

[The warped world of Pervez Musharraf, James Forsyth, Foreign Policy]

Just as in the case of the scandalous Cartoon's fiasco [see my comments], I am so disappointed by the lack of intellectual ability shown by the Muslims around the world who protested Pope Benedict XVI citation about Muhammad preaching a religion of violence and intolerance. People forget that the Popes speech was scholarly and like most scholarly works was meant for a select few...not because of exclusivity, but due to the nature of the text which is seldom comprehensible for the non-scholarship and especially for those those mother-tongue is not English.

Like all citations, the quote being cited does not always reflect the author's point of view and is usually utilized in a text to bring to light the argument. The employment of any citation does not signify the author's endorsement of the quote, but is only inserted to enhance the argumentative structure, and logical deduction or inference of the author's point of view. One is supposed to read the text (or sub-text) of the argument to conclude whether the author denounces or endorses the quote. That is the mark of not just a good scholar but a person with even the slightest sense of the laws and structure of language...any language for that matter!!

Nonetheless, to call of the author for the use of the words in the quote, and not for his words in the speech is pure fallacy. In the case of the Pope Benedict XVI speech, to call on him for his quotation of Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus' conversation with a Persian emissary, and not the text of Popes speech itself is not just a pure fallacious argument against the author, but also a portrayal of the lack of intellectual awareness and basic understanding in the Muslim fanatic circles. If they must, they should attack the Pope on the text of his own speech and not his quotations.

I think that a key point here is that the Muslims who raised their voices denouncing the Pope's speech did so due to two inherent flaws:
1. The fact that they did not understand the structure of language and how best to use and interpret quotations.
2. Which begs the question that they have never used quotations in their own argumentative writings...which is incorrect. Muslims always have yielded to a higher authority to legitimize their arguments - in this case: The Holy Quran. But the sheer distinction is that since no one can challenge the divinity of the Holy Scripture [be it Jews, Christians, or Muslims] without running into blasphemy laws, it is automatically deduced that the person hailing to a higher authority endorses the quotation derived. Given this dogmatism, fanatic orthodox Muslim clerics cannot fathom using quotations to signify an argument which is antithetical to the argument of the quote being used.

Such was the case with Pope's text.

Such is dogmatism...one that was recently potrayed in the Cartoon fiasco, and the Catholic Church's ban on The DaVinci Code.

[see The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and his take on the Pope's supposed apology, reaction from the Muslim world, and an insight into their thinking!!]

There is really something wrong with the larger and more fanatic Muslim communities and I wonder where the more 'Moderate' Muslims are right now? Where is this so-called "Enlightened Moderation" which the Pakistani President is so excited about? So along with the disclaimer that you can paint Prophet Muhammad, one is forbidden to even use quotes or citations in contemporary Islam? How far is this ignorance going to go?

BBC reported: "Reactions to the speech came from such leaders as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who said efforts to link Islam and terrorism should be clearly opposed." Well, lets see...churches were fire bombed again, effigies were burned, innocent people of different faiths were abducted, Crosses were degraded. What part of this is not terrorism?

But I don't blame the Pakistani President for his remarks and his lack of forsight. He is a very practical and sensitive leader of the Muslim world, one who is adamently for the progress and growth of all peoples of the world by bringing them together. However, he does have to show solidarity with the growing threat of fanatism...because at the end of the day...one should fight the battles which one can win, especially those which matter!!

Feminist dimension of the Pakistan Movement

2006-09-15T17:43:00.000-06:00

PAKTRIBUNE
Yasser Latif Hamdani
Monday August 15, 2005

Nationalism and Feminism in Asia have gone hand in hand historically. Populist Nationalism could not afford to ignore the women. It was the women who thus formed the vanguard of popular movements, struggles, electoral battles and even war. So is true of South Asia. Annie Besant, the famous English theosophist, could be regarded as one of the pioneers of women?s participation in politics. So too were women like Srojini Naidu and Ruttie Jinnah, Jinnah?s wife, who rose to fame as quick-witted Indian Nationalists. Amongst the conservative Muslims we saw Ali Brothers? mother Bi Amman jump into the fray at ripe old age in the non-cooperation and Khilafat movement. Later Gandhian freedom struggle also saw active women?s participation. Kasturba Gandhi, Kamla Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Arun Asaf Ali are some of the names of the more famous women in the Indian freedom struggle. This was not all. It was in Lahore in 1931 that the Asian Women?s Movement was born. That first conference of barely 20 activists today has grown into a vibrant movement with network all over Asia. However by and large Muslim women remained oblivious to such developments.

To Read More...

Obituary: Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

2006-09-15T01:21:00.000-06:00

AUTHOR: Clear-sightedly realistic
By Dr Syed Amir
September 10, 2006
Books & Authors
Dawn, Pakistan

Long-time residents of Karachi may recall several coffee houses in the Saddar area in the early ’60s which served as gathering places for the city’s intellectuals, poets, authors, journalists and literary critics, who regularly frequented these haunts in the evening hours. Times were peaceful, life moved at a leisurely pace and incidents of terrorism, suicide bombing, religious and sectarian strife were largely unknown and still decades in the future.

Such gathering places for artists and thinkers were not unique to Karachi and existed in most large cities around the world. In Cairo, the Ali Baba café served the same purpose and was visited daily for many years by a shy, modest man who arrived punctually at 7:00am to enjoy his cup of coffee, read his newspaper and meet other writers, the city’s intellectual elite. The man, Naguib Mahfouz, the only Muslim and Arab to ever receive a Nobel Prize in literature, died on August 30, 2006, at the age of 94. Characterised as the greatest Arab novelist of the 20th century, his passing was mourned around the world.

Mahfouz had been in declining health for some time, especially after suffering a head injury last July. As a mark of respect with which his nation held him, his funeral prayer service at Rashdan Mosque was led by Mohammad Sayed Tantawi, the Grand Sheikh of the Al-Azhar University, the powerful seat of Islamic learning for more than a millennium, and was attended by President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Ali Gomma, eulogised him as a singular literary figure whose writings had found resonance with many people around the world, not merely Arabs and Muslims. President Mubarak in his tributes, described him as “the cultural light that brought Arab literature to the world. He projected the values of enlightenment and tolerance that reject extremism.”

Naguib Abdel Aziz al-Sabilgi Mahfouz was born in 1911 in Cairo during the heyday of European colonialism when Egypt was still controlled by the British. Initially, planning to study medicine at the University of Cairo, he subsequently changed his mind and switched to philosophy and literature. It proved to be a felicitous decision as he exquisitely enriched Arabic literature over the course of the following six decades. He authored more than 50 pieces, including 34 novels, a collection of vignettes, and screen plays. Many of his books have been translated into English and other languages. He is quoted as remarking that his inspiration came from the Quran, and to some degree even from such literary Arabic classics as The Arabian Nights. He freely admitted that he benefited from the writings of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ibsen and Shaw, besides many Arab authors.

Mahfouz rarely left Egypt during his long life and even when he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988, he sent his two daughters, Om-e-Kolthoum and Fatima, to Sweden to receive it. His attachment and closeness to his hometown are apparent in his writings. The streets and alleyways of Cairo’s teeming old quarters, with its narrow streets, crowded cafes and elegant mosques provided the backdrops and settings for his various literary creations. He observed and recorded the trials and travails of ordinary Egyptians, narrating how their lives had been shaped by events over the past half a century. His portrayal of life in Cairo is often compared to Charles Dickens’ depiction of London in the Victorian era or the suffering of the working class in the 19th century Paris captured by the novelist, Emily Zola.

Mahfouz started his literary career by writing short stories, some 80 of which were published in various Arabic magazines. A collection of short stories, The Whisper of Madness, was published in 1932. He was strongly moved by the plight and low status of women in Egypt and the Arab societies in general, and many of his characters in short stories underscored this theme. He hated the British colonial rule, and his first novel, The Games of Fates, published in 1939, was inspired by his opposition to the foreign occupation of his country although its characters were drawn from ancient Egyptian history to circumvent censorship restrictions. While Arabic literature abounds with transcendent poetry, the novel as a form of literary expression had been unknown until Mahfouz introduced this genre.The most creative period of Mahfouz’s literary career came in the 1940s and 1950s, when he focused his writing on the life experiences of three successive generations of a middleclass Muslim merchant family living in Cairo from the First World War until Nasser’s military revolution that overthrew the monarchy. His three-volume, 1,500-page book, Cairo Trilogy, comprises Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street. Each volume is named after a Cairo street and encompasses the social changes and political turmoil that affected that nation. The Cairo Trilogy, considered his master piece, brought Mahfouz fame and recognition outside the Arab world that finally led to his winning of the Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel Prize Committee cited Mahfouz for creating “work rich in nuance — now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous — he has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind.”

In a recent TV interview conducted just after his death, Dr Roger Allen, professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, who translated several of Mahfouz’s books in English and met him a number of times, was asked what he was like as a person. He portrayed him as a highly organised individual, so much so that his friend believed that they could set their clocks if they knew where he was. According to Dr Allen, Mahfouz was also a great humorist, master of one liners, who in spite of his fame and celebrity status, remained a modest man, ready to listen to anyone who had anything to say.

As has been the fate of most writers and artists in third-world countries, Mahfouz could not make a living out of his writings and had to serve in a government job during most of his working life. He rose to become the director of the National Film Agency. However, his employment did not prevent him from forthrightly expressing his liberal, progressive views. In time, he became a subject of much controversy and acrimony, the religious fundamentalists being especially critical of some of his writings and his support of the peace treaty with Israel signed by President Anwar Sadat in 1979 that enabled Egypt to regain the Sinai peninsula from Israel.

While advocating coexistence with Israel, Mahfouz strongly supported the Palestinian struggle against the occupation and identified with their sufferings. He donated part of the money he received from his Nobel Award to Palestinian charities. While condemning the US invasion of Iraq, he opposed the religious extremism and severely criticised the establishment of theocracies that took narrow, outdated views of the world. He disapproved of book burning on moral grounds and also because he believed that such actions only generated greater publicity for their contents.

Angered by his tolerant and progressive political and religious views, some religious extremists, in an attempt to kill him, stabbed him in the neck in October 1994, while he was travelling to his favorite coffee house to a weekly meeting with a group of literary critics and writers. He was severely injured, but his life was saved since he lived very close to a hospital. Yet, he suffered permanent neurological damage which left him unable to use his fingers and to write. He had not worried about the vicious threats he had received from militants for many years and is reported to have said in an interview “I don’t look to the left or the right. And so what if they get me? I have lived my life and done what I wanted to do.” Several months after the attack, 13 religious radicals were apprehended and convicted. Later he made light of the incident, remarking, “It is not worth the trouble to attack an old man like me.”

Mahfouz regained some use of his fingers in time and was able to resume some writing, but could write no longer than 30 minutes at a stretch. His last contribution to Arabic literature was a collection of short stories, The Seventh Heaven, published just six months before his death. Naguib Mahfouz’s later life and activities were highly circumscribed by his physical fragility and the fear for his security. He was not able to roam the streets of Cairo at will and at all times as he did most of his life. He commented in an interview in 2002, as quoted by the New York Times, “I no longer fear death and no longer fret that it would come before I have the chance to finish my work.” The calling came just four years later.

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FASHION AND FEMINISM IN PAKISTAN

2006-09-01T15:41:00.000-06:00

Another look at Modernity via Fashion Industry
Syed Wamiq Jawaid

SO I MIGHT BE WRONG!!! In my previous article titled Celebrating Miss Pakistan, I argued that fashion shows are a celebration of femininity and womanhood, and thereby questioned the womanhood which is being celebrated throughout Pakistan today via fashion shows. I concluded that amidst the rape, lawlessness, and lack of basic human and women’s rights, it is irrelevant to ponder whether the holterbacks and g-strings paraded on the catwalk can afford to become a present day national attire. Therefore the only question one should actually ask is what is Pakistan celebrating?

AND I WAS WRONG!

Please do read my previous post before reading any further, since the following might not make sense. My thesis and argument was made in such a way as to lay the assumption that for a society to progress, basic and foundational structures such as law and order, and safeguards of equal representation of women in the workforce, are guaranteed in the society for there to be even a hint of celebration of feminism. Feminism is a movement which brings positive change in the society for women of all color, caste, and creed, and fashion shows, beauty contests, and awards of best female activists are a celebration of the work women have done to bring safeguards to femininity all around a nation-state.

Therefore, in the lack of safeguards and lack of legal hindrances for rape, what celebration is there? How can a modern society progress without due process for women, where apparently a society organizes catwalks seemingly for the heck of it, without the realization that the philosophical foundation upon which the show is constructed is non-existent? This I deduced is dangerous and leads to hedonism which many nations under the auspiciousness of globalization have fallen prey to. The counter-movement of such a façade is the highly conservative elements in any society which are quick to call such shows evil and materialistic. I don’t blame them! YET I am Wrong!

I took my grievances to a few fashion experts and models from Pakistan to get their point of view. Without disclosing their names, which is not the point and their opinions are essential here, I came to the conclusion that the logical step-by-step processes of infrastructure-safegaurd-modernity-celebration of modernity…might be a very comprehensible plan of action. Yet, there is another way of holding your ears!!

A dear choreographer from Karachi argued that modernization is progress and while it is deductively logical that without women’s rights, fashion show become a fallacious spectacle, can it not be so that through the act of celebration one can give birth to the movement of feminism itself? Can it not be, that in a society where sociologically and religiously, women are kept one step behind men in the public and professional avenues, that fashion industry which is all about beauty, looks, and good looks, that women are given a rare chance to excel and be who they are? Is it not so that fashion shows empower women to achieve what they hope to achieve in real life, gives them a chance to be beautiful and be who they are? Does the catwalk then not become a spokesperson, a representation, and a beacon for the feminist movement to bring equality for women in the professional life, and give them a rare opportunity of becoming economically superior to males?

This is indeed the major philosophical thinking behind a great many developmental projects in Pakistan today. [Please see article____ for more on definition of development] The fashion shows are truly a mode to instill a feeling of belonging and representation for the women of Pakistan, regardless of what many religious scholars might accuse them of. In a rapidly changing society fashion designers and models are a few who through their profession and art hope to channel the ideas, hope to instill, and hope to eventually make the society open to accepting women in the remaining walks of life.

So from a certain point of view, my previous deductions in CELEBRATING MISS PAKISTAN might be revalued.

To Be Concluded with Final analysis.

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Photo Credits:
Ali, Syed Danish, The Aquatic Life, Images, Dawn Group of Newspapers, July 30, 2006

What about the Children?

2006-06-02T02:27:00.000-06:00

The Pakistani Media suffers from ADD.

THE news coverage in Pakistan has totally devouted itself to either the Fiscal Budget of 2006, or the implications of the meeting between Nawaz Sharif and BB. Both are old news which have no real significance except that of the Military hording a higher cut of the revenues, and two exiled crooks meet in a lavish hotel in Dubai to discuss prospects on how to extract more from an already impoverished nation.

It was only when an unfortunate earthquake shook the foundations of Indonesia, did the overly occupied media networks of Pakistan, divert their energies from promoting politicians and Lords, to bringing the citizens of the world a minute update on the earthquake that shook their own country late last year.

Why are they suffering from an Attention Deficit Disorder, where they have lost interest in a story which they covered 24/7 back in November? Since winter has passed now, why have their reporters not gone back to investigate the aftereffects of the snow storms of the Northern Areas, or do they presume everyone is dead already, if not insignificant to devote a few minutes of their precious media attention?

Were has all the money and infrastructure gone, which was so humbly donated by International relief bodies and multinational governments for the rehabilitation of innocent people who lost everything? Has Pakistan invested that in Muzaffarabad or they ploughed it to purchase some 35 more Mercedes Benz? What has happened to all these artists and celebrities like Fakhr Alam and Shezad Roy who supposedly left everything to set up tents and rehabilitation centres to help the victims. And how worried and humble they potrayed themselves on TV? What's the update?

Most importantly, where are the orphaned children? Have they been given foster homes, shelter, or even some food? Or is the government only giving them subsistent education where they are told how to spell an apple in English? What good is that?

There are a great many children displaced as they lost their families and parents. These young children, who are not even old enough to be aware that there are 12 months in a year, were shown on GEO and ARY sitting on the side of the road awaiting food and medical supplies as they were helping their marginally younger siblings from crying for milk!!

[Read Peter Foster, 10,000 earthquake children face death, Telegraph, October 21, 2005]
[Read Peter Foster, Quake children face death from exposure, Telegraph, October 17, 2005]

I will not, and won't be surprised that these young children have become victims of sexually based offenses, trafficking, or even abducted for religious military purposes!!! These are the factors and indications of how a future epidemic could have been stopped. The propagandist GEO will not show or cover the plight of these children now.

What damn war on terrorism is Pakistan fighting where it can support its own infrastructure, cant provide electricity to common citizens, cant give more budget allocation to women's rights and basic human facilities. But, funds are always available to show expenditures made on buying bullet-proof Mercs and Lexus' as Capital Infrastructure expenses in the Annual Budget on 2006-07.

Despite pleas from Pakistan, the medical supplies needed to alleviate suffering in the rural areas arrived slowly. Children were treated without anaesthetic

[Also see: Tom Coghlan and Intiaz Ali, President defends slow response after the earthquake struck, Telegraph, October 13, 2005]

Citizens need to agitate and act!!! They cant just be complacent and go to local stores and tell the owner of the price hikes in lentils and rice. That does not help the situation, only keeps it growing in abeyance!!

The US in Peril?

2006-05-27T09:52:00.000-06:00

Volume 53, Number 10 · June 8, 2006

The US in Peril?
By Jeff Madrick

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century
by Kevin Phillips
Viking, 462 pp., $26.95

1.
In the early 1970s, the United States imported approximately one third of the oil it consumed. Today, it imports almost 60 percent and by 2025, so the Energy Department forecasts, the US will probably have to import 65 percent of its oil. Meanwhile, worldwide demand for energy will rise rapidly, especially as China and India increase their consumption, keeping up the prices American consumers and businesses pay for gasoline, home heating oil, kerosene, and jet fuel, as well as other petroleum products crucial for industries like plastics and pharmaceuticals.

But until recently—when rising gasoline prices have forced Bush to talk of conservation—the Bush administration's domestic energy policy has emphasized a proposal that will hardly ameliorate the nation's energy dependency.[1] For five years, it has strenuously sought to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to private petroleum exploration. Even if successful, however, Alaskan drilling would reduce the nation's oil imports modestly at best from 65 percent of its needs in 2025 to 61 or 62 percent and, in doing so, damage a valuable natural environment.[2] So far, Congress has not granted the administration its wish.

In Kevin Phillips's view, the Bush energy policy is a prime example of America's failure to confront its most difficult challenges. Phillips, once a member of the Nixon administration, has written a timely book that argues that America is very different from the independent and omnipotent nation portrayed by President Bush and his administration. Dependency on oil is one of three major tendencies that will seriously undermine America's future, he writes, the other two being the influence of radical religion and the growing reliance on debt to support the economy. For Phillips, these constitute "the three major perils to the United States of the twenty-first century," and he offers little hope that the US will avoid the consequences. Since he wrote his widely read The Emerging Republican Majority in 1969, Phillips has published several books lamenting how poorly the Republicans have handled their responsibilities. American Theocracy is his most pessimistic work to date.

Phillips is concerned with problems that all nations have to contend with in one form or other as they grow older. The very sources of national success, whether in resources or industrial innovation, eventually reach their limits; what lasts is a structure of power and influence that inhibits reform. But by limiting the scope of his book to oil, religion, and debt—although they can be connected with practically every other issue—Phillips has only partially described what is wrong with the US. Moreover, in this new book clear analy-sis is too often displaced by sermonizing to the effect that America is in ineluctable decline.

Phillips's three major threats to the nation are well chosen, and he presents much information about them; but he could usefully have considered other perils to the US as well. The rising cost of health care, for example, is as grave a concern as the three issues on which he concentrates. Unless that system is radically reformed the US will face a future in which growing numbers of people will not receive adequate treatment. The cost of education is on a similar trajectory, as the chances of getting even a minimal education in the poorer neighborhoods become smaller. Similarly urgent are the failures of the economy. Despite rapid increases in productivity, which is historically the source of a rising standard of living, family incomes are not growing. In fact, after the five recent years of economic expansion, median family income is roughly what it was in 1999, even though wages at last rose early this year.

In foreign affairs, one could argue that oil dependency and born-again religion have much influence over this administration's unfortunate policies. But they cannot alone account for its advocacy of preemptive war and its concerted efforts to update, improve, and build new weapons, including nuclear weapons, for conventional warfare. Bush's assertion of presidential authority to ignore Congress and authorize wiretapping, torture, and illegal detentions threatens the principles on which America's republican democracy is based. Phillips does not give these threats the attention they deserve.

Still, the damage being done by the administration's irresponsible energy policies, more evident by the day, is an appropriate place to begin a book on American ills. Despite its having reduced the use of oil over the past thirty years as a percentage of the nation's income, America is still by far the world's largest user of oil, consuming 25 percent of the world's daily production. Most of this is for transportation. Of the 520 million cars in the world, 200 million are driven in America, while the US makes up only 5 percent of the world's population. It also has only 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves, meaning growing imports are a certainty. Domestic production has been falling for decades.

Drawing on previous history, Phillips argues that the price of oil, now more than $70 a barrel, could go higher than $100 a barrel as worldwide reserves begin to decline. If his predictions come true, this could drive fuel and gasoline prices to levels that could seriously slow down the American economy. At more than $3.00 a gallon today, gasoline prices may soon start restraining economic growth. But long-term forecasting of oil prices has usually been unreliable and overly pessimistic. Of greater concern than dwindling reserves is the increasing demand for energy by newly expanding economies, notably China and India. Prices are now more than double what they were two years ago, and are likely to stay relatively high as long as the world economy grows. In addition, access to oil production is increasingly threatened by both political and natural events.

The biggest exporters of oil to the US are Canada and Mexico. But the fourth largest, Nigeria, may be on the brink of a civil war that could threaten production. Venezuela, another major oil exporter, is increasingly antagonistic to the US and American oil companies. Bolivia recently announced plans to nationalize foreign-owned natural gas companies. The US imports about 17 percent of its oil from the Middle East, a proportion that will rise. When Iran first threatened to cut off exports to the US during the current dispute over its nuclear program, oil prices jumped and have only risen further as tensions increase. Russia, a major producer, has been using its oil and natural gas reserves as a political weapon, threatening to shut down flows of oil and natural gas to the rest of Europe if it doesn't get its way. Gasoline prices also rose to $3.00 a gallon, if only temporarily, after Hurricane Katrina devastated refining facilities in the Gulf last summer.

A serious energy policy providing for security, diversity of sources, and, most important, conservation is necessary. But as Phillips shows in detail, such a policy is stymied by a US administration that is highly sympathetic to the powerful oil companies that would rather promote further exploration than reduce oil use. It is also an administration that does not want to ask Americans to make sacrifices. This was a political lesson learned from the Reagan administration, which successfully portrayed President Carter as a weak and confused pessimist because he called attention to the limits of natural resources. "The glory of the twentieth century is now the burden," writes Phillips somewhat rhetorically.

Oil has soaked deeply—in all likelihood indelibly—into the politics and power structure of the United States, partly because over two bountiful centuries it has also seeped, spouted, and oozed up from so many sections of so many states. More than a fuel, oil became a heritage and also the basis of a lifestyle.

Oil was first produced in volume in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and later Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and California. Oil companies and auto companies were among America's largest throughout much of the twentieth century, and Rockefellers, Fords, and Dodges were among the nation's richest people. As late as 1982, as Phillips observes, the fortunes of half of the top thirty of those on the Forbesmagazine list of the 400 richest Americans originated in petroleum. It is also to be expected that a huge nation with tens of millions of drivers will demand low gas prices. As Phillips shows, the high excise taxes of the kind levied in Europe to conserve oil have always been resisted in America, particularly by the auto industry and its powerful allies.

The willingness of much of the public to use less oil in the 1970s under President Carter suggests, however, that solutions to difficult problems are not beyond the nation's capacity. When Arab oil countries, along with some others, formed their cartel in the early 1970s, oil prices rose fourfold by 1974 and doubled again at the end of the decade. But higher prices reduced demand in the late 1970s and early 1980s and promoted the use of more efficient cars and other products, as did new government regulations requiring better performance. The average car was built to drive twenty-five miles per gallon by 1985, compared to fifteen miles per gallon ten years earlier. Home heating units and a great many appliances became much more efficient in conserving energy. The Reagan administration, however, turned away from regulation and conservation, and promoted domestic exploration, although Phillips is not clear why we cannot adopt policies similar to those of the Seventies again.

In the years that followed—under both George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton—a great opportunity to maintain conservation efforts was tragically missed. The crude oil price fell sharply in the 1990s to one third of its high, and American oil consumption soared again. By 1999, almost half of all new cars were gas-guzzling minivans, SUVs, and light trucks. Between 1990 and 2002 oil interests gave $159 million in campaign contributions to American politicians of both parties, but particularly to Republicans. The transportation industries gave $256 million. They made huge contributions to the Bush presidential campaign of 2004. For many years, as Phillips writes, these industries avoided regulations intended to produce both cleaner air and higher mileage for cars. The Bush administration maintained special tax treatment benefiting the energy industry and discouraged public investment in alternative fuels. SUVs in particular enjoyed a government-mandated privilege: because they were classified as light trucks, they were not subject to the gas mileage requirements for passenger cars.

By 2004, Phillips writes, "an oil, automobile, and national-security coalition had taken the driver's seat." Of all the major oil- and gas-producing states, only California voted for John Kerry. According to one survey cited by Phillips, Americans who drove the most, especially those who drove large SUVs and full-sized pickup trucks, supported Bush by a wide margin.
Phillips also argues that oil dependency had an important part in the American decision to go to war. Access to Iraqi oil, he believes, has long been on the minds of the Bushes, father and son. Both made personal fortunes thanks to the family's oil interests, and Vice President Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton, also got rich on oil. Before the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush said, we "would all suffer if control of the world's oil reserves fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein." According to one source cited by Phillips, Cheney closely studied maps of Iraqi oil reserves before the 2003 Iraq invasion to determine how much could be sold on the market to depress prices.

No doubt, the Iraqi oil fields were a tempting target of the US. Iraqi oil is plentiful and under Saddam Hussein was cheap to produce. Falling prices would have been a help to the US economy, while a friendly source of oil reserves would have made the US less beholden to Saudi Arabia, from which, as many in the government observed, most of the September 11 terrorists originally came. The oil companies who stood to benefit were strong political supporters of both the President and Vice President. David Frum, Bush's former speechwriter, wrote in his book The Right Man that the war was designed to bring new stability "to the most vicious and violent quadrant of the Earth—and new prosperity to us all, by securing the world's largest pool of oil."
Frum was referring here particularly to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations that seemed in danger of revolution. But Phillips does not make a convincing case that the central purpose of the war was to gain access to Iraqi oil. It seems more likely that the control of Iraqi wells was seen as an added benefit of the war. But the reader does not have to accept all of Phillips's claims to be disturbed by the obvious threats to national security posed by dependency on oil. Fear of Soviet influence in the Mideast oil region has long encouraged the US to cultivate dictatorial regimes there. If the Bush administration was counting on cheap oil from Iraq to reduce prices and American energy dependency, this was yet another example of its gross incompetence. Iraqi oil production is still well below pre-war levels.

But Phillips sees no way out. America's aging system for supplying energy, he writes, which is "guarded by a globally aggressive, entrenched-interest political coalition, is a harbinger of costly confrontations and military embroilment likely to lead to national decline." Yet according to recent public opinion surveys, a large majority of Americans are now demanding new energy policies as prices rise and the damage from carbon emissions is more widely acknowledged. The Apollo Alliance, a Washington-based group involving many businesses, labor unions, and environmentalists, for example, is proposing a series of investments in alternative energy sources, more efficiently heated buildings, better transportation planning in cities and suburbs, and new regulations on energy use.[3] If these measures could be carried out, the nation would be far less dependent on energy, and the economy would produce more domestic jobs as well. Such a strategy would require large-scale funding and national planning, and a willingness by politicians to take on the powerful interests. But it is not inconceivable that a new Congress could take steps in this direction and even ask Americans to accept new taxes to pay for it. Phillips does not discuss such a possibility.

2.
The spread of fundamentalist religion in America is Phillips's second concern, and his analysis of its growing influence is sobering. As he shows, the rise in fundamentalist Protestantism has come at the expense of the more moderate churches. "For the nearly four-decade period between 1960 and 1997," he writes,

...the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ (including the Congregationalists), and the Methodists lost between 500,000 and 2 million members each—the last being the Methodist slippage. In the meantime, the Southern Baptist Convention added 6 million, the Mormons 3.3 million, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God 2 million, and the Church of God (Tennessee) some 600,000.

Phillips says that one in four Americans is now affiliated with self-described evangelical or similar churches, an estimate that does not include the rising numbers of Mormons and members of other sects. The calculation also does not include a similar evolution among Catholics.

The growth of such religions accounts for widespread belief in the literal truth of much of the Bible, he argues. According to surveys, Phillips writes, many Americans believe that Noah's Ark and the parting of the Red Sea happened just as the Old Testament describes. He cites polls indicating that 70 percent of evangelicals believe the world will end in Armageddon in a battle between Christ and the Antichrist while 30 percent of other Protestants do. Phillips finds that the so-called red states that vote Republican almost all have high levels of evangelical residents. Religious preferences, he argues, tell us as much as any other factor about the current political alignment.

It is true that President Bush's support has been strongest among evangelicals, and among practicing Christians generally. Of those Americans who attended church more than once a week, nearly 70 percent said they would vote for Bush before the 2004 election. Only 40 percent of those who went to church a few times a year reported they would vote for Bush. To Phillips, the Republican Party has become America's first religious party, and it leans toward policies that reflect the predilections of these religions, including "zealotry, exaltation of faith over reason, too much church-state collaboration, or a contagion of crusader mentality." In this new religious atmosphere, Phillips finds a ready willingness to go to war and the foundation for what he calls an "American Disenlightenment." Among the examples of what Phillips describes as a war against reason are the call for teaching creationism, the castigation of stem cell research, the refusal to accept the scientific findings confirming global warming, and the pandering by President Bush and his brother Jeb to those who asserted a right to life on behalf of Terri Schiavo.

But religion by itself is not necessarily a cause of right-wing zealotry. After all, Jimmy Carter is a born-again Christian who has recently written a book emphasizing humanistic Christian beliefs. Evangelism among black Americans typically favors progressive political programs such as universal health care. More than a few liberal evangelist churches have rapidly increased their numbers, among them the followers of the Call to Renewal movement in California, led by Jim Wallis, which has taken strong positions in favor of abolishing poverty and providing health care for all.

Phillips could have said more about the sources of right-wing religious fundamentalism. He believes the rise of a powerful religious right has partly been the response to the efforts of liberals in the 1970s to "remove religion from the public square," whether by barring school prayer, for example, or ignoring religious objections to abortion. It was stimulated further, he argues, by Bill Clinton's marital infidelities in the 1990s. But evangelical religion, often with an anti-intellectual bias, has had a strong presence in America for many years. During the 1950s there were clearly religious underpinnings to McCarthyism, to irrational fears of communism, and to the cold war in general. When the cold war effectively ended in the late 1980s, an enemy had been lost, and Americans turned their religiously directed moral outrage to other outlets.

Attributing the war in Iraq and Bush's right-wing policies chiefly to religious fundamentalism in America is in some ways similar to attributing much of today's terrorism to Islamist fundamentalism. In both, religious doctrine can be a strong direct cause, but it is equally true that poverty and falling wages, national humiliation, high levels of unemployment, and lack of economic development contribute to a rise in dangerous extremism. Phillips cites two scholars, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, who write:

Fundamentalisms arise in times of crisis, real or perceived. The sense of change may be keyed to oppressive and threatening social, economic or political conditions, but the ensuing crisis is perceived as a crisis of identity by those who fear extinction as a people.

Phillips argues that the events of September 11 stimulated just such irrational fear of extinction, a conclusion that seems supported by some of the panicky reactions that could be observed throughout the country after September 11. But there were other confusing and threatening changes in American circumstances long before 2001, and, clearly, the rise of fundamentalism started well before 2001. In the 1970s, inflation and slow growth badly hurt most Americans, and the economic expansion of the 1980s, on balance, did not help middle- or low-income male workers. A large proportion of men saw their incomes fall or at best stagnate over twenty and thirty years. At the same time many men felt they were faced with threats to their dominance such as the rise of feminism and growing opportunities for women to work, not to mention the loss of jobs and entire industries to foreign economies. Such factors may help to explain why many working men have turned to religion in search of a confident sense of identity, and a reassertion of aggressive patriotic convictions favoring militarist foreign policy.

By not considering in more detail the historical causes for the rise of evangelical fundamentalists, Phillips misses opportunities to see how their effects on public life might be mitigated. Similarly, he finds the turn of the American South to the Republican Party a permanent change in American life. But there are other causes of political extremism beyond religious fervor. For most of American history the South has been underdeveloped economically. A government that could constructively respond to people's deepest fears, whether economic, social, or indeed physical, might also soften the harshest and most destructive tendencies of religious evangelism.
There are encouraging signs that Americans are turning against right-wing religious priorities. Two thirds of the people surveyed disagreed with the view of the President, his brother Jeb, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that the government should intervene in the Schiavo case.

There has been a backlash against pressures to teach intelligent design in the schools. A majority of Americans still favor providing individuals with choice with regard to abortion, notwithstanding the views of the evangelical churches. A Pew Research Center survey shows that in March, only 54 percent of white evangelicals approved of President Bush's performance compared to 72 percent in early 2005. In modifying some of the conclusions about religious influence that once seemed clear, such tendencies suggest that deep trends in political opinion often are not adequately reflected in surveys.

Phillips's third concern, the rise of personal and public debt, has become more urgent during the last two decades. The rapid increase in personal and public borrowing began with the Reagan presidency, when the federal government, consumers, home owners, and businesses borrowed at a faster pace than their incomes grew. In the late 1990s, the federal government under Bill Clinton at last produced budget surpluses, but private debt rose to still greater levels. Today, the federal government is again running deeply in the red, and consumers and home owners keep borrowing at high rates as well. America's level of debt is at its highest during the last onehundred years, some three times as large as the annual Gross Domestic Product.

Phillips makes several strong points about the debt. First, the nation's finances are spread thin. Consumers owe so much that a downturn in home prices or a mild recession could make it difficult to repay debt, ultimately endangering the financial institutions that made the loans. Meanwhile, the federal government is increasingly beholden to foreign governments such as China to buy its bonds because the US does not save enough to buy up its own debt. But nations like China are willing to buy American debt principally because the dollar remains the world's major reserve currency. If faith in the dollar falters, these nations may start to sell US debt and other assets. This could occur if, say, oil exporters demand payment in euros or yen, or the Chinese decide to diversify their vast reserves into other currencies. It could also occur if investors generally lose faith in the ability of the US economy to keep growing. If US bonds begin to be sold in large quantities, that would drive up interest rates and send the dollar down further, which would in turn create further inflation as import prices rise. A downward spiral could be difficult to stop.

This is no doubt a threat to American prosperity. It could bring on an economic cataclysm, but there are safety measures built into the system, including government programs such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, and health care, that strongly support the economy even when private markets are faltering. What should be clear is that adding to the federal deficit in order to provide tax cuts, as the President has done, is precisely the wrong policy in these circumstances. Such deficits can be defensible; they support spending for needed education, transportation, and daycare that might promote growth in the future, but otherwise they add danger to an already precarious situation.

More important to Phillips, it seems, is that the high profits of banks and brokerage companies—together they now earn more than all manufacturers in America—have enabled the financial industry to exercise a heavy influence on politicians and on the press and television. Over the past few decades, government regulations and safeguards against conflicts of interest and excessive speculation have been badly weakened, giving these institutions still greater power to promote debt and spread their influence. The wave of fraud uncovered at companies like Enron, WorldCom, and at many mutual funds and abetted by some of the nation's most prestigious lawyers, investment banks, and accountants, is partly the consequence of deregulation encouraged under Democrats, Republicans, and indeed the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.

Is decline inevitable as a result? Phillips's weakest arguments take the form of historical analogies. He observes that overreliance on debt in seventeenth-century Spain, eighteenth-century Holland, and nineteenth-century England preceded the declines of these nations. He makes similar analogies to dependence on energy resources, such as wind and water in Holland before its decline, or to the rise of evangelical churches in England, which he sees as having weakened central power. Such analogies contain informative bits of history but they are oversimplified. Phillips points out that Americans have taken on debt before to finance their economy; but he warns that the American economy was then young and full of vitality. Now, he argues, the economy is mature and has taken on excessive debt that will lead to decline. But the American economy must have seemed mature in the late nineteenth century, when the US overtook Britain in size and power. In the 1930s, many of the most respected economists believed that American technologies had been fully exploited. The same claims were made in the 1970s. It might be argued that after more than two hundred years of prosperity the American economy will now have difficulty growing in a globalized world, despite the advent of the so-called information age. But Phillips's predictions that the US economy is destined to decline need more supporting argument than he supplies.

Debt in itself is not likely to bring down a strong economy. The greater danger, I think, is that the financial industry will steer capital away from manufacturing, research, and new ideas and toward the easy profits to be made by investing in the financial markets. This is already eroding the nation's economic base. Still, the undue power and influence of the banks, investment houses, hedge funds, and other financial institutions could be remedied by laws against market manipulation, requirements that businesses be more transparent, and rules against excessive speculation. Today such laws may be beyond the American political system, but the nation has reversed course in the past under equally unlikely circumstances.

What Phillips sees as new problems have confronted America in different forms for two centuries. The very sources of its success have periodically come back to haunt it. Had Phillips not been so determined to conclude that decline is inevitable, he might have considered how in the past the US has overcome historical rigidities and the influence of powerful interests. The history of the US can in fact be seen as the growth—often in opposition to the entrenched legal protections—of markets, business competition, and wages; and central to that growth have been the successful demands to expand civil rights, including the right to vote, as well as to increase public investment in schools, transportation, and defense.

Particularly troubling are the challenges to the US that Phillips does not address. The potential bankruptcy of General Motors suggests one of the nation's greatest concerns. America's systems of health care and private pensions have long been deliberately linked to jobs through tax benefits for corporations. But now, as these companies fail, they reduce their coverage and they do not pay off their pensions. The system of private social protections is unraveling.

Phillips did not foresee fully the damage done by the Republican majority as a counterforce to what he once saw as the tendencies of liberal Democrats to promote social engineering and anti-religious sentiment during the 1960s and 1970s. The Republicans succeeded by portraying government social programs and market regulations as obstacles to the nation's progress. In doing so, the new Republican majority crippled the most important instruments with which to deal with a rapidly changing world. The neoliberal system of largely unregulated markets has had its share of spectacular economic developments, information technology high among them. But it never alone could solve the nation's major problems, and now, increasingly unregulated, the oil and finance industries, among others, are doing much damage. The Republican majority has been taken over by extremists who promise their own version of social engineering, from teaching intelligent design in public schools to the promotion of various "pro-life" causes.

The test of an industrialized nation is whether it can maintain a balance between community and private interests. To what extent is America doomed to decline as a result of the policies imposed by the Bush administration and its allies that favor the rich and powerful? This is the unspoken issue that hovers over Phillips's book. For all its dramatic and useful emphasis on oil, evangelism, and debt, it remains too narrow in its approach to fully engage the large threats we face.

Notes
[1] This April Bush said that he would investigate price gouging, suspend deposits to the strategic oil reserve, ease environmental standards, explore credits for buyers of hybrid and diesel vehicles, and encourage the increased use of ethanol. As many have commented, the President's program offered no serious prospect of dealing effectively with long-term energy problems.
[2] See the Web site of the Energy Information Administration, United States Department of Energy, www.eia .doe.gov.
[3] For more information, see www.apolloalliance.org.

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Economics of Witch Craft in Islamic Societies

2006-05-13T14:03:00.000-06:00

A question about black magic in Islam

---------------
Dear Jawaid,

why do you think witch craft and black magic is still part culture in a lot
of islamic societies?

cheers
paul
Truck and Barter
Where Sympathy and Hedonism Collide
---------------

Dear Paul,

It is quite incredible how in just a few verses ‘black magic’ was denounced in Islam. The verse levies the same denunciation to gambling and wine as well. But aside from the differentiation between pure and black magic, man has always been in awe of the unknown, and that which he cannot understand.

Take the idea of turning water into wine in Catholicism, which has now become a cornerstone of their religious faith. Furthermore, sacrifice of the flesh as well, is a remembrance of the event where Abraham's son was replaced with a sheep, and this event has been revered both in Judaism and Islam. Although these strong similarities in Abrahamic faiths exist, Islam tends to be extensively complicated from the norm.

Unlike the prophets before him, there are no ‘magical’ attributes associated with Muhammad – no resurrection, or no parting of the Red Sea – simply no bag of tricks which Muhammad could utilize in situations of trouble. For the Muslim faith, the idea of Muhammad receiving the revelation of God through a trance like experience (which in Arabic is 'wahi'), is exactly what many ulema argue, is evidence of the humanistic nature of Muhammad, and its significance that any man can attain divinity via piety and humility.

Herein is the problem. The message of Islam as a religion is complicated to the commonality of human comprehension, one that continuously is need of a tangible association with the Divine – be it the anthropomorphication of Greek gods, the bread signifying the body of Christ, or for that matter the supposedly healing power in the hands of Indian pirs and fakirs (many who have been accused of practicing black magic). All these are modes of the human psyche to transcend this world.

Therefore, since every demand has to be met by a supply to realize profits, in such a competitive economic environment such as that of the Muslim world, where poverty is such a growing concern, religion becomes the perfect business enterprise to realize the afore mentioned gullible human desire. One can go on to argue that the healing power of fakirs is a psychological state, and therefore has no bearing on the economic affairs of the business of magic in Islamic Societies.

CELEBRATING MISS PAKISTAN

2006-05-13T10:58:00.000-06:00

A look at honoring women in an Islamic society
by Syed Wamiq Jawaid

FREEDOM is an incredibly confusing world, one which has been used time and time again to justify acts and policies which really have confinement and enslavement at its core. Take the British foreign policy during the Colonial Period, where T. E. Lawrence sprung to the forefront of the Arab liberation movement against the Turks in 1916, bombing infrastructure which linked Istanbul to the Hijaz, and ultimately becoming one of the many factors contributing towards the collapse of the last Islamic Empire of the world. Sure, the Arabs won their liberation from the Turks, but it paved the way of western powers to gain a strong foothold in the Middle-East.

Brilliant I must say, as a policy and military measure, and quite stupid if I must add of the indigenous peoples of the region for not foreseeing this. The same goes for the East India Company, which after its inception in 1600 had been lobbying for an entry into the Indian market since 1602. Under the diplomatic mission of Sir Thomas Roe in 1615, Jahangir signed a rights treaty with the British, granting them exclusive permission to trade and build factories in India. Ultimately the Mughals were sacked by the British military, and things became so diplorable that, history as witness a Revolt broke out in 1857. This was just one year after the British forced the Ottomans into the Crimean War (1854-1856), against Russia: a bilateral ally of the Turks.

Given these two examples among a myriad of others, Muslims have been clueless about foreign policy initiatives of the Western world. Whether it be diplomacy, military, or cultural designs, Muslims have never understood these modes, and have found themselves in a state of frenzy or infatuation with these tools of domination, instead of being skeptical of their purpose. Not only is this aspect of foreign policy incredible, but rather exemplary and productive as well. Just look at the Crusades; it took Muslims a century after the massacre of Jerusalem in 1099, to realize that the knights with huge red crosses on their chests where not some mercenary nomads, but religious zealots fueled by an untamed desire to regain the Holy Land in the name of the Roman Catholic Church and thereby achieve divine purity. Closing ones borders to developments and to an understanding of how your neighbours think, is a lesson that Muslims have still not learned until today. They continue to be dazzled by the fruits of globalization such as Big Macs, Brittney Spears, or the more recent beauty Pageants in Canada.

Sonia Ahmed is the President of the Miss Canada Pakistan Inc. (www.misspakistanworld.com) is a beauty pageant for Pakistani women based in Canada. They have organized competitions in the past and their mission statement states that “[t]he Kalash people have fascinated [them] a great deal, and the immense beauty in the Kalash women as well as their simplicity has inspired us to bring up this culture of Pakistan that was never shown before.” This is undoubtedly a great cause for bringing the culture of Pakistan to Canada, and thereby becoming good-will ambassadors of the Country to the West.

But really, are they imparting the culture to the West? There is nothing wrong in beauty pageants since they aim to liberate women and elevate women to a certain status in society, where they are revered and respected. In simplistic terms, beauty pageants are a celebration for everything feminine and a recognition of the Woman as an integral member of the social fabric. This is entirely true, yet this purpose of the pageants is incumbent upon the sociological composition of the community being targeted by the competition.

As everything, issues have to perceived within a historical context in order to derive the true essence of a movement such as the pageant. The Miss America competition was launched on September 7th, 1921 as a two-day beauty competition in Atlantic City, New Jersey. History was made just a year before in the United States, when for the first time on November 2nd, 1920, women were allowed to vote for the U.S. Presidential Election. Since equal voting did not exist in Classical Islam under the Prophet, democracy is a purely contemporary concept and hence has to be deciphered by understanding the democratic movements in countries such as the United States.

Alice Stokes Paul, founder of The National Women’s Party (1916) led the brutal and tireless campaign for ‘women’s sufferage’ which ultimately resulted in the women’s right to vote in the U.S. federal election in 1920. The movement for women’s suffrage or ‘right to vote’ was a social, economic, and political reformation whose aim was for abolishing voting discrimination due to gender. Paul was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for her activism, and until today is an inspiration for women all over the world.

The success of the women’s voting movement, is unparallel due the efforts of Paul, since even in the oldest democratically structure under the Greeks, women were considered among slaves and barbarians: non-citizens and hence held no voting power. Given the phenomenal accomplishments of women in the 1920 electoral process, it is not wrong to deduce that this paved way for the establishment for a beauty pageant for the simple celebration of women, and status and power women had been granted by the U.S. Courts. Regardless of the fact that more contemporary beauty pageants might overlook this historical factor (which is another issue), the celebration of the reformation movement, nevertheless makes up the core of the pageant in the United States.

Which brings us - at last - to the pageant in Pakistani societies. Pakistani pageants beg the question of celebration in Pakistan’s political economy. What have the Canadian participants, which hail from various cities like Karachi and Lahore, have to celebrate for women’s issues in Pakistan? What astronomical achievement have the women accomplished there, when women like Dr. Shazia and Mukhtara Mai are raped, the State puts their names on the exit control list to prevent them from leaving the Country?

Furthermore, what accomplishments have the women in Pakistan have to celebrate, when the Head of State addresses the Women’s Association in New York, and loosing his composure, declares that rape is business for Pakistani women to gain naturalization status in a Western country? This is a statement which is still looked down upon in various circles of the United States, unfortunately only second to the pictures of the Taliban beating veiled afghani women! Hence, what is President of the Miss Canada Pakistan Inc. celebrating?

Pakistan is a perfect exemplification of the infatuation epidemic in the Muslim World. Reminiscent of what the Miss America pageant has become today, the borrowing of the concept of a beauty competition from the Western world, is nothing but an adoption, which is only skin deep. Like the infatuation with television shows like Baywatch and Orange County, Muslim World finds itself in the same position it did in 1916. Similar to Muslim response to concepts such as liberation, democracy, and now the celebration of femininity; the Muslim world does not understand the philosophical ideas and the political sacrifice, that western modernity celebrates.

The non-U.S World will continue to grapple with problems modernity inflicts with issues of identity, if, and only if, people continue to lack a deep understanding of what the United States has accomplished as a society. Without the insight of what we have achieved and how far we have come as a people, beauty will continue to be skin deep and problems such as Mukhtar Mai will still exist, thereby making celebrations as pageants and fashion-shows not only questionable and absurd, but dangerously making women into commodities.