Moderate Sufis? In Pre-modern era

Sufism is the mystical side of Islam that prioritizes "inner" spiritual aspects of religion to the "exterior" rituals and laws of the religion, that does not mean it completely writes off the latter. Like orthodox religion, heterodox Sufism is also a grocery shop - so many items of different flavors under the same label :) Various flavors of Sufism stand on different points across "inner vs exterior" religiosity spectrum. There was a "wahdatul wajood" (pantheism) school of Sufism that if taken to logical conclusion, ends up in the unity of all religions, thus undermining the claim of "one true faith". Some Sufis (malamatis) altogether rejected "exterior" (Sharia) for the "interior" (esoteric mysticism) and there were others form whom "interior" complemented, not replaced, the "exterior".

Sufis not homogenous

http://www.islamicpluralism.org/1922/the-moral-crisis-of-pakistani-barelvism
"Sufis are not a homogeneous phenomenon. Some are jihadist (notably Qadiri Sufis who have a long history of association with the Barelvis). Others are "peaceful, but not pacifist," in the description of the outstanding Western historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis. Some Sufis are Sunni-centric and despise Shia Muslims; others claim to have surmounted the Sunni-Shia divide. Some are strictly observant of Islamic shariah law; some refer to "shariah" only as the external practice of religion; some disregard Islamic law, as, for example, the Turkish and Kurdish Alevis, who originated in Shiism. Most, however, are open to dialogue with believers in other faiths."

Sufi militancy across history

http://tribune.com.pk/story/105628/are-sufis-essentially-non-violent/
"In the region now called Pakistan, Sufis, dervishes and mullahs pioneered several millenarian and revivalist movements directed against British colonialists. Mirza Ali Khan, better known as the ‘Faqir from Ipi,’ a hermit from the Waziristan region, led his disciples in a successful rebellion against the British. And the Hur movement of the late 19th century in Sindh was also mobilised by a saintly figure, Sibghtullah Shah Badshah."

Not so well-written but gives a good description of some Sufi warriors. There are some inaccuracies, for example, Mullah Omar's connection with Naqshbandis. But overall, a good list :
http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?61967-Famous-Sufi-Warriors

A detailed article on the history of Sufi militancy (the article has a Marxist slant but a good description of militant Sufi movements):
 http://ww4report.com/node/2151
"The first and most successful of the sufi revolutionaries was Amir Abd al-Qadir (also rendered al-Kader) al-Jazairi (1808-1883), of the Qadiri Order, who from his base in Oran began resisting the French almost immediately upon their 1830 arriveal in Algeria. The French originally saw in him a proxy force to fight the Ottoman Turks and signed treaties granting him wide autonomy over much of the country."

Extracts from the page 420 of the book "The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands" By Alfred J. Rieber. Deals with Sufi rebellions against Russian and Chinese empires.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=s6roAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA420#v=onepage

http://eye-on-islam.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/peaceful-tableau-of-sufism.html
"In the modern day, many influential Muslim leaders who are deemed by most people to be profoundly "radical", including Hasan al-Banna and the Ayatollah Khomeini, also had a great interest in Sufism. In modern times, a Sufi jihadi squadron was formed in Iraq in 2005, and the 2004 Beslan massacre, in which over 300 schoolchildren were murdered by Islamic jihadists in Russia, was orchestrated by a Naqshbandi Sufi, Shamil Basayev."


https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=wP1Nz5Y8-voC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=janissari+sufis&source=bl&ots=DtSK6QoIht&sig=HgivLuCSYybbTx087sdmXFyYer4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHhuS4v57SAhWKE7wKHRGFDqQQ6AEIRjAI#v=onepage&q=janissari%20sufis&f=false
Sufism in Ottoman Empire. Janisarri affiliation with Bektashi order.

https://twitter.com/cybertosser/status/833630559175790592
https://twitter.com/cybertosser/status/833629610067718145
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=t0MsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false
Militant Sufi orders in Ottoman Empire. Page 25 of the book "From Religious Empires to Secular States: State Secularization in Turkey" By Birol Başkan


https://twitter.com/cybertosser/status/833642922625097729
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=t0MsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77#v=onepage&q&f=false
Sufi origin of Safavids and their suppression of rival Sufi orders in Iran. Page 77 of the book "From Religious Empires to Secular States: State Secularization in Turkey" By Birol Başkan


https://twitter.com/cybertosser/status/855707869639041024
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jV_wAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100#v=onepage&q&f=false
In Tsarist Russia, authorities made use of orthodox Muslim clerics to denounce 'unorthodox' Sufi jihadis. Extract from page 100 of the book "The Tsar's Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia" By Paul W. Werth


https://twitter.com/cybertosser/status/854757595474743296
https://www.hudson.org/research/13480-justifying-war-the-salafi-jihadi-appropriation-of-sufi-jihad-in-the-sahel-sahara
During the jihadist campaigns of the 1800s in the Sahel-Sahara region, the Muslim scholars who led the armed movements identified themselves with the Sufi brotherhoods. In the Sahel-Sahara region today, core ideological concepts that animated the historical jihads of the 19th Century—including ideas about takfīr(excommunication), Dār al-Islām (abode of Islam), Dār al-Kufr (abode of unbelief), ḥijrah (migration) and al-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ (fealty and disavowal)—can be found in contemporary Salafist ideologies and have also been appropriated by present-day Salafi-Jihadi groups like Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda to justify their campaigns.⁴

http://stottilien.com/2013/03/01/sufism-the-gnostic-chameleon-muscle-and-brain-of-islam/
"Sufi Dervish were Warrior Orders called by the Calif, often from far distances, when long sieges were expected. They were not only mystics but warriors when necessity demanded. There is good evidence, that their secret close-knit brotherhoods was the role  model of the European Knight Templars."

"The Sufi Order was widespread in the Ottoman Empire (because the majority of Ottoman Janissaries were Shia-Sufis).  The Janissaries were elite soldiers, a heavy armored infantry or Foot Knights of the Ottoman Empire.  Ottoman Heavy Cavalry were Sipahis (Turkish Nobles) and Ghulams (mostly Persian).  Janissaries had “cousins” in Iran (Persia) under the Safavid Dynasty (Persian-Turkic Cousins of the Ottomans) . The Safavid counterpart of the Ottoman Janissaries were called the “Qizilbash.  Christian children were brought into the corps through the devshirme system, in which young boys were taken from their Christian families in  Greece, Serbia, Armenia, or Bulgaria , which were part of the Ottoman Empire. The word “Janissary” comes from the Turkish yeni çeri or “new soldier.” The child soldiers were converted to Islam, and trained in infantry techniques and tactics.
By the end of the seventh century, Turkish migrants converted to Sunni Islam and became champions of Islamic orthodoxy.  Beginning in the twelfth century, new waves of Turkic migrants became attracted to militant Sufi orders, which gradually incorporated heterodox Shia beliefs. One Sufi order that appealed to Turks after they won against Christianity was the Safavi, based in northwest Iran. Safavid adherence to a Sufi version of Shi’a Islam had the support of the Turkic tribes called the mentioned Qizilbash [literary the “Redheads” for the twelve red strips on their turbans symbolizing their adherence to twelve Shi’i Imams]. Qizilbash tribes resided mostly in Asia Minor; northern Syria, and northern Iraq. Concern about the growing influence of the Safavi probably was one of the factors that prompted the Ottomans to permit unorthodox Bektasi Sufism to become the official order of the janissary soldiers.
The Sufi orders enhanced their political role again with Western imperialism. When Islam was under threat, their close-knit brotherhoods were devastatingly effective. Sufi orders led anti-colonial movements from Morocco to Indonesia and are the core of the  stubborn Chechen guerrillas. Even Stalin’s terror campaigns could not root out the Sufi brotherhoods."


http://web.archive.org/web/20160326113305/http://jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2009-weekly/nos-06-09-2009/lit.htm
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2009-weekly/nos-06-09-2009/lit.htm

"Frembgen writes that during the twelfth century in the Taimour period, Ulemas belonging to the Naqashbandi school held strong positions in the government. Sufis who took part in power politics were generally either from the Naqshbandi school or its splinters. In NWFP and FATA areas there was a strong mixture of Pukhtoons and the Naqshbandi school. One may trace roots of such influences from neighbouring Central Asia. He also writes about a Chishti sufi, Sheikh Muhamad Rukanudin Junaidi, who did Rasm-e-Tajposhi of the first ruler of Bahmani kingdom during the year 1347 in Daulatabad, Deccan.

There are various incidents in which Sufis also supported rebels. The anti-Mughal Roshnya movement is not the only example in this connection. This movement was headed by Bayazid Ansari, commonly known as Peer Roshaan. He was a Jalandhri pathan by race. Peer baba of Bunair and Saidu baba of Sawat had lot of influence on Gujars, Pathans, Hindo Hazara and FATA tribes.

The author also narrates incidents of armed struggle from Sudan to Russia in which Sufis participated. In this connection he gives special reference to Imam Shamil (1796-1871) and the Mahdavi movement (1843)."


http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/sufism-in-asymmetric-warfare
https://www.ethz.ch/content/specialinterest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/en/services/digital-library/articles/article.html/184340
"Though several Sufi orders existed in East Africa in the late-19th century it is generally held that the Saalihiya order, led by Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan and his Dervish resistance fighters, had the greatest influence on the region. Contrastingly, historical evidence shows us that the Qadiriyya tariqa in East Africa was the most important factor in setting the conditions for Hassan’s later success against the colonial empires. This study argues that the Qadiriyya order, led by Uways al-Barawi, used its Sufi networks to wage limited aims warfare against the Europeans and pioneered a style of irregular doctrine that leveraged lesser means against greater forces."...
"Referring to one of the more recent studies of Sufi inspired warfare, Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush write in Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union, about Sufi insurgencies in the Northern Caucasus region of the Soviet Union. Like in East Africa, Sufis in the Northern Caucasus had the ability to preach to and earn the respect of all people in society, even on-Sufis. Sufis earned this respect by making shrines and paying homage to “saints” that were important local community figures, not just Sufi Muslims. In the end, the only qualifier to become a Sufi saint was to do good in the community resulting in the practice of “clan or tribal ancestors, Biblical prophets, even imaginary beings (often pre-Islamic deities of Zoroastrian or, rarely, of Buddhist origin)” becoming revered by Sufis (Bennigsen 94). This act of respect crossed religious, ethnic, and political creeds earning Sufis influence in all spheres of Northern Caucasus life. As a result, organizing recruiting campaigns and logistical operations against the Soviets was not merely a Sufi Muslim task; it became a local community task. As a result of the inclusive practices of Sufis, their shrines became meeting places for people from all walks of life. Mistakenly, the Soviets allowed the Sufis to control these very specific shrine areas and therefore they became “the critical juncture where popular belief meets clandestine organization, where ordinary Muslims come into contact with the highly motivated and rigidly disciplined Sufis” (94). Eventually, the Soviets caught on and concluded that Sufi shrines were “the holy place is the main contact place between ‘Sufi fanatics’ and the population – believers and unbelievers alike” (94-95). In the end two charges were levied against Sufis in the Soviet Union, the first was “The Sufi brotherhoods are the breeding ground of the most radical form of nationalism and nurseries of anti-Russian and anti-communist xenophobia” (102). Second, the Soviets believed that “Sufi communities are ‘closed societies’ which live outside the Soviet legal establishment” (108). From the Soviet’s experience, we can see that Sufism was considered inaccessible to western government, but extremely accessible to community members. Moreover, we learn that Sufis are not so concerned with physically defeating greater militaries are they are with finding a political end state that restores pride and honor in their communities."

http://history.emory.edu/home/documents/endeavors/volume2/LewisOuksel.pdf
The Tungan Rebellion was a great uprising of the Hui in the Northwest of China during the mid-nineteenth century. The rebellion began in 1862 as a series of local level conflicts between Hui and Han militias in the Wei River Valley in Shaanxi province but grew to encompass the entire province as well as those of Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang. The Rebellion itself took place during a period of great unrest when a number of rebellions were raging throughout China.
....
f the “New Teaching” caused great anxiety amongst Qing officials. The “New Teaching” arose in the eighteenth century as part of a wave of Islamic revivalism that saw similar movements in other Muslim areas. It came out of the Naqshbandi sufi order that was widespread amongst Chinese Muslims. Two sufi revivalists, Ma Mingxin and Ma Laichi, had studied in Yemen and Mecca and began teaching. Both had studied with prominent Naqshbandi Sufis, but had learned different lessons. Ma Laichi practiced the silent dhikr that was characteristic of the Naqshbandi order. Ma Mingxin, however, studied later at a time when vocal dhikr came to be seen as permissible and taught that to his own disciples. Though seemingly trivial, the issue of the dhikr was one of many contentious concerns among the Chinese Muslims. A greater issue was that of tajdid, the commitment to the political, social and religious renewal of Islam. Ma Mingxin, when he returned to China in 1761, intended to purify Islam as practiced in China and remove the Chinese influences on it. As a practitioner of the vocal dhikr, he named his new sect the Jahriya, after the Arabic word jahr meaning aloud. Ma Laichi and his disciples, the Khafiya, from the Arabic for silent, resented the upstart sect for rivaling their hegemony in the northwest. The Khafiya found the Jahriya practices to be superstitious, heterodox and immoral. The Jahriya, on the other hand, criticized the excessive donations demanded by the Khafiya, the emphasis on saints and tombs, and the development of hereditary succession. Beyond the differences in practice, the Jahriya were committed to the purification of Islam and to its renewal. This made the Jahriya much more militant towards the non-Muslim state and heterodox Muslims. Indeed in the 1760s and again in the 1780s, there was much violent conflict between Jahriya and Khafiya adherents. In 1780, the Jahriya organized large contingents of armed men to attack the Khafiya, who organized themselves but faced great losses. The Khafiya then turned to local Qing officials, who, instead of holding trials and administering punishment, dispatched troops with the intention of exterminating the followers of the New Teaching. The Jahriya responded by eliminating a platoon of troops and killing the accompanying officials. 


https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=-F4Yk0B16zAC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 102 of the book "Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union" By Alexandre Bennigsen, S. Enders Wimbush: “The Sufi brotherhoods are the breeding ground of the most radical form of nationalism and nurseries of anti-Russian and anti-communist xenophobia” (102).



http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2014.1.issue-1/opth-2015-0003/opth-2015-0003.xml
"Sufism is often viewed as a non-violent and non-political branch of Islam. However, I argue that there are many historical examples to illustrate the presence of anti-colonialist Sufi military movements throughout the “Muslim World,” and I give particular attention to the cases of ‘Abd al-Qadir of the Qadiriyya movement and his anti-colonialist rebellion against France in Algeria in the 1800s, as well as that of Italian colonialism in Libya and the military response by the Sanussi order. Thus, while Sufism clearly has various teachings and principles that could be interpreted to promote non-violence, Sufi political movements have also developed as a response to colonialism and imperialism, and thus, one should not automatically assume a necessary separation from Sufism and notions of military resistance."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/afghanistan-sufi-leaders-add-dig-20143256634750809.html

"The uprising, led by Habibullah Kalakani who, like a number of conservative Afghans, was offended by King Amanullah's rapid reforms, is said to have been instigated by the British. Interestingly, the head of the Naqshbandiyyah Sufi order of Afghanistan, Hazrat Nur al-Mashayekh Mojaddidi, was actively helping the rebellion against the king.

Historically, Sufism has always been intertwined with Afghan politics. The story of a Sufi dervish placing a wreath of wheat on the head of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of modern Afghanistan, at a Sufi shrine in Kandahar in 1747 is told to confirm the Durrani king's legitimacy. Zahir Shah, the last monarch of Afghanistan (r. 1933-73), was proclaimed king after Hazrat Nur al-Mashayekh placed the ceremonial turban on his head."


Sufi tolerance vs Salafi intolerance?

http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/311/html
"Salafism is often associated with intolerance and violence and Sufism with tolerance and nonviolence. In this article we demonstrate that these assumptions are baseless. Based on analysis of historical and contemporary cases from Southeast Asia and West Africa, we show that there is no significant correlation between theology and violent tendencies. Some violent groups are Sufi and others Salafi, while some non-violent groups are Salafi, others Sufi. Policy makers are therefore ill-advised to use theological orientation as a factor in assessing the violent potential of Muslim movements and organisations. "

"Usman dan Fodio, the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate provides a clear example. He had a vision in which he saw the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and other prophets and saints, including al-Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1077-1166), the founder of the Qadiriyya tariqa to which dan Fodio belonged. According to dan Fodio’s account of this vision, al-Jilani anointed him as the leader of saints (Imam Al-Awliyaa), and enjoined him “to command what is good and to forbid what is reprehensible.” Then al-Jilani decorated dan Fodio with the “Sword of Truth” and ordered him to “unsheathe it against the enemies of God.” (54) For dan Fodio, this was the spiritual and moral authorization for his jihad.
Al-Hajj Umar Tall invoked the doctrines of the Tijaniyya tariqa in his articulation of the doctrinal basis of jihad. In his magnum opus Kitab rimah hizb al-rahim ‘ala nuhur hizb al-rajim (“The Book of the Lances of the Party of Allah the Merciful against the Necks of the Party of Satan the Accursed”), he employed the sectarian Tijani discourse of spiritual election to legitimise his military and political agendas. This discourse proclaims that the Tijaniyya supersedes all other Sufi orders because of the exclusive guarantee of salvation Ahmad al-Tijani, its founder, received from the Prophet Muhammad for himself and his followers. Umar Tall also employed the Tijani doctrine of inkar that demonises all who reject the Tijani doctrine of spiritual election to refute his opponents."

https://books.google.ca/books?id=rdI96px90kUC&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 89 of the book "Egyptology: The Missing Millennium : Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings" By Okasha El Daly. A Sufi broke Sphynx's nose


http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/05/sufi_jihad.html#ixzz3rwtBydlo
"Throughout the 20th century, and at present, Sufi ideologues and mass movements (especially the Naqshbandiya) have been engaged in defensive—offensive jihad campaigns designed not only to expel real (or perceived) 'colonial powers', but also to create supra—national (regional) shari'a states, or even a frank Caliphate (i.e., a single unified global shari'a state). The restored Shi'ite theocracy in Iran, whose contemporary shari'a—based system of dhimmitude was drafted by a leading Sufi—Sultanhussein Tabandeh—provides a sobering example of what 'Sufi ecumenism' towards non—Muslims means in practice."

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=2875#.VtXkpBjhO8o
"The uniqueness of Sufism in Chechnya lies in the transformation and development of the two tariqas since the 19th century. The Naqshbandiyya, known in the Caucasus as a base of support for those who resisted Russian aggression in the 18th and 19th centuries, abandoned that view and adopted a stance of peaceful coexistence with the official authorities. At the same time, the Qadiri tariqa, which had come to Chechnya promoting nonviolent resistance to Russian colonization in the 19th century, has now become the main force of Sufi opposition to the authorities."


Sufis in Indian sub-continent

Hur rebellion terrorism in Sindh (1890s)
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=_kC421xzMKsC&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.facebook.com/archive150/videos/779935392031541/



Manzilgah Riots, Sukkur (1939)


http://members.shaw.ca/freesindh/sindhstory/Thrown_to_the_Wolves.html 
From 3 October to 19 November, 1939, under the leadership of G.M. Syed, Khuhro and Sir Haroon, they forcibly occupied Manzilgah. On I November, 1939, Bhagat Kanwar Ram, the well-known singer-saint of Sindh, was gunned down at Ruk railway station --- and nobody was arrested. Sukkur district observed complete hartal for fifteen days. When Pamnani, MLA, said that the Pir of Bharchundi had got Kanwar Ram killed (earlier the Pir's son had been beaten for kidnapping Hindu girls) he, too, was gunned down. The Sindh Hindus were stunned.   
But worse was to follow. Word went round that killing one Hindu was equal to doing seven Haj pilgrimages. Sixty-four Hindus were killed and property worth several million was looted or burnt in the Sukkur countryside. In this violent atmosphere, G.M. Syed said on the floor of the Assembly that the Hindus shall be driven out of Sindh like the Jews from Germany --- a statement he has very much regretted since. But the damage was done.   



Sufis view of militant jihad

Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio's jihad against Nigerian Muslim rulers who were deemed "not Islamic enough". Extracts from page 436 of the book "The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence" edited by Andrew R. Murphy:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MF2Oxz3a0XwC&pg=PT436&lpg=PT436#v=onepage&q&f=false

Views of some Indian Sufis on militant jihad as described on page 123 of "Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery" By M. A. Khan:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=uHNddAz5cfAC&pg=PA123&dq=auliya%27s+thought+on+jihad&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=auliya%27s%20thought%20on%20jihad&f=false
 https://books.google.ca/books?id=uHNddAz5cfAC&pg=PA123#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://twitter.com/Rjrasva/status/609311382819868672



http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/interview/177506
جب اکبر ہندوستان کا بادشاہ بنا، تو اس نے یہاں اکبری گمراہی کو فروغ دیا، اور اس نے یہاں شراکت ادیان کے تصور کو فروغ دیا۔ ہندوؤں اور مسلمانوں کو اس نے آپسی رشتوں میں منسلک کیا۔ قرآن اور ودھ کو ملا کر پڑھنے کی اس نے ایک ترتیب قائم کی۔ تو وہی اثرات اس کی نسلوں میں نظر آتے ہیں۔ یعنی جہانگیر میں شاہجہان میں اس کے بیٹے مراد میں، شجاع میں اور دارا شکوہ میں۔ اب دارا شکوہ قادری سلسلے سے تعلق رکھتا تھا، حضرت سلطان باہو بھی قادری سلسلے سے تھے۔ اور اورنگریب سخت قسم کے مولویانہ ذہنیت و نظریات کا حامل تھا اور دارہ شکوہ گو کہ حضرت سلطان باہو کا ہم مشرب تھا لیکن آپ نے دارہ شکوہ کا ساتھ دینے کی بجائے سیاسی سطح پر اورنگزیب عالمگیر کا ساتھ دیا اور اپنی فارسی تصانیف میں اس بات کا تذکرہ بار بار کیا کہ اورنگزیب ایک اچھا حکمران ہو سکتا ہے۔



http://indiafacts.co.in/sinister-side-sufism/
"Not a single Sufi, the so-called mystic saints, ever objected to the ongoing senseless manslaughter and reckless plunder, or to the destruction neither of temples, nor for that matter to the ghoulish enslavement of the so-called infidel men and women for sale in the bazaars of Ghazni and Baghdad."

http://www.chakranews.com/beauty-and-the-beast-of-sufism/2454
"Sufism however does not describe a single set of doctrines but a disparate set of spiritual practices and mystical techniques which added a new dimension to Islam. In this the Sufi masters imbibed ancient spiritual traditions of the Greeks, Jews, Zarathustrians and Hindus which predated Islam. Nevertheless Sufis could be as fanatic as any mullah or army on the march of jihad. The history of Islam in South Asia demonstrates this very clearly. Like David Livingstone was to do in Africa these missionaries for the one true jealous male demiurge called ‘God’, acted as sappers and miners for the colonialism which was devastating ancient civilisations without mercy."
"Many other famous Sufis also revered Aurangzeb, including the Punjab Sufi Sultan Bahu who wrote ‘Aurang-i-Shahi’ praising the emperor as a just ruler. Now Aurangzeb or Alamgir is notorious in history as the Mughal who tried to annihilate Hinduism completely, destroying temples and suppressing religious practices. Guru Tegh Bahadur and his two close companions Bhai Matti Das and Bhai Fateh Das were executed for refusing to convert to Islam. Aurangzeb’s tomb is in Khuldabad in Maharashtra within the courtyard of the shrine of the Sufi saint Shaikh Burham-u’d-din Gharib."

https://rossonl.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/what-about-the-sufis/
"Sufis like Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624) said that sharia law should be “fostered through the sword”. Shah Wali-Allah (1703-1762) said that unbelievers “should be reduced to a state of humiliation and treated with utter contempt” and he commanded Muslims to “not be negligent in fighting jihad”, for “by taking up the sword to make Islam supreme and by subordinating your own persona needs to this cause, you will reap vast benefits”.
This has been just as true in the 20th and 21st centuries. The Shi’ite Sufi Tabandeh (1915-1980s) wrote a nasty treatise against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As recently as 2009, leaders of the Sufi order Naqshbandiyya met with a leader of Hamas, praised the Hamas jihad, and boasted of their own jihad attacks against Americans in Iraq. The Muslim Brotherhood has ties to Sufism, especially to the Tijaniyya order. Al-Qaeda itself betrays Sufi influence: its members take bayat (an oath of allegiance) to their sheik Bin Laden, which is the Sufi ritual of accepting one’s sheik as the special leader of the brotherhood and coming under the protection of the order’s lineage."

http://www.kamakotimandali.com/blog/index.php?p=1417&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
"Amir Khasrau described many instances of barbaric cruelty, often of catastrophic proportions, inflicted by Muslim conquerors upon the Hindus. But nowhere did he show any sign of grief or remorse, but only gloating delight. While describing those acts of barbarism, he invariably expressed gratitude to Allah, and glory to Muhammad, for enabling the Muslim warriors achieve those glorious feats."

"First, Sufis became an organized and accepted community in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. By this time, the peoples of the Middle East, Persia, Egypt and North Africa had become largely Muslim. The Sufis could not have played significant roles in their conversion. In agreement, says Francis Robinson, Sufis played a leading part in ‘the remarkable spread of Islam from the thirteenth century onwards.’ Second, the Sufis almost invariably needed the power and terror of the sword to create the dominance of Islam first before their alleged peaceful mission of propagating Islam could proceed."

"(Pir Ma’bari) came here and waged Jihad against the rajas and rebels (of Bijapur). And with his iron bar, he broke the heads and necks of many rajas and drove them to the dust of defeat. Many idolaters, who by the will of God had guidance and blessings, repented from their unbelief and error, and by the hands of (Pir Ma’bari) came to Islam."


https://twitter.com/cybertosser/status/833685849027993601 
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=j2F9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false 
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=j2F9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false 
Warrior Sufis of Bijapur (1296-1347)


Sheikh Jalal, warrior Sufi in Bengal: 

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft067n99v9&chunk.id=ch03 
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=gKhChF3yAOUC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165#v=onepage&q&f=false


Extremist Sufis in Kashmir:
page 232 of "Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery" By M. A. Khan:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Mr_eYjoVjz8C&pg=PT232&lpg=PT232&dq=musa+raina+hindus&source=bl&ots=75kvuFX4z0&sig=HAWvmLx70oU11-agZ1CIoTM9kIE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibztad66bMAhWYOsAKHUWAAqIQ6AEIOjAI#v=onepage&q=musa%20raina%20hindus&f=false


Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi

http://sunnimuslimsnews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/allama-fazl-e-haq-khairabadi-convention.html 

"Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi was one of the main figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He was a philosopher, a poet, a religious scholar, but is most remembered for his role as a freedom fighter. It was he who issued the fatwa in favour of Jihad against the Britishers in 1857. Allama Fazl-e Haq Khairabadi was one of the pioneer freedom fighters deported to the Andaman Islands in 1859. After the First War of Independence failed, he was arrested on 30 January 1859 at Khairabad, was found guilty of "revolt" against the Government and sentenced for life to the prison at Kalapani (Cellular Jail).

The Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi Convention was organised by by Khanqah-e-Qadariya Badaun Shareef along with Jam-e-Noor with the Cooperation of Jamia Millia Islamia at Ansari Auditorium to observe the 150 death Anniversary of Freedom Fighter of 1857 Hazrat Allama Fazle Haq Khairabadi on 18th Sep 2011.

"



 
Sufism, Salafism, anti-imperliasm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/821299/posts
The root of all evil
Al-Ahram Weekly ^ | 1-11-03 | Basheer M Nafi
Posted on 12 January 2003 at 14:35:55 GMT by SJackson

Basheer M Nafi* finds interesting similarities between Russia's accusations against Sufism in the 19th century and those the West is currently levelling against Wahhabi Islam

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One has only to skim a daily digest of the Russian print media to realise that the Russian press is united in its understanding of the Chechen problem. Accordingly, the war in Chechnya is the work of a foreign group of radical Muslim activists and an alien culture, namely Wahhabism. More than 10 per cent of the Chechen people have been killed and twice that number are now living in refugee camps in other areas of the Caucasus. Those remaining in Chechnya are daily subject to horrendous forms of oppression at the hands of Russian security forces, including rape, torture and detention in the absence of any kind of legal process. While Russian troops pillage the supposedly autonomous republic, Grozny, its capital, has become a ghost town, deprived of all necessary means of living. Meanwhile, the Russian media puts all of this down to the actions of a group of foreigners and few a Chechen dissidents, motivated by evil Wahhabi influences.

The attribution of an imperialist conspiracy to a particular school of Islam is neither new nor uniquely Russian. During the 19th-century Dagestani resistance (1830-59), Tsarist Russia found in the Naqshbandi Sufi order a convenient scapegoat. The reason behind the vilification of Sufism was the involvement of a number of Naqshbandi followers, most prominent among them Imam Shamil, in the resistance movement. Like her British and French counterparts, 19th-century Russia saw her work in the northern Caucasus as a civilising mission. Any resistance to it was by definition an expression of fanaticism, backwardness and decadence. From the Russian perspective, the project of Russification in the northern Caucasus was driven by the values of progress; consequently, the values embraced by Dagestani fighters were portrayed as nothing more than anti-historical and anti-progressive cultural sentiments. In other words, the problem in mid-19th-century Daghestan (and then in Chechnya) was not the Russian imperialist expansion but the culture of backwardness and fanaticism precipitated by the "alien" Naqshbandi.

In the latest issue of the German academic journal, Die Welt des Islams, Alexander Knysh, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Michigan, published a rigorous challenge to the Russian reading of the 19th-century Islamic resistance in the northern Caucasus, and to all those who adopted this reading. Knysh, who is of Russian origin and highly-regarded as an expert of Sufism, considers the Russian reading an intrinsic part of the Western view of Islamic resistance to imperialism in the 19th century. The Russians, however, did not have a monopoly on the vilification of Sufism: the theme also marks Anglo-French interpretations of Islamic jihadi movements in Sudan, Somalia, Algeria and West Africa, and was used for the same objective by the Dutch in Indonesia and the Italians in Libya. In Sudan, the British faced popular resistance embodied in the Mahdi movement, while the Somali opposition to the British occupation originated in branches of Qadiri and Idrissi orders. Abdel-Qadir Al-Jaza'ri, who led the anti-French resistance in mid-19th-century Algeria, was also an adherent of Naqshbandi Sufism, while the Sanussi order would play, a half a century later, a major role in organising Islamic resistance to European invasions of Chad, Libya and other parts of West Africa. As all these resistance movements had Sufi affiliations, it was expedient for imperialist administrators, commanding officers and their advisers to depict Islamic jihadi forces in the 19th century as desperate cries from an inward-looking and declining Sufi culture that was being pushed to the margins of history by the forces of progress and civilisation.

Basing his argument on a thorough understanding of Sufism and the resistance in the northern Caucasus in the 19th century, Knysh demolishes the theory of militant Sufism from its foundations, describing it as a police-reports historiography. Imam Shamil, for example, was not a main Sufi sheikh but merely a follower of one of the Naqshbandi sheikhs in Dagestan; nor were all sheikhs of the Naqshbandi order associated with the anti-Russian jihad. While a few influential sheikhs declared their support for the jihad, others openly disapproved of the use of armed struggle, emphasising the spiritual and educational mission of Sufism. More important is the utter lack of evidence to link the teachings of Naqshbandi and 19th-century Sufism in general, with jihadi orientations. This is equally true of the case of the Sanussi, which was born as a reformist movement within Islam -- not as a framework for Islamic resistance to foreign domination. The only exception, which can by no means be considered a rule, was the Mahdi in Sudan that carried from its moment of inception strong sentiments against the Egyptian administration, many of whose officials at the time were Europeans. There is no doubt that if Naqshbandi, Sanussi or Mahdi brotherhoods did not exist, Muslim peoples would still have risen against the colonial forces.

This, of course, should raise a number of questions about the ongoing attempt to turn Wahhabism (and sometimes the whole of Salafi Islam) into the source of all evils that have befallen our world. A century and a half after the defeat of Imam Shamil, Sufism is no longer a problem for Russia. In fact, Sufism is now presented in Russian writings as the peaceful, authentic culture of the peoples of the northern Caucasus. The problem is the alien teachings of Wahhabism, the Wahhabi of the foreign Arab mujahidin and scores of their Chechen dissident allies. And exactly like the 19th century, blaming Wahhabism is not restricted to Russian discourse. From writers at the respectable broadsheets of the British media, French specialists in modern Islam, leading American congressmen and women, to those Western Islamicists well-known for their humanist outlooks, there seems to emerge a kind of consensus that it was Wahhabism/ Salafism that provided the eco-cultural system from which Al-Qa'eda and all other currents of armed, radical Islam were born. And just like the international situation in the 19th-century, the distance between Western discourse and Western polices has narrowed to a great extent.

If Wahhabism/Salafism is the problem, then American armed forces should be unhesitatingly deployed to uproot centres of violence, backwardness and anachronism wherever they are -- even if that requires invading the entire eastern part of the Arab world. It apparently did not cross the minds of the makers of the Russian expansionist policy in the 19th century, or their counterparts in London, Paris and Amsterdam, that invading and oppressing other peoples was in itself an act of evil. What dominated the world outlook of the European metropoles was an unquestionable sense of self- righteousness to do whatever they had to do as long as they were fighting the battle of civilisation against backwardness, of freedom against fanaticism, and of the values of human progress and advancement against values of decline and attachment to the past. One perhaps has only to read a recent speech by George W Bush or Tony Blair to discover that almost nothing has changed in the Western discourse on Islam and Muslims. The discourse underpinning Western policies at the beginning of the 21st century is almost a literal reproduction of the Russian, British and French imperialist readings of Islamic resistance in the 19th century.

The Wahhabi movement, which is identified with sheikh Mohamed Ibn Abdel-Wahhab, was born in the Najdi region of the Arabian Peninsula in the second half of the 18th century. In terms of its intellectual antecedents, Wahhabism belonged to the wider pool of the Salafi school of thought and its deep roots in Islamic culture. Modern Salafism encompasses multiple currents, the common denominator of which is their affirmation of the position of the founding Islamic texts (the Qur'an and Hadith) and their opposition to various manifestations of popular religion.

Like the Sanussi, Wahhabism was a within-Islam reformist movement that for more than two centuries after its appearance showed no specific anti-imperialist tendencies. A considerable degree of violence was associated with the rise of the Wahhabi movement, but that violence was largely engendered by the Saudi political expansion and inherent tribal rivalries in the Arabian Peninsula. Today, even if we accept that Al- Qa'eda subscribes to Wahhabi doctrines, there exist manifestations of Wahhabism that reject recourse to violence despite their opposition to foreign influence and the state. Other Wahhabi manifestations are closely linked with the Saudi regime and denounce all forms of dissent that threaten the prevailing political order.

Within the broader context of Salafi Islam, Salafis of the 20th century evidence a wide range of intellectual and political concerns, from Mohamed Abdouh and Rashid Rida to Youssef Al-Qaradawi and independent Islamic intellectuals such as Mohamed Salim El-'Awa, Tariq El-Bishri and Fahmy Howeidy. Some of the 20th-century Salafis, like Haj Amin Al-Husseini, Izzeddin Al-Qassam and Abdel-Karim Al- Khattabi, were national liberation leaders; others, like Mustafa Al-Maraghi and Tahir Al-Jaza'iri, were advocates of reform in its civic sense. There is nothing inherent to the Salafi world-view that calls for recourse to violence or leads to it.

In the mid-20th century, as the nationalist trend moved to the forefront of the anti-imperialist movement in the Arab world, Arab nationalism became an object of relentless Western animosity. Preparing British public opinion for war on Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden equated Nasser with Hitler. And for several decades afterward, Western powers saw in Islam (including Wahhabi/Salafi Islam) a dependable partner in the global war against the Soviet empire with which Arab nationalist leaders like Nasser and Boumedienne seemed to ally themselves.

What Bin Laden is doing today is to invoke the cultural themes and motifs he is most intimate with in an attempt to legitimate the political strategy he is following -- exactly as Imam Shamil, Mohamed Ahmad Al-Mahdi and Al-Qassam had done before him. As a grand narrative, Islam has time and again been invoked, especially during the past two centuries, to provide the symbols that are the points of reference for a variety of political choices and programmes of action. For long, nonetheless, it was the political meaning and orientation -- rather than the ideological content -- which determined the nature of relations between the Western powers and the Arabs and Muslims. Wasn't Wahhabi/Salafi Islam the great, courageous instrument of the West against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan? How, then, did it become such an evil in Western eyes, only a decade after the Soviet defeat?

Perhaps, then, the vilification of Sufism and Salafism tells us more about the crisis of imperialism than about a crisis in Islam. With their absolute sense of self-righteousness, imperialists are never sure of what to make of the resistance they are faced with by the "lesser" peoples. The marathon- like conflict between Western imperialist powers and the world of Islam was caused neither by 20th-century Sufism nor by 20th-century Salafism. This conflict is rooted in a dominant set of international relations, known simply, in university textbooks, as the imperialist system. It is no doubt imperative for Islam to confront and deal with the forces of pathetic radicalism and nihilist violence that are trying to speak on its behalf -- a task that Islam has successfully engaged in on numerous occasions during its historical venture. Yet, this is will not put an end to the conflict. An end to the conflict and the development of normal relations between Western powers and the world of Islam are contingent upon an end to imperialist relations in our world.

* The writer teaches history and Islamic studies at Birkbeck College and the Muslim College, London.

Religious Narrative & Terrorism

Ghamidi belongs to Farahi and Islahi school of thought that is an offshoot of Jamat-e-islami, though they strongly differ from Maududi on various issues. My main concern is that he advocates moderate and pro-peace interpretation of religion, and challenges the violence narrative. People have right to their views as long as they do not advocate violence towards those who disagree with them, and I like him for this approach. Whether he is anti-Sufi makes no difference. 

https://www.facebook.com/javedahmadghamidi/videos/988843541159597/

Colonialism & Terrorism

Blaming extremism and terrorism on Western or Eastern imperialism could be a "feel good exercise" but I find this claim quite naive and unconvincing. If Western imperialism were the major cause of terrorism, we would see suicidal terrorists emerging from Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa, Congo, India, Phillipnes, Carribean islands, Australian aboriginies and so many other places.

Terrorism requires weapons, funds, training, safe houses, - and most important of all - an efficient propaganda, a narrative of "us vs them" that builds on rage and hate.

Agreed with Tariq Ramadan that history should be understood, but there is "one true" narrative of history that is considered unquestionable by all sides. Facts are picked or omitted to fit into one's favorite narratives, and cherry picking of facts and building of narrative should both be freely discussed and criticized.

Fisk's article was not convincing. One Algerian-French attacker, so blame French colonialism. Another attacker was Belgian-Morrocan, so whom should we blame for that? If Vietnamese immigrants in France, and Indian immigrants in UK start killing random people because of their outrage on imperialism, these articles would be taken seriously.

Causes of Extremism

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/editorials-columns/how-to-stop-the-contagion

"Suicide bombing cannot be explained by poverty and disadvantage. The London bombers were not the wretched of the earth. They came from working-class but comfortable backgrounds, living in one of the world's most prosperous countries. For all the talk of their being marginalised, none were living in hellish ghettos. Britain today does a decent job of assimilating its immigrants, certainly better than any other European country. If anyone had cause for rage, it was not the bombers but their parents. Muslim migrants from Pakistan (in three cases), arrived in Britain in less multicultural times. They were dirt-poor and probably ostracised and persecuted. And yet they did not become murderers; they started fish-and-chips shops.

Like all ideologies, radical Islam is a phenomenon of the educated class. From Muhammad Atta to Mohammed Sidique Khan, almost all suicide bombers have been men who read and write. In V S Naipaul's book, A Million Mutinies Now, the author interviews a young Hindu fanatic. The man explains his fascistic views, and then Naipaul asks the man's father, who happens to be sitting there, what he thinks. The old man explains that he works at a factory from morning till night and doesn't really have time for these kinds of ideas. Extremist ideology is a leisure-time pursuit."

This video also explains this findings:

https://www.facebook.com/prageru/videos/897194363656754/?pnref=story

Myths and Narratives

Pray tell why some Husseini "progressives" are so cocksure of their narrative as if they have got the CCTV footage of Karbala battle and related events. There are myths, there are facts, there are cherry picked facts, and there are narratives based on cherry picked facts. Different narratives exist even for events that have happened very recently with each side using latest technologies to unravel and present their side of facts and opinions. Why should one not question the "one and the only one true version" of something that happened 14 centuries ago and is communicated to us though a chain of poorly documented accounts compiled by partisan authors that contains facts and myths both shrouded in the halo of reverence?  Wasn't Ahle-bait's claim to Imamate based on the same principle (i.e. hereditary dynasty) that Ummayads invoked to claim their Caliphate? Or Ummayads were the Caesars seeking dictatorships and Imam Hussein was the Brutus who was leading a "peoples' revolution" for the restoration of a "pure" Islamic republic based on universal suffrage?

A Scientist working at 100

Beware she may become the reason to cut back funding for all "Assisted Living" research. :)

"Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."

Couldn't agree more!

After the flogging

Learn new meanings of "living in the moment" from Taliban. Extract from the article:

When asked whether the actions of Swat’s school-blasting warlord Fazlullah were un-Islamic (haram), Sufi said, “the debate on past happenings is disallowed in Islam; a hadith sharif says what has happened in the past should not be discussed”.

Citing another hadith, he further explained that “a Muslim should not discuss past happenings because he may not remember all the (details) and therefore, he may...sin by not speaking the truth.”


Surosh Irfani has rightly observed:

Small wonder then that the leaders of Wahhabi-Salafi movements such as Al Qaeda, LeT and Jama’at-ud Dawa are not trained jurists but “engineers or medical doctors”. Such self-proclaimed jurists have reduced Islam to a combustible mix of intolerance, hatred and isolationist arrogance, exploding across the world, but most notably among Muslims themselves.

However, I slightly beg to differ here. Islamists are mostly led by "engineers and doctors" rather than the "trained jurists" is primarily because the latter somehow lack the knack of managing people, resources and weapons which the former seem more adept at. It's not that the former are missing some information that only "trained jurists" are aware of.

Justice has it way....

Finally, Pakistani parliament approves enforcement of Shariah in Swat. Now is the time to put one's money where one's mouth is. All those MPs who voted in favor should embark on "hijra" to Swat where they could enjoy the blessings of "Divine Justice" without any interference from "liberal extremists". Imran Khan, Ansar Abbasi, Dr. Jahil Online and others should lead the caravan.

Meanwhile, all hail to Ayaz Amir for sticking his neck out against the medieval legislation.

Beards, Cuban and Pakistani style

Here is a socialist's take on Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. Some extracts from the article:


Yes, it is absurd to compare Cuban revolutionaries with fanatic reactionaries. But here in Pakistan we are at a dead end, where absurdity holds sway over everything logical. Pakistan has become capable of generating any absurd headline possible. Be ready every time you tune to a news channel.

Love - Muslim style

An amusing real life account of an arranged marriage with a happy ending!

Young British Muslim Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, 34, chose to take the traditional ‘arranged’ route to finding a partner, despite having liberal parents and many Western friends. Her hilarious first book, Love In A Headscarf, charts her ten-year journey to find ‘The One’, Muslim style, with more than 50 dates and plenty of heartache, laughter and learning experiences along the way.

Foreign husbands, foreign wives

Interesting article about changing dynamics of arranged marriages in Pakistan:

Given the burgeoning Pakistani communities across the globe, expatriate marriages are only likely to increase. Similarly, because foreign citizenship confers economic potential, it is likely to remain a denominator in considering the worth of a future match

"W." the movie

Just watched the movie "W.". Hollywood liberals have done justice to their "favorite" maximum leader. Josh Brolin gives a nice performance as Bush. Did anyone else watch the movie?

Flat N All That

Happy reading for the "fans" of Thomas Friedman. :)

Reminds me of what Robert Kiyosaki said while showing his notes to a
journalist:

"It says 'best-selling author,' not best 'writing' author."

Troubles facing Pakistan

Sadly, Pakistani establishment lacks credibility among international community and all assurances in being firm against terror will make little difference to it.

Pakistan faces the spread of Taliban and Al Qaeda elements southwards into the settled areas as CIA drones operate in the Tribal Areas. There is insurgency in Balochistan which is steadily killing persons suspected of being against Baloch nationalism. Equally there is the calamity of an earthquake in the province which Pakistan is finding it difficult to tackle. Relations with the US are tense over the drone attacks and Pakistan needs cooperation with its regional neighbours to avoid becoming isolated while its economy needs to be helped out of its current trough of depression. Above all, it needs understanding from India while it stands ready to share intelligence with it on the latest Mumbai bombing.

Recent events have not helped. India has been accusing Pakistan’s intelligence of having attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul with a suicide-bomber while Pakistan has alleged Indian hand in the Balochistan insurgency and even terrorism emanating from the Tribal Areas. This has been a blind continuation of allegations that began in 2001 when the Indian parliament was attacked, triggering Indian troop deployment along the border with Pakistan. This kind of “jurisprudence” is being pulled out again to explain the latest attack. “Analysis” emanating from the West about the Mumbai attack having the signature of Al Qaeda in combination with some Pakistani Islamic group has not helped either.

Pakistan needs to activate friendly diplomacy instead of “replying” to the allegations being made by upset Indians over the media. The past may have been problematic but the present clearly shows both countries afflicted by the same disease. Both need to cooperate and must stop their “proxy” war in Afghanistan. The cue for this must come from the friendly statements made earlier by President Zardari, expressing Pakistan’s willingness to move rapidly on a course of normalisation with India.

Lahore is Lahore.... indeed!

Hats off to Pirzadas for organizing the world's 3rd biggest performing arts festival in Lahore, "the cultural capital of the world's most dangerous country" in such times.

Celebrated British stand-up comedienne Shazia Mirza, whose parents were born in Pakistan, had a packed hall roaring with laughter at her politically incorrect, bawdy lines delivered with deadpan confidence. She has been to Pakistan before, but this was her first time
performing here.

She told IPS she had been apprehensive about coming to Pakistan “given the state it’s in” but all her fears were unfounded. “I was also worried about whether they’d laugh at themselves. I was really surprised. It’s been a fantastic experience.

They understood all the references and laughed and weren’t offended.”

Abdus Salam as child prodigy

Some extracts from biograhpy of Dr. Salam.


At the age of 17, as a student of BA, he wrote his first research paper titled A Problem of Ramanujan, which was published in the college journal Mathematics Student. His classmate Ram Prakash Bambah, later Dr Bambah, recalled that in 1942 when Dr Chawla posed the unsolved problem of the legendary Indian mathematician Sirinavasan Ramanujan regarding four simultaneous equations in the four variables, the 16-year-old Salam solved it in three days, suggesting that ‘the four variables were the roots of a quadratic whose coefficients could be found by solving a cubic’. This, at the age of 16!

Olympian Indicators

Ah!! Olympics and Pakistan. A long road ahead.


It appears that nations of the sub-continent have neither developed an industrial base nor a modern culture. They have been unable to provide necessary services to their citizens as well. India, much touted as an emerging economic giant, has been totally exposed at the Olympics. It has been shown that Indian economic growth is spotty and lacks the vitality of an emerging economic power. It is neither here nor there: it has the ills of both Socialist and Capitalist systems and none of the benefits both types of society offer.

Pakistan’s situation is even worse. It is still stuck in the old feudalistic mode or at least it is still in the grip of feudal culture. A few girls in sleeveless clothes on TV and billboards are not reflective of the prevailing culture. The elites have ignored their own people and have kept all the goodies for themselves.

On top of it, general anarchy, ensuing commercialisation and absence of government writ have made the situation worse. Encroachment of public lands by the needy and the powerful has left no space for young and aspiring athletes to play any kind of game, for pleasure or for professional development. So there are no places for the runners to practice like the Africans. The Pakistani youth has the worst of all worlds. With this backdrop, it should not be surprising that we are nowhere in the world Olympics.

Getting Smarter and Happier

So, another world is possible. There is always a room for improvement. Excerpt from this article:

with the advance of brain scans and increased capability to measure neuron function down to a single cell, I have had to concede that not only can the brain get “smarter and better balanced,” but this process lasts a lifetime. And to put the new findings into greater relevance, the smarter you get the happier you get.

One of the principles of improved brain plasticity, as mentioned in my book entitled The IQ Answer, is that neurons (the brain cells) tend to gravitate toward high activity centers. Much like we develop motor skills to learn to ride a bicycle, the motor cells will accumulate as you build the coordination to keep yourself going. It takes trial-and-error for the brain to coordinate the neurons and accumulate enough for the practice to establish the high level of balancing and muscles to finally build the “package” of neuron connections for bicycling that seems to stay in place for decades.

Demystifying priorities

How setting the wrong priorities haunt/ed Pakistan.

After Kargil, Mr Sharif is a greatly embarrassed man, disenchanted as far as the army is concerned. So is the rest of Pakistan. And Kashmir, the source of all intellectual dislocation in Pakistan, is no longer the jugular vein of Pakistan. We have discovered rather late in the day that it is Karachi that is our jugular vein and that we have been living upside-down all our lives. And that we’d rather protect Karachi from terrorism and provincial sub-nationalism than try and grab Kashmir.

History as we know it

"Tell me what they teach in schools and I will tell you how will country look like tomorrow", Aristotle is reported to have said something to the effect. Rings a bell about the curriculum being taught in Pakistani schools.

An overhaul of the entire curriculum is a prerequisite for any positive change in the Pakistani psyche. Unfortunately, it is reluctantly being done under US pressure, which is leading to misperceptions of its own

Myths of Cuban missile crisis

Some more to that meets the eyes!

The Paradox of Muslim weakness

A well-balanced and well-articulated critique of Islamism.

while talk of Islam’s inroads in Washington, London and Paris may indeed be overblown, the special conditions in the Muslim world ensure that the threat to liberal democracy in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Islamabad is not about to disappear any time soon.

Waiting for "Trickle Down"

Lesser mortals of Pakistan - joining the queue and waiting for "trickle down". Sad!!

Music has no boundaries

So Armenia, Azerbaijan and Israel are now part of Europe. Thanks to Eurovision 2008 Song contest.

Indeed music has no boundaries! I know it no, I know it now!

On another note, it seems Europe's eastern borders are not well-defined. You keep going Eastward and suddenly you come to know that Europe has ended and Asia has started. More a matter of opinion than of fact. :)

The World's Oldest Profession in Pakistan

I have not would love to read Fouzia Saeed's book Taboo. An article in Asia Times sheds some light on dark trade in Pakistan.

Russian physiologist rocks :)

Finally, someone said something in praise of Muslim males. Give this Russian physiologist a medal. :)

Russian physiologist Leonid Kitaev-Smyk has stated that most male diseases are caused by women who adhere to provocative clothes and behaviour. As a result, the Western civilization gradually turns into the society of sexually unsatisfied men and eventually unsuccessful and physically unhealthy men, the scientist considers.

US researchers published results of their 30-year-long work. It suggested that 80 percent of men aged over 60 who died for different reasons had prostate cancer apart from other diseases. Every third American and European male aged over 30 has problems with potency and the prostate gland. The situation is quite different in the Muslim East. Arabs have the lowest rates of prostate cancer. Scientists considered that it depends on climate and meals and studied carefully the Oriental diet and tried to find any food with preventive action. They failed, although the clue is quite obvious.

Former Pakistan Brigadier spills the beans on 1971 war

If there is one institution in Pakistan to which the label "jack of all trades, master of none" aptly fits, that is the "gallant" Pak Army.

“Tanks not supported by Air Force at Longewala”

"Pakistani Army trained Mizo insurgents in East Pakistan: Brigadier Khan

“Unsuccessful coup attempt made to overthrow President Yahya Khan”

The War of Drones

Pakistani nation seems to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome on the issue of suicide bombing. Extract from Pervez Hoodbhoy's article in today's Dawn:


Even with evidence staring them in the face, most Pakistanis seem locked into a state of denial. They refuse to accept the obvious fact that more and more mullahs have created cults around themselves and exercise control over the lives of worshippers. An enabling environment of poverty, deprivation, lack of justice, and extreme differences of wealth is perfect for demagogues.

As the mullah’s indoctrination gains strength, the power to reason weakens. The world of the follower becomes increasingly divided into absolute good and absolute evil. Doubt is replaced by certainty, moral sensibilities are blunted. Reduced to a mere instrument for murder, the human drone is left with no room for useless things such as judgment, doubt, or conscience. As other human beings become mere objects rather than people deserving of love and compassion, the metamorphosis from human to drone becomes complete.

Divine Revelations: Mystery Unfolded

Kudos to Benny Shanon for resolving this mystery. Now I realize why Gods-men forbid drugs. They are wary of losing monopoly over "Divine Revelations". :)



Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

The Compleate Women

More power to this endangered species!

Verdict of the People

All this seems too good to be true. I'm personally very excited to see lota-league and mullah-league bite the dust. May be it is just another evidence of his sheer incompetence to produce desired results, or finally His Enlightened Moderation have had an epiphany overnight and he decided to play fair this time. Anyway, the pessimist inside me says expect no miracles, at least in impending future. Let's not forget that turn-out was quite low in the polls and I would be greatly pleased to know that the landslide of PML(N) and PPP does not owe (at least partly) to some behind-the-scene "deal". Both Zardari and Sharif did not contest the polls. After seeing election results, they may order some MNAs of their parties to drop their seats and pave the way for their entry into parliament. Who knows?

Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

And we were under the impression that witch-hunting was the relic of past.

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

What makes a miracle

Challenging the conventional wisdom about economic boom of India and China!

Anti-Amnesiastic

They could not reduce the burden of body for him but they will hopefully relieve the burden of brains for so many. Here comes a godsend for postgrad students and researchers. :)

Professor Lozano said: "This is the first time that anyone has had electrodes implanted in the brain which have been shown to improve memory. We are driving the activity of the brain by increasing its sensitivity – turning up the volume of the memory circuits. Any event that involves the memory circuits is more likely to be stored and retained."

The discovery had caught him and his team "completely by surprise", Professor Lozano said. They had been operating on the man, who weighed 190kg (30st), to treat his obesity by locating the point in his brain that controls appetite. All other attempts to curb his eating had failed and brain surgery was the last resort.

The treatment for obesity was unsuccessful. But, while the researchers were identifying potential appetite suppressant points in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain associated with hunger, the man suddenly began to say that memory was flooding back.

More About Iranian experience

More leaves out of Iran's books for Pakistani liberals. Another article about Iranian lessons for Pakistani liberals! Nature abhors vacuum and we must be on watch against the twin danger. "Exit strategy" for "Shah of Pakistan" should not have any room for takeover by any "Ayatollah of Pakistan".

The lesson to learn here is that revolutions don’t always behave. They are slave to no one and masters of all. When revolution comes, the people who succeed are normally not the people who believe in all the wonderful things such as human rights and the rule of law. In times of revolution, power flows from the barrel of a gun

Engineers have Terrorist Mindset

Not a news for me, as I have observed this phenomenon for long. Probably this is a sociologist conspiracy to deflect some funds of engineering school to their school. :)

On a serious note, I had this discussion on another list about over-representation of engineers in Islamist or other terrorist movements. To my mind, one plausible explanation is that that applied sciences make people adept at using tools but do little to shake inherited beliefs and prejudices. Natural sciences and liberal arts tend to broaden one's outlook on life and world
and hence, people with these majors are less susceptible to be deluded by extremist causes.

The authors call it a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.

A past survey in the United States has already shown that the proportion of engineers who declare themselves to be on the right of the political spectrum is greater than any other disciplinary groups--such as economists, doctors, scientists, and those in the humanities and social sciences.

The authors note that the mindset is universal.

Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, they pointed out that a disproportionate share of engineers seem to have a mindset that makes them open to the quintessential right-wing features of "monoism" (why argue where there is one best solution) and by "simplism" (if only people were rational, remedies would be simple).

Freaking War

War is indeed hell, sometimes not just for the loser.

So what if the war was sold on completely fabricated lies, was supposed to be a cakewalk but has now lasted longer than World War II, has divided the country and made the world hate us, has squandered our (borrowed) resources and broken our military, has brought instability to a volatile and crucial region and allowed a real national antagonist to double its power, has diverted our resources from the still-uncaptured guy who supposedly attacked us on 9/11, has become a factory for producing anti-American terrorists, has wiped out over a million innocent people and turned more than four million into refugees?

Threats and Conspiracies

It's all so obvious and it's all so painful.

While manifestations are diverse, the fundamental issue that plagues Pakistan is the lack of legitimate constitutional rule. This is discernable across the three fault-lines holding the future of the country hostage: the civil-military divide; the centre-province divide; and the extremist-moderate divide. Conversely, it can also be argued that it is actually the entrenched civil-military imbalance that accounts for lack of rule of law within the country, which in turn explains the tussle between the centre and the provinces within the federation and between the moderates and the extremists within the society.

Iranian Lesson for Pakistan

A lesson which Pakistani liberals can ignore only to their detriment!

In 1978, Iran’s liberals were bent on removing the Shah by any means. Instead of creating an atmosphere conducive to an Iranian Gandhi, they unwittingly helped usher into power Ayatollah Khomeini and a theocratic regime less tolerant than the one they helped unseat. Three decades later, millions of chastened Iranians wish they could relive those heady days differently; their Pakistani counterparts would be wise to heed their hindsight.

Charlie Wilson's War

Watched this movie today. It is based on the book with the same name, although some humor has been added for public consumption. Interesting to see a God-fearing party animal (Joanne Herring played by Julia Roberts) motivates a philandering senator (Charlie played by Tom Hanks) to collect funds and weapons (from USA and Israel) for Islamic fundamentalists fighting against godless Communists in Afghanistan. Politics indeed makes strange bellows. Om Puri, an Indian actor, plays the role of Pakistan's ex-president Zia ul Haque. The movie ends with a Charlie's quote:

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world.... and they fucked up the end game".

Repressing Democracy

Simon Jenkin's article about Pakistan:

Backing Musharraf has always seemed "a good idea at the time". The next person to be cursed with Washington's favour appears to be Musharraf's successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani. However, by opting for the realpolitik of dictatorship the west has not just repressed democracy but aided insurgency and terror. It has yielded no security benefit to anyone. If Pakistan becomes a "failed state", the failure will, in large part, be one of democratic imagination in Washington and London. We simply refuse to practise what we preach.

National Harakiri

A nation on the way to collective harakiri.

The bountiful American largesse to the Pakistani army, the businesses the army runs that sustain the luxurious lifestyles of the elite, can't conceal the fact that most Pakistanis are desperately deprived: not just of shared, public resources, but of a clear answer to a simple question - what is Pakistan for? They may be able to replace the burned buses, the torn bridges, the uprooted railway lines; but a combination of military power, dynastic politics, fervent religious dogma and extreme social inequality are the ingredients only of disintegration. It is sad to see a nation dying; it's an unspeakable tragedy when it is killing itself.

Suicide bombing in Lahore

Today it was Lahore's turn. 23 people dead and more than 70 injured. This cancer of suicide bombing and jihadist violence is not gonna die soon. Combine it with the sheer incompetence and authoritarianism of President-for-life, and there is a disaster ready to explode! Muharram is about to start and more turbulence in the offing!!

Searching for propagandists

Ever wonder why academic research is in tatters in Pakistan? An insight into Pakistan's sponsored academic chairs in some international universities:

The main purpose of these chairs was to encourage the academic circles in these countries to study different aspects of Pakistan and not become a diplomatic outpost.

Now, things have become even worse. At this juncture, all major positions are vacant. This is because the government in Islamabad is no longer able to find safe scholars. Recently, the names of three academics from Quaid-e-Azam University were rejected by the government. On the other hand, the names recommended by Islamabad are not acceptable to the universities because the academics that Pakistan wants to send have no academic expertise and are not relevant. Apparently, one of the names was rejected by Islamabad because the scholar concerned was not approved by the intelligence agencies. Interestingly, the final approval is given by the IB and the ISI. One wonders if the intelligence agencies understand the worth of academic work or even know the definition of intellectualism.

Pakistan - After the Assassination

Pervez Hoodbhoy's interview to an Italian newspaper in the wake of Benazir's assassination. It is indeed disheartening to see that while Pakistani "man on the street" is up in arms against military authoritarianism, he feels shy of condemning theocratic authoritarianism with the same vigor. One can only hope that demise of Musharraf in any near-future does not lead to Iranian-style "revolution" in Pakistan.

Almost everyone holds the government responsible for the assassination. Tragically, suicide bombings are not condemned with any particular vigor. There is no strong reaction against the mullahs, madrassas, and jihadis. Perhaps people are afraid to criticize them because this might be seen as a criticism of Islam. Interestingly, in all the street demonstrations I have gone to after the Bhutto assassinations, there was no call for cracking down on extremists. Yesterday I met the lone taxidriver who thought the Islamists did it. I tipped him well.

No end to dynasty worship

There seems to be no end to dynasty worship in Pakistan - even the most liberal and popular political party is not immune from it. Quite disappointing to see this news:

Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son Bilawal has been chosen to take over her Pakistan People's Party, after her assassination on Thursday.

It is thought he will take the role in a ceremonial capacity while he finishes his studies at Oxford University.

Bilawal told journalists at the Bhutto family home: "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."

Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who is expected to run the party, said it would contest January elections.

Rejectionists

Just came across this article. It is insightful to know that extremists despise neardby moderates much more than they do faraway rivals.

In 1947, when the sharp East-West polarisation that came to be known as the Cold War was just beginning to take shape, Stalin came forward with an apparently strange theory. He identified the Soviet Union's main enemy not as the United States, but as the British Labour Party and its leader, Britain's then prime minister, Clement Attlee. The underlying logic of Stalin's theory was the same as the one that had led Lenin, just before the Bolshevic Revolution, to focus the main thrust of his attacks not against the Tsar but against the Cadet Party, the party of the Russian Liberal bourgeoisie. The logic in both cases was that these apparently less offensive parties, the Cadets in 1917 and the British Labour Party, a typical representative Social-Democracy, in 1947, were better equipped than any other anti- communist forces to attract the masses. As such, they represented the main obstacle in the way of a communist victory, and only by removing that obstacle would the communists succeed in isolating the capitalist enemy and paving the way for its downfall.

From Dynasty to Democracy - At the end of the tunnel

Let's hope this chaos may turn out to be a precursor of constructive change. I agree with Tariq Ali that it is a high time for its rank and file to transform Pakistan Peoples Party from a dynastic to a democratic party. Someone suggested on another forum that Aizaz Ahsan be asked to lead PP now and I fully concur with this proposal. Perhaps there exists some light at the end of the tunnel ! Or may be I am just being over-optimistic!


Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.

Assassination of BB

Benazir Bhutto is killed in a suicide blast in Rawalpindi today, along with 20 other people. Another unfortunate event in the land of crisis. Bhutto was far from impeccable politician but removing her from scene will do no good to already messy situation in Pakistan. More chaos ahead!

Pevez Hoodbhoy's 10 Commandments

Pevez Hoodbhoy, world renowned MIT-trained physicist and arguably among the best minds ever produced by Pakistan, reveals an upodated version of 10 commandents, 5 of them for USA and 5 for Muslims. I have nothing to disagree with him on this matter.

1. Muslims must STOP blaming the West (or the “infidels”) for everything that is wrong with them. Out of the 48 Muslim countries of the world, not one can be called a democracy in the pure sense of the word. Sadly, there has been NO significant scientific achievement in the last 700 years or so, whereas between the 9th and the 13th centuries, during the golden period of Islam, it was only the Muslims who kept the light of knowledge burning. The causes of Muslim decline have all been internal, and NOT the result of conspiracies. If Islam is to become a positive, constructive force in the 21st century, it must change from within, and worldwide opinion will follow.

2. Whenever and wherever there is an act of terrorism, condemn it LOUDLY and fully. The West has taken the majority of the Muslim communities’ lack of anger at 9/11 as tacit approval of militant Islam. Unfortunately Islam has become synonymous with violence and terror, and many moderate, peaceful Muslims have now become victims as well. The moderate Muslim community must fight against the hijacking of Islam.

3. Stop dreaming of theocracies and the reinstating of the Shariah law. Such ideas belong to the past, and are not compatible with the continuously evolving society and environment to which we belong. Insistence on such ideas can only drag the Muslims further into a medieval abyss.

4. Accept the fact that others do not see morality the way you do. Muslims have been brought up to believe that the only morality worth upholding is sexual morality. Other religions and cultures may not place so much emphasis on sexual morality, but that does not necessarily make them inferior human beings.

5. The last Commandment is for Muslims who have chosen to live in countries other than their homeland. Integrate. Do NOT try and stand out. Do NOT try and be different. And yes, it is possible to do all this AND maintain one’s individual identity, and without compromising principles and values we have grown up with. We must take more of an interest in our surroundings, in politics, and not just national politics but starting at the grassroots level.

Myths of Neocons About Pakistan

A beautiful dissection of "realism" of neocon pundits about Pakistani politics!

Back to Stone Ages


Shamshad Ahmed's article in The Nation:

A country without constitution or the rule of law and where there is no independent judiciary and no fundamental freedoms and rights is no better than the 'stone age' cultures, and has no place in the contemporary comity of civilised nations. Government and politics, as the world knows them, are alien to Pakistan. Our scene pathetically bears resemblance to Thomas Hobbes's concept of primitive anarchy marked by a 'war of one against all' and to Rousseau's idealisation of the 'noble savage'. Perhaps, Hegel spoke for us when he said that man can never learn anything from history.

Akbar's eclecticism

Khalid Ahmed reviews Stietencron's book on Mughal Emperor Akbar's syncretic approach to religion.

Akbar’s rule was a patch of effulgence in a general darkness on earth. Poets and artists gravitated to it; faiths rejected in other lands escaped to India to find tolerance. Today, Akbar is irrelevant to what is happening in the Islamic world

Aitzaz Ahsan - a break from past

Arguabley one of the finest political minds in Pakistan.. I have always admired Aitzaz's intelligence, in spite of his often defences of his corrupt leader. He has made a tough choice and I wish his very well.

Intellectual Bankruptcy in Pakistan

Bit old but still spot on! The article has a leftist slant but still, it is an interesting commentary on the sorry state of intellectual bankruptcy in "Mamlikat-e-Khudadad".



There are, I discovered, less than half a dozen good bookshops in the whole of Lahore, once considered to be the intellectual capital of India, that stock books in English. The vast majority of these books are, curiously enough, published in India, a few in the West and the rest, a very small proportion, are local Pakistani publications. Books on Pakistani society, based on empirical realities, are almost impossible to find, although the number of titles on the so-called 'two-nation theory' and the history of the Muslim League, as well as on elite politics in Pakistan, run into the hundreds. So do books on Jinnah and Iqbal, the two major ideological heroes of Pakistan, after whom a vast number of public institutions throughout the country are named. As a Lahori friend of mine quipped, 'The intellectual scene in Pakistan is so bad that our rulers think we have almost no one else to name our institutions after'.

Even on Islam and Kashmir, two issues that are central to the way in which the Pakistani state has sought to construct the notion of Pakistani national identity, I discovered hardly any decent literature in English in the numerous bookshops that I visited. Many of the few English books on Islam I came across were actually published in India. A few others were by Western writers, while the rest, not more than three dozen titles, many of these being were poorly-researched and ideologically-driven propaganda tracts of the Pakistani Jamaat i Islami and its associated publishing houses. Likewise, on Kashmir. In Lahore's biggest bookshop that also stocks English books I came across an entire shelf of books on Kashmir, but almost all of them were written by Indian scholars, published in India and probably represented the Indian position on the disputed territory.

Pay it Forward

I came across this website while going through Christian Science Monitor. Fun, learning and charity - all in one. Do give it a shot!

Daughter of the West

To date, Pakistan People's Party remains the only mass-based political party whose support runs across all ethnic and sectarian divides in Pakistan and has a cadre of dedicated and sincere workers. However, the integrity of its leadership leaves much to be desired. Tariq Ali's take on Pakistan's lady kleptocrat Benazir Bhutto.

Restless Few, Silent Many

Six soldiers are killed in a militant ambush in North Waziristan. A suicide bomber strikes a school bus near Kamra air force complex. Four CD and video shops bombed down in Peshawar. Meanwhile, "Great Leader" is busy establishing "writ of state" on judges, lawyers, and media and civil society. And "the people of Pakistan", while being rightly outraged against the dictator-in-chief keep mum about the increasing influence of wanna-be dictators.


In addition to sympathising with the Islamists’ anti-US stance and justifying their anger against western clout that has spawned economic inequality and despotic regimes, there is a tendency to endorse the ‘moral order’ that the militants want to impose on society. Thus, all kinds of atrocities are tolerated. Not a murmur is heard when women, accused of indulging in wayward acts, are beheaded, or when public executions (bypassing state justice) are conducted in the name of purging society of undesirable elements. Little concern is enunciated by the educational authorities when girls’ schools are bombed. If at all there is any protest at the way young boys are brainwashed in seminaries and then dispatched on suicide and other missions, it is muted.

The liberals lack the courage, possibly even the numbers, to come forward and forcefully explain why moral policing and extreme religiosity have no place in a society which would be better off concentrating on how to improve the lives of its people. Taking advantage of their silence, dogmatic elements propound views that fuddle clear thinking. This is the phenomenon that is described as Talibanisation. The latter does not merely pertain to actual deeds of violence in the name of religion. It is also a state of mind.

Balochistan’s prisoners of conscience

Balochistan is no doubt the most wronged province of Pakistan. Qazi Faez Isa gives an insight into the grievances of Balochistan's civil society against "the essence of democracy" introduced by Mush.

Time magazine’s (Dec 10, 2007) evaluation is, “Pakistan’s leader leaves the army, but his war on the Constitution continues. But regardless of what outfit he wears, Musharraf has left Pakistan with a tattered constitution patched with amendments and filled now with so many loopholes justifying his rule that it resembles a crocheted doily, ready to be thrown over whatever ugliness the next ruler creates in pursuit of power.”

The article concludes with the swipe: “When Musharraf took power in his 1999 coup, he quoted Abraham Lincoln, saying sometimes you need to amputate a limb to save a life. On the day he imposed emergency rule, he repeated the reference to justify his actions. The only problem is, amputated limbs don’t grow back.”

What is Free Society all about?

Timothy Gorton Ash makes valid points about the essence of free society and how it needs to accomodate religious believers (and vice versa).

Among the essentials is freedom of expression, which has been eroded to an alarming degree, both by death threats from extremists and by misconceived pre-emptive appeasement on the part of the state and private bodies. Freedom of expression necessarily includes the right to offend; not the duty, but the right. We must, in particular, be free to say what we like about historical figures, be they Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Churchill, Hitler or Gandhi (and then let our claims be tested against the evidence). We may not agree with what controversialists say about these figures but we must defend to the death their right to say it. There should, for obvious reasons, be limits to what we are free to say about living people, but these limits must be very tightly drawn.

Among the liberal essentials is equality before the law, including equal rights for men and women. Among the essentials is also freedom of religion. Since a core liberal notion is that we must be free not just to pursue our own version of the good life but also to question and revise it, it follows that we must be free to propagate, question, change or abandon our religion. In a free society, proselytisation, heresy and apostasy are not crimes. This - and apostasy in particular - is not accepted in many versions of Islam, but it is a liberal essential on which there can be no compromise.

Ed Husain's piece in The Observer slashes the clauses of medieval Sharia that are at odds with free society and advoctes a "liberal" version of Islam. It's interesting to see how he mentions Shatibi and Locke in the same sentence.

What remain valid are the eternal truths that Shatibi, Locke and others enunciated. Our humanity must transcend adherence to scriptural literalism, especially if it leads to mayhem and loss of innocent lives. The whole purpose of religion is to bring order and harmony to our existence.

Entertainment Offense

Music, dance and entertainment have always been an anathema for this bunch of spoilsports and killjoys - known as Islamists. Nothing offends them more than the sight of anyone being happy and jubilant. A report from Islamist heavens of our "Wild Wild North-West".

The girls who turned to music concerts and stage shows, often held in Peshawar, the capital of NWFP, were thrown out of business when the cultural shows were banned.

Some of them benefited temporarily when the aficionados and businessmen on NWFP's dance and music scene diversified into the video CD business, producing and distributing long plays and dance sessions on VCDs and DVDs.

But a violent campaign by militant Taleban has caused this business to decline across large parts of NWFP. Hundreds of video outlets have been blown up. Others have voluntarily closed down or switched to other businesses.

Collective Self-destructiveness

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown laments the self-destructive behavior of "saviors" of Ummah! With "friends" like these, who needs enemies!

Today, creative, imaginative, dissenting and innovative Muslims have to wear virtual body armor, hunker down, just in case someone decides to get offended (and someone always does), inciting an uproar on the web, on the media, on the streets bringing out the mobs in Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, South Africa, Somalia and on and on. Inevitably some die for a cause they never really understood and the restless army of discontents shuffles off until the next noisy and bloody march.

I know of talented painters and poets in Pakistan who have just given up or fled. Arab artists, activists and thinkers unafraid of the truth are in actual prisons or enclosed behind limitations built by their fearful societies.

Explosive episodes are always gathering round the corner. We witnessed the organized outrage over the Channel 4 programs exposing some of the vile imams still controlling some mosques. The film of Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner, about a young boy in Afghanistan, is causing much anger. One of the pivotal scenes involves a homosexual rape of a Shiite boy. They won't have that, it is a slur, an insult. Muslims don't do such things. The same protests met Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane, in which a young Bangladeshi wife in Tower Hamlets has an affair. Muslims don't do such things etc, etc. Of course there is no rape and adultery in our countries, those are bad "Western" behaviors. The controversy will be reheated when the film of Brick Lane is released in a few weeks.

Transcultural dialogues

A lampoon on current political mess in Pakistan.

Someone "Insulted Islam" Again!

Gosh! Is there an end to this craziness? A British teacher faces six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine if convicted of blasphemy. Her crime? Naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Yes, there is good reason to feel "insulted" and "offended". Not at teddy bear being named Muhammad but at the so-called "leaders" of Ummah who have yet to learn stop behaving like children!

She's got the looks......

So we males are still fascinated by looks and wary of brains. Marilyn Monroe still proves to be a better turn-on than Marie Curie. So says Maureen Dowd:

November 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Should Hillary Pretend to Be a Flight Attendant?
MAUREEN DOWD

In 2005, a year after Ellie Grossman, a doctor, met Ray Fisman, a professor, on a blind date, she was talking to her grandmother about her guy.

“Never let a man think you’re smarter,” her grandmother advised. “Men don’t like that.”

Ray and Ellie “had a good laugh, thinking times had changed,” he recalled. The pair went on to marry — after she proposed.

But now, he says, “it seems like the students at Columbia University should pay heed to Grandma Lil’s advice.”

Mr. Fisman is a 36-year-old Columbia economics professor who conducted a two-year study, published last year, on dating. With two psychologists and another economist, he ran a speed-dating experiment at a local bar near the Columbia campus.

The results surprised him and made him a little sad because he found that even in the 21st century, many men are still straitjacketed in stereotypes.

“I guess I had hoped that they had evolved beyond this,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s like that ‘Sex and the City’ episode where Miranda went speed-dating. When she says she’s a lawyer, guys lose interest. Then she tells them she’s a flight attendant and that plays into their deepest fantasies.”

As he recapped the experiment in Slate last week:

“We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner’s beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks.”

He continued: “By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point ... It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.

“When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own.”

Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps.

Perhaps smart women can take hope — as long as they’re built like Marilyn Monroe. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pittsburgh have released a zany study on the zaftig, positing that men are drawn to hourglass figures not only because they look alluring, but because hips plumped up by omega-3 fatty acids could mean smarter women bearing smarter kids.

Yet Alex Williams recently reported in The Times that the new income superiority of many young women in big cities is causing them to encounter “forms of hostility they weren’t prepared to meet,” leaving them “trying to figure out how to balance pride in their accomplishments against their perceived need to bolster the egos of the men they date.”

Professional women in their 20s are growing deft at subterfuges to protect the egos of dates who make less money, the story said, such as not leaving their shopping bags around and not mentioning their business achievements. Or they simply date older men who might not be as threatened.

Even though men and women in surveys often say that a salary gender gap doesn’t matter, in the real world it can play out differently — either because the man has subterranean resentment he can’t shed, or the woman equates it with a lack of male drive.

Evolution is lurching ahead unevenly at the office, as well. The Times’s Lisa Belkin wrote this month about the confusing array of signals for executive women that can leave them hamstrung.

Catalyst, an organization that studies women in the workplace, found that women who behave in ways that cleave to gender stereotypes — focusing on collegiality and relationships — are seen as less competent. But if they act too macho, they are seen as “too tough” and “unfeminine.”

Ms. Belkin said that another study shows that men — and female secretaries — are not considered less competent if they dress sexy at work, but female executives are.

Women still tend to be timid about negotiating salaries and raises. Men ask for more money at eight times the rate of women.

Victoria Brescoll, a Yale researcher, found that men who get angry at the office gain stature and clout, even as women who get angry lose stature because they are seen as out of control.

That may be why Obama is trying to get “fired up,” in the words of his fall slogan, while Hillary calmly observes that she can take the heat and stereotypically adds that she likes the kitchen.

Ignoring and Repeating History

As Santayana remarked, "Those who forget their history are destined to repeat it". The "orphan" nation provides a living testimony to this statement.

A clue to the answer may lie in Professor Aziz’s remarks, particularly his brilliant social analogy. What distinguishes orphans in a community? The comparison implies not just a lack of means and privilege, which though an obvious handicap is seldom a permanent disability, but also insecurity and lack of breeding. Communities may pity orphans for the former but they have also learnt to be wary of them on account of the latter. History, myths and literature (particularly children’s literature) show that gods and emperors have always treated orphans and outcasts (orphans by choice?) with suspicion. Their total ignorance of rules makes these ‘aliens’ impervious to the reluctance and inhibitions that are often the reformer’s undoing but sometimes prove his saving grace. Their insecurity, leading in extreme cases to paranoia, makes them ruthless.

Having realised that behind almost every horrible crime against humanity (from genocide to apartheid), there lies an incurable sense of insecurity (the-entire-world-is-against-us syndrome), the world has seen the wisdom of Saadi’s advice — fear the man who is (unreasonably and irreconcilably) afraid of you — and learnt to shun the orphan more than the bully.

This, even though respectable senators dismiss it, is the unfortunate connection. When we turn our back on our national history, our neighbours in the global village are perplexed. When we refuse to acknowledge the facts and logic of world history, they panic. They wonder, and one cannot blame them, whether we are plain silly or suicidal maniacs. They fear an apocalypse.

The case of Musharraf and the drunk uncle

A scrutiny of Great Commando's eloquence:

And when he said, "Extremists have gone very extreme," it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound -- if you would only pour him one last one.

Consider this; in the middle of his speech when everyone was silently urging him to get to the point, losing the thread of his diatribe about how judicial activism was responsible for the rise of jihadis in Pakistan, he abruptly said, "I have imposed emergency," then looked into the camera, waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and said, "You must have seen it on TV."

He forgot to mention that he had pulled the plug on all television channels except the State-run television. It might sound like old-school dictator talk, but just imagine if somebody took away your television and then told you, 'Oh, did you see that thing on TV?'

The Siege of Mecca

Ziauddin Sardar reviews Yaroslav Trofimiv's book "The Siege of Mecca" that provides an investigative account into the siege of Kaaba in 1979. I was not aware how incompetent Saudi intelligence and security forces turned out to be in this whole episode.

The Saudi authorities were slow to realise what had happened. It was only when the first batch of police and security officials were gunned down that the state grudgingly moved into action. The insurgents had occupied prime sites on the nine minarets of the mosque and were able to pick off anyone who approached the site. A number of assaults, involving police, the National Guard and the army, which Trofimov describes in some detail, ended in bloodbaths.

The authorities faced a number of problems. They were totally incompetent. The three security forces had different commands, did not trust each other, and were unable to communicate with each other as they had different radio systems. And, most astonishingly, they had no architectural plans of the mosque.

Indeed, there were only two institutions in the whole of the kingdom that had detailed plans of the Sacred Mosque - the Bin Laden Construction Company, which had built various extensions to the mosque but which was unwilling or unable to pass the maps on to the authorities, and my own research centre. For the previous five years, we had measured, calibrated and photographed almost every inch of the mosque. At considerable risk to himself, our director, the dissident architect Sami Angawi, delivered the plans to the front-line troops.

One of the mosque's gates was identified as the entry point for a new offensive. It was blown up with a huge charge. Paratroopers backed by armoured personnel carriers (APCs) stormed in, only to walk into an ambush. Another bloodbath ensued. It seemed that the insurgents had an answer to whatever the army threw at them. Even blowing up the minarets of the mosque did not help much. Eventually, using heavy artillery and scores of APCs, the army and the National Guard fought their way, step by bloody step, to the centre of the compound, where the Kaaba is located. Qahtani, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, who fought with exceptional daring, was killed.

Yet this was only a partial victory. The rebels retreated from the mosque's surface to its underground section. Known as the Qaboo, this is a labyrinth of rooms and alleyways, a mini-city where the insurgents had stashed the bulk of their weapons. Once again, the army's attempt to enter the Qaboo proved futile and deadly.

After a week of horrendously savage combat, it was clear that the Saudis needed help. They turned to their foremost allies: the United States and the CIA. A horde of CIA operatives was quickly converted to Islam so that they could enter the Holy City to assess the battlefield for themselves. They recommended chemical warfare. Potent tear gas was pumped into the Qaboo through its various entrances, but the exercise turned into a fiasco.

Hardened rebel fighters were able to shield themselves with mattresses, cardboard and cloth and prevented the gas from spreading into narrow underground corridors. Their water-soaked headdresses protected their breathing. The gas had a natural tendency to rise, so it came up to the compound of the mosque - where the Saudi soldiers were ill-prepared to use gas masks. Their generous facial hair prevented the masks from sealing on the skin: the gas seeped through their beards and knocked out a large contingent. Then it made its way to the surrounding area, and most of Mecca had to be evacuated.

My own account of what happened next differs from Trofimov's. The grapevine in Jeddah, I remember, suggested that the Qaboo had been flooded on the recommendation of the CIA. The rebels who escaped drowning were forced to the surface and captured. But Trofimov provides us with another story. The Saudis, he suggests, called in the French Foreign Legion. Paris despatched Lieutenant Paul Barril, a mercenary commando with expertise in such situations, on a "provost mission" to the kingdom.

Barril recommended another dose of gas - indeed, a whole tonne of CS gas, enough to poison a small city. However, the entire French stock of CS gas came to only 300kg so the operation was limited to this amount. This time, the gas was to be used with a particular cunning. Countless holes were bored from the surface of the compound down into the Qaboo, and the gas was pumped in through these holes. At the same time, battalions of the army entered the Qaboo from two points, in a pincer movement. They succeeded in overpowering the insurgents and capturing Juhayman.

Emeregency +

Ejaz Haider continues with his satire of "Great Leap Forward" (aka "emergency plus") by His Enlightened Moderation.

A Tale of Two "Moderates"

Here are two "moderate" presidents bent on begetting anything but moderation in their countries. Compariosn between Messers Musharaff and Mubarak (and their other counterparts in Muslim world) couldn't be sharper . Mona Eltahway puts it brilliantly

You have brilliantly used the Islamist boogeyman. That is a trick your fellow Muslim dictators also have perfected, presenting themselves as the only sane choice in countries beset by Islamist lunatics. Mubarak might point to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas can point to Hamas, but who can beat having Osama bin Laden allegedly hiding somewhere in his country? Or those Taliban and Al Qaeda foot soldiers crisscrossing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?

You claim that your emergency law is aimed at fighting these suicidal maniacs and their Pakistani supporters. But Pakistanis know the real target of your clampdown is the country's Supreme Court and its brave judges who have steadfastly opposed you.

That's another thing you share with your fellow Muslim dictators: an allergy to an independent judiciary, which in many Muslim countries constitutes the most potent secular opposition. Mubarak recognized last year the danger of judges who dared demand independence. He had them beaten and arrested and had their supporters jailed, answering any questions about how "serious" he was about reform and democracy.

Pakistan’s General Anarchy

Muhammad Hanif's article in today's New York Times:

For those who have never had to live under his regime, the general/president can come across as a rakish, daredevil figure. His résumé is impressive: here’s a man who can manage the frontline of the Western world’s war on terrorism, get rid of prime ministers at will, force his political opponents into exile and still find the time to write an autobiography. But ask the lawyers, judges, arts teachers and students behind bars about him, and one will find out he is your garden-variety dictator who, after having spent eight years in power, is asking why can’t he continue for another eight.

General Musharraf’s bond with his troops is not just ideological. Under his command Pakistan’s armed forces have become a hugely profitable empire. It’s the nation’s pre-eminent real estate dealer, it dominates the breakfast-cereal market, it runs banks and bakeries. Only last month Pakistan’s Navy, in an audacious move, set up a barbecue business on the banks of the Indus River about 400 miles away from the Arabian Sea it’s supposed to protect.

It’s a happy marriage between God and greed.

Big Brother has taken his gloves off ...

Laughable or lamentable, you decide, - but definitely readable it is. If the "emergency plus" was aimed at fighting terrorists (as Great Leader proclaimed), it has missed the bull's eye way apart. Big Brother has taken his gloves off but to whom he wanna shows "who is the boss".. As Asma Jehangir said in her message:

... the President (who has lost his marbles) said that he had to clamp down on the press and the judiciary to curb terrorism. Those he has arrested are progressive, secular minded people while the terrorists are offered negotiations and ceasefires.

Our "Defining Moment"

It's not the first (and probably not the last) "defining moment" since its birth this crisis-ridden nation is currently passing though. Three days after the imposition of emergency, all private news channels remain off air - and hundreds of lawyers, political workers are under arrest or "in-house detention". All for one reason that C-in-C (Creep-in-Chief) is unwilling to go on leave.

Pen is Funnier than Sword

Some hilarious cartoons by Khalid Bendib!

Pathetic state of apathy

Pervez Hoodbhoy and Rasul Bakhsh Rais has pointed towards the sickening apathy of Pakistani civil society against the rising tide of religious extremism and terrorism. Ayesha Siddiqa provides her diagnosis of this sorry state of the nation:

As long as our honour is secure and we are not being insulted, why get up and fight. Unfortunately, today this is the mindset of most people. Everybody wants to secure his or her own space without bothering to stand up for the other.

I am reminded of the story of a king who ordered all his subjects to bring a pail of milk and empty it into the pond in front of the castle before dawn. Next morning when the king woke up, he found the pond filled with water and no milk. Everyone thought that others would bring milk so a bucket of water would suffice. This is pure realpolitik and pragmatism. People are encouraged not to fight for norms, values and principles but to save their interests. Power is the name of the game and people are meant to respect that.

How, then, can we expect a society, which could not snub two extremely arrogant agents of the state for insulting an educationist, to stand up against terrorists that kill innocent security personnel? This is not to justify the society’s complacency but an effort to understand the sickening apathy. Both the individual and the society he lives in do not have the strength to stand up to often violent humiliation at the hands of all sorts of rogue elements.

Flawed and failed

Razi Azmi has re-appeared on the pages of Daily Times after a long time, though not on a pleasnat moment and and not for a pleasant reason:


The famous French writer Victor Hugo once said that history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, then as farce. One is tempted to see all the Pakistani governments from Ayub to Musharraf, indeed from Nazimuddin to Musharraf, in this light. Only it is hard to tell which phase constitutes tragedy and which farce.


Meanwhile, Daily Times is still harping on it's "transitionist" (aka pro-Mush) tone, blaming anyone but Great Leader for imposition of "emergency".

Desperate Measures: Emergency rule declared in Pakistan

Finally an end to rumors circling around for past few days! Commando resorts to desperate measures to stick to hold on to power and declares emergency rule today. PTV's newscaster referred to him as "Chief of Army Staff"rather than "Sadr-e-mamlikat" while breaking the news of emergency. All private news channels including BBC and CNN have gone off air (Thank God, they did not terminate internet connection - as yet at least). A drowning man catching at a straw! Or a stooge flaunting to his pay masters "who is the boss" in the "most dangerous country of the world" (State Department unambiguously opposed the idea of emergency or martial law in Pakistan).

Meanwhile, I am faced with another personal emergency. Travel agent told me that I won't be able to leave for Dublin tomorrow. Instead, I have a chance to get ticket on 9th and he will give further details on Monday. Sigh!

Rape Conundrum

It was kinda shocking to know that in UK, less than 5% of reported rapes lead to conviction, not to mention that majority of sexual assaults remain unreported. Joanna Burke suggests a re-examination of masculinity as one of the possible remedies to this problem:

A politics of masculinity that focuses upon a man's body as a site of pleasure (for him and others), as opposed to an instrument of oppression and pain, demands a renewed focus on male comportment, imaginary, and agency. People discover sex: they learn its performance. Indeed, phallic masculinity represents a turning away from a complex model of pleasure, draining it (in the words of feminist Catherine Waldby) of "erotic potential in favour of its localisation in the penis, taken to be the phallus' little representative". Adopting a "good sex" model will enable men to love and be loved in more fulfilling ways.

The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy

Here is a a review of John Mueller's article "Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy".