The Way You Make Me Feel...

Mourning Michael Jackson

By Aisha Sarwari

When an iconic figure like Michael Jackson stops breathing, it’s a sad moment.

There are those attempting to make it less of a sad moment, recounting news flashes about others dying in wars and drones, hunger and disease. True, that happens every day. Neglect is the cause of many unnecessary deaths; the sheer futility of life is astounding and its brutality crushes anything remotely resembling human spirit – This was the very significance of the Michael Jackson I knew, his songs from, We Are The World, They Don’t Really Care About Us and Heal The World are deeply politically astute and inspirational songs.

His impact on the African American race as the first Black singer to break into the MTV culture and his loyal fan following around the world resonates with his synchronous performances, alluring presence and love for melody. He was the one who opened up the West to the rest – From Africa to China and to Pakistan, Michael Jackson was a forever brand.

He was not very different from any other artist except in the exaggerated level of controversy and allegations of child molestation, which may or may not be true, but for the sake of fairness the man should only be judged for what he most certainly did.

He allied himself with causes that were worthy, most of his stage performances had sign language instruction for the deaf, and his charities toward causes of poverty alleviation, AIDS awareness and child health go far beyond the $500 million he currently owes.

He is credited for clever business in his purchase of ATV and being one of the first artists to get steep royalties for music played anywhere on the airwaves.

But his cleverness was soon to be replaced by bad financial management, a freakish and obsessive nature, marriages gone bad and a wacko case of dangling a child from a balcony. Like him, his music became aimless and soulless. His fans waited, others faded into a growing hysteria of spectator comfort – it was much more entertaining to call him out as a misfit, which he was, no doubt– especially as he decided to open up his personal life to Martin Bashir, a Briton of Pakistani Origin who won the trust of Michael Jackson, and got him to approve a live show called Living with Michael Jackson.

Falling into the trap of a deranged social climber like Martin Bashir, Michael Jackson made the typical mistake of a profile low self-esteem case. He thought by opening up honestly to the world of TV, with the help of Martin’s cleaver editing, he will become redeemed for the bad press he’d been getting. As Martin Bashir giggled under his breath at the star’s psychobabble, and gasp at his spending 6 million on a shopping spree, and sneer as Michael Jackson got cozy with a young cancer patient he was assisting, the world got an editorialized cut of the episodes that were clearly skewed to stage nothing but a freak show. Shame on Martin Bashir!

And shame on a world that was too narrow for someone as sad as Michael Jackson to not fit into, so he grew into his own skin.

While there was a part of him that fought back, the revolutionary enraged by the terror of the world, spreading a message of hope; there was also a part of Michael Jackson that was a victim.

Abused by his father, beaten and told he is ugly, particularly because of his big (African) nose, he was working hard to reinvent a person more acceptable to his world view.

His constant sense of rejection and abandonment from family haunted him, pained him greatly, and he fled that pain by internalizing his protection from it by conquering the physical, changing his face, his nose, his skin, his demeanor. In the process of reinventing himself in the face of watchful paparazzi, he got addicted to pain killers.

This is what killed him they say, overmedicating himself with painkillers. Why should we discriminate between crying for a broken heart and crying for general pain and misery of the entire world? Does not the seashell cry the ocean’s tune?

We are the world! Watching the Michael Jackson's Memorial in Islamabad, Pakistan

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Chickens coming home to roost

Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi- the head honcho over there at Jamia Naeemia- has been killed in a suicide attack on the mosque. He had given a fatwa against the Taliban recently... and called them enemies of Islam and Pakistan. He was absolutely right and he paid with his life.

However a few years ago... Sarfraz Naeemi had given this Khutba:

"The suicide attacks are not haram [forbidden in Islam] but are the supreme form of jihad."

Now therefore we must learn a lesson from this. Sarfraz Naeemi succumbed to the so called "supreme form of Jihad". While we mourn his passing, we must realize that this was the logical extension of the argument our Islamic scholars have been spinning for years.

We must make a break from such violent interpretations of Islam now... lest we don't have a country or a religion any more.

DAWN REPORT: Villagers in Upper Dir take up arms against Taliban

Villagers angered by mosque blast attack Taliban By Our Correspondent Monday, 08 Jun, 2009 | 03:33 AM PST |

UPPER DIR: Two Taliban commanders and their four fighters were killed in an armed action taken by a tribal Lashkar in the Doog Darra area of Upper Dir district on Sunday. (According to AP news agency 11 militants were killed in the attack.) The Lashkar was formed in Hayagay Sharqi, and was supported by people of Hayagay Gharbi, Doon, Kilot and Miana Doog villages, after the suicide attack on a local mosque during Friday prayers that killed over 30 people, including several children. The Lashkar stormed Taliban bunkers in Doog Darra, Salam Bekay, Ghazigay, Shatkas, Panaghar and Maluk Khwar and torched about 20 houses of people who harboured militants. People from several other villages joined the Lashkar to expel Taliban from their area. According to local people, both sides were using heavy weapons in fierce clashes between the Lashkar and the Taliban. Sources said the village force was attacking Taliban positions in Shatkas, Miana and Doog Bala. Meanwhile, people of Maluk Khwar and Panaghar villages, who were active supporters of the militants, also parted ways with them after the mosque blast and announced support for the tribal Lashkar and vowed to evict militants from the area. Doog Darra area, it may be mentioned, was attacked by planes in the third week of May. Two men of the Lashkar identified as Shah Khalid and Mohammad Ayaz were injured in Sunday’s clash. The militants, holed up in their stronghold of Shatkas and Gazigay, were putting up stiff resistance, the sources said. Agencies add: The incident underscored a swing in the national mood towards a more anti-Taliban stance, a shift that comes as suicide attacks have surged and the military wages an offensive in the Swat valley. DCO Atif-ur-Rehman said some 400 villagers formed a Lashkar and attacked five villages in Doog Darra area. The militia has occupied three of the villages since Saturday and is trying to push the Taliban out of the other two. The government has encouraged local people to set up militias to oust Taliban fighters. ‘It is something very positive that tribesmen are standing against the militants. It will discourage the miscreants,’ Mr Rehman said. He said around 200 militants were putting up stiff resistance in their strongholds surrounded by the villagers. ‘We will send security forces, maybe artillery too, if the villagers ask for reinforcement,’ he said.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/12-tribesmen-avenge-mosque-blast-attack-taliban--bi-01 Copyright © 2009 - Dawn Media Group

Obama's landmark speech... in the wrong city

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

President Obama’s landmark speech was extraordinary and unprecedented. It marks a paradigm shift in US’ relationship with the Muslim world and is a recognition that our common earth needs to be saved from destruction and mindless violence. President Obama is proving himself to be the change that he promised. Yet as a Pakistani I feel that the speech was delivered at the wrong forum in the wrong city.

Let us forget and forgive the president for his glaring omission of Kashmir which he had rightly identified as a major flashpoint on the world map during his campaign. Even without Kashmir, the speech would still have a far greater impact had it been delivered in Islamabad instead of Cairo. Unlike Cairo where you have an unpopular but entrenched despot, Islamabad has an embattled democratic government which is fighting perhaps the most important civil war in world history since the American civil war itself. Infact its significance might be greater for it will determine the future of the entire Islamic civilization. Obama’s presence in Islamabad would have bolstered that effort greatly.

And unlike Cairo, Islamabad is the capital of the second largest Muslim country and population after Indonesia with 165 million Muslims within Pakistani borders. Indeed most of the world’s Muslims live outside the Arab world. Indonesia has more than 200 million, Pakistan 165 million, India has 145 million, Bangladesh has 140 million. Three of the major core Muslim majority countries are non-Arab- Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Considering this, Islamabad should have been the logical choice of this address.

Obama spoke of the diversity of the Muslim world and of women’s rights. Unlike Cairo which is dominated by Sunni Islam and is ethnically homogenously Arab, Islamabad is the capital of a state which is far more reflective of the diversity, both ethnic and sectarian. Consider for example the fact that Pakistan has both the second largest Sunni (after Indonesia) and the second largest Shia populations (after Iran) of the world. It is a land where many languages are spoken and many ethnicities live and its history is older than that of Egypt. As for women’s rights, it is Pakistan which as Obama himself pointed out elected a woman prime minister twice. Islamabad and the rest of Pakistan was the scene of the lawyers’ movement, a thoroughly secular movement for constitutionalism and fundamental rights- much of what Obama himself claims to uphold. All this would have helped Obama underscore his message of common bonds with Islam much more than his performance in Egypt.

Still a very important opportunity has been extended to us and we must clutch it with both hands. Our common humanity dictates us to do so.

Principles for the New Pakistan Left

Seven Principles on which the left should seek to reinvent itself in Pakistan:

1. Faithful allegiance to Jinnah's conception of Pakistan as an egalitarian, cosmopolitan and democratic social welfare state based on rule of law and equality of opportunity.

2. Immediate, unconditional and effective land reforms.

3. Provincial autonomy through residual powers lying with provinces

4. Affirmative action for religious minorities, women, depressed classes and linguistic minorities.

5. Education reform and access to all citizens of Pakistan

6. Provision of health care should be state responsibility.

7. Foreign policy based on rational self interest within reason and in consonance with international law

Rebuttal to Ishtiaq Ahmed's article "fundamentalist dimension of the Pakistan Movement" that Mullah types and Indians love to quote:

What Ishtiaq says is basically two fold… that in 1946 elections Punjab Muslim League used Islam through “Barelvi Pirs” against Unionist party (what he forgets is that Unionist Party as well as Congress also used Islam against the Muslim League) and that people like Raja of Mahmudabad promised Quran and Islamic state….

Ishtiaq Ahmed's omissions are also two-fold:

1. If Raja of Mahmudabad did promise “dictatorship of the Quran” which he did, Jinnah expelled him from the Muslim League. This is well known.
2. Barelvi Pirs etc constitute the “low church of Islam” not the “high church”. Muslim League’s use of Barelvis … only as late as 1946 …. was in response to the use by the Congress and then the Unionist Party of the “high church” i.e. Deobandi Islam.

Ishtiaq Ahmed also makes horrendous factual errors in the said article:

1. He claimed that Jamaat Ahmaddiya was ambivalent to the Pakistan Movement till Zafrullah Khan was won over… this is an absolute lie. First of all Zafrullah Khan vetted the Lahore Resolution which is considered the starting point of the Pakistan Movement. Secondly Jinnah’s famous visit to the London Ahmaddiya Mosque in 1933 was where the Imam of the mosque, Ibrahim Dard, had persuaded him to go to India and re-organize the Muslim League .. and Jinnah had promised to consider it. Jamaat Ahmaddiya had in the mid-1940s engaged the famous geographer George Spate to carry out a “Pakistan Survey” in aid of the Muslim League. A detailed report was issued which was reprinted by the Dawn a few years ago.
2. He claimed that Shias remained ambivalent. Muslim League leadership was mostly Shia. Ironically the Raja of Mahmudabad that Ishtiaq Ahmed quotes was also staunchly and fanatically Shia.

The facts are:

1. Almost every Islamist Mullah organization Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind (apart from the small breakaway Usmani faction), Majlis-e-Ahrar, Khaksar Tehreek , Jamaat-e-Islami etc opposed the Pakistan Movement.

2. That it was Gandhi who through his Khilafat movement brought these Mullahs into politics.The roots of this dischord were found in the Khilafat movement… Achyuth Patwardhan, one of the Socialist stalwarts in the Congress, has given a remarkably candid and self critical analysis of the Congress Party vis-a-vis Khilafat:

‘It is, however, useful to recognise our share of this error of misdirection. To begin with, I am convinced that looking back upon the course of development of the freedom movement, THE ‘HIMALAYAN ERROR’ of Gandhiji’s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to the Khilafat Movement at the end of the World War I. This has proved to be a disastrous error which has brought in its wake a series of harmful consequences. On merits, it was a thoroughly reactionary step. The Khilafat was totally unworthy of support of the Progressive Muslims. Kemel Pasha established this solid fact by abolition of the Khilafat. The abolition of the Khilafat was widely welcomed by enlightened Muslim opinion the world over and Kemel was an undoubted hero of all young Muslims straining against Imperialist domination. But apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim Leadership of clerics and maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secular, modernist leadership among the Muslims of India and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of the Maulvis. Maulana Mohammed Ali’s speeches read today appear strangely incoherent and out of tune with the spirit of secular political freedom. The Congress Movement which released the forces of religious liberalism and reform among the Hindus, and evoked a rational scientific outlook, placed the Muslims of India under the spell of orthodoxy and religious superstition by their support to the Khilafat leadership. Rationalist leaders like Jinnah were rebuffed by this attitude of Congress and Gandhi. This is the background of the psychological rift between Congress and the Muslim League’

Pakistan was a movement led by middle class largely westernized Muslims who had no truck with religious dogma.