ISLAMABAD, Sept 10: The federal government is considering legislation to ban sectarianism and any attempt to finance sectarian hatred. Takfir, meaning one Muslim declaring another Muslim Kafir (apostate), will be considered a serious offence, under the proposed law which will be discussed at a meeting on Thursday in the Prime Minister’s Office.
“The purpose of the new law is to ban sectarianism and come down hard on financers of sectarian violence in the country,” said an official monitoring progress on the National Action Plan (NAP). “Both the centre and the provinces will pass legislation towards this end,” he said.
Experts believe the state is facing a major threat from sectarian groups, many of whom have been active in south Punjab, interior Sindh and Balochistan for several years now.
Hundreds have been killed in targeted killings motivated by sectarian hatred, which according to some experts, has been fueled by certain ‘brotherly’ allies of Pakistan.
“We will take up the issue of provinces’ hurdles in way of swift action against all banned outfits,” the official told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity. “Under new laws, no one will be allowed to declare a member of any other Muslim sect apostate.”
Talking to The Express Tribune, senior lawyer Ali Zafar said the government could amend relevant clauses of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) after reviewing the chapter of “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.”
“It is a serious issue. The 1973 Constitution gives everybody the right to freely exercise his or her religion or belief,” he said. Former interior secretary Mahmood Shah said sectarianism should be considered a serious offence under the new laws. “It is high time we got rid of this chronic issue. Funds coming from abroad is also fueling sectarian violence which must be stopped and the issue should be taken up with brotherly countries,” he said.
Pakistan’s top civil and military authorities are scheduled to hold a crucial meeting in Islamabad today (Thursday) to discuss the next phase of the operation against militants. Participants include the prime minister, military and intelligence chiefs, chief ministers for the four provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the premier of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
“We are going to discuss a three-point agenda, with a focus on counter-terrorism and how to de-radicalise our society,” said a senior National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta) official who will also attend the meeting.
The other two areas to be focused in the meeting are controlling proliferation of weapons and implementation of NAP in the provinces, the Nacta official said. He added that the Foreign Office would also convince authorities in Saudi Arabia and Iran to send funds to seminaries in Pakistan only through official channels. According to the official, the interior minister will also formulate a draft policy for deweaponisation in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2015
Parsi girl in Karachi (Credit: nation.com.pk)KARACHI: For more than 1,000 years, Parsis have thrived in South Asia but an ageing population and emigration to the West driven by instability in Pakistan means the tiny community of “fire worshippers” could could soon be consigned to the country’s history books.
The ancestors of today’s Parsis in Pakistan — followers of Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest religions — fled Persia over a millennium ago for the safety of the western Indian subcontinent.
Legend has it Parsi leader Jadi Rana made a pledge to the then emperor of India that Zoroastrians, known in the region as Parsis, would not be a burden but would blend in like sugar into milk.
But today they are a fading people across the subcontinent, with many affluent families from India and Pakistan leaving for the West.
The community, which has long been active in business and charity, has been unnerved by the upsurge in Islamist extremist violence. One expert said the loss of the Parsis in the society would be a “huge blow” to Pakistan’s diversity.
Only around 1,500 are left in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, where they have “fire temples”, community centres and final resting places also known as the “Tower of silence” — where the remains of their dead are left in the open to be consumed by vultures according to their tradition.
Parsis are often called “fire worshippers” because their religion considers fire — together with water — as agents of purity and fires are lit as part of religious ceremonies.
They have long been discreet in observing their faith, but some, like 23-year-old art student Veera Rustomji, think they need to do more to preserve their heritage.
“It’s been successful that we have been an unattacked and unharmed community because of our low profile,” she said at her studio at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA).
“But at the same time it backfires because a lot of people focus on how the community is becoming small numerically.”
Rustomji has traced her family’s past in Hong Kong, where Parsis founded a university, a ferry service and hospitals. It is this link to business as well as charity that Byram Avari ─ the head of the Avari, one of Pakistan’s leading luxury hotel groups ─ said has allowed the community to build an enduring relationship with Karachi.
“Before partition the ladies maternity home called Lady Dufferin hospital was put up by the Parsis, the NED University of Engineering and Technology, DOW medical college, the Spencer Eye hospital and I cannot tell you how many numerous things have been set up by the Parsis for the people of Karachi,” he told AFP.
Parsis believe “in giving back what they had”, he added.
But today young Parsis are leaving in droves. The past decade has seen Islamist violence soar, with religious minorities often in the extremists’ cross-hairs. While Parsis have not been specifically targeted, many feel vulnerable.
‘We cannot see a future’
“There is a general instability in the country. Because of this we cannot see a future for our community here right now,” says Kaivan Solan, a 27-year-old training to become a priest.
Izdeyar Setna, 37, a freelance photographer with a slew of international clients, added that Parsis were seeking new lives in countries with larger Parsi communities, such as Canada.
“I think most people are leaving because of a few reasons. One is security. The way things are, people are scared not knowing if things are going to get better,” he said.
“So I think they are trying to get out. Most people are going to Canada, or the USA, wherever it is easy to get the visa.”
In the city’s Parsi neighbourhood, the rotting stench of death emanates from the Tower of Silence, a large circular structure where the bones of the dead are kept in accordance with Zoroastrian practice.
For many, these traditions must go on and the compound provides a sense of belonging.
It is home to dozens of Parsi families but many have now hired armed guards because of attempts to seize their land by a neighbouring Muslim community.
“Losing a community like the Parsis is definitely a huge blow to a tolerant Pakistan, its cultural diversity and economic well-being as Parsis have contributed immensely to the progress of this country,” said Rabia Mehmood, a researcher on religious minorities at the Jinnah Institute think tank.
Not all the threats faced by Parsis are external. They are already facing a low birth rate and their marriage laws are extremely strict, forcing women to leave the community if they “marry out” — though men marrying non-Parsis is tolerated.
“I would love to [marry] if I find the right person, but it’s difficult because the numbers are so small,” Rustomji, the student, said.
Growing up in such a close-knit society, familiarity can breed contempt, she said.
“I grew up in Karachi and all the Parsi boys I know since I was 10. It’s just science that I wouldn’t just fall in love with them when I turn 28,” she said, referring to the age by which most Pakistani women get married.
“When Parsi men marry out of the community, they are undeniably accepted more and unquestioned … I find that very hypocritical because Zoroastrianism is a religion that advocates equality for both sexes.”
Washington, Aug 14: The leader of the Islamic State personally kept a 26-year-old American woman as a hostage and raped her repeatedly, according to U.S. officials and her family.
The family of Kayla Mueller said in an interview Friday that the FBI had informed them that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, had sexually abused their daughter, a humanitarian worker.
Mueller’s parents said the FBI first spoke to the family about the sexual assault in late June and provided more details two weeks ago. The bureau pieced together what happened to the American from interviews with other hostages and the captured wife of a senior Islamic State figure.
The FBI also told the Muellers that their daughter had been tortured.
“June was hard for me,” said Marsha Mueller, Kayla’s mother. “I was really upset with what I heard.”
The disclosure that Mueller was raped by Baghdadi adds to the grim evidence that the exploitation and abuse of women has been sanctioned at the highest levels of the Islamic State. The sexual enslavement of even teenage girls is seen as religiously endorsed by the group and regarded as a recruiting tool.
News of Baghdadi’s abuse of Mueller, who was from Prescott, Ariz., was first reported Friday by the Independent, a London newspaper.
“As painful as this is for our family, we just feel like the world needs to know the truth,” said Carl Mueller, Kayla’s father. The Muellers noted that Friday would have been their daughter’s 27th birthday.
The Islamic State claimed that Mueller was killed earlier this year after a Jordanian fighter plane dropped a bomb on the building where she was being held. The U.S. government confirmed the death but not the cause.
Mueller’s family had previously released a letter their daughter had written in which she talked about the conditions of her captivity. “Please know I am in a safe location, completely unharmed + healthy (put on weight in fact); I have been treated w/the utmost respect + kindness,” she wrote in the letter, which the family received in the spring of 2014.
Kayla’s mother said she had thought her daughter had been treated reasonably until she learned about the conditions of her captivity during a June meeting with FBI officials in Washington. The FBI said they learned about Mueller’s mistreatment from the wife of a senior Islamic State operative captured earlier this year, as well as young female members of the Yazidi religious sect who had spent two months in captivity with Mueller before at least one of them escaped last fall.
U.S. officials had previously said that Mueller was abused by her captors, but it was not known until now that she was kept as a sex slave of the leader of the Islamic State.
Baghdadi is a former Iraqi insurgent who was detained by U.S. forces early in the Iraq war. He was part of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq that was thought to have been largely destroyed before the civil war in Syria allowed it to regenerate.
Though little is known about his background, Baghdadi is regarded as an experienced fighter and a capable leader. His most prominent public appearance came last year when he surfaced at a mosque in Mosul to declare himself the leader of a restored caliphate.
Mueller was abducted in August 2013 after leaving a hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Three months after she died, the compound where she had been held was targeted in a raid by U.S. Special Operations forces.
The operation was aimed at capturing Abu Sayyaf, the nom de guerre of a high-ranking Tunisian member of the Islamic State, who was thought to be in charge of oil smuggling and other illicit enterprises that have funded the terrorist group.
Sayyaf was killed in what U.S. officials described as intense “close quarters combat.” But his wife, identified only as Umm Sayyaf, survived and was eventually brought back to Iraq aboard a bullet-riddled U.S. aircraft. She was then questioned by U.S. interrogators for months, providing information about Mueller as well as the Islamic State’s leadership, before recently being turned over to Iraqi custody.
Mueller’s mistreatment is the latest evidence of the Islamic State’s systematic abuse of women on a significant scale.
A report released in April by Human Rights Watch accused the Islamic State of war crimes for its brutal treatment of female Yazidis — many of them teenagers — who were captured in Iraq last August, taken to Syria and forced into sexual slavery by the Islamic State.
After surging into the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar last year, Islamic State fighters captured as many as 1,000 Yazidi women, many of whom were given a bleak choice of “marriage” to a fighter or imprisonment and potential death.
The Human Rights Watch report focused on 20 women who escaped the group and provided detailed accounts of their treatment.
One described attempting to kill herself by going into a bathroom, turning on water and grasping a wire “to electrocute myself but there was no electricity.”
After being discovered, she said she was badly beaten, handcuffed to a sink, stripped of her clothes and washed. “They took me out of the bathroom, brought in [a friend] and raped her in the room in front of me,” said the woman, who is referred to only as Leila. Later she, too, was raped.
Another victim, who was only 12 years old, said that after being abducted in Sinjar, the women in her family were separated from the men and sent to a house in Mosul. Islamic State fighters “would come and select us,” she said. One of the captors beat her, she said, and then “spent three days having sex with me.”
A recent issue of the English-language magazine published by the Islamic State described the taking of sex slaves as religiously justified. The article — titled “Slave girls or prostitutes?” — endorsed the practice, saying sex slaves are “lawful for the one who ends up possessing them even without pronouncement of divorce by their [non-Muslim] husbands.”
The article went on to cite accounts that the prophet Muhammad “took four slave-girls as concubines,” a purported religious basis for the practice.
The first thing you hear as you approach Badam Bagh women’s prison in Kabul is children’s laughter. The closer you get, the more the building sounds like a kindergarten class during recess.
Over the past five years, I visited a half-dozen women’s prisons in Afghanistan and met hundreds of women who were arrested while pregnant and gave birth in prison, along with hundreds who came into the system with toddlers. Afghanistan’s prisons are filled with mothers who have been rejected by their families because they are accused of “moral crimes”: women who have been raped or fled abuse or forced marriages, women accused of adultery, unmarried women who have become pregnant with partners their families didn’t approve of. In Afghanistan, such victims of abuse are penalized instead of protected.
When a woman’s body, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, is considered the property of her father, husband, community, religion or state, any action she takes without first being given permission by the men who wield power over her becomes a threat to the authority of those men. In Afghanistan, such threats are often met with incarceration and violence. Whenever I asked a female prisoner what she would do when released, the most common response was: “I will be killed.”
The justice system in Afghanistan is a funhouse-mirror reflection of what a justice system should be. Women who run away from their homes to escape abuse or forced marriage are tracked down by the police. Victims are transformed into criminals, and the limited resources that should be used to bring perpetrators of violence against women to justice are instead spent to keep young women behind bars.
When I first began visiting women’s prisons in Afghanistan, I focused on these “moral crimes.” But as I spent hours seated on prison floors in conversation with prisoners, I met more and more women who had been incarcerated for crimes they actually did commit — such as one 20-year-old who cut the throat of the sleeping husband who forced her into prostitution, unable to withstand another day of the abuse he had inflicted on her for years. I came to realize that I needed to abandon the categories of guilty and innocent. Nearly every woman accurately accused of murder, drug or drug-related offenses said she had been physically abused or raped, or had survived extreme poverty, or had been forced into marriage and motherhood, often while still a child herself. Each of them had been denied control over the direction of her own life from girlhood.
If these women had been able to control their destinies, and had access to basic education and protection from abuse, they would have chosen different paths and would not have been in prison to tell me their stories.
In 2009, the Afghan government formulated groundbreaking legislation called the Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW). This law criminalized harmful practices such as rape, forced marriage, domestic violence, the sale of women and girls and the denial of the right to education and work. It was enacted by presidential decree but because of conservative resistance was never ratified by parliament. The resulting confusion about its status has made its application inconsistent at best. Without a firmly established legal framework of protection and basic human rights, Afghan women have no hope of securing gender equality or a justice system in which their rights can be defended. As the international community continues to withdraw from Afghanistan, it is urgent that the law be ratified and implemented.
But the solution is not only legal. It is also cultural. The monitoring of women for “moral crimes” perpetuates a system of marginalization and legitimized violence. If women were free to choose their intimate partners, their communities, husbands, fathers and the entire justice system would no longer be in the business of safeguarding their virginity and their bodies. So long as a woman’s body is regarded as property, gender equality — and basic human rights — cannot exist.
School in Karimabad, Hunza (Credit: Washingtonpost.com)
KARIMABAD, July 22 —Visitors to this stunningly beautiful valley, towered over by five snow-capped mountains, sometimes feel as if they are standing at the edge of the earth — or, maybe, at the middle of it.
Once a hardscrabble Himalayan town where residents barely had enough to eat, Karimabad, in the Hunza Valley, is now one of Pakistan’s most idyllic spots — an oasis of tolerance, security and good schools. That standard of living can be traced to residents’ moderate interpretation of Islam as well as the considerable support from one of the world’s largest charities.
Many parents in the valley say that if they had to choose, they would send their daughters to school over their sons. Nearly all families own at least a small plot of land. Residents say they cannot remember the last murder in the valley. And unlike in other parts of Pakistan, streams are not polluted with plastic bags, human waste and decaying appliances.
Such views — and protection of the surroundings — have allowed the Hunza Valley’s population to become a bulwark against Islamist extremism, despite its relative proximity to militant strongholds in Pakistan’s tribal belt and Kashmir, a disputed region that Pakistan and India have fought wars over.
“Here, we have facilities, we study, and there is no terrorism,” said Haider Ali, 18, watching classmates play soccer as the sun set behind Mount Rakaposhi, elevation 25,551 feet.
Not everything is perfect, of course. Electricity deficits can keep the lights out for days at a time. A once-vibrant tourism industry collapsed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Deforestation has led to a shortage of firewood, so families must huddle in one room to stay warm when winter temperatures plunge toward zero.
And some local leaders worry the community has become too dependent on charitable organizations, leaving it vulnerable to a sudden reduction in aid. Such concerns are growing more pronounced as the Pakistani government, which temporarily expelled Save the Children last month, implements strict new licensing requirements for international aid groups
But for now, Karimabad is an example of what’s possible in rural Pakistan when residents accept support from international charities and stand firm against the threats posed by militancy.
“This is the real Shangri-La,” Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, the former European Union ambassador to Pakistan, said in an interview after seeing the Hunza Valley for the first time last year.
Indeed, over the decades, the valley has been cited as one of several Himalayan locations that might have inspired the mythical Shangri-La in James Hilton’s 1933 novel, “Lost Horizon.” Even if it didn’t, the valley’s enormous cliffs, 20,000-foot-plus peaks and turquoise Hunza River would certainly make a spectacular backdrop for a Hollywood movie.
More than 90 percent of the residents of Karimabad identify as Shiite Ismaili Muslims, among the most moderate sects of the Islamic faith. They are followers of the Aga Khan family, viewing it as directly descended from the prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law.
Prince Karim Al Husseini, a billionaire philanthropist who lives in France and goes by the title Aga Khan IV, is the Ismailis’ spiritual leader — and a major benefactor of the Hunza Valley.
Husseini’s Aga Khan Development Network has an annual budget of $600 million and operates in more than 30 countries. Over the past four decades, it has worked with other charities to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the valley, paving roads, opening schools and establishing health clinics and water treatment centers for the 65,000 residents of the Hunza Valley.
About 16,000 of them live in Karimabad, which was the capital when Hunza was an independent state prior to the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
During the 1980s, in a bid to expand the local economy, the Aga Khan network helped persuade farmers to grow cherries and peaches along with the traditional cash crops of wheat and potatoes. Now, much of Karimabad is an orchard.
Husseini is also a proponent of education, and nearly everyone in Karimabad can quote one of his teachings: “If a man has two children, one boy and one girl, you should educate the daughter first. Because, when she is educated, she can educate her entire family.”
According to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, the Hunza Valley’s literacy rate is 77 percent, although Karimabad residents say nearly everyone younger than 30 can read and write. The national literacy rate is about 58 percent, with a sharp disparity between men and women.
A World Bank study published last year concluded that female literacy in parts of the Hunza Valley had reached 90 percent, compared with 5 percent in another mountainous district, Diamer, about five hours away by road.
“When I was in school, few could even speak English,” said Javed Ali, 41, manager of Karimabad’s Hilltop Hotel. “Now, everyone speaks it fluently.”
From settlements at an elevation as high as 9,000 feet, children walk as much as three miles into the valley to get to school each morning.
After middle school, some female students enroll in the Aga Khan Higher Secondary School for Girls, which teaches only math and science. Nearly all graduates go on to college, according to Zahra Alidad, the principal and a graduate of the school.
“Even though it’s a remote area, students are motivated to learn,” said Alidad, noting that girls in other rural areas of Pakistan often stop attending school as early as fifth grade.
Another prominent school in Karimabad, the Japan-sponsored Hasegawa Memorial Public School, bills its teaching philosophy as one that creates “global citizens with a cosmopolitan, ethical orientation so that they can survive in any corner of the world.”
Students and teachers are encouraged to discuss sensitive issues, even those that challenge some Islamic teachings, said Nazim Aman, the school’s principal. Ninth-graders, for example, have been assigned this summer to read “The Kite Runner,” a novel about Afghan culture that touches on adultery, rape and homosexuality.
“We are true believers of pluralism,” Aman said. “We believe you, yourself, have to be authentic. We believe in diversity. We value social justice. We love nature, and you must develop that sense for survival.”
That teaching is echoed by the Sunni Muslim leader of one of Hunza’s largest tribes, most of whose members are Shiite Ismailis.
“A dish will taste better the more you mix it with spices,” said Mashgool Alam, 80, the leader of the Kurkutz tribe. “And if you mix many religions, society becomes a better place.”
Iqbal Walji, president of the Aga Khan Council for Pakistan, said that sort of attitude has helped shelter the Hunza Valley from the extremist ideology that has taken root in other parts of the country.
“When you have communities improving their own lives, and obtaining education, it prevents easy manipulation of communities and allows them to be resilient against external forces,” Walji said.
Some local leaders complain that residents have become too passive and reliant on the Aga Khan charities.
“Ismailis have become absentee stakeholders,” said Izhar Ali Hunzia, a local political leader. “All decisions are centralized and made in France, and people are just waiting for others to solve their problems.”
For his part, Ali Murad, 66, said he is grateful for financial support that helped free his and other families from the isolating grip of mountain life.
When Murad was a child, he recalled, his family struggled to make money and ate mostly food made from wheat. Now he owns eight cherry trees, 35 apple trees and 40 apricot trees. Two of his three sons have graduated from college. One works as a chef in Dubai and the other as a Chinese interpreter, he said.
“I’ve learned it’s better to own your own trees because, when you get money, you can just buy wheat,” Murad said.
KARACHI, Pakistan — WHEN I go to buy my drinking water, I don’t ask for water. I ask for Nestlé. Then I drive home with five 20-liter plastic bottles and make sure that we make every cup of tea, and all our ice, from this water. Like other people in this city, I believe the tap water is poisonous. During the summer, many of us follow the practice of putting out a water cooler on the street for passers-by. There are chic restaurants, cafes and art galleries in my neighborhood, but not a single public source of clean drinking water. Street vendors, security guards, trash pickers and maids rushing from one job to another often stop by to have a drink from this cooler. Like most such water coolers, mine is secured with a padlock; even the plastic tumbler is tied to it with a small chain.
Ramzan, the holy month of fasting known as Ramadan in the Arabic-speaking world, started last week, and like everyone else, I stopped putting out the water cooler. I did think about the people who wouldn’t be fasting and the non-Muslims not obliged to fast. But I didn’t think much. I removed the cooler because everyone does. There is the Respect of Ramzan Ordinance, which says you may be sent to prison for a few months if you eat or drink during fasting hours, or if you give someone something to eat or drink. I don’t really think I removed the cooler for fear of the ordinance: God knows, like every middle-class, privileged Pakistani, I flout enough laws. I did it because it would hurt the sensibility of those who fast.
Many of the 1,000 people who have died in the recent heat wave in Karachi died because of this sensibility: Some people were reluctant to ask for a drink of water, others were reluctant to offer it to them. You can’t blame them. Even if they could get past their inhibitions, there was no water to be had. All the little tea stalls, roadside restaurants, small juice or snack vendors disappear from the streets during fasting hours. In this month you can walk miles without finding a sip of water. And Karachi has developed in a way that you can also walk miles without finding any shade to cool down. Trees have been cut down to widen roads, overpasses have gobbled up footpaths; there are few shaded bus stops. Without water and without shade, while fasting or pretending to fast, people going to and coming back from work just fell on the streets and died.
Karachi is known for killing its residents, but weather had never been its weapon of choice. It is the world’s third-largest city, and its population has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, to 20 million. People come here to survive even though they know it can be a dangerous place. They leave bombed-out villages in the tribal north or parched hamlets in South Punjab to come settle at the edge of sewers in unplanned slums and make a living, mostly in daily wages, building malls or guarding them. Karachi hosts refugees from countries as diverse as Afghanistan and Myanmar. One reason so many have flocked to the city is that the weather has always been hospitable. You can sleep on the streets year round. Winter is only a rumor. Summer is hot and humid, but usually bearable out in the open with the breeze from the Arabian Sea.
The highest recorded temperature during the current heat wave in Karachi was 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Other towns in Pakistan have recorded temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, without ever suffering the kind of catastrophe that struck here. The victims, mostly poor and working class, needed some shade, a drink of water and a bit of time to slow down. But shade and a respite from work are hard to come by in Karachi — even in the month of Ramzan, the work of being a megacity must go on.
Thousands of construction workers dangle from high-rises. Traffic constables stand on city squares. Private security guards sit outside banks and offices. All in the heat, with no shade. When it is not Ramzan, these workers usually carry a bottle of water. When it is Ramzan, they don’t. When it is Ramzan, the eateries where they could score a free drink are shut. And when it is Ramzan, all the kindhearted people take away their coolers.
Since an overwhelming majority of those who died were poor, nobody is calling for an investigation or rethinking how the city is growing. The victims were just dehydrated and not sensible enough to protect themselves against the harsh weather. They don’t count as martyrs, according to religious authorities, even though they died during the holy month, many of them while fasting. The media express indignation, but over power breakdowns: the assumption being that with enough electricity these people wouldn’t have left their air-conditioned rooms and would have had chilled water to drink. Just as we kindhearted people do.
But it really wasn’t the lack of electricity or even the heat that killed these 1,000 people. What killed them was the forced piety enshrined in our law and Karachi’s contempt for the working poor. These people died because we long ago removed any shade that could shelter them from the June sun and then took away their drinking water. When they were about to die, we rushed them to hospitals in ambulances paid for by charities and gave them medicines paid for by charities. We gave them white sheets to recuperate in if they survived, and when they didn’t, those white sheets became their shrouds. Karachi’s hospitals are now awash with chilled bottles of Nestlé water donated by the kindhearted people of the city, but you still can’t get a drink of water on the streets.
Mohammed Hanif is the author of the novels “A Case of Exploding Mangoes” and “Our Lady of Alice Bhatti.”
KARACHI, May 13 – Gunmen on motorcycles boarded a bus and opened fire on commuters in Pakistan’s volatile southern city of Karachi on Wednesday, killing at least 43, police said, and militants affiliated with Islamic State claimed responsibility.
The pink bus was pockmarked with bullet holes and blood saturated the seats and dripped out of the doors on to the concrete.
“As the gunmen climbed on to the bus, one of them shouted, ‘Kill them all!’ Then they started indiscriminately firing at everyone they saw,” a wounded woman told a television channel by phone.
Police Superintendent Najib Khan told Reuters there were six gunmen and that all the passengers were Ismailis, a minority Shi’ite Muslim sect. Pakistan is mostly Sunni.
Militant group Jundullah, which has attacked Muslim minorities before, claimed responsibility. The group has links with the Pakistani Taliban and pledged allegiance to Islamic State in November.
“These killed people were Ismaili and we consider them kafir (non-Muslim). We had four attackers. In the coming days we will attack Ismailis, Shi’ites and Christians,” spokesman Ahmed Marwat told Reuters.
Later a Twitter account from militants identifying themselves as Islamic State claimed responsibility. It was not possible to verify their claims and they did not provide details of the attack.
“Thanks to God 43 apostates were killed and close to 30 others were wounded in an attack by the soldiers of Islamic State on a bus carrying people of the Shi’ite Ismaili sect … in Karachi,” said a statement distributed on Twitter by a group calling itself Khorasan Province Islamic State.
Several Pakistani splinter groups have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and some individuals claim to have been to the Middle East to meet IS militants. But so far there are few signs of major operational, financial or personnel links.
At least 43 people were killed in the bus attack and 13 wounded, provincial police chief Ghulam Haider Jamali told media.
Outside the hospital where the wounded were taken, and where the bus was parked, scores of young men formed a human chain to block everyone but families and doctors.
Emails and Facebook posts on Ismaili pages encouraged the community not to respond or say anything that might further endanger them.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he was saddened by the attack.
“This is a very patriotic and peaceful people who have always worked for the wellbeing of Pakistan,” he said. “This is an attempt to spread divisions in the country.”
MILITANT THREATS
Uzma Alkarim, a member of the Ismaili community, said the bus took commuters to work every day. The Ismailis had faced threats before, she said.
“Around six months ago, our community elders had alerted us to be careful because of security threats but things had calmed down recently,” she said.
English leaflets left in the bus were headlined “Advent of the Islamic State!” and used a derogatory Arabic word for Shi’ites, accusing them of “barbaric atrocities … in the Levant, Iraq and Yemen”.
The leaflets also blamed Shi’ites for a deadly sectarian attack in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, and raged against extrajudicial killings by police, naming a local officer.
In January, 60 people were killed when Jundullah bombed a Shi’ite mosque in the southern province of Sindh. The Taliban bombed another Shi’ite mosque in the northwest city of Peshawar weeks later.
Both the Taliban and Jundullah claimed the bombing of Wagah border crossing last year, which killed 57 people. Jundullah also claimed a church bombing that killed more than 80 people in Peshawar in 2013.
Many religious minorities accuse the government of not doing enough to protect them. Police are underpaid, poorly equipped and poorly trained.
ISLAMABAD, April 30: Pakistani pilgrims wishing to perform Hajj this year will have to declare whether they are Shia on their Hajj application forms if they have any hopes of making the sacred pilgrimage.
Confirming that the conditions had been forward by Saudi Arabia, government officials responsible for making Hajj arrangements said, “Saudi Arabia will not entertain any Hajj application from aspirants that fail to specify whether the applicant is a Shia or a Sunni.”
Taking Saudi requirement seriously, the government has added a question on page eight of the Hajj application form with the question “Are you Shia.”
The Ministry of Religious Affairs Spokesperson Muhammad Farooq said, “Aspirants are supposed to fill it with: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”
Riyadh has made it mandatory for all Hajj pilgrims to declare their sect as it fears that sectarian tensions could rise in the kingdom owing to the conflict in Yemen.
“Saudis do not want a repeat of the 1987 demonstrations during the Hajj pilgrimage, which led to the deaths of over 400 people in Makkah,” a senior official of Pakistan Hajj mission observed.
Religious affairs ministry officials, who are facilitating applicants (under government scheme) for getting visa, said the Saudi authorities also slightly amended the new Hajj visa form requirements. Though officials insisted that there was no such written instruction from Saudi authorities. But they said that the decision to insert the question was taken at a high level.
On the other hand, the religious affairs ministry spokesperson claimed that the question had been added on the request of representatives of Shia community in the country in order to prevent exploitation of the ‘mehram’ rule by Sunni women for performing hajj. Shia women, unlike their Sunni counterparts, can perform Hajj without a ‘mehram’. There have been reports that Sunni women have in the past exploited this provision.
Commenting on the new condition put forward by the Saudi Arabia, Chairman Pakistan Ulema Council Tahir Ashrafi said that he supports the Saudi move, adding that every country has the right to set new terms and condition to ensure better security.
“It’s not a new move. Pilgrims should abide by Saudi laws and declare their sect. Pilgrims are treated equally regardless of their sect,” he stated.
Amin Shaheedi, a representative of the Shia community in the Council for Islamic Ideology, said that, “We have no problem with this new addition. If Saudis are satisfied with this new move, Shia community is ready to abide by newly amended laws.”
Paternal grandmother of U.S. President Barack Obama attended an exhibition detailing the life of the Prophet Mohammad at the end of a pilgrimage in the Saudi city of Makkah, local media reported Wednesday.
Unlike the Hajj pilgrimage – a trip to the cities of Makkah and Madinah which every able-bodied Muslim is expected to undertake at least once in their lifetime – Umrah can be undertaken at any time of the year.
After finishing Umrah, Omar visited an exhibition about the life of the Prophet, commenting that it was a “good example” of what she called the moderate teachings of Islam.
“I am very happy to visit this exhibition, which is a good example for the propagation of Islam in a modern way, supported by scientific and authentic documents,” local daily Arab News quoted her as saying.
The Arabic-language Akhbar meanwhile said Obama’s grandmother cried during her visit to the exhibition.
Obama is a Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life but his father is of Muslim heritage from Kenya. Obama said both his American mother and Kenyan father were not devout.
Punjab Governor Salman Taseer’s killer acclaimed (Credit: demotix.com)
While the media is brimming with tall claims of no relaxation to terrorists, three big fish managed to wriggle out of the clamped jaws of law during recent weeks. Simpletons are told that their lawyers were consummate enough to outshine the official mavericks in the court so the jury was constrained to let them walk free.
The case of Mumtaz Qadri is even more intriguing. In a baffling verdict while his death penalty has been maintained, the judges were convinced that the act of killing a sitting governor is not terrorism.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) verdict says that is amazing to note that appellant (Mumtaz Qadri) took protection and rights guaranteed by the constitution, but deprived the deceased (Salman Taseer) of all constitutional guarantees. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that the murder of Salman Taseer at the hands of appellant Mumtaz Qadri was pre-planned, cold blooded and gruesome.” However about the charges of terrorism, the court observed that “it was not applicable because the incident did not create panic among the public.”
It is baffling that if a failed attempt on Gen. Musharraf can lead to hanging of the convicts, how the “pre-planned, cold blooded and gruesome” murder of the governor of a province is less than terrorism? Article 6 (2-n) of The Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 defines terrorism as an action that involves serious violence against a member of the police force, armed forces, civil armed forces, or a public servant. Also it is hard to comprehend how the grisly act did not create panic among the public? If the prosecutor was too naïve to prove these explicit facts, one even with a severest flu would still smell a rat.
More flabbergasting was the performance of two counsels for the felon. Khawaja Muhammad Sharif, a former chief justice of the Lahore High Court while arguing before the court showered his profound eulogy for the gunmen who attacked French weekly Charlie Hebdo and pronounced them “heroes”. He also pleaded before the court that the shooting of Salman Taseer was not an act of terrorism. Another lawyer of the convict, a retired judge from Punjab Mian Nazir Akhtar expressed his vehemence by saying that “I am sure Salman Rushdie would also be killed if he were to come here”.
When the IHC remarked that even a judge cannot touch an accused after awarding him punishment, yet the defence counsel insisted that a person can kill another person under unusual circumstances. These observations leave one dumbfounded as both the lawyers adorned the seat of justice for several years with such ethos. How accused of blasphemy or heresy would have been treated by an adjudicator who ardently justifies killing by the lunatic fringe. Both lawyers must also be aware that in September 2014, a prisoner guard at Adiala Jail shot a septuagenarian British-Pakistani accused over blasphemy charges. An internal inquiry revealed that the shooter was incited by Mumtaz Qadri while he was deployed outside his cell. He became a disciple of Qadri and used to seek religious lessons from him.
Incompetence and connivance of a matching magnitude was evident in the case of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Punjab government’s slouchy demeanour was too unveiled that eventually set free Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, an alleged architect of November 2008 Mumbai carnage. Not much different is the case of Malik Ishaq, leader of a proscribed outfit who was put at ease by the Punjab government when it withdrew an appeal for extension of his confinement. The government opted to plead a weak case and facilitate his acquittal.
The list does not end here. There are even more privileged names to count who receive a VIP treatment in official corridors. An astounding news report revealed that website of TTP could not be blocked because of lack of legal mechanism. The concerned authorities have expressed their inability to this effect under the pretext of absence of requisite legal instruments. One wonders why such legal tools are not required to block word press and other sites where public opinion is aired.
According to a newspaper report, a survey carried out by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has made a startling revelation about illegally constructed mosques in Islamabad. The report disclosed that out of 492 mosques in the city, 233 are illegally erected on state land encroaching non-perennial streams, right of way of major roads and other such expropriated public and private locations. The CDA mentioned the number of such mosques 83 in 2011. In other words, such mosques have grown threefold during past four years.
According to another survey jointly conducted by the CDA and police, the city has 160 unregistered madrassas and 72 day scholar Quranic institutes. Deobandi madrassas take the larger share of 193 out of total 329 seminaries in the city. Interestingly only one month ago, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, while replying to a question in National Assembly, claimed that Islamabad has only 30 unregistered madrassas. This indicates the lack of credible information at high level decision making forums.
A newspaper reported that in line with the recommendations of the National Action Plan, provincial Auqaf departments have gathered data of madrassas from all provinces. The survey revealed that there are 8,135 unregistered seminaries in the four provinces with an enrollment of 0.3 million students. Punjab tops the list with 4,125, followed by KP with 2,411 such seminaries. Sindh and Balochistan are not immune either and are home to 1,406 and 266 such institutions respectively.
Another report puts the number of unregistered seminaries in Punjab at 6,550.
Intelligence reports have been indicating that foreboding signs are ripe in the capital city and cannot be just dismissed with flippancy. All these facts corroborate the assertion of an Interior Ministry official that the federal capital is an “extremely dangerous” city. A senior official of the Interior Ministry made this ominous disclosure while making a presentation before the National Assembly standing committee in February 2014. The official claimed that the capital city had been at high risk and has become a sleeper cell of banned organisation members, including al-Qaeda, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). In a bid to quell the horror feelings, the Interior Minister dismissed the report and termed Islamabad a safe and secure city.
Not just Islamabad but much of the Punjab is also infested with militants. Leadership and administration of Punjab has been eschewing any confrontation and always attempted reconciliation with militants. This approach has provided safe bastions to militancy. Recently, the Interior Minister told a top level meeting that the number of proscribed organisations engaged in terrorism and extremism in Pun jab had reached 95.
Several newspaper reports indicate that intelligence agencies have been warning the Punjab government about spiraling militancy in the province but the cavalier Punjab government remained unfazed and conveniently ignored all such red alerts and slept over sprawling sleeper cells. This lax attitude of the Punjab government is not mere inaction or apathy of the PML-N government but it represents a segment within civil-military establishment that continues to believe in the fallacy of considering militants as strategic assets.
These intransigent elements always see foreign hand in every macabre incident occurring in Pakistan. This self-deceiving contentment is far from reality on ground where copious of evidences indicate internal hands as the real cause of prevalent malaise. It would be pertinent to mention that in 2013 a new chapter was added in the army doctrine that describes homegrown militancy as the biggest threat to national security. The army doctrine deals with operational preparedness and inclusion of this fact marked a major shift in the security paradigm. It is, however, yet to see how this cardinal doctrine is mainstreamed and policies and practices are fully synchronized across the board.
