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For and against Malala Yousafzai -- Ishtiaq Ahmed
[Pak Daily Times] The world on the lam and particularly the majority of the people of Pakistain are holding their breath as the 14-year old Malala Yousafzai struggles for her life after suffering grievous injuries at the hands of Taliban gunnies, who on October 9, 2012, stopped her school bus, in Mingora, Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
and shot her in the head and neck. Two other girls in the bus were also injured. Malala received the best medical care that Pakistain could offer, and once her situation allowed, she has been sent to a specialist hospital in Birmingham, UK, where the reports suggest that she is slowly but steadily recovering. Other victims of Taliban terror have not received the same attention. Thus she is lucky because her activities in the international media, beginning with the blog at the BBC in early 2009 that exposed Talban atrocities, had made her famous.

Government and the middle of the road political opposition have been quite vocal in condemning the liquidation attempt. Army chief General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...
 went to the hospital to express his sympathy for Malala. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf also visited her in the hospital and President Zardari has described her as a symbol of Pakistain's resistance to 'Talibanisation'.

With regard to the Islamists of different varieties, the situation is, as always, full of circumlocutions. Thus for example, 50 holy mans of the Barelvi-Sufi Sunni Ittehad Council have issued a fatwa (religious edict) against those who tried to kill her. They have opined that Islam does not prohibit females from acquiring education. In the same fatwa, however, they have declared the United States as an enemy of Islam and Pakistain.

The logical connection between the two stands is difficult to figure out, but it seems to be a way of saying that all the troubles in Pakistain originate from its alliance with the Americans, who have been firing missiles from their drones, thus killing many innocent Paks. The Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
's Syed Munawwar Hassan and the head of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
 and many other Deobandi-Wahabi holy mans have also spoken in similar terms.

However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package...
 the Taliban seem undeterred and unrepentant. They have found support for their vile crime from sacred sources. They have asserted that a female who plays a role in the 'war against the mujahideen' can be and should be killed. They invoke an example of the Prophet Muhammad ((PTUI!)):

"[W]e can see the incident of the killing of his wife by a blind companion of Prophet Muhammad ((PTUI!)) because she used to say demeaning words for the Prophet ((PTUI!)) and the Prophet ((PTUI!)) praised that act."

Moreover, they refer to a Koranic verse, which according to them justifies their decision to eliminate her: "If anyone argues about her young age, then the story of Hazrat Khizar in the Koran (states that) while travelling with Prophet Musa (AS), (he) killed a child. Arguing about the reason for his killing, he said that the parents of this child were pious and in the future he (the child) would cause a bad name for them."

Now, if both sides can refer to the same sources to reach diametrically opposite conclusions then how on earth can such controversies now or in the future be resolved through discussion and consensus? For 1,400 years, this mode of argumentation has effectively killed self-criticism and independent thinking.

However,
the hip bone's connected to the leg bone...
 far more worrisome is the Pak ruling class's ambivalence and indecisiveness. Pakistain has been shocking the world by recurring acts of terrorism carried out by the Taliban and their associates and the power elite remaining paralysed and apathetic. Who can forget that when Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was mercilessly bumped off by his own police bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, some of his own colleagues in the federal and provincial cabinets issued statements that seemed to condone the action of that culprit. The presiding judge, Pervaiz Ali Shah, who found Qadri guilty of murder, has since then been on a visit to the holy land, and as far as I know has not returned. The killers of the federal minister for minority affairs, the Catholic Shahbaz Bhatti, have similarly not been punished for their crime yet. Then, of course, gruesome attacks on religious and sectarian minorities have been going on for years. Much worse, the Taliban recently beheaded Pak military personnel and yet nothing decisive happened. One can see on YouTube the shocking execution of these men being carried out in a barbaric manner.

So, how can one explain that a nuclear weapons state possessing one of the biggest and best trained militaries in the developing world is unable to strike and destroy the scourge that brutalises its citizens and has the temerity to kill its military personnel with such unmitigated savagery? I have no answers or explanation. To believe that these demented killers please God through their crimes against humanity and are somehow strategic assets that in a post-US-NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
 Afghanistan will help restore our ascendance in that country is sheer lunacy. At some point, the whole system will explode. If there is a will not to let this happen, then the Taliban-al Qaeda enclaves in North Wazoo and elsewhere must be destroyed.

It may be noted that on facebook, fans of the Taliban are busy pedalling theories that the army has itself criminal masterminded the assault on Malala Yousafzai in order to justify an invasion of North Waziristan! More ludicrous conspiracy theories cannot be imagined, but in Pakistain, perverted imagination has been having a field day since a long time.
Posted by: Fred 2012-10-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=354282