Muslims are emotional The monthly Naya Zamana, in its June issue, carried a review of Zafar Aibak’s biography Khatiraat (1990) by Dr Pervez Parwazi. The book describes how an innocent young Muslim student of Government College Lahore was inspired by the clergy in 1925 into leaving India as Darul Harb (House of War) and entering Afghanistan with Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi and other ‘mujahideen’ to discover that it was a fool’s plan. Sindhi took money from the Russians to survive and Amir Habibullah was too busy copulating with his hundred young girls (concept of kaneez without nikah) to look after them. (Habibullah also fondled women of respectable families whenever he got a chance.) The main reason was that the Muslims in India were mostly uncivilised and uneducated and were under the spell of the equally uncivilised clerics. Afghanistan was supposed to be Darul Islam (House of Peace) according to the mullahs of India.
Urdu columnist as suicide bomber
Writing in the daily Pakistan, Asadullah Ghalib stated that some Urdu columnists had opposed the fatwa given by a number of ulema against suicide bombing. He said that if these columnists were so fond of suicide bombing, they should be sent to Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and Palestine in the form of a gang of suicide bombers.
Is there an ummah?
Writing in Jang, Irshad Haqqani stated that the future shape of the ummah will develop among the young men who followed Islam but believed neither in the traditional ulema nor the values of the West, but understood Islam in their own rational way and were becoming gradually capable of representing the world of Islam and its population known as ummah. He said that in the coming days, the extremism of the ulema will give way to these Islamic scholars who will be able to bind the Muslim world together in such a way that the ummah will become a reality. He said the biggest drawback today was the illiterate nature of the Muslim masses who followed the traditional mullahs blindly.
A conspiracy of provocation
Columnist Nazeer Naji stated in Jang that the publication of an insulting cartoon in the Washington Times and the revelation of the desecration of the Quran in Newsweek was a plan to provoke Muslims into killing each other. In Pakistan and Afghanistan there was violent protest but those who died were all Muslims. He said no one knew who was fighting who in South Waziristan, Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, but the violence against the mixed marathon in Gujranwala was like Pearl Harbour of Pakistan.
Actresses arrested in Gujranwala
The daily Pakistan proudly claimed that on its report, the administration in Gujranwala attacked the Anmol Theatre in the city and arrested four actresses and six others on the charge of spreading fahashi. The police was most efficient. It prepared for the operation and then assaulted the theatre and most competently arrested the actresses who were then taken to the thana and locked up.
Pakistani women without ‘burqa’!
Quoted in Khabrain, visiting BJP leader LK Advani’s family was shocked to see that women in Pakistan roamed around without burqa. They thought that with so much Islamic rigidity and Islamic laws, the women would be sitting at home or covered with burqa. They in fact noted that Pakistani women were good-looking and had a high sense of fashion in clothes.
Intermediate Board in ‘trubbel’
According to the Nawa-e-Waqt, four student wings belonging to religious parties and banned jihadi militias had started threatening the Lahore Intermediate Board after a question paper was issued with two verses of the Quran inadvertently mixed together by a typist of the Board. The Board had apologised for the mistake and given the examinees concessions but the student wings demanded that an inquiry committee look into the matter of blasphemy against the Quran with a religious leader inserted in it on their recommendation. The ‘student wings’ were Jamaat Al Daawa (Lashkar e-Taiba), Imamia Students Organisation, Islami Jamiat Tulaba (Jamaat e-Islami), MSF (Nawaz) and PSF (PPPP).
‘Little Pakistan’ is dead!
Writing in the daily Pakistan, Syed Akmal Aleemi stated that Coney Island Avenue was once Little Pakistan where a two-mile stretch was dotted with shops and restaurants owned by Pakistanis who roamed around in tehband, shalwar and dhoti while speaking Punjabi and Pushtu. After 9/11, however, most of the Pakistanis hoping to get naturalised had run away because of their illegal status. Now half of Little Pakistan was shut down and the rest of the shops were in the grip of manda (low custom).
Sectarian murderer triumphant after sentence
According to Khabrain, leader Gul Hassan of Lashkar e-Jhangvi (Sipah e-Sahaba) was making victory signs in court after being sentenced 45 times to death for killing 45 innocent Shia worshippers in Imambargah Ali Raza and Masjid Haideri in Karachi in 2004. He persuaded two suicide bombers to tie explosives around their midriffs and kill themselves for the sake of Islam.
Pakistan is secular!
The daily Khabrain quoted BJP leader LK Advani as saying that Jinnah had declared Pakistan a secular state. The fact that he had been asked to inaugurate the conservation of the Hindu mandir at Kattas also proved that Pakistan had no religious bias and therefore was a secular state. He said Jinnah was a great leader and Pakistan came into being because of him.