Being the products of the myopic narratives about Pak nationhood and religion in our textbooks and the populist media, quite a few young educated Paks are struggling to find practical political, social and economic examples of the faith-driven Utopia that they were told Pakistain was to be. The problem with many among this generation of middle-class men and women is that quite unlike the earlier generations, they seem to have wholly bought into the farce of a religion-based Utopia they were told the founding founders conceptualised.
This is strange. In spite of the fact that they have more opportunities to acquire modern education and information today, this generation has somehow blocked alternative narratives that attempt to counter the one that defines Pakistain as some unique blob of religious, nationalist and political singularity. This is a reflection of a reactive strain of desperation, myopia and close-mindedness that have been creeping into the urban middle-class ethos.
A good part of this dilemma is also about how many young Paks feel awkward when their modern lifestyles fail to relate and connect with the brutal ways of creatures like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. So, as if feeling guilty about this, they have concocted various social escape valves with the help of modern-looking and sounding Islamic televangelists through which they believe they can keep one of their feet in religion and the other in the modern material world.
On the political stage, many have adopted Imran Khan ... who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... as their leader, perhaps because he too is a rather ubiquitous example of the dilemma this generation is going through: a reactive political, religious and social conservatism glorified as a revolution. On a more disturbing level, there are also some who have become venerable to what can be described as the modern and educated face of religious extremism: The Hizbut Tahrir (HT) ...an al-Qaeda recruiting organization banned in most countries. It calls for the reestablishment of the Caliphate...
The HT was formed in 1953 in Jerusalem by a former Moslem Brüderbund member. His professed goal was to unite the Mohammedan world under a single political entity (Caliphate) and the Sharia (his 'Salafi' version of it). In the 1950s and 1960s the HT was mostly active in Arab countries. In the 1970s it got involved in various coup attempts in Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Planned with a handful of military men and political holy mans, the moves were easily crushed.
The setback saw many HT leaders escaping to European countries, especially the UK. There the HT came onto contact with the second generation young Paks, Mohammedan Indians and Bangladeshis. Though staunchly anti-West, the HT was tolerated there because it was more vocal against the Soviet Union.
It was during this period that it began reworking its idea of a world caliphate. And since it was now operating in Europe, its activists began dressing in western clothes, speaking English and using modern political symbolism to communicate what was otherwise a retrogressive, if not entirely Utopian, idea.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the HT began sending its well-dressed and articulate recruits to Central Asian countries, but more than ever, the focus was now on Pakistain. Being the country most affected by the Afghan civil war a number of Death Eater and sectarian organizations had emerged in Pakistain. The fallout of the war was also a state-sponsored 'Islamisation' and the confusion that set in at the end of the Cold War. This confusion engulfed the urban middle-class.
Facing a regenerated conservatism, this class reached out to 'rediscover' its Islamic roots (without letting go of modern material aspirations, of course). The same thing happened in certain sections of the military as well. The HT also began infiltrating modern university and college campuses (especially in Lahore) with the help of sympathetic professors and teachers. It began recruiting military officers too.
The HT bypassed terrorism and concentrated on building support among middle-class students, professionals and the military men. In the new millennium, its leadership was convinced that Pakistain was ready to become the launching pad for an international caliphate. And it planned to use elements within the army to achieve this. Violence was not far behind.
In 2003, the HT was accused of being involved in an liquidation attempt against General Musharraf. An army captain was nabbed for plotting a military coup. According to a former HT man, Majid Nawaz, the HT does not discount the use of violence through the converted military men in its goal of toppling the Pakistain government and the military's top leadership to 'establish a Khilafah state'. He adds that the second phase involves spreading the borders of such a state through jihad.
Though the HT is banned in Pakistain (not banned in the UK), a recent report suggests it still has sympathetic groups operating in the military and in various private universities. The HT has given the somewhat concocted and worn-out Maududiist notion of Islam's 'pristine political past' a contemporary dimension. By using modern economic and political symbolism it has reconstructed this notion as a largely Utopian and farcical model for some sort of a golden, all-conquering future.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/22/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"The HT bypassed terrorism and concentrated on building support among middle-class students, professionals and the military men. In the new millennium, its leadership was convinced that Pakistain was ready to become the launching pad for an international caliphate. And it planned to use elements within the army to achieve this. Violence was not far behind."
#2
Actually, all muhammadans want calipha. The false-prophet left a united political regime in the hands of his designated successor (caliph): abu-Bakr. The very fact of 1400 years of sectarianism, and caliphates rarely in arab hands, should cause slaves-of-allah to wonder if some "god" really ordered an "angel" to pass "messages" to a "prophet." No "god" is that f___ked up.
h/t Instapundit
The Left has gone into overdrive in its attempts to rewrite the history of the riots, but the public knows the truth.
...The capacity for self-control, and the willingness to suppress one's innate selfishness or cruelty, is something that adults must consciously instil in children and reinforce in other adults by their attitudes to them. The indispensable tools of social stigma and moral judgment that communities used to have at their disposal for this purpose have been stripped away, and the result -- the fearless defiance of helpless authority -- is what we saw in its terrifying logical conclusion on the streets. That is what real people know: that they were right all along.
The root core problem of the Left is a simple one: it believes in the perfectability of humankind. To be 'progressive' is to believe that imperfect beings, if molded and led properly, one day would become perfect; the result of that would be Utopia.
The Left then simply cannot abide those religions that preach that mankind is and shall always be imperfect, and therefore must suppress religion. It cannot abide by the historical experience that teaches that men cannot and will never be perfect, and therefore must rewrite history. It cannot admit that 'perfection' is in the eye of the beholder, and therefore shall implement one and only one vision of perfection: that of the one man who becomes ruler.
Thus Bonaparte was the end result of the French revolution. Thus Lenin was the end result of the Bolshevik revolution. The characters change; the great moral delusion does not.
I wouldn't count on seeing 'the end of the liberals' great moral delusion.' They've kept those delusions in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the fact that they don't work. Their greatest asset is Attention Span Deficit Disorder. They're busy 'interpreting' the riots now. Eventually most of us will move on to thinking about other things and their 'interpretations' will be the received wisdom.
#1
There was a time within living memory when all reasonable grown-ups were considered to be on the same side. Parents, teachers, police, judges, politicians decent citizens of every station and calling formed an unspoken confederacy to uphold standards of behaviour within their own communities. But their shared values and expectations about human conduct were systematically undermined by a post-Sixties political ideology that preached wholesale disrespect for authority, and legitimised anti-social activity in the name of protest.
Was it Pelosi who said protest was patriotic? I know that was only as applied to Bush and was slanderous subversive sedition when spoken about The One. Certainly Pelosi's district is paramount in patriotic protest of the people.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/22/2011 6:17 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The left rode into power upon a narrative of the imperfections of society and civilization. What the left suppressed in its telling was the true history of mankind, largely of poverty and brutish behavior. The left's false promises have only delivered something even more imperfect, but with its destruction of institutions of civilization, leaves the masses with even less ability to rebuild the future without the usual pain man pays for such changes.
#5
Did seem like it was an equal opportunity looting spree...
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/22/2011 12:03 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Some of the UK looters arrested were not at all deprived and came from well-to-do families. They violated ancient standards of behavior because they enjoyed it and they thought they could get away with it.
#7
Large population of Libyans have lived in England for some time. The English noticed on the news how well Libyans spoke the English language in Libya. I wonder what will happen now after the show is over. I would at least keep an eye on the Masque's in England upon their return. The welfare is so much better but the opportunity for mischief is greater.
I think they were just as mentally impoverished by a parental welfare state as the welfare trash doing the looting was. Once the separation between earning and getting is founded the rot of entitlement sets in.
#10
If the rioters are not being drawn and quartered or broken on the wheel, I'd call it more namby pamby silliness and laboring under the insane assumption that locking someone up equals punishment.
Incarceration isn't punishment. Flogging at least, would be punishment.
Posted by: Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division ||
08/22/2011 17:25 Comments ||
Top||
#11
I would think Stalin was. Lenin was the setup guy.
#12
"Some of the UK looters arrested were not at all deprived and came from well-to-do families. They violated ancient standards of behavior because they enjoyed it and they thought they could get away with it."
Kind of like the GOP's friend on Wall Street that created this economic mess...
Posted by: Barbara ||
08/22/2011 19:23 Comments ||
Top||
#14
If I were so monumentally wrong in sprading lies before known truths (see: Dodd, Frank, Goldman Sachs, Democrat Party), I would tremble before God too
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/22/2011 19:36 Comments ||
Top||
#15
Kind of like the GOP's friend on Wall Street that created this economic mess...
Posted by someone who's never checked the Wall Street donor lists for the Donks. No man is blinder than he who will not see.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
