The Domestic Violence Bill

The Domestic Violence Bill

I am not a lawyer or a constitutionalist, but I am a mother and a wife; I do not weaken the strength of my household by making my children aware of their rights against their father or myself, but by making them aware that they are living in a state of welfare in the good-will and good-faith of their parents. In the due process we as parent, may several times be hurting their egos or abusing our authorities or inflicting upon them psychologically, but we insist that this is for their good. I believe Allah has given some amount of immunity to the head of the household, for the smooth governance of the matters of the household.

Wherein all fathers cannot be perfect and some can be criminally bad and they should be dealt with, severely, but their conduct cannot be pasted on the face of the whole society. Which is what I think, this new bill of ‘domestic violence’ will bring. This bill is a haphazard, cut and paste from the constitutions of difference countries, like the Philippines and others, which are essentially not Islamic. It’s espouse to the UN conventions make it essentially feminist and some of its clauses take a head-on clash with our religion. There is no protection, in the bill, for the male members of the family, who might not be dependent but in in-numerous cases are subject to psychological abuse from their sexual counterparts on gender bases. Neither does it show console with the victims that have been abused or used by the feminine part of the family. I believe such to be inevitable because of the inability of mere clauses to cover all the hurt, misuse and psychological trauma words can inflict. Even so, let’s be a little objective and observe some clauses of the bill:

The clause of Definitions 2(f), giving the definition of domestic relations identifies marriage to be equal to, ‘or either or both believed they were married to each other, including marriage according to any law, religion, custom or usage’ which might not be marriage under any religion or law OR ’they share or recently shared the same residence’ which legitimizes ‘living together without marriage’, which cuts off the Islamic way of living at the roots.

The clause (5) is ridiculous in defining the ‘informant’ using the terms ‘any person’ who has ‘reason to believe’ that violence ‘is likely to be committed’ and provides information in ‘good faith’; this is giving precedence of good faith of informant or complainant over the good faith of the father or husband, will he not right away falsify the accusation in ‘good faith’.

The clause (6) makes the privacy/safety of any household or even the victim totally vulnerable to the authority of the female or male union councilor cum protection team, whereby s/he can enter any premises without written complaint from the victim or any of his/her family members and merely at the demise of the informant trustworthy to the protection team. Giving her/him power of terrorizing anyone in her jurisdiction as the clause 7(7) says that ‘No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Protection Team or any member thereof for any act done or purported to be done in good faith in the discharge of duties under this Act, except as provided for in section 15(which again is unclear about any punishment for her/him).

The clause 2(g) which mentions the physically accountable crimes such as hurt, wrongful confinement, criminal force, assault, mischief, criminal intimidation, fails to explain its requirement when they are already covered under law and enforced under a policing and jailing system, whereby the protection team and the magistrate become something like a state within a state. And wherein all the other crimes mentioned are in no way physically measureable and are therefore left to the grace, good-faith and award of the protection team and the magistrate and of course the good-faith of the informant.

Moreover there will be a ‘Family conciliatory Committee’ which will work between the proceedings of the protection team and the magistrate, thereby being a third court, wherein the chairperson will try to ‘befriend’ the victim and the respondent (the criminal), so that they would happily go back to their home. As to, why this council would try to reconcile such a matter as, taken up on good-faith of the protection team and bad-faith of the respondent and turn it around wherein putting good-faith in the bad-faithed-respondent. Or is it going to be a merry-go-round or rather a maze of confusion wherein the victim and the respondent will surely forget why they entered.

Therefore in short amid all the terror prevailing our country, a new cane of terror will be unleashed in the society, upon the ill-faith prejudged against the male gender, whereby letting bare-open the security and stability signified in a closed and private society, where the provider (father/husband) is the controller and governor and the family has good-faith in him. Awareness will be warranted, to the women and the young girls of all classes, but especially the un-educated class, where the social-workers really put their trap; an awareness that they have rights and power to break away from the male, from the family and from the moral standards set by the olds. The same power and right that was abused by the male, will it not be abused equally by the female; when she comes from the same up-bringing, the same levels of empathy, the same socio/economic constraints. Is this not then, the feminist agenda, to cleave apart the bond that binds the two genders together, with the awareness that ‘he is oppressing her’, that ‘he is her enemy’.

All this preamble is not to defend criminal misconduct of any gender, neither is it to justify that awareness is essentially bad. It is to justify that biased, one-sided awareness is dangerous and un-lawful. It is to impress that economic, emotional, psychological and verbal abuse are very relative terms, the essence of which easily changes with the use of words and the day by day situations. Negligence, abuse and harm may not be so easy to measure and would look different to different members of a family.

Common sense tell me that social problems in a society will be cured by social means not by the whip, it is the duty of the state to impose law and police over its populace but its primer duty is to educate them, not with law but with moral values. The state needs to inculcate virtues in its men and in its women; the state needs to feed the models of modesty, love, support, honour, bravery, dignity and sacrifice into the minds of the populace from every possible medium that approaches their thinking. God and Godliness have to be preached into the hearts and the minds; when the eyes will be set high, the gaze will not set upon the lowly. But alas! What is the state feeding us, from every medium of information; lust, sex, materialism, individual fulfillment; until when one finds oneself; one is disgraceful as a national, vacant as a believer and barren as a human. This deliberate education of westernizing and Indian-izing, wherein the eye and the ear loose the war of patience and are dragged into desperation, they will do what they see, they will say what they hear.

Love, respect and support that the man, woman and the child all need equally, will not be won by war, blames and prosecutions; they will be attained by patience, by sitting in the people with stories of wisdom and valour; by giving back to the people the culture of reverence, wherein goodness is aspired for the love of it, wherein chastity, forbearance and self-restraint are the vogue of the day. This is the duty of the state, obtainable only by virtue of the social-worker, the preacher, the modeler, but shamefully so, our social work sector does not want to sit in, talk to, commune with the society, educate them in social gathering, preach the good and use the beautiful lesson of our religion as a means to change the hearts and minds. It looks like our social-workers don’t have time for that, they cannot come out of their drawing rooms, all they can do is look out of their glossy panes and tell the whole world how bad it is out their; how bad the man is, how oppressed the woman is, and want to arrest the sole-earner of the family in their cage of abuse; they want to police; don’t we already have one set of corrupt police in hand. Is there no immunity for the father, the husband, does he have no good-faith, can he manage the household without power; you give full immunity to the president when he is responsible for 18 crore people; he has no relation with most of us; but the father the husband, you start with him in disgrace and disbelief, does he have no empathy, will he have the moral status of a just governor, when all the good-will in and around him has been shattered. Well we shouldn’t be surprised! The workers of the imperialist agenda have imposed shame on our rulers, they live and work in disgrace, now they want every man in the country to live like that. Thanks to our gender-biased feminist social workers.


aneelashahzad

Battleground God

Battleground God

Lately I got across tmp online, the philosopher’s magazine; it has a set of very interesting philosophy games. These games test your moral standing and the rationality of your religious beliefs. I being a firm believer quickly set myself to play the game, but I wasn’t trained for it. To my grunt I scored as a morally disillusioned and a rationally inconsistent loser.

But I am not an easy loser, so I began to analyze the game once more and see how it had played me down. This particular game I am writing about is called ‘battleground God’, it has a set of 17 questions, and the aim is to trap you down against God, based on the ‘problem of evil’ (which is a theory that if God is al-good, all-knowing and all-powerful why does He allow evil to happen in the world). The questions are set in such an array, that you answer one thing in the prospective of human morality and the next thing is that you are made to question God on the same moral principle and you inevitably contradict.

Here is the gist of the working of the game, if you are going to say yes to: God is all-good, al-powerful and the basis of all morality then standing on a higher moral ground and having the power to do so, He must never have allowed any suffering to happen then you have to admit that God is either indifferent to morals or maybe He just doesn’t exist, otherwise you are being rationally inconsistent. Likewise if you admit that evolution is not true because there is not enough evidence for it, then you are trapped to say that you believe in God without enough proof and you are inconsistent again. Then, if you agree that your internal conviction for God’s existence is enough, you are trapped to say that a rapist is right in his inner conviction for doing the crime for some bigger good of his own imagination. Again if you say that God cannot make circular squares then you have to say that He is either not all-powerful or He is bound to abide by some kind of rationality, therefore, He is not the ultimate and that something is above Him. And then if it’s morally wrong to torture the innocent, why would God let innocent babies burn in fire. Therefore any person who believes in God would be bound to lose this test and prove to be harboring irrational beliefs.

So are we irrational and is our belief system inconsistent, is God really cruel or maybe just incapable? No, I don’t think so; I think the ‘problem of evil’ is a theory inconsistently put. It is a theory based on premises designed for an end and disregards many other possible premises that if considered would contradict this end and would change the whole mindset of the thinker.

Here are some I have made;
God made nature on laws
all parts are connected by laws
laws make the machine go right
when laws are working the machine is happy
man is the only machine that can break the law
God tells the man-machine the right laws.
man breaks the law
Makes breakage, sufferings, and unhappiness.
The whole system gets affected.
Thus power given to man God is all good and temporary given to man made all the mess.

OR
God wants to test man.
all-comfort is not a good test
He inflicts sufferings on him

OR
God is a good teacher.
Good teacher never leaks the answers.
Good teacher marks justly.
Good teacher punishes and rewards.
Good teacher repeats lessons and warns.
Good teacher does not pass a failing pupil.
Therefore He allows sufferings to prevail.

OR
God loves man the most.
God gave him one of His godly powers of free-will.
God expects good from man.
God knows he has made him perfect.
So He is willing to forgive.
He just wants him to return to Him after he has erred.
Should man not fulfill this minimal criteria, after all the sense, knowledge and ability he possesses.

Therefore it can be shown that several logical answer can be found to why evil exist, and why God wouldn’t eliminate it from the present system, a system made on trial bases; the trail of man. Not the ultimate, indestructible, ever-lasting system, which would stand as a case of God’s real intentions, where the promise of knowledge is to be fulfilled. The trick is to define God’s position on one’s own dictate and ignoring what God actually has to say about His own position. The fallacy used in this game is the ‘straw-man fallacy’, which is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position and attacks that ‘straw-man’ position.

Play the game and have fun.

  http://www.philosophersnet.com/


aneelashahzad

Anti-Blasphemy

The Anti Anti-Blasphemy Stance

There is a lot of brawl against the anti-blasphemy law enact in Pakistan, in the articulate medium. The beholders of the ‘freedom of speech’ yell out to us that barricading any idea, spoken, written or in form of an image, what-so-ever, is equivalent to snatching away one of the very first human rights, a free-born person is born with; If you put a fence on the thought process it is like choking the entire progress of humanity. The so-called liberal-humanists cry out to us that any single human life is too precious to be wasted away for age-ridden conservative dogma. Then there is an appeal to our pity; how can we see a man or a woman being mercilessly hanged to death for merely uttering a bad word against someone or something that was simply not sacred for him/her, are we not always casually taking against other religions and other ideas.

Another very interesting argument to circumvent the Muslim believer is; if you really believed in your faith so firmly, why would you be bothered by anyone saying anything against it, your agitation and your anger is the sign of your fear, a fear that a new idea might break the facade of religious dogma which is really resting on rusted foundations; You are scared of voices because they attack your irrational beliefs that have only stayed on owning to designs of fear and punishment.

My aim for this essay is to lay bare the fact how different fallacies are being used to attack the Muslim belief, by the masters of propaganda and to present a logical case against blasphemy.

While the ‘freedom of speech’ declarations are enacted by different articles of the United Nations and made a part of the constitutions of several countries in the west and also around the world, its espoused values have had quite a challenging situation from the origins. Several cases, regarding personal privacy and esteem have been recorded in the western courts, which have pushed the ever-adjusting courts to put limitations on libel, slander, obscenity and incitement to commit a crime. The article 19 of the ICCPR goes on to say that the exercise of the ‘freedom of expression’ rights carries ‘special duties and responsibilities’ and may ‘therefore be subject to certain restrictions’ when necessary ‘for respect of the rights or reputation of others’ or ‘for the protection of national security or of public order, of public health or morals’.

Therefore, the indefinable and unlimited version of the freedom of expression can only be dreamt of but cannot be deemed workable. Just like freedom of choice does not make a case for one to kill or rob, so too freedom of expression does not give allowance to disrupt the privacy, self-esteem, reputation and social structure of the society. But one thing is clear that in the prevailing air of liberalism, where progression and vogue render us clueless and hamstrung to ‘hear everything’, ‘see everything’ and ‘accept everything’, the only ones who have a right to their privacy and sanity are the ones with the power and the determination to make a case for themselves and stand up for it.

It is clear, that the freedom of expression is unable to stand up on its own grounds, whereby it could be harboured as a virtue that could demand of a people or a nation to forsake their social/moral structure, their privacy and their religious values, which bind them together as a peaceful, working society. Nor can it be allowed to agitate the moral conscience of a people, whereby they might be incited to react violently. Such allowance would not only create harm but would also spoil the reputation of this nation in the international community.

Let us now analyze the appeal to our pity; can we ruthlessly give a sentence of death to a human being, on account of something he said or wrote or drew, surely this seems to be an extreme position. But the question is, can the disgust to suffering undermine the disgust to crime, is it morally correct to sympathize with a murderer or a rapist, should his death not be the only way to satisfy the anger of the sufferer and the community. Therefore, this appeal to pity will only have to be weighed with the hugeness or the littleness of the damage contained in the so-called crime of ‘saying something’.

The core of the matter, will then rest upon the assessment of, ‘how big a damage can this freedom of expression bring?’ Those who study sociology, the role of religion in human society and the philosophy of the ‘worldview’, know that apart from the extreme minority of the atheists, the genus Homo has rarely ever made it without a religion (a worldview based on some kind of a God). A worldview required to satisfy the subjective needs of mankind, that answers age-old questions such as, ‘where we came from’, ‘where will we end’, ‘why we are here’, ‘what is the ultimate truth’, ‘what are morals’. These questions are inevitable, they are embedded in the very infrastructure of the thought process and they have to be answered. Forming a worldview is an inherent nature of human society, if you strike off one worldview, another will take its place, but this extreme generalization of reality must take place and that is precisely what religion is. So once we agree that belief of some kind is an inevitable necessity of the human race; nowhere and never will a society be found without it, the choice left then, is not between belief and non-belief but between which belief is the best for mankind. What a democratic, liberal, secular thinking can demand from us is to respect and accept difference of opinion but it cannot demand from us to forsake our own opinion. Therefore any ‘expression’ that deems one’s revered worldview as wrong, not in way of logical, rational reasoning but in way of insult, disgrace, scandal, slander and infamy has the potential not only to incite public roar but to tear apart the very fabric upon which the social structure of that society has been woven. Thereby, converting a relatively calm and working community into a radical, self-destructible mob with no sense of direction or a shattered one. Is such a crime of disrupting the peace of a nation, inciting the possibility of several deaths or maybe inciting a call for civil war, smaller than murder of a single person? So, so much for freedom; I could make a logical conclusion for freedom here, if freedom of expression is equal to happiness and if freedom of expression is also equal to incitement of bloodshed, then happiness is equal to incitement of bloodshed.

But a troubling idea still remains; why would ‘saying a bad thing about your prophet’ incite you. If you really loved your prophet, and really believed your religion to be true, why would you bother about what others are saying about him? This irritant can only be resolved considering the relative differences from nation to nation; not cultural or ethnic difference but difference of the height of the moral grounds upon which each society stands. For one man it might not matter, if the neighbors talk shamefully of his father or mother as long as he loves them, but for another man this may be utterly un-stand-able, which of the two men is on a higher moral ground. The first man might have turned passive for two reasons, either he thinks that his parents really have problems and he has to live with it or he thinks that he does not have the power to stop the neighbors. The second man might take out his gun because he knows that the neighbors are slandering and that his parents are not wrong and whatever power he finds he is ready to use it. Which of the two has true belief and true love? But if the first man had taken a stance for freedom of expression of the neighbors, wouldn’t that slander become the norm of his neighborhood; to the point that the first man could one day be saying, ‘I always say bad things about my parents, there’s nothing to be angry about that, why don’t you say some bad things about your parents too; that would make you just as rational a person as I am’.

There are also some allegations upon Islam, that fall into our context, but I am sorry to say that they are all based on fallacy-based arguments, they are: all religions have been proven to be based on falsehood, myth and irrational belief, its time the Muslims start admitting that their religion has faults too and start rethinking (argument by generalization; if 5 apples plucked were rotten the 6th will be rotten too); that Islam, like all religions demands infallible respect of its prophet, which practically goes to the equivalent of worshipping, as there is no space for reasoning or questioning (putting the cart before the horse; saying that the prophet is taken to be right because he is respected whereas the prophet was respected because he was on the right); death penalty for abuse of one particular person, gives him precedence over the rest of the people, therefore fractures the notion of equality (casual reduction; death penalty is not for abuse of the single person but for abuse of values of a whole community and incitement); Islam provokes violent nature in its proponents, makes ruthless killing a matter of pride for them (denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent; the reasons for provocation are completely dismissed, which may have reduced the graveness of the consequences).

To conclude, reverence of great men, who stood for love, peace, and the highest standards of morals, is one of the focal points of human thought, where all good ideas will accumulate, spread out from and associate to. The greater and the more elaborate, this focus is, the more it will penetrate in the lives of its beholders. Any society that lacks reverence of holiness inevitably falls into the trap of taking whatever is next to holy as its hero; either the people will fill their need of reverence by filling that space with idolizing low-grade things (like scientists are revered by some, but their findings and quotes cannot give a full code of conduct, and their findings are often proven wrong or they revere even lower things like the American idols) or they will be left in total skepticism. While there is no doubt that idealizing a corrupt standard would deeply wound the social/moral structure of that society, as one ill will lead to many others in a matter of time. But at the same time, to blotch an existing ideal of morality, with unproven accusations, at times when such a commodity is rare or simply not found any more, is to snatch away the possibility for any heart to remain pure or good. It is to drag society into a state of skepticism and a low morale. Moreover reverence is a psychological state of hallow, purity and association that allows the beholder to let his soul bask in the light of all-good, whereby the beholder is able to discover his inner subjective realm as a cherishable possibility; associating with goodness gives the reverent the moral strength to pursue the goals of goodness and set them high. Once that ideal has been snatched away, the hallow will turn into a hollow, a state of depression, towards which the winds of the vile will blow in, from all directions.


aneelashahzad

The Quaid Said

Why The Quaid Said This

 I am not a historian of the Quaid, but the Quaid is the founding father of my country and I have, since I can remember, taken pride in having this slim, elegant, meticulous man, personifying determination, strength of character and visionary out-look as the man who gave lead to a depressed people out of the chaos of indecisiveness and from the enstranglement of covet and uncompromising enemies.

Was my idea of this man based on delusion, was he an ‘anybody’ who fitted in our mental father-figure space, by some rule of psychological casualty; as a national, I have the right to know!

The assertion that Jinnah was secular is enough to jeopardize the whole thought of an ‘Islamic welfare state’, that most of us aspire for. This novel idea has the ability to gather loads of other suspicious ideas around it, so that eventually the whole facade of nationhood would come tottering down under its own weight of shame and disgust.

One thing is clear to me that Jinnah never used the word secular in any of his speeches, then where is his secularism hinted from; his dress code, his felt-hat, his English speaking, his many other friend who wore three-piece suits; I think that all these things help to paint a picture of a westernized man not very close to religion. But was he really a secular minded person, which would imply that he had no consideration of religion for himself or did he want a secular Pakistan, which would imply a system of government that does not take into account any consideration of religion in its functioning and its legislature, therefore the body itself becomes the supreme sovereign over its matters.

No, Jinnah never said that, rather, if one goes through his speeches, one might come to realizes that he used many western terms in his own corrected version, an Indian version or a Musalman version, so when Jinnah talks about matters, he uses words in the preferential context of the matter. For example, see how he uses the word democracy to his own definition:

‘When you talk of democracy, you are thoroughly dishonest. When you talk of democracy you mean Hindu raj, to dominate over the Muslims, a totally different nation, different in culture, different in everything. You yourself are working for Hindu nationalism and Hindu Raj.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we learned democracy 1,300 years ago. It is in our blood and it is as far away from the Hindu society as are the Arctic regions. You tell us that we are not democratic. It is we, who have learned the lesson of equality and brotherhood of man.’
( All-India Muslim League, Delhi, April 24, 1943)

First Jinnah took the word for its vice, that if democracy would be applied in united India, it would be genocidal, the very next he used it as cherishable entity, derived from the very heart of Islam, but only applicable in the Musalman setting i.e. an Islamic setting, rather, he seems to be saying that democracy would shoot out naturally from the Islamic system.

Why did this change of meaning happen, it was natural, Jinnah was standing at the juncture of three civilizations (Hindu, Muslim and the western), at a time when orthodoxy was being overturned by modern science-based thinking, so words could not have had the same essence or implications for all the different people. This might be precisely the reason why different thinkers can extract different assertions from his same words.

It seems that while he was not sure what the constitution of the country would finally be, he was sure of one thing that it would be according to the aspirations of the people. He knew that the Muslims and the Hindus were two different people and that Pakistan was to be made:

‘We are told by one party or another that we must have a democratic or socialistic or a “nationalistic” form of government in Pakistan. These questions are raised to hoodwink you. At present you should just stand by Pakistan. It means first of all you have to take possession of a territory.’
(League Planning Committee, New Delhi, November 5, 1944)

The Quaid’s open position as to what the constitution may be, might have been on account of preference of matters and time constraints, as he was a meticulous man not ready to pass his verdict until he has weighed it from every possible aspect. Therefore it can be expected from him that he would not pass decisive remarks on a matter that needed a full body of inquiry. Nevertheless there are statements of the Quaid which give lead to the fact that the Quaid had not a speck of doubt that Pakistan and Islam are replaceable terms but there are also statements that create an amount of ambiguity. Firstly I will talk of his pro-Islamic stance, while there are loads of such statements that show the Quaid’s resolute commitment to Islam, I have pasted so many of them just to prove his firmness on the issue:

‘We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.’
(Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force, October 11, 1947.)

‘We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind.’
( State Bank of Pakistan, Karachi July 1, 1948.)

‘You have asked me to give you a message. What message can I give you? We have got the great message in the Quran for our guidance and enlightenment.’
( NWFP Muslim Students Federation, April 1943)

‘No doubt, there are many people who do not quite appreciate when we talk of Islam. Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a code for every Muslim, which regulates his life and his conduct in even politics and economics and the like. It is based upon highest principles of honour, integrity, fair play and justice for all.
(March 5,1948)

‘The establishment of Pakistan for which we have been striving for the last ten years is, by grace of God, an established fact today, but the creation of a State of our own was a means to an end and not the end in itself. The idea was that we should have a state in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find fairplay.
(Broadcast Message 15th August, 1947)

‘Now you have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and equality of manhood in your own native soil.’
( February 21, 1948, Ack Ack Regiments at Malir )

‘What relationships knits the Muslims into one whole, which is the formidable rock on which the Muslim edifice has been erected, which is the sheet anchor providing base to the Muslim Millat, the relationship, the sheet anchor and the rock is Holy Quran.
(Address At Islamia College Peshawar)

‘We do not demand Pakistan simply to have a piece of land but we want a laboratory where we could experiment on Islamic principles.’
(In 1946, at Islamia College)

‘The Muslims demand Pakistan where they could rule according to their own code of life and according to their own cultural growth, traditions, and Islamic Laws.’
(Muslim League Conference on November 21, 1945 )

‘I have one underlying principle in mind: the principle of Muslim democracy. It is my belief that our salvation lies in following the golden rules of conduct set for us by our great lawgiver, the Prophet of Islam.’ (1948)

‘Everyone, except those who are ignorant, knows that the Quran is the general code of the Muslims. A religious, social, civil, commercial, military, judicial, criminal, penal code, it regulates everything from the ceremonies of religion to those of daily life; from the salvation of the soul to the health of the body; from the rights of all to those of each individual; from morality to crime, from punishment here to that in the life to come, and our Prophet has enjoined on us that every Musalman should possess a copy of the Quran and be his own priest. Therefore Islam is not merely confined to the spiritual tenets and doctrines or rituals and ceremonies. It is a complete code regulating the whole Muslim society, every department of life, collectively and individually.’
(Eid message in September 1945)

‘We must get Pakistan at any cost. For it we live and for it we will die. The Mussalmans have to struggle and struggle hard for their honourable existence….you must work and work hard. By doing so you will contribute substantially not only to the honour of ten crores of Muslims but to the crystallization of a free Muslim state of Pakistan where Muslims will be able to offer the ideology of Islamic rule.’
(Address, Public Meeting, Mardan, 24 November 1945)

If the Quaid was so adamant for the pursuit of Islam, then what of those who assert that the Quaid never even once used the term ‘Islamic state’ and that the sole purpose of the struggle was to secure the economic and social wellbeing of this minority nation. That the two nation theory was based on the unfair attitudes of the Hindus; that if they were just a little compromising we would have happily lived together; that those who migrated would not have done so if the Hindu army had not forced them out; that the whole company with Jinnah was clear that religion would have nothing to do with the affairs of the state. Statements that hint such possibilities have been placed below with a critical commentary.

‘The vital contest in which we are engaged is not only for the material gain but also the very existence of the soul of Muslim nation…’
( Punjab Muslim Students Federation – March 2, 1941)

This answers the allegation that Pakistan was made solely for securing Muslims economically and socially. Here are excerpts regarding Jinnah’s idea of the to-be-made constitution.

‘The constitution of Pakistan can only be framed by the Millat and the people. Prepare yourself and see that you frame a constitution which is to your heart’s desire. There is a lot of misunderstanding. A lot of mischief is created. Is it going to be an Islamic government? Is it not begging the question? Is it not a question of passing a vote of censure on yourself? The constitution and the government will be what the people will decide. The only question is that of minorities.
(All-India Muslim League, Delhi, April 24, 1943)

‘Begging the question’ is a fallacy, which means presenting a postulate, the answer of which is already in the premises. Which would mean that Jinnah had no doubt about the fact that Pakistan would be an Islamic state and considered this question to be a fallacy, made to create mischief. Whereas in the modern usage of the term, it may refer to as ‘to raise the question’, which would give the opposite assertion to Jinnah’s point of view. Another controversial statement that needs our serious attention is:

‘The constitution of Pakistan has yet to be framed by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principle of Islam. Today, they are as applicable in actual life as they were 1,300 years ago. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of man, justice and fair-play to everybody. We are the inheritors of these glorious traditions and are fully alive to our responsibilities and obligations as framers of the future constitution of Pakistan. In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission…’
(Broadcast recorded on February, 1948.)

So if the constitution was to be framed in the frame of Islam then why was it not to be theocratic? Because theocracy is a very specific term, it does not mean ‘religious’ like it sounds to be; it means the specific mode of governance in which a single religious personality, who is supposed as ‘divinely guided’, is to form the official policy. Any religious scholar should be clear upon this that nor the Quran, the Hadith or the Caliphate represent a theocratic model, rather they present a model of consultation, reasoning and Ijtehad, none of the four caliphs considered themselves above the intelligence or rational thinking of the others neither considered themselves beyond public scrutiny. Therefore when the Quaid is showing his fear against theocracy he must have its practical models in mind, like the papal system of the west, or Iyat-ullahs of Iran or maybe even the tendency in the Paskistani Musalmans to throw their blind trust onto any single revered personality or any particular school of thought. In fact the constitution should lock itself into the bondage of gathering the best minds of all schools of thought (modern, orthodox and reconstructive) and to undertake the constant process of integrating the present with the true soul of the ‘Deen’. The Quaid said:

‘What is Religion? Which government, claiming to be a civilised government can demolish our mosque, or which government is going to interfere with religion which is strictly a matter between God and man? The question is that the Mussalmans are a nation, distinct from the Hindus. (Ismail College, Bombay, February 1, 1943)

Does this statement assert that religion is every person’s personal matter and has nothing to do with the government? Or should we look at the statement in context of the situation it is addressing. A situation in which if Jinnah would present a fight for the religious rights of his community, these could be catered for in a united secular India, which was a collection of many communities. Therefore it was essential for the Quaid to assert the Muslims as something distinct from a ritualistic community, but to present it as a community that essentially needs territorial authority to fulfill its way of life; why so? Because their very identity is not just ritualistic, it is economic, it is social, it is political and it has a foreign policy.

Lastly let me present the notorious 11 August speech, upon which the facade of a secular Pakistan is usually made to stand.

‘You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any region or caste or creed –that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.’
(Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August, 1947.)

Anyone who is unbiased can easily affirm from the above that the Quaid despises the involvement or intrusion of the state in the personal decisions of people about their faith and their ritual choices and that the economic and social opportunities should not be distributed or disrupted on account of one’s caste or creed. But does he also want to say that the constitution of the state will not be made according to the dictates of Islam, or did he say that equal rights of Hindus or Christians in the country means that they could have their religious dogma inculcated in the legislature or the policy of the state. Is that a workable possibility; to combine opposing dogma! Then what does equal right means, does it mean a secular form of government, in which law and policy is absolutely free of religious ideals and dictates, where the body of the state becomes its own law-giver and sovereign above itself and its people, does that not give the theocratic powers to the rationale of the commoners; what goodness would that yield; and is that not what we are already experiencing in Pakistan due to an incomplete conversion of the constitution into its aspired form.

Have I now earned my right to be proud of the father of my nation! If I need to have a superman to fill that place, perhaps Jinnah wouldn’t fit in that place; he was a human, with his limitations, trying to sum up his physical and intellectual energies for a cause that he considered noble, and he did that above the average human ability. He raised himself above his ‘self’ and became the spirit and symbol of the Millat of the Indian Muslims; he may not be exactly what everyone wanted or aspired him to be, but he was certainly the one closest to their aspirations.

“Now you must not fail your nation and we shall have Pakistan, Inshaallah.” Jinnah.

aneelashahzad

Secularism

Secularism; the venomous intruder

Secularism might not seem to be such a frightening phenomenon if one considers it to be a system whereby the government does not intervene with the choices people make in their religious matters. Therein they exercise full freedom in going by their aspirations and that this is secured by keeping religious dignitaries away from the government offices so they won’t be able to impose their particular religious agendas over the masses. Outwardly this may seem like a rational idea but immediately it has struck the democratic right of a people if they simply want a religious person to represent them.

If you consider a secular form of government; one that will be free of all religious dogma and that the law will be free of religious discrimination and will be based on the (Justinian) civil law, which is an ever-adjusting codification system, the tables are surely turned on you. You will have a system of government that has no religious belief and will act in accordance to its own estimates as to what is good and what is bad for its people. The very near logical end of such a system is its conversion into a materialistic totalitarian and at the best a utilitarian system, as the state does not possess the instrument that will measure or define what the subjective needs of its people are.

Furthermore if the whole society is to embrace secularism as its ideal then its people have to embraces human reason and ethics and have to specifically throw of the shackles of religious dogma. In Pakistan, a country in which civil law and some amount of Shariah law have gone side by side and where the masses are not ready to do away with their aspirations, there is another kind of danger we face from secularism.

This is the danger of the vow of certain organizations and groups to bring down the educated sector of the nation to their knees in compliance with secularism. This is a silent move, as in, the majority seems to be unaware of it but it is clamorous, as in, the reading, writing and speaking space of the country is filled with it. The agenda is, to present secularism as a force that brings freedom of speech, rethinking of beliefs, rationality; tolerance for the others and more space for individuality. All these are extremely attractive slogans for a youth already confused between the extensive media retreats, the surges of the information age and the contradiction between the double standard of social practices and the moral/religious code.

These organizations and groups have occupied a vast space in the internet; as social blogs, newspaper blogs, chat-houses so on…, many hosts of popular television talk-shows speak their language, in fact much of all the media is dictated by the trends they set for them. These groups are also active in making clubs and community centers wherein the youth is given a lot of opportunity to express itself in music, drama and discussions; the approach is to keep everything open, everybody is ready to hear everybody, you can express your emotions, your doubts and possibilities; in a positive air such as this it is possible for the ‘change agent’ to work comfortably.

A change agent may be a person, an idea or maybe even a word. Sociological experimentation have sorted out the fact that it is much easier and non-alarming to bring out change in a society by doing it in a slow, soft, friendly way, in just a ‘by-the-way’ manner rather than to be imposing and bossy about it. For example (in case of homosexuality) if I just put a billboard on a rather busy road in the city, saying ‘HOMOSEXUALITY IS WRONG’ this might not agitate many people as most of us will agree with the message, but every time everyone will see that board, he or she will be forced to think about the issue. Children will be exposed with the ideas and their curiosity may lead them to experience or experiment with homosexuality for themsleves. So, the change agent does not have to superimpose her idea on the other, it merely has to introduce some words, ask a question about it and let the idea evolve in her target community until they will be ready and eager to talk about it or be influenced by it themselves.

The agenda of these groups is very deep and wide; for a people to of give up their beliefs, a lot of damage has to be done, so here are some of their points of concentration; tolerance is portrayed as possibility for individuality to thrive, whereby any vice would be considered a virtue as long as the individual is ready to stand for it; the vices of the society are repeatedly hammered on the memory of the individuals and proven to him/her that religion and irrational belief is the root cause of all these evils; tolerance is preached to such extents that one is to allows one’s nationhood, one’s belief, one’s morals and in essence the very fabric of one’s sanity to be desecrated; the venerable personalities of both nationhood and the religion are targeted in such controversial ways as to create doubt upon their credibility and character in ways that the untrained individual is not prepared for; the rights of minorities are defended in such a way that the identity of the majority becomes vulnerable; and in between all this many times Islam is directly hit as a forsake-able, lethargic disease. Islam is portrayed as a burden that hinders progress, rational and scientific thinking and something that stands in the way of human happiness and satisfaction.

The upholders of ‘secularism’, who come to our country with the slogans of tolerance and free-thinking, under the guise of their ‘love for humanity’, in such ways as described above, are thus able to tear apart the fabric of our society; the once secure family structure of the educated class, that was embedded with love, sacrifice, respect, where the individual could subjectively connect to the whole, feel the strength of unity, do good for the sake of good and depend upon God as the ultimate returner of all deeds, is now slowly but effectively eroding away.

Belief has to give way to tolerance, respect has to be forsaken for the growth of the individual and the subjective self has to give itself to be measured in objective scales of measure.

aneelashahzad

Quddus

   What’s in the name

     Quddus

                The word quddus comes from the base word quds (qaf-dal-seen) the word quds holds the following meanings in the dictionary

1.   To go far away in the country side

2. To be pure

3. To hollow, sanctify, consecrate

4. To declare God far removed from evil

5. To bless, to be the blessed

  
 This amazing name of Allah reveals that Allah is so infinitely far removed from our physical universe that He is literally hallow, that although He is omnipresent, everywhere, all the time, that is by virtue of His knowledge and control but as far as physical presence is concerned, He is far, far removed. The physical realm is a realm of limitations and physical urges that have to be fed, but for one to be free of obligations, necessities, laws and rules one has to be outside the system. Like the hermit who has gone to live in the jungle is free from the social constraints of the sedentary life; Allah is pure of all constraints, as He is the creator and sustainer of all systems, not a part of any system. So He is pure, in terms of all virtues, all powers, all knowledge, He is absolutely blessed and the distributer of holiness in the universe.   

          
The nonbelievers have always tend to relate God with the physical attributes that they themselves experience but Allah repeatedly says to them in the Quran

   “…pure is He of all that they attribute on to Him…” (6:100)            

     
 In fact He is so far removed and independent, He is in a kind of hollow, as compared to our physically dimensioned world (with many undiscovered dimensions yet). But in His own realms, unimaginable realms, sophisticated and ultra-high-tech realms, He might be in any form of existence as He wishes goodly for Himself.

              
 In the Quran this word comes only twice as Allah's name, that also in combination with another name:The sovereign king, the very sanctified, hallowed ;

      “… al Malik al Quddus.”                       (5:23)

     “…al Malik al Quddus.”                         (62:1)

    

The other eight sightings of this word in the Quran are: in four places the word is used to describe Gabriel, as the Rooh ul quds, twice it has come for the sacred place where Moses encountered the voice of the Lord, Wadil muqaddas i tuwwa, and once for the promised land, the Ard el muqaddasa.  And in one place, amazingly, as a verb, when the angels say to Allah;

   “…and we hallow ourselves for Thee.”             (2:30)

       
Here too, the angles mean to say that they move themselves from one realm of existence to a totally other one and keep repeating that, to hallow themselves and to experience, in a lesser scale, what there Majestic Lord experiences to absolute degrees. The same is encouraged in man, when the Prophet (PBUH) asks the mommineens to ‘cultivate the attributes of Allah in themselves’. Man can rightly ‘far remove’ himself from the filths of this life, yet be in total control, only by observing the true balance laid down by the Quran and Sunnah.

      
This word, not only, holds beautiful meanings but also has an amazing historical perspective, I believe that the words good and God have been derived from the word Quds :
 The words ‘ haMalech haKodesh’ and ‘Elohim Kedoshim’ are present in the Hebrew bible; it follows in Jewish and Christian traditions that Jesus, son of Mary, the Christ, used to call Allah by the name ‘Malech Kodesh’, frequently in his last days, also when he had to, he would quicken the dead, by Allah’s command, by calling them in the name of ‘alMalech alKodesh’. When this revered name of the AlMighty, travelled with the Christian followers from the sematic language zone into the European speakers, it changed from Kudus to Gudus, Goodes, Goods, Gods and God, also Gott in German. The same word when travelled east, became Khoda in Persia and Koodda in the subcontinent. The currency of this name proves not only that all the prophet were preaching the same Deen but also that the name might have travelled from the time of Noah, Hud or Abraham into these diverse cultures. It certainly did after Jesus and the spread of Christianity in Europe. Whereas with Noah, Hud and Abraham civilization has spread in the middle east and downwards.

          
AlMalik AlKaddoos, in combination, draw a most pleasing scene of the kingdom of a King who possesses everything, yet who is the most noblest, most hallow; not an arrogant king ready to use his power to inflict upon others, but a purely good King ready to disperse His goodness upon His subject. It gives a picture of serenity and solemnness, of the kingdom of eternity and goodly providence, as show in the words of the Quran:

 “and when you see it, you will see abundance and an amplified kingdom.” (76:20) 


aneelashahzad

       

Subhan

What's in the name
 Subhan

          
 Subhan is one of the most oft recited name of Allah in the muslim community, repeated several times in each of the daily prayers, oftly repeated in the Quran and recited hundreds of times on rosaries by many muslims everyday. Infact rosaries are called 'tasbeehs' by muslims, which means to mention the word 'Sabbaha', which is the root-word comprising of the letters 'Seen, ba, ha'.

Traditionally, the word Subhan is translated as 'the Pure one’, which is a correct meaning, but this, emphasized, name of the immensely resourceful, intricate knower of all knowledge, ruler and king of all, surely holds much more to its meanings.

For so many years i have been rehearsing the some meaning (the pure one) with complete reverence from my part, when, one day reading through the Quran i came across the passage where the angels were arguing with Allah upon the deputation of Adam on earth ,when they said;

"Will You make in it, one who will make corruption in it and shed blood, and we purify (sabbaha) with Thy praise and sanctify (nuqaddisu) for Thee; said (Allah) surely I know what you know not". (20:30)

For a moment i was stunned! how is it that we always use the word 'sabbaha' to describe Allah's purity and here the angels instead of calling the praise of Allah by saying 'oh Allah! You are pure’, are asserting that we (the angels) are purifying ourselves and sanctifying ourselves. That doesn’t make sense because these words are considered by us as words of praise and celebration and it is worthy of none to praise himself in front of the King of all kingdom.......curiosity led me to the lexicon.

 In the dictionary we find the following set of meanings for the word 'sabbaha' (sa, ba, ha)
1.swim, course along the water                                                                      
2.glide, pass, spread, the sundisk glides(sabbaha) along its path            
3.travel far                                                                                                 
4.run swiftly                                                                                         
5.occupation in task, going to and fro                                                    
6.dig(in the earth)                                              

 It is notable that the common factor in all these meanings is 'going from one medium to another' or from one reality to another, like the swimmer is constantly oscillating from the medium of air to the medium of water and back.......and like, when the sun disk enters the horizon of our earth, it is entering a new reality, a new world.

Going far (travel), dig (in the earth) also refer to, escaping fully from one set of reality to a completely different set of realization. The same goes for being occupied diligently in a task, in which a person completely cuts of from his environment and goes into a specific concentration of thoughts.

 How these meanings would fit into what the angels were saying, were they not saying that, 'we go far and travel from one reality to another to purify ourselves, like passing through a sieve'. Because the reality (realization) of an atom is different from the reality (realization) of an ant, the angel appointed on the control of the atom would have to dig into its world, its body, its thought, its destiny.

 So then, the angels are saying that they are constantly changing states, going through awe, wonder and toil, which purify their own thought and feelings towards their praise for their Lord. But..... what is Allah's answer to the angels in the very next iyahs. It seems that though acknowledging the ability of the angels to move in and out of different realities, Allah is putting an even bigger challenge in front of the angels; 'Do you know the names of all things?'. As if, Allah has given knowledge and power to the angels only in specific realms but not given them comprehensive knowledge, to put all the things together and to see the whole picture.

                
"and taught Adam the names, all of them, then affronted them to the angels and said, ‘inform Me with the names of these, if you are truthful".(2:31)                                                                       

             
"said (the angels), 'You are pure (Subhan), we have no knowledge except what You have knowledged us, surely You are the Knower the Wise".(2:32)                                                                                                                

             
"said (Allah), 'oh Adam! inform them of the names', and then he informed them of the names". (2:33)

              
"said (Allah), 'hadn’t I said to you that I verily am the knower of the unseen (ghaib) of the skies and the land and know what you show (tubdoon) and what you hide (taktamoon)". (2:34) 

 But again.......why would and how could the angels hide anything from Allah, there is something amiss here, what do these words actually mean; the base word of 'tubdoon' is badaa (ba,da, aa), meaning ; to begin, create afresh, going from one land to another, repeat from the start, experience. The base word of 'taktamoon' is katama (ka,ta,ma) meaning to conceal, keep back, hold. So, Allah must be saying 'I know what you create (by His command) and what you hold back', i.e. He knows what realms of realities they experience and how far their reach is.

 These meanings fit in amazingly into the blessed name of Allah, 'the Subhan'. The One who creates and holds back all things (assigning subordinatory powers to angels). He can come in and out of all realities, realizing their states at all levels. Taking 'man', as just a single example, He knows and realizes us at the level of the cells, the nerves, the oxygen and the carbon. He is in the heart, the brain, the soul, the conscience, the subconscious.

 But He is not just in me; He is in the billions upon billions living on the planet, in all the stars in the skies, in every photon, in every microwave traveling in space. He is, in and out of everything, so swiftly that He can manage all the numbers and all the variations, yet He is, all the time, totally composed in His personality; on His throne, no one ever seeing Him not on the throne. Just close your eyes and imagine someone so swift to be everywhere all the time, to be so knowledgeable to be able to break in the physical code of all things. Not only creator and sustainer but abolute realizer of all things.

That is where the meaning 'pure' comes from, if you can be in everything all the time, you overpower all situations, you are independent of them. The more you know the more you are sieved, and if 'by your knowledge', you are always 'in', but otherwise you are always out, then you are 'pure'. Because out of everything you have created, you will be ready to associate the 'good' of it to yourself but the 'bad' of it, you would rather discard and dump.

Consider one of the most revered recitation held by the ummah, proposed by the prophet(PBUH) himself: "Subhan Allah wa bi hamdihi subhan Allah hil azeem"

Meaning, He is the absolute realizer of everything, His being in and out of everything, in the way of knowledge and realization, purifies even His hymn because when He is felt by the beholder, in and out of itself, in mysteriously divine ways, the beholders realize His presence in some conscious our subconscious way and the constant recharging keeps the hymn pure.

  Now, consider yet another mind blowing iyah;                      
 "Everything in the skies and the land purifies itself for Allah...."      (57:1)

What!!....does everything in the skies and the land come and go from one reality to another and back. Isn't this exactly what the modern quantum physics is purporting; that the photons and the electrons have shown a very strange property of being visible and invisible many times in the smallest amounts of time, i.e. they exist and cease to exist and come to existence again.                                                          


"The atoms and the elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities and possibilities rather than one of things and facts". (W.Heisenberg)

Are they not then, oscillating from one reality to another and purifying themselves to show gratitude to their Lord and to hymn His praise.

 Thus are the overwhelming meanings of this single name of the Grand Majesty of this universe and many other universes and of His inconceivably spectacular throne.

aneelashahzad