Adil Najam
Report from News (21 February, 2007):
A fanatic shot dead Punjab Minister for Social Welfare Zill-e-Huma Usman “for not adopting the Muslim dress code” at a political meeting here at the PML House on Tuesday. A party worker caught the accused, Maulvi Sarwar, and handed him over to the Civil Lines Police. Huma was at the PML House to hold an open Kachehry. As she was busy meeting the PML women activists, the accused sitting in the audience approached her with a pistol and pumped bullets into her head from a point-blank range… The accused, M Sarwar Mughal – popularly known as Maulvi Sarwar – is a resident of Baghbnapura in Gujranwala. Two police stations of Gujranwala and the Tibbi police of Lahore had booked Maulvi Sarwar for the murder of six women, but he was acquitted for want of sufficient evidence. His alleged spree of killing “immoral” women started in the year 2002. In his confession statement before the police on Tuesday, he said he was opposed to women holding public office. He added that after he read in the newspaper that the minister was holding an open court, he decided to kill her.
Sometimes you just wonder why! Sometimes you just want to give up!
I have been feeling sad and numb and down and dejected all day. I heard about the brutal murder of Punjab Minister Zile Huma Usman’s murder by a crazed fanatic some 10 hours ago. And I have been in utter shock.
I have tossed and turned. I had thought earlier that I would not even write about it. What is the use? When a society goes so mad that a woman is killed just because she is a woman, what can a blog post do. Just ignite more silly debates; more childish heckling; more immature point-scoring; trying to show how smart you are; or, more likely, trying to show how idiotic others are; reaffirming your own belief that you are always right, and everyone else is always wrong; single-track chest thumping; self-righteous finger-pointing. No remorse. No compassion; not a word of sympathy; not a shred of caring. All there is, is anger; getting high on our own anger; anger for its own sake; getting so very angry that you even forget what or who you are angry at.
But now I do want to write about this. We, as a society, have some serious thinking to do.
What killed Zille Huma Usman? Not religion. Not madness. But anger. Uncontrolled anger.
A society that seems to be fueled by anger. No conversation is seen to be legitimate unless it is an angry conversation. And the solution to everything seems to be violence. ‘Kill the infidels’ say the believers. ‘Kill the mullahs’ shout the modernists. ‘Hang them by the gallows.’ ‘Put them in boats and let them sink.’ ‘Death is what they deserve.’ We have heard it all right here. I suspect we will hear it again. That dastardly, self-righteous anger. This violence in the language, as Zille Huma so tragically found, becomes the violence of bloodshed all too easily. Today it was in the name of religion. Tomorrow it will be something else.
So, do me a favor folks. Give her some dignity. Hold your anger. Think about what happened. Ponder. And pause. For the sake of whatever is sacred to you; please pause!
An innocent woman’s life has already been taken by our inability to put a lid on our passions and our anger. Let us please not make a tamasha out of her death by making her a poster child for whatever ’cause’ we are parading for right now.
Adil,
As pointed out above, your appeals for ‘anger management’ have been ignored by some of the enthusiastic commentators on this post.
This is a tragic and shameful incident. It also shows that the lunatic fringe misguided by narrow and often misogynistic interpretations of our religion continue to play havoc with our society. This is not the norm, we all know but then the state agencies knew about this mad man and his past crimes. Why was he not in a mental institution in the first place. Partly, because he would presumably have many sympathisers. Let us not forget the beating of women doctors and nurses under the Taliban in our very recent past.
I am not sure that condemning the ‘mullahs’ or bigots tantamounts to condemning Islam or being disloyal to our religion. We need to debate about these things and arrive at some sort of a consensus in our society. Point scoring is the last thing we need in these dire times.
And, some of the personal attacks above are in real bad taste!
[quote comment=”35039″]”right to be outraged.”
Bravo. What a wonderful thing.
Isn’t that what this Maulvi Sarwar was exercising? His right to be outraged?
Lets all be outraged.
Lets go and kill everyone with a darhi.
Then we will kill everyone whose name is Sarwar.
Then we will be even, won’t we.
Of course, they may not think so and might want to make it even the other way.
But what the heck, we would all have exercised our right to be outraged.[/quote]
We should not kill the darhi(bearded) people to show our outrage we can apply some super glue on their (darhi) beard every time they kill a women, is that fine? ;)
[quote comment=”35037″]Truefacts!
No one is happy on the brutal murder of Huma, But using is dead body to condemn religion & start diversification of discussion towards ur own area of interest is equally brutal like murder. Don’t try to impose ur ideology on others.
[quote]
Okay just be unhappy and sit and watch or shall i say hope that justice will be done. She was killed by an extreme religious person, its not about religion its only about these fanatics and their ideology.
“right to be outraged.”
Bravo. What a wonderful thing.
Isn’t that what this Maulvi Sarwar was exercising? His right to be outraged?
Lets all be outraged.
Lets go and kill everyone with a darhi.
Then we will kill everyone whose name is Sarwar.
Then we will be even, won’t we.
Of course, they may not think so and might want to make it even the other way.
But what the heck, we would all have exercised our right to be outraged.
This was clearly religion motivated and should be condemned by liberals as well as religious people.
But thanks to some peole here overdoing things anyone reading this set of comments will think its the liberals who are the real fanatics here.