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.
My prayers are with her family. I hope the horror f this tragedy will wake people up to the hatred in extremism that has become so common in our society.
Adil:
You are absolutely right what you have written. People living in Pakistan seem to have Affective Disorder; an anger problem; mood swings and intolerance. But what causes this frustration? You mentioned about the symptoms, lets start talking about their etiology and cause.
I support all of the above interactors here who have expressed their severe moral and humanistic outrage at this blatant murder of a female minister who was trying to do her part (by holding an open kutchery) in the industrial heart of Punjab.
The fact that she was murdered in broad daylight because some despicable person thought she did not conform to his religious vision of women is the worst form of narrow-mindedness and zealotry.
I can understand the outrage being expressed by Adil saheb, YLH and other posters just as any loving father, husband and son would feel the same.
I hope Yasser that you can follow up on her story and let us know if there is any sort of scholarship or trust that can be set up in her name (she was a lawyer too) that we can make our contributions too. Maybe start a Zil-e-Huma scholarship for aspiring female lawyers/leaders at a local law school and let us know the details.
I also hope that the media, both English and Urdu, does not stop covering this story and does it’s part to make this a landmark case in Pakistan’s history. Omar Quraishi I hope your paper can take the lead with this.
Berate the government for its hypocrisy in dealing with religous extremism that causes bigots and animals like these to roam around forcing people to follow their vision of religion. Provoke the religous parties in condeming this inhuman act as a fundamental violation of ISLAM and start a movement to address rights of females to become leaders in society in their khutbas and madrassahs (if they really care about women and their fellow ‘sisters’). If they can arm themselves with guns to protest against the demolition of an illegal building they can surely support the right of all WOMEN in Pakistan to live a peaceful and dignified life.
I hope sincerely this will be a wake up call for all the ministers, the army and any other person who cares about the future of this country. When female ministers can be murdered in cold blood in the name of religion then there can be no security for any other woman in Pakistan. I hope that Sehba Musharraf and Mrs Shoukat Aziz can make their husbands realize the urgency of the precarious status of women and law/order in our country.
Can this be the watershed moment in our history? Will Zil-e-Huma’s episode become synonomous with the assasinations of Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X for religous and human rights causes?
May God bless the departed and provide peace and patience to her family.
[quote comment=”35055″]One of our soft-hearted member even worried about her kids while he wouldn’t have made any attempt to ponder about millions of poor pakistani kids who are father due to different horrible issues [/quote]
How do you know I would not? Are you a walliullah? Have you no shame, going left and right spreading lies and offending people!
Pakistan is a lawless country where human life is a joke and religion is a mokery. Safety is the least priority. So whats the big deal about her murder????