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.
Since this incident also relates to the police and judiciary (the fact that the killer was allowed to roam free), can somebody explain what happened to the police reforms announced in 2002 and why hasn’t the media done anything to follow up on the subject?
What happens very often is that the media picks up an issue, a few articles are written on it, and then the whole thing is forgotten untill some other similar incident takes place. I hope it will be different this time and the media will take up the issues related to this murder and continue to highlight them rather than forgetting.
May her soul rest in peace.
The mullahs are a big problem. But we have let them become a problem. The only reason why they are so successful in propagating their ideas is that there is a big political vacuum.
Think about it…ALL of the ‘mainstream’ political parties are basically grouped by ethnicity….Sindhis vote for PPP, Punjabis for various flavors of PML, and so on.
MMA is ironically the only party that seems to transcend cultural boundaries….so is it any wonder?
Zill Humma brought life in the social welfare department in Punjab which was doing nothing for many years. She initiated some very good projects for the protection of street children. She was enthusiastic for the rebirth and revival of social welfare department which shows her potential for progress.Her death undoubtedly shows the level of intolerance and barbaric approach of our society. May God her soul rest in heaven.
Unfortunately, this extremism is spreading very rapidly not only among the illiterate section of our society, but lot of educated people are getting involve into it.
I have a humble request for the contributors that please stick to the issue rather than asserting your ideologies aggresively over others. No doubt everyone has a right to see and analyse the things with their own lens, but one should not assert one’s point of view to be accepted by others.
I am sure that the ATP moderators are busy people and want a serious and sober discussion from contributors rather than trolling and condemning eachother. Adil, Owais and Bilal, please dont feel so dumb and discouraged.
Personally for me, ATP is a community where I find the real flavor of Pakistaniat but sometimes it gets very hard when people get aggrevssive and intolerent.But we have to deal with this reality too….
Adil,
What is really troubling is that there are people who may actually agree with this lunatic…The religious argument is a very strong one, by using it, the murderer will gain sympathy from a certain segment of society…
Today, during an interview, i asked a cleric in Afghanistan what he thought of female politicians, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “there is no place in Islam for female rulers and they should all be forcefully removed.” At first i dismissed his views as being “Afghani and backwards” of course i almost fell off my chair when he told me that he had lived in Pakistan since 1978 and had attended Peshawar University and that he was thankful to his Pakistani teachers for showing him the true path to islam….He then went on to say that he felt sorry for the young woman who had been killed in Pakistan, but and i quote, “what did she expect, she was playing with fire…”
The way i look at it: We shall reap what we sow…! And we already are!