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.
It turns out it wasn’t one mad man involved but quite a few. This man killed girls/women and some “Mukhayar Hazrat” would pay Khoon-Baha on his behalf. How do you beat that? I suspect the law is still in place and it will allow him to pay Khoon-Baha, hopefully this women’s family will not accept it and the man may end up in prison after all.
All praise to “Islamic” laws like this one and late Hudood ordinance, which create more problems than provide solutions.
my immediate reaction after reading the zil-e-huma post was to pour out my sadness in the post above…after doing that i started reading all the responses that this post has received…i do not wish to comment on any of the posts…however, i have lived my life with a very simple motto…i am a woman, i am a person and everything in life is my choice…nothing i do, nothing i live and nothing i work for is out of compulsion but because i want to be by choice..i understand that not every woman in Pakistan has this opportunity…but for how long can we go on blaming men for our misfortunes…we, the women of Pakistan need to stand up for ourselves…as much as it saddens me to read of Zil-e-huma, it also givesme the courage to look at the fact that here was a woman who was a wife, a mother, a daughter yet despite all that she was also out there trying to make a difference for the people of Pakistan…her convictions should not go wasted and i think we should bring this awareness in our schools, in our colleges and in our universities…if we want our men to respect the women then it will have to start from Pre-k, it will have to be inculcated in these boys as they go to schools and the girls need to know that this may be constant struggle but despite it if we can raise a 100 more women who believe that they can stand up and be a meaningful part of this society then it will have been worth the effort…moreover, i think Pakistan is changing…i have to believe that it is changing because Pakistan is whatever i dream it to be…it was a dream and sometimes the dream may turn into a nightmare but i think we should all remember that religion or no religion, beliefs or no beliefs, politics or no politics, we are Pakistanis first and foremost if want to believe in it strongly and we can overcome any struggle…
I am logging back in after a couple of days and what i see here is just so sad…its depressing…Zil-e-huma, a person murdered for no reason, the samjhota express disaster, the suicide blast in Quetta…all within less than a few days of each other…what is happening to Pakistan…when i think of pakistan i like to think of the quite and beautiful nights when i would sit outside in the garden with my father and smell the raat ki rani and the motia and people would be gossipping about who is to marry who and who is doing what…perhaps for most people life still is like that even now, but somehow, when i see all this i feel as though life is moving on…just as people have passed away, so has a lot of the good that i believed existed in Pakistan…it saddens me very much…
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Nothing can be more revealing on this topic than Sharmeen Obaid’s post above as it provides a first-hand apercu into the mindset of such individuals.[/quote]
Yes, but the tragedy is that these films are intended for a Western audience…I mean, if we really want to dismantle misogynism and other evils from our society ..shouldn’t the films be geared towards Pakistani audiences??
It is more a feeling of helplessness than anger with which I read about all this systematic victimisation of women in Pakistan.It is helplessness with which we stand by and watch day in and day out all these heinous crimes committed against women in Pakistan.It does not matter anymore as to which walk of life you belong to as a Pakistani woman ….it is just a sin to be a woman in Pakistan.It is true and utter helplessness which makes a woman say that.