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.
Dear Adnan Siddiqui,
I am going to ask you to refrain from making personal attacks against me.
Since you’ve never met me and most of your theories are conjectures and surmises, I suggest you dispense with the notion that you know who I feel sad for and who I don’t feel sad for.
Answer Farrukh’s question.
Farrukh,
Pray tell how my commenting on an internet forum expressing my point of view is the same as Mullah Sarwar going and killing this innocent woman or other women? Why is it that some people here want to draw a moral equivalence between words with no instigation of violence and brutal violence?
Had Mullah Sarwar been expressing his outrage through a forum, nobody would condemn him. I am beginning to think that people here just make statements to sound cool…. when there is absolutely no sense to them.
A genius said on this forum earlier that there is no difference those who use words to spread their ideas and those who use bombs to burn people alive. I suppose you agree with him.
Editorial in The News, Feb 22, 2007
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=4387 0
Misogyny 101
The assassination of a female provincial minister by a ‘fanatic’ in Gujranwala is a grim reminder that the slow yet steady headway being made in Pakistan on ending discrimination against women and bringing them at par with the other gender is always going to be hampered by self-styled guardians of morality and purveyors of misogyny. At the same time, one needs to exercise an element of care and should not be quick to link the murder of the minister with increasing Talibanisation/extremism in the country. One is saying this because though the alleged murderer has been accused of killing the female minister since she was “not wearing Islamic” dress, it is also suspected that he may be mentally unsound. If this condition is proven, then the motive for the killing of the minister, which, superficially, may be religion-based, could have more to do with the alleged murderer’s lack of mental soundness. According to the police, the man also is thought to have killed several other women whom he believed to live questionable lifestyles. He had apparently even been arrested in these cases, which were registered by the police in Lahore’s red-light area, but was released by the courts for want of evidence. This should be thoroughly investigated and it needs to be ascertained why this happened.
Of course, one is not denying the fact that over the years, and thanks in large part to General Zia’s so-called ‘Islamisation,’ Pakistan has taken a deep dive when it comes to tolerance levels in general, and particularly with regard to religion, minorities and women. That uniformed usurper used laws relating to women especially as a way of foisting his bigoted and obscurantist agenda onto the rest of the country. The nature of this campaign was so great and prolonged that its after-effects continue to linger with considerable adverse consequences for contemporary Pakistani society. It has to be said that we have our fair share of people who feel it their divinely-ordained duty to go around telling people (read women) how and how not to dress in public. In fact, in the not-too-distant past one heard of incidents where women – even in the relatively cosmopolitan city of Karachi – were asked by obscurantist individuals (who obviously thought that they were living in the Dark Ages) to cover up and dress modestly. The sad thing is that it wasn’t as if these women were dressed indecently to begin with but to certain people the only decent attire for a woman is one that covers her from head to toe, including her face. What makes this already bleak situation even worse is that many people who hold such views do not consider it wrong (in fact most may even believe it to be their mission) to go around forcing their literalist and rigid interpretation on all and sundry.
As for the alleged murderer’s purported insanity, that is something that will have to be investigated by the police, perhaps with the help of psychiatric experts. Empirical evidence suggests that many murders committed by insane people were done under the influence of delusionary behaviour and that a significant percentage of those diagnosed with such traits tend to see themselves as furthering a ‘religious’ or divinely-ordained mission. Of course, all of this has yet to be proved in this particular case. One thing is for sure, though: the murderer lives in a society with a strong and at times virulent strain of misogyny. It is a place where many people hold extremist and obscurantist views particularly regarding how women should dress and behave and many consider it proper to go about enforcing their pernicious views by force if necessary. The government should also investigate why the alleged murderer was let off earlier in several murder cases for want of evidence.
Pakistanian — there is something called the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance which allows the payment of ‘blood money’ by the murderer to the family of the victim —
Saif — sorry but disagree with you — blogs are v good but they are no replacement for the newspapers — not any time soon —
and newspapers have the added advantage of not only getting off something your chest but also initiating change — that reflects the fact that blogs r more personal and in a newspaper the motive may have more to do with being a journalist, i.e. professional