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.
The point is who let the mullah control things? Its our fault we have leave it on them by not educating ourselves in our own religion. By blaming onto mullahs we can not escape our responsibility to understand Islam. There is also some exaggeration about how influential mullah in our society as you can see how many of us offer prayers daily? At the end of the day, everybody will be accountable for his/her own acts and can not blame that because of mullahs I stopped acting on Islamic teachings.
As tragic as this murder is, there is however a possibility that it could trigger a process of positive change.
This is not an ordinary citizen who got killed, she was a minister. Her death may serve as a reminder to the leading politicians that if they do not combat extremism and continue to avoid reforming the law and order system, even they won’t remain safe. If anything will serve as a wake up call for PML-Q (and others like PML-N and PTI who shamelessly refused to support the women protection bill) it could be this realization.
Eidee Man post no 110:
“What’s most unfortunate is that our mullah jahils seem to be getting their education from Osama et al and our ‘parhay likhay’ elite seem to be getting their religious education from Fox News.”
This is one of the best comments on this thread.
There are plenty of arguments within Islam against such mindless violance, and if we are to combat extremism, we will have to find an indiginous logic in favour of tolerance, otherwise there will be a lot more inertia from the society.
I would certainly agree. But I don’t think anyone is suggesting they are. However, I certainly think that blogs present a DIFFERENT view and one that newspapers cannot. Certainly in this particular case, I have read every English and Urdu newspaper account and comment on this and the comments here, sad as they are, present a truer picture of our divided society and its angst than anything else I have seen anywhere. This discussion provides a deep picture of the tortured social relationships that we have with our own identity in this society. Given the discussion here this is a sad thing to say. But unfortunately true. This is who we are: angry, frustrated, and ready to pounce on and maybe kill anyone who even slightly disagrees with us.
[quote comment=”34968″]there should be outrage all right, huge amount of outrage because there was evidence to convict the murderer before he did this heinous deed. geo news last night was showing a news-clip from 2004 in which this jaanwer, in an interview, confessed to being a serial killer. if our courts cant give phansee to serial killers based on their own confession, then god help us. god knows how many other serial killers have been set free by our honourable judges. i would also not rule out the possibility of extremist religious groups pressurising the courts into releasing this mad man. unfortunately we will never find out the truth because our newspapers will completely ignore this very important aspect of the case.
also i agree with ylh that this woman was shaheed. unlike most politicians who see power as an end in itself, this woman was working for a very noble cause which was the empowerment of women. she paid the ultimate price for her deeds and deserves no less a recognition than a sipahi defending the frontiers of pakistan. i am disappointed to see that this murder is not getting any more play on the tv networks i subscribe to. it will be a real tragedy if this life was lost in vain. the best way to remember this shaheed would be to launch an annual award in her name to highlight the achievements of a pakistani woman contributing to public welfare. even if we are able to contribute $1,500 for this award, that would be a substantial sum in pak. i would be willing to contribute substantially to this end. certainly a very good opportunity for this website to take the lead and make itself heard.
i also think this murder has more to do with the attitude of society towards woman which has nothing to do with islam. recently a pakistani man from nwfp residing in the uk murdered his family after a drinking binge. when it comes treatment of women, all tubqas are guilty. mullahs however can do the hounourable thing by condemning violence against women without any ifs or buts. their silence on this matter is unforgivable.[/quote]
There are serial killers all over the world. Majority of them are sadistic. Now what I believe is happening in our society is that the sadistics have taken refuge in the religion for it is safe under it as the mullahs are an illiterate lot not only in the academic sense but in the true understanding of religion also . Had the religious people been literate and rational no sadistic could have dared try using the name of ISLAM.
Coming back to murder the most sad thing is the killer was not sentenced for his doings earlier. In a country where judicial system is not able to convict a murderer and where the police is not able to gather ample evidences to convict a murderer and where sadistics continue using Islam as a refuge, these type of murders/events will not cease to happen.