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.
[quote comment=”35340″][quote post=”583″]we as muslims dont understand our own religion propley[/quote]
…we have all heard this line ad nauseum from our elders since we learned the first kalma and a more meaningless line is hard to conjure up. What does that even mean ? It implies that a proper understanding of religion exists but muslims don’t understand it. So then who does? And how would one recognize it should they come across it?[/quote]
They would recognize it if they took the time and effort and actually make a half-ass attempt at learning a few tidbits about their religion.
If a 13 year old kid consistently fails Math, Science, or English, his parents will try to move heaven and earth to make him learn and perform properly. However, if he is good at other subjects and has total misconecptions about religion, they will probably think of it as funny …”haha, our genius fails Islamiat and Urdu all the time…”
Your first sentence is actually extremely important. You mentioned “our elders.” Those two words are constantly used to justify all sorts of pathetic nonsense.
Growing up, I had several friends who used to get physically punished (nothing intense though :)) when they got bad grades…their ‘elders’ would constantly repeat the regular stupid lines “study!” “work hard” leaving the kids clueless as to what they were expected to do.
I mean, hell, you found this website and lots of other stuff online…I’m sure you’re capable of finding some good information on Islam. But I guess it’s not as entertaining…
[quote post=”583″]we as muslims dont understand our own religion propley[/quote]
…we have all heard this line ad nauseum from our elders since we learned the first kalma and a more meaningless line is hard to conjure up. What does that even mean ? It implies that a proper understanding of religion exists but muslims don’t understand it. So then who does? And how would one recognize it should they come across it?
Aqil Sajjad,
What about countries like Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam? women do not fare any better there. In fact, women in Pakistan are much more liberated than their Saudi or Gulf counterparts. So, if at all, the “culture of our region” had a liberating influence on the Muslim women in Pakistan.
The murder of Zille Huma was discussed in the Senate last night. One woman senator from the ruling party, Kulsoom Parveen, had this to say:
[quote]”The government should take notice of the incident and a female relative of Sarwar should also be killed in the same manner to avenge the death of Zille Huma.” Dawn Feb. 23[/quote]
This is one of our lawmakers speaking! Should one cry or laugh?
One important contributing factor, of course, is the culture of our region, which predates Islam. Deeply entrenched misogynistic attitudes and practises are often justified in the name of Islam when they have absolutely nothing to do with it. Contrary to the common perception, Islam never really gained much foothold on our land, a lot of un-Islamic traditions have continued, its just that they were conveniently mixed up with religion and justified in the name of Islam.