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=”35312″]
It is like you have an architectural drawing, which if followed properly, will give you a beautiful building. But all the engineers, contractors and builders working on it cannot build it right. Is it because they cannot read and interpret the drawing? Or is it that the building was intended to be built using different materials —stones, mud and wood —- and we are using concrete, steel, glass and aluminum?
Isn’t there, perhaps, a need to revisit the drawing and see if it needs to be adjusted to suit the contemporary building technology and building materials?[/quote]
@MQ – nice anology. good post.
[quote comment=”35348″][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…”
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]
@Eidee – There is an important distinction to be made here:
Religion – any – is a Godward endeavor, codified. Unlike Math,Physics, Geography, etc. it is not an objective science. These modern subjects aim to give us knowledge of the physical world, which can be grasped by the mind. However, the religious experience is a subjective one. Sure, the experiences of religious luminaries have been gathered into books, but at the end of the day, its an experience thats being communicated, not objective theories than can be mentally grasped.
Now, you can force your mind to understand Physics. The same approach towards religion will only yield theological merit and nothing more. Its like the pandits in Benaras repeating the scripture ad-nauseam, while he’s no closer to God than you and I. You’ll know the processes or one set of tools without the spirit behind. This spirit cannot be had by Googling. Thats my point.
Eidee Amin, I evaluate every issue on its own merits and on the issue of marraige for money or that of exhorbitant jahaiz etc., I entirely blame it on the cultural influence of Hinduism on our society over the centuries.
Islam has its own mysogenistic problems but these are not amongst them.
You are also presumptous in assuming that I don’t have knowledge of religion and I don’t continue to try and make sense of it.
Teaching respect for everything elders say or do is okay for children but not for grown men and women. So please spare the idea that age is necessarily tantamount to wisdom. Sometimes that’s true and sometimes not.
[quote comment=”35349″][quote comment=”35330″]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.[/quote]
Precisely. Consider the marriage nonsense in Pakistan. In some parts, the families of women are expected to come up with huge sums of money and meet idiotic demands just so they could get married to a scum-of-the-earth man. Akif Nizam, are you going to blame that on Islam or our own cultural jahaliat?[/quote]
You guys are funny! How can any religion be ‘pure’ in that sense? Every religion formed within some society. Take Islam in Arabia: did it evolve in a vacuum? Did it not react to the society that it grew up in? Are there are no Arabic cultural values,traditions embedded in that version? Same with Persia, Morocco, whatever. So who is going to give you a pure, in-a-vacuum religion?
My point is not that whatever culture pre-dated Islam in Pakistan is good. Simply that its par for course. Whatever you dont like of it, change it.
[quote comment=”35330″]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.[/quote]
Precisely. Consider the marriage nonsense in Pakistan. In some parts, the families of women are expected to come up with huge sums of money and meet idiotic demands just so they could get married to a scum-of-the-earth man. Akif Nizam, are you going to blame that on Islam or our own cultural jahaliat?