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.
zamanov I hope u r in a leadership position in PK & putting your rhetoric into pragmatic implementations. We have a crisis of rational leadership.
Eidee Man
[quote]”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.”[/quote]
If that 13 year old belongs to a lower income family they would put him in a madrassa. I am not being facetious when I say that. This is exactly what many families in rural Pakistan do.
[quote comment=”35357″]
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]
Okay, I’m done banging my head against the wall…no cure for the confused, depressed 30-something Pakistani man….
[quote comment=”35359″]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.
[/quote]
Very true. This is a big issue in India. In rural parts, its very entrenched, but in sections of the cities, and more so in the south than in the north, there is an easing away of this custom these days. At the least, its being softened up or morphing in form (to become less of a demand and more voluntary). It will possibly be a while before this spreads out in the masses.
One interesting, providential and unintended consequence of this custom in recent years: education being valued highly, for girls with market-place worth education, the dowry comes down significantly. This has meant many middle-class families ensuring that their daughters get some kind of a respectable degree.
Mahi, I agree with you 100%. I was going to comment along the same lines but you beat me to it…..and I probably wouldn’t have been able to put it together as lucidly as you did.