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.
why thank you bhindi gosht
lahori — now you are contradicting yourself — you wrote clearly that the press is not good at covering nirala adding that there must have been pressure on the press – you were pointed out an issue far more sensitive than nirala and told that there was no pressure on it to cover that issue (and in fact even if there was pressure it would have been resisted) and you now say that you are only talking about nirala —
also since you mentioned zim (Zafar Iqbal Mirza) and if you know him why dont you ask him how much of a Mr Know-it-all Omar R. Quraishi is — i will eagerly wait for your reply on this lahori
I agree with Yasser. The quality of the op-ed pieces in The News has gone up. Great work Omar!
I guess your calling people ‘clueless’ is not name calling but someone’s responding to it is. I guess this is part of the culture of one-way communication in the print media versus the two-way communication in the electronic. I certainly never accused an entire profession ignoble. There are plenty of very good journalists out there, many my dear friends. But I do think that the type of editorial excellence that was the hallmark of the late A.T. Chaudhry or Zafar Iqbal Mirza has been replaced by a more brash know-it-all attitude. It is not only the RIGHT but the RESPONSIBILITY of the public to comment on and evaluate the media, and those who dish out criticism on others for a living should have enough self-confidence to take a little themselves. The issue of disappearances has nothing to do with this. There are MANY areas in which the press has done extremely well. Disappearances is not the best example, but many others are – including, recently, womens issues, minority rights, curriculum debates, etc. My point was and is a very simple one. The disappearance of the STORY about Nirala is as astonishing as the disappearance about the Nirala brat himself. I have a right to wonder why it disappeared and, frankly, saying that people lost interest in it is totally wrong. Go to any social gathering in Lahore today and it will inevitably come up. Also, people’s interest in one measure but not the only one of what should stay alive. People will loose interest in the horrible murder of this MNA too. Just like people loose interest in the earthquake survivors. Is it not the responsibility of the media to keep the interest in these stories alive?
btw lahore instead calling me names plz answer my point about coverage of the disappearances
Why thank you Yasser