Adil Najam
Pakistan is a land of creative cell-phone ringtones. Sometimes, I feel, a little too creative.
You are sitting in a meeting with some very self-important and staid people – officials, businessmen, buzurg grandfather types – and one of their cell-phone rings: and the ring-tone is a computer synthesis of “Sanou Nehr Waaley Pul Tey Bulla Kay” or “Nawa Aaya Aye Soonia.”
Even though the first is one of my favorite Noor Jahan songs and the second my all-time favorite movie, my head spins and I wonders if in a society where everyone is always so proper and so cognizant of “loug kiya sochaiN gay” (what will people think?), cell-phone ringtones are like catharsis. One of the things that lets people show that little bit of their “fun side” that they were otherwise suppressing. Kind of like the otherwise all-too-serious professor in the US coming to class wearing a Mickey Mouse tie (I actually own more than one of those).
Yet, it seems that the vigilantism of the piety police that is the extremist fringe in Pakistan wants to even snatch (literally) this little pleasure from us.
Here is a small news item in the Daily Times (January 18):
Militants snatch computers from ringtone shops
LANDI KOTAL: Local Taliban militants snatched computers from ringtone shops in the main Landi Kotal Bazaar on Thursday, sources said. Earlier, they added, the militants had warned them to stop downloading ringtones onto mobiles, terming it an “un-Islamic†practice. Around 10 armed Taliban came to the bazaar and took away computers from ringtone shops at around 5pm.
Whatever else you do, folks, please do not try to answer the question in the headline. It is rhetorical. Frankly, I have very little interest in what anyone, least of all some militants, have to say about this and I am sure that God has far more important things to deal with right now than how my cell phone rings.
I have chosen to write about this question because I think there are two types of people who do take things like this seriously. So serious are they in their beliefs that they are even willing to condone violence in the name of those beliefs. I am afraid of what the fanaticism of these two extreme groups can lead to, especially in Pakistan.
One type are the puritanical extremists within Islam who think that they and they alone have a monopoly on piety and theirs and only their view is right and who are willing – even eager – to impose, even violently, their view on all others. The Taliban, of whatever ilk, are one such group. The second type are those who obsess about things that are supposedly wrong with Islam and who love to believe such nonsense because it reinforces their existing prejudices. Who are prone to taking such actions by the extremists and then project it as if all Muslims are like this. This set of people are often equally extreme in their beliefs.
Luckily, neither is a majority. Unfortunately, the ranks of both are swelling. Oddly, but not surprisingly, these two extreme types have much – too much – in common; including the monopoly they think they hold over the truth.
Sadly, but also not surprisingly, these two groups are probably the biggest threat to Islam and Muslims today, including and especially in Pakistan. Even though I fear their impact and influence in Pakistan and on Pakistan, I – like most Pakistanis I know – reject the message of both these extreme groups. I prefer, instead, to listen to cell-phone ringtones that go “Sanou Nehr Waaley Pul Tey Bulla Kay” or “Nawa Aaya Aye Soonia.”
If guys out there are hell bent to fix the world by virtue of their religious beliefs and struggling hard to find ‘things’ they can fix then I have a suggestion for them:
“Safai nisf eeman hei” (cleanliness is half of the faith). Look no further than this and you will find every city, street, drain, river, watershed etc (…. the list goes on) on the land of Pakistan extremely dirty. Forget about every thing and clean your homeland. It will quench the ‘thirst for doing-something-for-the-faith’.
Non-fancy ringtones (or lack of these) can’t give a more hygenic and healthy life to our children – cleanliness can!
@ Khoob Guzray gi jo mil-baithein gay Dewanay do,
@D_A_N aur
@ aik aur Dewana,
khudhi sawal kartay ho,
jawab detay bhi ho khudhi,
following sher is very bareek, ghaur-talab hay :
bajatay ho, bhais badal badal kar been,
Bhaisain ati hein nazar, nazar ko kabhi
Rafay Kashmiri
Well Dewanay …
kya karoon yar….mera dil phat jata hai aisee baatain sun kay…
i will keep asking till I am provided with answers to these questions…
I will keep asking till i am blue in the face….
Its fine for people to make arguments and justifications for what they believe is right…BUT I now make it a point to call out outright lies put out as the truth by the Mullah and their sympathizers….and I make it a point to call out people when I catch them applauding the slaughter of Muslims…
I just cannot…in fact I just refuse to take it anymore…..
I cannot do much to affect things such as they are….but the only way I can raise my voice against these people is by now publicly…in most social places…asking them to justify why they think it is fine to spill the blood of fellow Muslims….just explain….
I believe that at least we need to challenge these people and force others to see the evil that exists in their hearts…
I have lost friends due to this but I am undeterred…
I hope others at this forum will follow me in the same vein and challenge the Mullah when they play cricket on the street….when they go to the mosque to pray….when they sit in the office cafe for tea….when they run into an old friend who is now a Mullah…when they get stupid emails about khuda ka leay and against my home Pakistan…
challenge him…and force others to see his true face…
you owe this to your Deen…your fellow Muslim brothers and sisters and to your home Pakistan…
D_a_n: bhains kay aagay been baja rahay hain? :P
Dear Rafay,
You’re saying that social life gains plurality with an islamic state?? Let’s say that i’m a christian. I can’t have a role in an islamic government. Can I? And what do I have less than any of the islamic people? Am I less intelligent?
So, the “biased legislators” are the ones that you defend: the islamic state ones. When I look at Ayatollah Khamenei I only think “what about if that guy doesn’t have the best moral in his society?”. What about? That means he has power on people that are way better than him.
From the christian history I learned that religion can’t mix with politics. It shouldn’t, anyway. That’s because a christian or islamic state is, by its nature, more attendant to its followers. A christian state despises islamists; an islamic state is, as well, less ‘good’ to christians.