Editorial : Why Najam Sehti?

PKKH Editorial

PML-N has confirmed PPP nominated Najam Sethi , as their final pick for the CareTaker CM of Punjab. In this very crucial time, when the fate of the nation is to be decided in the up-coming elections, the Punjab government has again proven to be a lame opposition, hand in gloves with the Zardari regime, playing another game of underhand deals, oblivious to the democratic rights of the people who mandated them.

Why Najam Sehti, is the question we ask? Known for his Marxist ideology and arrested in 1999 on charges of trying to destabilize the country, raises the eyebrows of sensible people of Pakistan. June, 1,1999, authorities charged Sethi with “Condemnation of the Creation of the State and Advocacy of Abolition of its Sovereignty” and “Promoting Enmity Between Different Groups”. But as usual the courts ruled out the charges saying the government had provided insufficient evidence to justify Sethi’s detention.

The irony of the matter is that those who voiced support for Sehti were none from Pakistan but big organizations all the way from America. The Amnesty International The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists and World Bank president James Wolfensohn, immediately sent letters of protest and called upon the government to release Sethi; latter awarding him with Awards.

Opinion: Did Jinnah Wrong Us In Making Pakistan?

PKKH Exclusive | By Aneela Shahzad

Ayesha Jalal in her book ‘The Sole Spokesman’, first published in 1985, has presented a sharp scrutiny of the personality of the Quaid, Muhammad Ali Jinnah; alleging him to have made such political decisions that suited his personal ambition of making Pakistan, while in doing so, he had deliberately set aside the interests of the Muslims who were not to be a part of the Pakistan-to-be.

According to her, Jinnah claimed to be the sole spokesman of all Indian Muslims, not only in provinces where they were in a majority but also in provinces where only a minority was represented; and that the political geography of the subcontinent guaranteed that there would always be as many Muslims outside a specifically Muslim state as inside it.

In the first chapter of her book, she asserts, “The Cabinet Mission sought to solve the problem of British strategic interests in India by ‘giving both the claimants (Hindus and Muslims) some part of what they wanted…’; a Pakistan trimmed to the bone (Scheme B), or a central government stripped of most of its real powers, and not ‘worth much’ (Scheme A)… Once the Cabinet had given the go-ahead (in March-April 1946), the way was clear to offer Jinnah the alternatives of a small Pakistan with sovereign rights and treaty relations with Hindustan, or a larger Pakistan… inside a federation with Hindustan.”

She furthers her argument by counting the many merits that would come with a Pakistan inside a larger Hindustan, pointing out that: there was to be no union legislature, and any question at the center on which the two federal units failed to agree would be referred back to their respective group legislatures; agreement would not be imposed by central dictate, but by agreement between two federated governments; the Muslim-majority areas would have complete control over all their affairs except those specifically given to the center; and at the center ‘they would meet the Hindus on a level where it was States which counted and not the number of individuals in them.

Ayesha argues that in making an East and West Pakistan with ~95 million Muslims inside, the Quaid had left the same number or more, helpless at the hands of the Hindus in Hindustan.

Opinion: Social Media’s War Against Islam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PKKH Exclusive | by Syed Asad Shah

Anti-Islam propaganda under the guise of free speech is not a new thing anymore. There are hundreds of websites which publish anti Islam material in an attempt to malign the teachings of Islam. By the time our religious scholars and people adapted to the World Wide Web, these elements found a novel battleground in the form of social networking websites. Very soon this highly interactive and popular forum came teaming with misinformation. Thanks to the growing extremism and intolerance in our society incidents like ‘Badami Bagh’ have always provided a fodder for these Anti-Islamic elements. 

On Facebook – the most popular social networking website today – one often encounters an anti-Islamic page or profile. Until recently, they have been sprouting their hatred for Islam in English language. However, a sudden shift in their strategy was noted when they started to spread misinformation mainly in Urdu language typed in Arabic transcript. It isn’t certainly because of the love of Urdu language or their Pakistani identity. It speaks of something sinister, a strategy to reach out to the maximum of the Pakistani youth. After analyzing the posts of a few Anti-Islamic pseudo-liberal pages on Facebook, one finds a striking similarity in them. The way of addressing the people, grammar, writing style, fake stories of how-I-left-Islam share a common pattern. An outright similarity in the names of the profiles of those who often share contents of these pages is visible even to a cursory eye.  Inter connectivity between two different pages propagating the same ideology is obvious in many cases.

Meeting between Nawaz Sharif & Pervez Mushara

These days news about a meeting between Mr Nawaz Sharif and Gen (rtd) Pervez Musharaf in Saudi Arabia has hit electronic and social media. It is not blankly denied by either party. Speaking on a TV program, Maj. Gen (rtd) Rashed Qureshi and Ahmad Raza Kasuri had neither denied nor accepted it. As NS and PM both visited Saudi Arbia in recent months the observers presume a meeting must have taken place. They support their arguments primarily on the way Pervez Musharaf spoke in his last press conference about his return to Pakistan and the way his body language reflected his decision which was contrary to similar announcements previously.

By Dr Ghayur Ayub – Opinion Maker

One can look at this meeting against certain perspectives;

• American perspective; Zardari who is known for pulling out gun from his hip at eleventh hour, shot the Americans in their back when he agreed to hand over Gwadar to Chinese and let Pak-Iran gas pipeline deal go through. Americans would do anything to kill these deals or at least put a break to them. Coming eighteen months are crucial for them when they leave Afghanistan. They don’t want to see Chinese holding the jugular vein of the world economy at Gwadar or let an under-sanctioned Iran supply gas to Pakistan.

• KSA perspective; Saudis are weary of creeping Iranian influence in Arab world especially after ‘Arab Spring’. With opening of Pak-Iran gas pipeline they can see Iran not only spreading its tentacles towards nuclear Pakistan but in the process losing Pakistan as its trusted friend. They want to keep Iran politically isolated from Pakistan.

Pakistan: Children of a Lesser Evil

By Humayun Gauhar -Opinion Maker

Once again, Pakistan is being sacrificed at the altar of elections that don’t dispense democracy but ‘predatorocracy’ in which the system leaves the oppressed no choice but to elect their oppressors, the prey its predator. That’s the long and short of it. Now this predatory system is at flashpoint. Once again the danger is that it could bring the country to flashpoint too, just as it did after the 1970 elections. Thus we are trapped between two evils – hold elections and we have had it; don’t hold elections and we have had it. The people have to choose between the rock of one predatory party and the hard place of another. Elections can cause chaos; delay anarchy. We are in a difficulty, to put it mildly.

Wiseacres say that people get the governments they deserve. A genius proclaimed on TV that until the people improve and correct themselves their leadership would not improve either. How, in a country where the lowest priority is given to the human condition beyond politicians uttering syrupy statements that they don’t mean and forget the moment they are elected. It makes one want to puke. How, where a pittance is spent on education, where government schools are housed in chicken farms without clean drinking water or toilets, where headmistress force girl students to massage their legs and feet and if they don’t do it properly they are beaten on their hands with a big fat baton? How when the ‘education’ that is imparted is outdated and dysfunctional and the ‘teachers’ themselves need education. This while a chief minister doles out cheap laptops not to educate children but to get votes. It’s all about votes, votes and more votes by creating optics, optics and more meaningless optics. It’s pathetic many times over.

“As elections get nearer I’m still not sure that they will be held on time because of the frenzy of bloodletting that is feared, not against the system but myriad groups killing one another at greater pace. There could be an orgy of blood. But that too is part of the evolutionary process so let us learn our lessons. It matters not a whit who the caretaker prime minister is or who the chief ministers, though I am not so sure that they will all come out of it with their reputations enhanced.”