We Pakistanis are fortunate enough to have a person of Abdul Sattar Edhi’s stature among us; who has been constantly involved in the humanitarian efforts over the last so many decades. I had written The Real Humanitarian in 2006 when Muhammad Youns of Grameen Bank had won the Noble Peace Prize. At that moment I thought how come a Nobel Peace Prize committee ignored the struggle and activities of someone like Edhi. Recently, Edhi won the United Nations prize for his efforts. Edhi in my view, deserves Nobel Peace Prize too so let’s make our voices heard.

The Real Humanitarian

In fifty-nine years Pakistan has produced just one Nobel laureate Dr. Abdul Salam. The younger generation of Pakistan knows very little about this prominent scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for his work in electroweak theory. Unfortunately due to his religious beliefs he didn’t get due recognition from the government in Pakistan.

People often think is there any other Pakistani who could win a Nobel Prize for his genuine efforts in the scientific field, literature or peace? There is certainly one humble personality the more one analyzes his efforts and achievements spanning over five decades the more he seems to be a strong contender for Nobel Peace Prize. Always clad in a simple gray shalwar kameez, black cap and chappal he is none other than the Pakistan’s most loved and respected philanthropist, Abdul Sattar Edhi.

Born in Bantva, a small village of an Indian state of Gujarat to Memon parents, Edhi was taught to be kind and compassionate towards the needy people since his childhood. In 1947 the Edhi family migrated to Karachi. At the age of fifteen Edhi got financially independent as he started off his own small business. Soon after that he got associated with Bantva Memon Dispensary in Karachi. That was the time when he officially started social work. Following some administrative disputes with the other members of Bantva Memon Dispensary, Edhi parted his ways with this organization.

In 1951, he set up his own dispensary at Mithadar that would provide medical assistance and medicines to the poor. Edhi gained popularity among the masses during the 1957 flu epidemic in Karachi. It was during that time that he bought his first ambulance called “Poor Man’s Van”. Later on in 1974 he established the Edhi Foundation. Today Edhi Foundation owns a fleet of almost 600 ambulances, 1 helicopter and 2 aircrafts hence making it the largest volunteer network of ambulances in the whole world.

Edhi Foundation has 3,500 workers and thousands of volunteers who work in over 300 centers all across Pakistan with daily expenditure of 1.2 million rupees. The Foundation runs 8 hospitals in Karachi, including clinics, maternity homes and blood banks. Edhi dispensaries are established all across Pakistan where people get free treatment. There are six nursing schools that provide basic training to the nurses and so far have produced 40,000 qualified nurses. The Foundation’s Apna Ghar, is a home to 50,000 destitute, runaways, orphans and mentally challenged people. Besides that the Foundation has also established shelters for women and Jhoolas for the unwanted infants. His Foundation works day in and day out to make the difference by providing health facilities, food, shelter and basic and vocational education; these are all the duties of a state but instead of looking up to someone he quietly does his work. Edhi Foundation swiftly responds at the time of natural calamity and other crisis. After the earthquake on 8th October 2005 the Edhi Foundation was among the first to reach the affected areas.

Edhi Foundation hasn’t limited its welfare activities to Pakistan only. The Edhi International Foundation has branches in 34 countries including UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Dubai and Bangladesh. The main task of UK and USA branch is to provide the facilities of temporary residence to the people hailing from the third world countries who come for a treatment to UK or USA. These branches provide assistance to refugees; maintain community centers and work for emergency relief such as after the 9-11 Edhi offered aid and assistance to the New York government and after Hurricane Katrina donated 100,000 dollars to relief efforts. The Foundation also sent relief items and established centers in the countries affected by Asian tsunami of 26th December 2004. Lately Edhi personally visited Lebanon during the Israel-Lebanon war and provided medical assistance and food to the people. Moreover he donated three ambulances to Lebanese government. After witnessing the gruesome scenes of death and destruction in Beirut he requested for immediate cease-fire.

In 1979 Mother Teresa was given the prestigious Nobel Prize for Peace. She, a Catholic Christian of Albanian origin dedicated all her life to the poor people of Calcutta and later on expanded her activities to the other cities of India. By awarding Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus this year (2006), the Nobel Committee has certainly broadened its criteria for selection. Edhi has been given many national and international awards and honors in recognition of his services to the humanity such as the “Ramon Magsaysay Award” given to him in 1986 and “Lenin Peace Prize”, awarded in 1988 besides Pakistan’s highest civilian award, Nishan-i-Imtiaz in 1985. In 2000 the Italian government awarded him the ‘International Balzan Prize for Humanity Peace and Brotherhood’. And most recently he won the UN prize for his services in promoting tolerance and non-violence.

The time has come that the Nobel Committee should also consider Abdul Sattar Edhi and his Edhi Foundation for the Nobel Peace Prize. Edhi is one such personality who is selflessly serving the humanity in distress from many decades irrespective of their religion, caste or social status. His achievements speak volumes about his credibility. He is a simple man with no political affiliations and with a vision to bring peace into the lives of suffering humanity.

Usually I refrain from religious debates because I believe in certain things that are a complete departure from the mainstream beliefs. Secondly, I neither like to thrust my opinion on someone nor I can tolerate it if someone does especially when things get abusive and nasty. Anyway, growing up in the Muslim household we start hearing the word hoor since childhood. Lately, this concept has been abused and distorted to the unimaginable lengths by the would-be suicide bombers, their trainers and Jihadis which pain me as to how Islam has been manipulated by the section of people for their own vested interests.

Once I was watching Aalim Online on Geo TV. Someone (a man) called up and asked the Mullah as to what will women get in Paradise. The Mullah gave the oft-repeated reply that women will have their worldly husbands as hoors. That was such a corny reply! I thought what will those women who die unmarried, young, or are killed by their brute, abusive husbands get there? It is very much possible that an innocent woman who got killed by her own husband might be entered in the Paradise while her husband would be paying for his sins in the hell. There are too many lose ends to this concept. So let’s get back to the basics and try to understand what does this word hoor mentioned in the Quran actually mean and why this word has been mentioned and in what context:

The concept of hoor is not that complicated to understand. The only thing is that word hoor has been wrongly interpreted. The word hoor occurs four times in the Holy Quran;

1. “Moreover, We shall join them to companions with beautiful, big and lustrous eyes”. (Al-Dukhan Verse 54)
2. “And We shall join them to companions, with beautiful, big and lustrous
eyes”. (Al-Tur Verse 20)
3. “Companions restrained (as to their glances), in goodly pavilions”. (Al-Rahman Verse 72)
4. “And (there will be) companions with beautiful, big and lustrous eyes”.
(Al-Waqi’ah Verse 22)

The word hoor is a plural of ahwar (applied to a man) and of haura (applied to a woman), signifying one having eyes characterized by the quality termed hawar. Which means intense whiteness of the white of the eye and intense blackness of the black thereof.

The word ahwar (singular of hoor) also signifies pure or clean intellect.

The other word i’n in the Verse 54 of Al-Dukhan, zawwajna-hum bi-hur-i’n is plural of ay’an (meaning a man wide in eyes) and ai’na (meaning a woman wide in eyes). It is noteworthy that the whiteness is also a symbol of perfect and unsullied purity and therefore the two words hoor and i’n really stand for purity and beauty.

In order to understand the true significance of these words two points must be borne in mind. First, that paradise is a place for faithful women as well as faithful men. The Holy Quran often speaks of the faithful as being in paradise with their wives.

“They and their wives are in shades, reclining on raised couches.” (Al-Yasin Verse 56)

In this verse although the faithful are spoken of as sitting on thrones with their wives but the Holy Quran doesn’t speak of any conjugal relations being maintained in a physical sense in the life to come. Where the blessings of paradise are spoken of, these are nothing but physical manifestation of the spiritual blessings which the doer of good deeds enjoy in this life too. There are gardens, trees, river, milk, honey, fruits and innumerable other blessings but all these are not things of this world.

The Holy Prophet (PBUH) is reported to have said, “Allah says I have prepared for My righteous servants what no eye has seen and no ear has heard and what the heart of man has not conceived.” (Bukhari 59:8)

The Holy Quran also speaks of such blessings in the similar words,

“So no soul knows what refreshment of eye is hidden for them; a reward for what they did.” (Al-Sajdah Verse 17)

These blessings are hidden from the physical eye of man. The blessings spoken of in paradise have been explained in the pure metaphorical sense for the man’s convenience and understanding.

The second thing is that the blessings of paradise are alike for women and men. There is not even a wee bit of difference between the two genders. It is evident from the Al-Ahzab verse 35,

“Surely the men who submit and the women who submit, and the believing men and the believing women, and the obeying men and the obeying women, and the truthful men and the truthful women, and the patient men and the patient women, and the humble men and he humble women, and the charitable men and the charitable women, and the fasting men and the fasting women, and the men who guard their chastity and women who guard their chastity, and the men who remember Allah much and the women who remember — Allah has prepared for them forgiveness and a mighty reward.”

This verse speaks that the women can attain every good quality to which the men can have access and settles it conclusively that according to the Quran women stand on the same spiritual level as men.

Some people may raise the question as to why are these blessings described in words which apply to women? The fact is that the reward spoken of here is one having special reference to the purity of character and the beautiful deed of the righteous. And it is the womanhood not manhood that stand for the symbol of purity and beauty. Therefore the reward for good and pure deeds has been spoken in term which applies to women.

This must however be noted that in Arabic language one word can have diverse meanings. That is why both the words hur and i’n are plural of words applying to men as well as to women and also to qualities and deeds. Hence the white-eyed, large-eyed ones or pure, beautiful ones, the hur i’n of verse
54 of Al-Dukhan are not actually beautiful women (of this life). These are heavenly blessings which the righteous men as well as women shall have.

Dr. Zakir Naik holds the same view! And my research is to an extent based on his findings.

Are you ready for the change? What difference will it make in the lives of ordinary people anyway? But there is something that hurts and it is ever growing instability in the country and extreme interference of the foreign powers in our internal politics besides of course the struggling economy and eternal corruption.

Excerpts from Dr. Shahid Masood’s article:

The main problem being faced by the US administration, which it may never admit publicly, is that the present set-up with Asif Ali Zardari as the de facto ruler, has no credibility at home and no ability to deliver on the promises he makes, either on the military side or on the war on terror or on governance issues.

Other officials I met were even blunter. They say the US abhors corruption, kickbacks and commissions anywhere in the world as a matter of policy.

A Pakistani, who knows a lot about developments in Pakistan and the US scene, said that apart from this purely legal and domestic scene, there were four possible ways through which Zardari could exit. These ways were repeated by others who had nothing to do at all with the previous source. They are: one, impeachment; two, voluntary resignation in the wake loss of credibility; three, ‘natural’ or man-made elimination of the president, and, four, an Army coup. The impeachment and coup scenarios are considered non-starter and impossibility.

Source: Americans see a change in the air in Pakistan

Pilgrimage to nowhere

8th January 2009

Fatima Bhutto

The old Bhutto mazaar, or graveyard, is in a small town called Garhi Khuda Bux. It is not fair to call it a town; it’s a hamlet really, nestled between swaths of fertile agricultural land and small town centres that cater to travelling traders and produce distributors. When I was younger, I used to know we were close to the mazaar as we drove by the old paan wallah. He was a geriatric who sold betel-leaf paans, conical beedi cigarettes and a pack or two of Gold Leaf extra-strong smokes from the table he sat on. The mazaaritself was hundreds of years old and is where the Bhuttos have been buried since they settled in Sind. Wooden pillars, carved with lattice designs, marked the absence of the four walls that would have enclosed the open-air burial site. It was a sombre resting place: four corners of Sind lay open around you, and the dusty smell of the air in Garhi Khuda Bux’s desert climate surrounded mourners who came to mark death anniversaries and birthdays.

It’s all gone now.

It was torn down by the last member of the family to be buried there, Benazir Bhutto, and rebuilt as a mausoleum. In a country where politics has always orbited around personalities, she was determined that hers would be the largest and the grandest. Benazir rebuilt the old family mazaar in the manner of an Aladdin-style castle. The structure has a domed roof, four minaret-like points facing in different directions, a grand driveway so that no one need bother to walk, and elaborate staircases which lead nowhere. It’s revolting. It looks like the Disney version of the Taj Mahal.

A visiting journalist once asked me what was going to be built on a second storey of the grandiose mausoleum, the one the staircases presumably were erected for. “A gift store, probably,” I answered. I was joking. But there is one now – actually, there are plenty, they’re just not on the second floor.

Outside the mausoleum there are juice sellers, men with portable pakora and popcorn machines, stalls selling pictures of all the dead Bhuttos and more stalls selling posters and tapes of the dead Bhuttos’ speeches. It’s macabre, but this is the shrine that Benazir built for herself; this is the afterbirth of her death.

Now her posters, in the manner of those at Sufi shrines, hang inside the mausoleum, over the graves even. There is no space for the sacred, there is no space for grief, only space for advertising and political grandstanding of “Look whom I’m related to”-type posters, “Vote for my children, they’re next!” warnings, and so on.

One year after Benazir’s assassination, this is what her legacy has come down to. And it is fitting that in her death, like in her life, there is no talk of principles or ideology, only of personality and genealogy.

There is, however, a small matter to contend with: the larger legacy, so to speak. Two months after her violent death, the party she headed as chairperson for life (an actual title) – the Pakistan Peoples Party – came to power on a sympathy vote. The people voted for a ghost and they ended up with her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and her cronies in power. Pakistan is, to date, the only nuclear-armed country in the world led by two former criminals. And as the new PPP’s first year in power comes to a close, coinciding with the death of its chairperson, I feel compelled, as a Pakistani, to recap what all this means and to ask, “What legacy have we been left with?”

Clearly, it is a legacy with no sense of irony. In the United States the Pakistani diplomatic mission to Texas is hard at work raising funds for a Charlie Wilson Chair of Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Out of all the people in the universe who should have a chair in Pakistani studies named after them, the American congressman who funded the mujahedin (now Taliban) through Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, is the stupidest person to choose. Remember how well Wilson’s efforts turned out? Well, right here in Pakistan we have daily reminders. In the last week of December, a branch of the Peshawar Model School was attacked. The school, which offers private education to 12,000 of the poorest children in Peshawar, North-West Frontier Province, was targeted by the Pakistani Taliban – thanks, Charlie Wilson – because it teaches girls and boys together. Two buses were burned to a crisp and ten others were quite seriously torched. A parcel of dynamite that exploded in the principal’s office maimed several staff and groundskeepers.

US drones continue to breach Pakistani sovereignty, with the blessing of President Zardari, who proclaimed to those being anonymously killed that “the air strikes will go on”. Somebody told him that was a bad PR move, so he quickly rescinded the proclamation.

The front page of a leading English-language daily last month carried a statement by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of army staff, in large, bold letters, “Kayani pledges matching response to India strike in no time”. The story directly opposite read, in a con siderably smaller font, “US missiles kill seven in South Waziristan”. This referred to civilians killed on 22 December, but, in fact, the unmanned drones have been killing since the autumn.

While it remains acceptable for Americans to come and kill our citizens, Pakistan’s government has issued bombastic and seemingly harsh statements to counter the threat of a possible Indian air strike following the fallout of the Mumbai massacres. It’s nice to be distracted from an actual daily death toll, after all.

There’s more, lots more legacy to contend with. At a mid-December Asia Society panel in New York, grave charges were placed against Pakistan. Salman Rushdie, no fan of Pakistan (and why would he be, when the country’s parliament pledged its continued desire to prolong his fatwa and allowed several members publicly to offer to kill him after he was knighted in 2007), summed up the way people are now looking at Pakistan: “The headquarters of al-Qaeda, the headquarters of the Taliban, the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Toiba, the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammad is in the world centre of terrorism – Pakistan.” For emphasis, he added, “All the roads of world terrorism lead to Pakistan.”

For those Rushdie bashers who would be quick to fatwa him for that statement, it is worth remembering that he is as Pakistani as he is Indian, his family having moved to Karachi and lived and died there.

But it is not just Rushdie who lacks faith in this new Pakistan. A poll conducted in the country in October by the International Republican Institute showed that 88 per cent of Pakistanis think their country is heading in the wrong direction. Fifty-nine per cent said they felt their economic situation would worsen in the coming year and the PPP received a rating so unfavourable that the pollsters compared it to former President Pervez Musharraf’s figures last January. Why should Pakistanis have any confidence in their government? Recently it was made known that the puppet prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, had spent 50 million rupees on five foreign trips over the pre vious four months. That’s something close to £450,000 – for one man (and his very large entourage, apparently). I smell corruption. You’d have no sense of smell if you didn’t.

Legacies aren’t enough in Pakistan. They never were, but now we have ample proof why. Personalities and dynasties are meaningless in a country where, every day, gastrointestinal disease kills children because they have no access to potable water. Legacies are insulting in the face of mass suicides, carried out by members of Pakistan’s poorer classes because they simply can no longer afford to live.

Mohammad Azam Khan worked for a private cable channel. He killed himself in early December, having not received a salary for five months. His colleagues held protest rallies around the country, but no one – especially not the media – wants us to remember his name or why he felt he had no choice but to take his own life.

Pakistanis have bigger problems to contend with, bigger causes to grieve for than Benazir Bhutto. And yet, a year on from her death, we are still at the mercy of our ghosts.

Fatima Bhutto’s article cum letter published on 4th December 2008

Open your eyes, Dave

Dear David,

I hope this letter finds you well. Do you mind if I call you David? “Mr Miliband” sounds so formal, given your affectionate relationship with my country. It was such a lovely surprise to have you over. It warmed our hearts, really it did. I especially enjoyed your faith in our new government (you know, the one headed by two former ex-cons?). The CIA and Nato have both praised Pakistan’s new regime for its enthusiastic assistance in the war on terror, and now you’ve chimed in. I find it’s always nice to have supportive friends when you’re at war with your own citizens.

But back to you, esteemed Foreign Secretary (maybe I could just call you Dave?). You welcomed the “reforming zeal” of Pakistan’s present government, adding that under Asif Zardari’s stewardship Pakistan has been turned into an outward-looking force. Flogging an extremely dead horse, you went on to say that Britain was keen fully to support Pakistan’s “democratic” government. The quotation marks are mine, not yours, clearly. Let’s talk about some of that reforming zeal you were so impressed by.

In a push to inaugurate as many chums as possible into high-powered federal posts, the Zardari government last month named Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani as the education minister. Does the name ring a bell, Dave? It should. In 2007, the former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry – you remember him surely? – ordered Bijarani’s arrest for a small matter.

The small matter was this: to settle a feud between two families, Bijarani, then a Pakistan Peoples Party national assembly member, sat at the head of a local jirga and ordered that five girls be handed over to the family of a murdered man as compensation. The five girls were Aamna, aged five, Bashiran and Meerzadi, both aged two, Shehzadi, six, and Noor Bano, three. But thanks to the reformist zeal of our new and, might I add democratic, government, the former chief justice’s condemnation of Bijarani’s barbarism is null and void. The criminal is cleansed and blessed with a promotion allowing him to preside over a substantial federal ministry. What happened to the five girls – to Bashiran and Meerzadi and the others? Who cares? Their country is an outward-looking force.

Throughout your time in Pakistan, and I hate to be a pain about this, Dave, you used the phrase “civilian government” ad nauseam. “Pakistan’s civilian government must stop the drones”; “I welcome the reforming zeal of the civilian government”; “Britain supports the civilian government of Pakistan”. But what you seem to be forgetting is that civilian governments can be authoritarian, too. Case in point: because of a most inconvenient deluge of criticism aimed at the civilian government, the civilian government has introduced the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance.

Threatening text messagers and satirical emailers through the Federal Investigation Authority was not enough; now parliament is going to get serious. Under the ordinance, anyone found guilty of “cyber terrorism” and who thereby “causes death of any person” will face the death penalty. The only problem is, again, a small one – that no one is clear as to what exactly constitutes cyber terrorism. The definitions put forth by the civilian government are ludicrous. They do not follow internationally recognised standards. The ordinance includes many more ambiguities, for crimes such as “spoofing” and “spamming”, for instance, that will be punished with imprisonment.

Does this article count as an electronic crime? It might. According to the decree, I’ve just spoofed by making suggestions of an obscene nature – that criminals shouldn’t run countries. I could, therefore, be found guilty under section 13, which prohibits cyber stalking. Yes, I know they aren’t related. I didn’t stalk anyone. It’s just that kind of law. If I forward this article to my mailing list, I could be charged with “spamming”. Anything is possible under the reformist zeal of our new civilian government.

A few days ago, the senate standing committee on the interior admitted the presence of “countless hidden torture cells” across the country. What exactly has changed since the civilians took power from the generals? Nothing. Torture remains unabated. The press is more muzzled, and the economy is prostrate, at the mercy of the International Monetary Fund’s lending conditions.

By next July, according to the stipulations of the IMF, subsidies for electricity, gas and petroleum products will be eliminated. Agricultural subsidies will most likely be cut, and by 2015 the ratio of tax to GDP will increase from less than 10 to more than 15 per cent. The poor will have to pay for Pakistan’s corrupt governance, Dave. The poor, already burdened by extreme food inflation and power and water shortages, will bear the brunt of our civilian government’s “reformist zeal”.

Covering both Afghanistan and Pakistan on one trip in two days, and now having the issues in India to respond to, is a hell of a lot of work. You must be dreadfully exhausted by all your recent politicking. I know we are. I trust you had a safe flight home. We’ll miss you.

Best wishes,

Fatima