Mumtaz Qadri, Our Hero?

It is hard to find a dull moment on the horizons of Pakistan and especially when a civilian government is in place. But the recent developments in the aftermath and leading to the murder of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer are actually very scary, to say the least.

A Pakistani state which already failed on many accounts, has now transformed into a smoking inferno which can erupt any moment and that will wipe and burn away everything. The bigotry, mindlessness and intolerance has tore about everything of which a social fabric of a society is woven with. I was appalled to see the scenes of hero-like welcome to the suspected murderer of the constitutional head of the largest province of Pakistan. And this was accorded to him by none other than the lawyer fraternity, who are the very custodians of law and justice. No matter what was the motivation, it was a murder and in any society of humans it is incomprehensible to glorify the murderer.

In my previous writings I have been consistently mentioning the emerging dangerous trends and pampering of zealots by the state organs, so I am not going to repeat myself over it. But it is necessary to reiterate that after the painful procedures carried out over Pakistan in the last thirty odd years, we don’t need to be genius to guess the ditch we are going to fall in.

I always question myself, when we’ll stop celebration of the arrival of Muhammd Bin Qasim and look into the future? Infact Pakistan was created twice, once when it was carved out of the Indian Union by a brilliant lawyer and statesman Muhammad Ali Jinnah, but that Pakistan didn’t last long. The mischievous elements who were left behind rather opposed the making of new nation state, soon re-organized theirself to get credit for what that was none of theirs. However they remained on the sidelines and no one paid any attention to them, until they found one of their type, General Zia-ul-Haq as late as in 1977. And this was the second of birth of the Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan was dead and a new Pakistan came into being. Currently we are living in this new dictator framed Pakistan.

During the past three decades, the religious facade was given to cover up any lie, dishonesty and consequently hypocrisy became the hallmark of this ‘holy’ society. The clandestine and visible efforts were made to spread hate and intolerance, as it was necessary to sustain the illegal rule of Zia. Religious forces were given free hand coupled by the public capital punishments and lashing, which gradually transformed the society into the one which sought its entertainment from inflicting pain and suffering on its fellow members, basically a sadistic one. School text books were amended to include heroic Arab conquests of the world. National media glorified the same characters of Arab monarchies of Umayyad and Abbasis. The world view of the new minds was twisted with fabricated stories of gallantries and myths of crowdedness of their enemies. A nation was cheated to achieve the longevity of an individual’s ruling tenure. Basically during this process Pakistan lost a whole generation!

To compound the pain, Russian adventure in Afghanistan, implicitly plagued the entire nation to an extent that Pakistani society started reflecting the medieval outlook. Essentially if we fast it forward to present day, Pakistan has been transformed into a nation where nobody from outside world want to visit, invest and live. This is unfortunate but I must say the present scenarios is like the one we see in apocalyptic theme movies where a segment of the people are infected with a deadly virus and the rest of them quarantine them so that infection couldn’t spread. Please forgive my forbearance but I see the same scenario in the world where Pakistan is increasingly getting quarantined as no antidote has till this day been discovered to cure it.

Most of us are raised in traditional Muslim families where along with religious rituals, we are also imparted with vital lessons of ethics, morality, respect, tolerance and love. But lately the rituals have dominated the entire religious space and basic norms of living in a human society have practically evaporated. True, the whole scenario is not only the doing of clergy or power savvy generals but it has too many other moving parts as well. During the peak of Afghan Jihad days there was a special emphasis on one of the tradition ( Hadith ) that says “In the matter of faith, kids are not obliged to listen to the contrary views of their  parents”. Agreed, but this was not quoted in love of religion but was used as a weapon to get the conscripts against the wishes of their parents for a multi-faceted Jihad in various regions of the world with focus on Afghanistan and Kashmir by the Pakistani establishment and greedy clergy.

The subject of blasphemy may be beyond me to indulge in but we are always taught to pray for treading the ‘Uswa-e-Hasna’ ( the best trail, meaning by to attempt the emulate the life of Holy Prophet ) but when I study the life and times of Holy Prophet, I find him with a patience as high as mountains, compassion more than a mother who showers the love on her infant, forgiveness of the highest level to the extent to forego who insulted him, to clemency for those who killed his nearest relatives and a message of love for everybody. Allah says in His Book “Ponder over ( think and learn)”, do we? And if we don’t what this whole fuss is about, let us celebrate the death of a murdered man and garland his murderer, after all Mumtaz Qadri has opened many closed vistas on us and if we follow them soon we’ll earn our respect in the community of nations!

Tailpiece: I wish Mumtaz Qadri knew that Qadri Sufi’s originate from Hazrat Mian Mir who was such a tolerant and peace loving man who even  helped Sikhs in setting the foundations of Darbar Sahib Amratsar. Baba Bullhay Shah was also one from the same ‘silsala-e-Qadria’. Alas, someone could educate us!

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