The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
How do you fight a person, when you can’t fight the mentality? The Jehadis in Pakistan have very clear enemies – Americans & Westerners, Jews, Indians (read Hindus), and the Muslims who aren’t “Muslim enough”. That is how the hierarchy of “Enemies of Islam” goes.
What happened in Lahore is symptomatic of a larger malaise in Pakistani society and the difficulty of the nation’s psyche to extricate itself from it. When a Jehadi shouts hate slogans against a Jew or an Indian Hindu, how can another Muslim also brought up on the hatred for Jews and Hindus – reinforced by their education and mosque – credibly and effectively (critical qualifications) counter him? Even when he knows that he is the next one in line of the hierarchy for the self-appointed ‘Believers in Line- Incharge” Jehadis.
How can one with 50 or 60 or 80% of the destructive beliefs of the killer’s total content of belief system, effectively fight him? By the time, the Jehadi comes out of the comfort zone of the “Moderate’s” 50% belief similarity zone, it is too late. He is the next in line!
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD) – a Jehadi outfit in Pakistan – openly took out a rally vowing to convert Pakistan into a Taliban state. Notice the words in the news item – “outlawed”. These words somehow lose their normal meaning in Pakistan.
Jamaatud Dawa (JD) has vowed to convert Pakistan into a Taliban state and to train young people to wage jihad against America and India, in the latest rally by the outlawed group here in the city.
“It cannot”, many Pakistanis will retort. Taliban is not a group. It is a mentality. One would need to take a deep dive into one’s own self to see if he is or isn’t a Taliban in his heart.
It is not about the 60% of your heart that feels for humanity that counts. It is the 40% of the heart that is steeped in prejudice which will matter in the end.
No one has ever seen yet, nor is there any record of – a “Day of Judgment” by a faceless and formless God (who is also never been seen, nor heard in any audibly recorded device) as yet. But it is important for everyone to judge himself to see if s/he is what one wants to make the society as?
You cannot be 20% Taliban in your core, and expect 100% country to be rid of Taliban! It doesn’t work that way.
An interesting but devastating fact of this incident – that shows the vulnerability of the nation’s society is who were involve in the protests and how. A fact, that underscores the mess that I am talking about. School kids as young as 10 years – were taken on pretext of a “Field Trip to Science Exhibition”. Pretty obviously, they were NOT from madrasas, but from English Medium schools, albeit “Islamic” English medium schools. 50% Taliban + 50% Modern.
Just as I said, it doesn’t work that way.
Critical to remember, however, is the relationship and power of outlawed Jehadi groups with schools for middle or upper middle class society in the country.
Students aged 10 to 15 from Jhumra Sandal Islamic School, Faisalabad, and Tameer-i-Seerat Model School Sharaqpur, Sheikhupura, said that they had thought they were going to a science exhibition and that’s what they had told their parents.
One student from Sandal Islamic School gave this correspondent a form titled ‘Field Trip Permission’ that was signed by his mother. “Dear Parent or Guardian,” it reads. “Your child is going on a field trip. Please read the information at the top of this form, then sign and return the permission slip at the bottom of this form.” It goes on to say that the students would be taken to a science exhibition at Al-Mizan School, Faisalabad, and they would be back by 3pm. The protest did not end till 4:20 pm, when the participants got back in the vans and buses and drove to Nasser Bagh.
Intellectuals in Pakistan are asking - why is Pakistani society where it is today. It did not happen in a day. The Crimes and the depravity was always present. You acquiesced to it all along.
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Words won't work here. Action will.
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