2003

The New Apartheid Jan-March 2003 

“Welcome to the United States of America. We have a proud tradition of welcoming immigrants and visitors,” reads a brand new billboard placed at all border crossings and major airports of the United States at the beginning of October 2002. “This tradition is renewed and enriched by each and every law-abiding immigrant and visitor,” says the poster-size board. But under this welcoming prelude is a new charter of apartheid that lists special registration procedures for visitors born in certain countries. This is how the Bush administration’s brand new department of Home (in)Security made its debut in the real world. Read full article

Instruments of Inquisition Next 'Concentration Camp?' Jan-March 2003

That INS has become the most important Instrument of Inquisition in the post 9/11 era is a reality that is being witnessed by thousands of aliens in the United States on a daily basis. The horror stories that have surfaced so far only differ from the notorious Spanish Inquisition in as far as their application is concerned; this time, the victims of inquisition are only Muslims.

But detentions, ad hoc arrests and mistreatment being meted out to the registrants in various INS offices is only the beginning of a long process that would eventually create a totalitarian State so hostile to Muslims that their survival will become impossible unless they chose to give up their religion, language and cultures. If this sounds a far-fetched exaggeration, one has to remember that no one thought that the infamous Spanish Inquisition would go as far as it did. Read full article

Muslim and secular Secular and Muslim Making sense of a non-sense! Animal, vegetable or mineral? April 2003

A new category of “Muslims” has been born. They call themselves “secular Muslims”. This is not an isolated nor a limited phenomenon. Secular Muslims can be found throughout the world. In societies where they can safely proclaim to be one, they do not hesitate to announce their presence. But in societies where a disclosure is not safe, they keep their beliefs hidden or use a different label such as “liberal Muslims”. In all cases, they are the darling of Western media seeking to promote a “tolerant version of Islam”. Read full article

Welcome to the new empire! No Pretentions, only fait accompli! May 2003

The recolonization of the Muslim world has been quickened to such an extent that we have already forgotten the bodies lie in Kandhar, Mizar-e Sharif, Kabul and in scores of other sites in the ravaged land of the Afghans. The dagger has now been plunged into the very heart of the Muslim lands.

The rules of recolonization have not only been announced, they are already in use. The new operative law is the law that comes from the barrel of the gun. No justifications are needed anymore; a fait accompli is the mother of all justifications. There is no time left for that nineteenth century mess of treaties with Mir Jafars and Mir Sadiqs; no need to put up the farce of renegades. The best way is the one forged by an overwhelming force; the shortest path is to proceed at all fronts simultaneously, creating a new lexicon: simultaneity, speed, pre-emptive strikes, targets of opportunity. Read full article

For every Pharaoh, a Moses Meanwhile, a question for humanity June-July 2003

Iraq has receded from the headlines. There is a terrible silence reigning supreme over the dead. The anti-war protests and the daily bulletins are gone. Germany and France are said to be mending fences with the United States. The world seems to have accepted, one more time, the illegal and immoral occupation of a state by another state merely because the invading army has succeeded by sheer power of its own lawlessness. Read full article

The road to freedom Total faith and total self-reliance June-July 2003

The US forces currently occupy two-thirds of Kuwait, almost one-half of Qatar, and large sections of land in Saudi Arabia. They have bases in Pakistan, most of the Central Asian Republics and of course they, along with the British, now occupy Iraq. In addition, US installed regimes rule over Afghanistan, Jordan and Egypt; Syria has also quickly fallen in line. Proxy rulers, in various shades and hues, in varying degree of submission, control the rest of the Muslim world. This process of re-colonization of the Muslim world has now gained so much momentum that within the next decade, there may not be any country left without a direct or indirect colonial rule. Read full article

Pakistan Revisited: Iqbal airport to Iqbal symposium A journey of many discoveries June-July 2003

As I stepped out of the plane just before sunset, the first glimpse of Lahore’s brand new Allama Iqbal International airport was an unexpected surprise. The beautifully designed building seemed suspended in air. This lightness must have been the result of its columns and mihrabs, red clay-bricks and shining glass windows, and my own perception after a sixteen hour journey from Canada on Pakistan International Airline’s old but reasonably clean and punctual 747 plane. Read full article

General ‘enlightenment’ of Islam Confusion and intellectual pollution (part 2 of Pakistan revisited, published in October 2003 issue)

As if the Conference on Iqbal was merely for the sake of providing General Parvez Musharraf an opportunity to “enlighten” the crowd about his doctrine of “progressive Islam”, there were no wake-up calls the next day; no one was watching time. About half an hour after the scheduled time, the morning session began in the same hall which now looked half-empty because more than half of those who had gathered there yesterday had come merely for the sake of the General. Today, other than the invited guests, there was only a handful of Iqbal enthusiasts, as if this International Conference on Iqbal in the city that had been his home for much of his life and where he is buried had nothing to do with the concerns of Lahories. But the meager crowd, the delayed sessions and the general lack of interest in things related to thought and intellect seemed to be an acceptable modus operandi in that atmosphere; no one complained, no one was even concerned. Read full article

The clash of civilizations and the love for dictators August 2003

June 2003 was the month of glory for Pakistan’s military ruler, General Parvez Musharraf. During his extended tour of England, United States, Germany and France, he received a highly publicized red-carpet welcome. In the United States, he was the first Asian to be hosted at Camp David. In England, Germany and France, he was received by the leaders of these countries as if he was a world-class statesman. When he returned home, he was greeted by a sycophant herd as if he was returning after conquering the world. True, he did receive a promise of 3 billion dollar aid package from the United States and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced that he will lift sanctions on supply of spare parts to Pakistan Air Force’s radar system. These offers were the stuff on which the home crowd fabricated its grand conquest theme, ignoring the small print which says that the US offer of a 3 billion aid package is merely a promise by George Bush to work with Congress on the “idea” of this aid package which would extend over five years (at the paltry sum of 60 million dollars a year) and that most of this money is already earmarked for those needs of the United States which are not related to Pakistan at all but to its own war of terror in Afghanistan. Likewise, the German offer is merely limited to a small and obsolete radar system. Read full article

From Ground Zero to Baghdad Against the flow of history September 2003

Perhaps we will never know the actual details of what really happened on that morning of September which has now become a defining factor in international relations. But no one can doubt that 9/11 has been used by those who joined hands and minds in the post-Regan years to craft a new vision of America, quite removed from what her founding fathers envisioned. These “weird men behind George W. Bush”, the authors of the New American Century Project (PNAC), did not rise from Ground Zero; rather, they were already active for years before anyone ever heard of Ground Zero. Read full article

The Power of Truth Falsehood is bound to perish September 2003

Only the very ill-informed or the naïve would disagree that Islam and Muslims are under attack from many fronts. Even a routine action like a flight out of any US airport, a quick count of the number of Muslims being killed daily in Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya, or a few minutes of viewing an American television station are enough to realize the dimensions of this global war against Islam and Muslims that is being waged on many fronts. From the streets of Baghdad to Grozny and from cyberspace to neoconservative institutes, where policies for global dominance are being formulated, these myriad fronts constitute various segments of a total, well-planned, fully-funded and comprehensive war aimed at establishing the supremacy of a worldview totally alien to Islam. Read full article

Truth asserts itself, always It is eventually the human conscience October 2003

It was unimaginable even two years ago that more than half a century after the disappearance of the last empire on which the sun did not set, the twenty-first century would begin with a global effort to build a new empire. It was generally recognized that humanity had passed the stage of empires. But so early in this new century, the world is acceding to the dictates of a new empire, willy nilly.

This new empire is being built by a handful of individuals on two quite different sets of corpses. The first set consists of those who have decided to live honorably or die for the sake of their freedom; the second pile of corpses consists of those who have sold their conscience for their paychecks. The first set belongs to that honorable group of men, women and children who have always remained a source of inspiration for all those who seek higher goals in life and death and who value their honor, dignity and freedom. The second pile of corpses will decompose, leaving behind nothing but the rancid memory of lowly desires, greed, and a mournful account of the enslavement to the stomach. Read full article

The Kingdom of Man And the Sacred Cows of the Western Civilization October 2003

We live in a world that has been largely shaped by two revolutions, the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century and the accompanying revolution in thought that sought to establish a Kingdom of Man on Earth. Both revolutions originated in Europe, crossed the Atlantic and begat what has now become the sole self-assuming “superpower” of the world with a claim to world leadership. A large portion of humanity missed these two revolutions only to find their abundant harvest at their door steps. During the second half of the twentieth century, Japan and China changed their course and joined the race to partake of the fruits of these two revolutions; India too has been trying to follow, though in a sluggish manner as compared to Japan and China. The rest of the world has become a passive recipient of the products of these two revolutions. This passive receptivity has created a great hunger in many cultures for all the “marvels” of these two revolutions: technological gadgets, an unsustainable consumerism, a revolt against tradition and incessant change. Read full article

The Kingdom of Man Redefining values and morality October 2003

On July 17, 2003, the Government of Canada referred a draft bill to the Supreme Court of Canada for its view on the constitutionality of the bill which changed the definition of marriage in Canada to include same-sex “marriages”. The bill had come into existence following a landmark decision by the Ontario Court of Appeals which had ruled that the opposite-sex requirement for marriage is unconstitutional and directed that marriage in the province of Ontario be defined as “the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.” Hailed as a great victory, hundreds of men and women rejoiced; their “marriages” were now legal. The Ontario decision followed on a similar decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal on May 1, 2003. The Quebec Superior Court had also ruled that same-sex marriages will become legal effective September 2004. Read full article

The man in the spider hole And those who share his deeds November-December 2003

A pathetic face indeed. As he crawled out of his hole, raising arms in surrender, pronouncing the quixotic sentence, “I am the President of Iraq and I am ready to negotiate”, there was something untidy about the text; the story was already falling apart. But, before the jubilation could fade away, it had to be bolstered by crisp images of his unkempt face, now opening the mouth on the instructions of an army doctor, now staring into the empty air, perhaps in search of his past glory. Read full article

Semantics of Occupation and a New Muslim Media Organization December 2003

 “Insurgents attacked a convoy and killed three soldiers” is a sentence which is already loaded with built-in meaning. When used in the context of the US occupation of Iraq, the word “insurgent” makes the occupation “lawful” because by definition, the word “insurgent” means “a person who rises in forcible opposition to a lawful authority”. It is almost synonymous with the word “rebel”.

This may seem an insignificant attempt at understanding the insidious use of language, but in the context of the contemporary reach and power of media, this is a little more than a trivial effort because repeated hour after hour in numerous news bulletins and projected globally, this particular phrase becomes embedded in the listeners’ conscience and in time, the illegitimacy of occupation starts to give way. This, of course, is not a new tactic; the British and the French had utilized this method to “legitimize” their occupation of a large part of the world with amazing success. Read full article