God's Blessings..

When our parents are old, let us not burden them with negativity of conflict and disputes. They deserve peace having spent all of their youth in bringing us up.

Allah in Quran dictates to us, "Be All kind and Do Not say a word (Uff) to them when your parents reach old age", means we dare not cause them any harm or distress. 

We, as Muslims, believe that Heaven lies under our Mom's feet. Wow, such an easy approach to Great Victory; we just have to live obedient under our Mother's shaded tree.

May God's curse be on those who torture their parents mentally or physically. To me they are worse than Wild Animals and must be Shot and Chopped. Bng

Learn Arabic...!!!

In my opinion 'The Qur'an' cannot be translated though every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Qur'an - the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Qur'an and peradventure something of the charm in English. It can never take the place of the Qur'an in Arabic, nor is it meant to do so... Bng

We are Muslims when We follow Mohammed (pbuh) and we enter Islamic brotherhood that makes us equal in rights and dignity. Islam alone is our symbol of unity. Though Quaid e Azam preached Democracy and was fiercely against Theocracy but he didn't know that Democracy in Pakistan would produce Pimps and Prostitutes. Today Pakistan's survival rests in Theocracy, simply to follow our neighbors in the West and South West who are divinely guided by QURAN... Bng

Beyond Man-made Paragraphs... 

As a child my ‘Morals’ were sound, even a bit Islamic, but when at Naryab Eid Festival a hidebound old deacon inveighed against Khattak Dance I rebelled. Years later, by the time of voyaging to London I was still a ‘believer’ in Democrac but had strong questions which were encouraged at Trinity University in Dublin. In Europe I became a freethinker, and when in 2003 I came to join PMLN in Islamabad I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to become a Yes Man. Then when I got free access to Jaati Umra, the engagement was held up because again I balked at some leading leaders for their wrongs. I refused to stay silent when I was supposed to shout. But then When Pervez Rasheed, my only friend and supporter, died; I mean died politically for me, I flatly refused to pay my allegiance to PMLN’s rusted creed. From 2013 onwards I have increasingly regarded Democracy as an institution which defends such evils as slavery, color, caste, exploitation of labor and internal war. I think the greatest gift for Pakistan will be the dethronement of the Parliament and refusal to let Democracy be part of our 1973 constitution, or otherwise let Pakistan dwell and prosper without this robbed and raped, faultlessly faulty Constitution. (Bng)

MY ETERNAL PRAYER

Keynotes from Kandahar


TRANSFORMING TOGETHER

How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when they neither share our suffering nor we share their joys! When we know that we don’t belong to them. Our century refuses to acknowledge anyone’s right to disagree with our Rulers. All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, and the dream of a cloister. This is how we define our stupid unwanted prevailing democracy in Pakistan. The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

There comes a time when one must take position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellion ferment in the masses of life which people earth. On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

People in our country are since shouting that they want to create a better future. It is not true. Their future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. Our past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. By a certain age coincidences lose their magic and then in some grave times no longer surprise becomes a ladder to climb uphill. A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. Remember, remember always, that all of us, you and I especially, are descendants of  the immigrants from our North West, of who all were Rebellions.

I began to ask each time: What is the worst that could happen to us if we tell the truth? Unlike people in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, disappeared or run off the road at night. Rather our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called idiots, jerks and junks or hypersensitive and at the most we may disrupt some dinner parties. But then our speaking out will permit other men and women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and our country is altered forever. And our outrightly speaking will get easier and easier. And we will find we have fallen in love with our own vision, which we may never have realized we had. And we may lose some friends. And new ones will find us and cherish us. And at last we will know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking our truth; And that is not speaking.

The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order. Or to put it the other way around: the desire for order is a virtuous pretext, an excuse for virulent misanthropy.

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There cannot be any large-scale reformation until there is a personal radical change on an individual level. It has got to happen inside first. Just remember that the greatest and most powerful overturn and outbreak often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows.

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is our own Government, and let us not be more silent about it.
We all shall die, sooner or later, whether or not we had even spoken of ourselves. Our silences would not protect us anyway. What are the words we do not yet have? What are the tyrannies we swallow day by day and attempt to make our own, until we will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language. This you call a free life?

There comes a time when silence is betrayal. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without any end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. We can only bring about a change when ordinary people do extraordinary things. We have seen in Afghanistan the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. And this was handed down to us by our neighbour from the East. And they are perpetually it's victims.

Do we ever know that in the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. That is the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I have worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I have met some who hated army and others who wanted to make it a career. I met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done, we do what we do for one another, for friendship; not for country, not for patriotism, not because we are programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to us. We fight for our friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for us, and everything about the fighting is built on this simple premise.

The greatest mistake of our fruitless effort was that we were trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. We have to wake them up first, then push them through the action. This change will not be a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. This will be an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

Our strategy should not be only to confront Politicians, Judges and Bureaucrats, but to lay siege to all of them. To deprive them of oxygen. To shame them. To mock them with our art, through our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we are being brainwashed to believe. Occasionally we must ensure that Pakistan is watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants. The Politicians' Power world will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, and their notion of inevitability.

And remember this: We may be many and they be few, but they need us more than we need them. Now are the times where the decades change must happen. And this change is not a bed of roses rather a struggle between our future and our past.

There is one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it is one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It is people that kill every transformation. This is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. You cannot buy this change. You cannot make this change. You can only be the change. It is either in your spirit, or it is nowhere. We much know this is a tearful transform, but we all shall survive through this "TRANSFORMING TOGETHER." (Bng)

20May20

REJOICING REFORMATION


It is unique that I have been able to cover all these uprisings and revolutions during these few years. I am lucky—it is incredibly complicated to understand where you need to go when you’re on the ground, and I was lucky to have a lot of help. The protests were well under way when I got to Tahrir Square in late January, and their size and scope took my breath away: in three decades of visiting the Middle East, Ihad never encountered anything like this. There was huge fighting betweenthe pro-government supports and revolutionaries. Some of the journalists werebeaten. Some of them lost their cameras. They kicked me out once, but I managed toget back in the next morning. I saw a lot of families—not just young men orrevolutionaries—and everyone was helping each other, praying together. It was agreat time. Everybody was waiting for Mubarak to make the right decision, andsuddenly it happened. And it was so emotional: people crying, shouting,screaming…it was incredible. The next morning, it was over. The army was kickingeveryone out. They weren't friendly—there was a feeling of ‘You got what youwanted. Now get out.’ Of all the revolutions I came across, Egypt was the most special.

The mood at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain was very different fromTahrir Square. In the first days, I saw men in white robes approach police with flowers, offerings of peace: the response was tear-gas and live rounds. Therewas a huge difference between this army and the Egyptian army. People fromBahrain—there was no way they could even talk to the army who had arrived fromSaudi Arabia. There was no way for me to get to Pearl Square hence I watched what was happening from the hotel. There was one hospital where all the protesters were gathered together. Andthen the doctors did something incredible. Not all of them supported theprotesters, but they gave them shelter at the hospital and saved a lot oflives. I had a chance to go back to Bahrain after they demolished Pearl Square, a few weeks ago, and I saw young people who had lost one eye to rubberbullets. It was just so sad, and I just saw some of them. I know there were many more.

In Yemen, it was very different. There was no Facebook. Change Square was still packed, but the feeling of revolution was more religious, moreconservative. There was an invisible border for protesters to stay behind, and the army would shoot anyone who tried to cross this line. I saw so many youngpeople were ready to cross the line, marching to die. And around Change Square,there were hundreds of pictures of people who’d died. In Egypt, I saw protest signs and other things, but in Yemen, it was just pictures of young  faces. Whether or not President Saleh will relinquish power, the political crisis inYemen will likely remain acute, not only because of its tribal culture and topography, but also because of its deep poverty, high illiteracy and birthrates, and deeply entrenched government corruption.

Libya was different because it was more of a civil war than arevolution. It was here that I met Mariama whom later I would address as MB.She was the one who helped provide a car with a driver, who drove me all alongthe Mediterranean coast. It was she who took me to the front lines near RasLanuf. It was near an oil refinery factory that was important for bothsides—both the rebels and government. I stepped in Ras Lanuf on March 11, whenGaddafi’s military could still fly, and they were flying around, dropping bombson the rebels. It was really scary for everybody on the front line. Suddenly you could hear the plane coming and the bombs hitting their targets. These menwere the shabab, young people who weren't professional fighters and didn't haveweapons or training. They’re not rebels, but eager to be on the front lines.They’re jumping because they heard the planes coming, so they’re running aroundtrying to find any place to hide, which was hard because everything was flat andexposed. It was just an incredible experience to be there.

Beyond these main four revolutions, I also traveled to watch closely the protests in Ireland and Tunis. I came to the conclusion that each revolution must be assessed in its own context, because each had a distinctive impact. The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each, therefore, demands its own narrative. In the end, the differences between them may turn out to be more important than their similarities, however. And the common thing about all these protests is the number of youngpeople who really want to bring changes to their country. That’s what’s most incredible. We have a new generation of people who are sick and tired of what’sgoing on. Call it the Islamabad Revolution, the Quaid's Pakistan or the Mothers' Revolution, there’s a powerful Sirocco blowing across the Arabian Sea flowing down into Indian Ocean, striking at sky-blue waters of Gwadar and oily black shores of Karachi, and the brave young people in my country realize there is yet another life ahead and they want to live differently now. (Bng)

Makran Coast: 27Mar17