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Nfp Articles, Satires, & Parodies
#1 Felicius
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Posted 25 August 2013 - 04:24 PM
The Broken Bow
So often one hears a fellow Pakistani bemoaning how polarised a nation we are.
But sometimes I feel that what they mean by polarisation in this context is the presence of the rich ethnic, religious and sectarian diversity that this country is actually blessed with.
This diversity on most occasions has simply refused to come under the all-encompassing umbrella of ideological unity that the country's establishment, its religious allies and the urban bourgeoisie have been shoving down our throats for the last six decades. They refuse to realise that organic diversity (and not synthetic homogeneity) is what drives democracy and best utilises the inherent economic, cultural and sporting genius of a nation.
But no doubt there is also polarisation of a more disturbing kind in the Pakistani society.
On occasions it's been like a black comedy that can generate sheer bafflement.
Every Friday at my office during the second half of the morning session, I notice guys who regularly go for Friday prayers at the mosque break up into little groups. One day I decided to figure out why this happens or why they are all not going to the same mosque (or to the one nearest to the office).
It is easy to understand that the Shia among them would visit the Shia mosques.
But one Friday I was rather amused when I overheard a group of Sunni colleagues discussing why they would not go to a particular (Sunni) mosque because the mullah's sermons there offended them.
It turned out that the lads were Deobandi Sunnis, who, due to lack of time, had had to visit a nearby mosque whose mullah belonged to another Sunni sub-sect, the Barelvi — which, nevertheless, is the majority Sunni sub-sect in Pakistan. So the discussion was to locate a Deobandi mosque nearest to the office.
A senior colleague, who'd seen me talking to these guys, approached me in the evening, smiling: "Did you see how they were whining?" I smiled back: "I'm not very good at understanding these things."
He shook his head and then said something that took me by surprise. He said: "I was the one who introduced them to the mosque they are now whining about. I'm sure in their hearts they now believe I am a heretic."
This colleague is a very religious man, with a beard and all, so his claim did baffle me but not for long.
I soon realised what he was suggesting. He belonged to the Barelvi sect. It was a strange experience because on various occasions I've seen him agreeing with his Deobandi counterparts on so many issues, especially on things like the blasphemy law, the need to enforce the Sharia, etc. But here they were all, refusing to go to each other's preferred mosques.
This actually shouldn't come as a surprise in a country where the state has for long been active in defining what or who a 'Muslim' is in a society brimming with various Islamic sects and sub-sects. This has left the sects judging one another, sometimes overtly and sometimes discreetly.
The state did not learn anything from the findings of the famous Justice Munir Report in which — after the 1953 anti-Ahmadi riots instigated by the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Majlis-i-Ahrar Party — Justice Munir noted that according to his interviews with a number of ulema on the matter, he found that no two ulema agreed on a uniformed definition of a good Muslim.
Later on history recorded another rather amusing episode. During the movement against the Z A. Bhutto government in 1977, led by an alliance of various anti-PPP parties (the PNA), the alliance leaders met at the Karachi Press Club to brief the press about their plan of action.
Demanding the imposition of Sharia laws and the ouster of the 'secular- socialist' Bhutto regime, the alliance's top three parties were representing the country's main Sunni sub-sects.
The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) followed the Deobandi school while the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) was Barelvi in orientation. PNA's third main party, Jamaat-i-Islami, had a following among middle-class urban Sunni conservatives and pro-Saudi elements.
Newspapers reported that after outlining their plan of action and professing their unity of purpose (i.e. the downfall of Bhutto and the imposition of Sharia), the PNA leaders broke for the evening prayers.
In those days there were no prayer rooms or mosques at places of work, and certainly none at the Karachi Press Club (though there is one now).
So some journalists cleared a room for the PNA leaders to say their prayers in.
Urdu dailies, Imroze, Jang and Musawat, then went on to report how a commotion of sorts broke out amongst the PNA leaders when they couldn't agree on who would lead the prayers as all three followed their own respective schools of Islam.
The issue was not political but sub-sectarian. Some newspapers reported that JUI's Maulana Mufti Mehmood refused to offer prayers behind JUP's Shah Ahmed Noorani (and vice versa).
Syed A. Peerzada in his book Politics of JUI quotes a JUI leader who alleged that the reporting of this discord was the doing of the PPP's Kausar Niazi whose job it was to exploit the sectarian differences between the PNA's religious parties.
This might be true, but then this was perhaps the easiest thing to do: i.e. to disturb the make-up of what Bhutto might have (correctly) thought was, at best, a cosmetic face of unity among the political-religious figures of Pakistan.
The fact still holds true, and like it or not, perhaps it always will.
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#2 saifdpl
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Posted 26 August 2013 - 11:44 PM
#3 sabre2
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Posted 27 August 2013 - 04:41 AM
This article wasted a lot of my time. Author should have just admitted he is secular (Munafiq) and we wouldn't have to listen to this mumbo jumbo...
Actually, the author is not munafiq and has nothing to do with secularism, but is in fact speaking the truth and the reality of Pakistan and its sect and sub-sectarianism.
The bottom line is that the majority of Pakistanis follow the moderate Barelvi school whereas the JI lot follow the Deobandi school. Saudi's and other Gulf states claim a lot of the practices in the Barelvi school as heretic and therefore since the time of Bhutto starting pumping money into madrassas and and religious parties who follow the Saudi/Salafi/Deobandi school.
Taliban and TTP are closely aligned with the Saudi/JI lot, hence you will never hear any JI or deobandi criticizing the Taliban/TTP.
You can stick your head in the ground and ignore it, or shoot down the messenger, but this is the reality that exists in Pakistan.
#4 blueazure
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Posted 27 August 2013 - 06:36 AM
but the later part that deobandis/AS dont pray in each other's mosques is all made up .
#5 Felicius
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Posted 27 August 2013 - 10:07 AM
If one can't even tolerate different views, how can you even progress as one nation!
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#6 Felicius
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Posted 04 September 2013 - 10:07 AM
Most wanted terrorist captured from hotel in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: In a daring raid, Saudi Special Forces arrested one of the most wanted extremist leaders, Abu Jarara Al-Yemeni, from a hotel located in one of Pakistan's most popular vacation spots in Murree.
The news spread like wildfire and people were seen cursing the Pakistani government for allowing the Americans to undermine Pakistan's sovereignty, again.
However, when it became clear that the raid was not conducted by the Americans but by the Saudis, the frowns turned into smiles and many were heard saying, 'Jazzakallah!'
Only minutes after the raid, Pakistan's Prime Minister appeared on state-owned television and congratulated the nation and thanked the Saudi regime for helping Pakistan in its war against terror.
Interestingly, religious parties like Jamaat-i-Islami, (JI) Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) and some banned sectarian organisations, that had originally called a joint press conference to condemn the raid, changed their stance half-way through the conference when told that the raid was by Saudi forces and not the Americans.
JI chief was first heard lambasting Pakistan's civilian government for letting the country's sovereignty be violated by the Americans, but after a reporter confirmed that the raid was executed by Saudi forces, the JI chief turned towards the JUI chief and embraced him.
'Mahshallah!' he exclaimed. "Today is a glorious day for our Islamic republic!"
JI and JUI chiefs had earlier questioned the real identity of the man arrested from the hotel, saying that even if it was Jarara, we should be ashamed because he was a freedom fighter, conducting a liberation war against the Americans.
However, after it became clear that the arrest was made by Saudi forces, both the men then claimed that Jarara was no friend of Pakistan and that he was not even a Muslim.
In a joint statement, JI, JUI and the sectarian organisations congratulated the nation and said that they had been saying all along that the extremists were Pakistan's greatest enemies and should be exterminated.
The statement also said that the JI and JUI (along with PTI) will continue to hold sit-ins against American drones, which were parachuting evil men like Jarara into Pakistan and violating the sovereignty of the country. For this, the statement suggested, that Ahmad Shah Abdali should be invited to invade Pakistan and defeat the Americans.
When told that Abdali died almost two hundred years ago, the religious leaders termed this to be nothing more than western propaganda.
PTI members at the conference added that Pakistan's most prominent revolutionary and youngest nuclear physicists, Zohair Toru, was building anti-drone missiles.
Toru, who was also present at the conference, confirmed this while licking a lemon-flavored Popsicle. He said it was a very hot day and popsicles helped him concentrate.
Zohair Toru at the press conference.
However, soon things took another twist when sources suggested that the Saudis captured Jarara and handed him over to the Americans.
The Americans – who had accused Jarara for committing crimes against humanity – actually plan to use him to lead a revolt against the Syrian government that the Americans accuse of committing crimes against humanity.
After this, the chiefs of JUI, JI and the sectarian parties again changed their stance. In another joint statement, they said Jarara indeed was a great Muslim warrior. They then embraced each other and distributed Saudi dates among the gathered media personnel and asked them to pray for Jarar's success against the evil Syrian government.
But when asked what they thought about Jarar working with the Americans and vice versa, they said they cannot answer this question because it was time for the afternoon prayers.
When asked whether they will answer the question after the prayers they said by then it will be time for the evening prayers.
When asked if they would be willing to give an answer after the evening prayers, they said by then all of them would be on their way to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj.
Members of religious parties after being told the raid was conducted by the Americans.
Religious party leaders after being told Jarar will be used by Saudi Arabia and US in the war against Syria.
The raid
A military spokesman also held a press conference to give the media a briefing on the details of the raid.
He said the raid was executed by Saudi Special Forces who came on four helicopters from Saudi military bases in Raiwind.
The helicopters then landed on the Margala Hills in Islamabad. On the lush hills, Saudi soldiers disembarked from the copters, got on camels and rode all the way to Murree in broad daylight.
They were twice stopped at checkpoints by the Pakistani police but were allowed to cross when some Saudi soldiers promised the cops jobs in Saudi Arabia and year's supply of Zamzam water.
An eyewitness claims the cops smiled and waved to the departing camels, cheering 'marhaba, marhaba.'
A passerby captured this photo of the Saudi Special Forces on their way to Murree.
The camel army reached the in Murree at 11:00 am and right away rode their way into the sprawling premises.
The camels were also carrying rocket launchers, sub-machine guns, pistols, grenades and popcorn, all concealed in large 'Dubai Duty Free' shopping bags.
One of the items left behind by the Saudi raiding party.
The military spokesman added that although the Pakistan Army had no clue about the raid, there were a dozen or so Pakistani security personnel present at the hotel.
When asked whether these men questioned the camel riders, the spokesman said that they did see them enter the hotel but were at the time busy interrogating a 77-year-old Caucasian male whom they had arrested for smoking in a non-smoking area.
"After the Abbottabad incident, we are keeping a firm eye on Europeans and Americans," the spokesman said.
Even though the white man turned out to be an old Polish tourist, the spokesman praised the security men's vigilance. "Our country's sovereignty is sacred," he added. "And, of course, smoking is bad for health."
According to the Pakistan's security agencies, the Saudis then rode their camels into one of the hotel's kitchens and fired teargas shells.
This way they smoked out the chefs, cooks and other kitchen staff out into the open. From these, a Saudi commander got hold of a fat, hairy chef with an untidy beard.
The Saudi commander looked at the chef and compared his face with a photograph he was carrying. He asked: 'Al-Jarara?' To which the chef was reported to have said: "No, al-chicken jalfrezi. Also make very tasty mutton kebabs."
The commander then asked, 'Al-Yemeni?', to which the chef said, 'Yes make Yamani tikka too. You want?'
A photo of one of the raiders who entered the hotel disguised as a friendly camel.
A reporter asked the military spokesman whether the Pakistani security men present at the hotel witnessed the operation. The spokesman answered in the affirmative but said they didn't take any action after confirming that Pakistan's sovereignty was not being violated.
The reporter then asked how the security men determined that Pakistan's sovereignty was not being violated. Answering this, the spokesman said that since the camel riders were speaking Arabic there was thus no reason for the security men to charge them for violating Pakistan's sovereignty.
This statement made the media personnel at the press conference very happy and they began applauding and raising emotional slogans praising Pakistan, Ziaul Haq and palm trees.
Soon after the announcement that Al-Jarara was arrested by Saudi forces, the country's private TV channels became animated. One famous TV talk-show host actually decided to host his show in a Bedouin tent. And instead of a chair, he sat on a camel.
Set of a TV talk show held on a local channel to discuss the Saudi raid.
Though most of his guests — that included prominent ex-generals, clergymen and strategic analysts — praised the operation and heaped scorn and then praise at Al-Jarara, there was one guest, a small-time journalist who disagreed with the panelists.
He asked how a wanted man like Jarara was able to live in Pakistan undetected and that too while working as a chef in a hotel. He also said that Jarara had also been appearing on various cooking shows as a chef on TV food channels.
An alleged shot of Al-Jarara on a Pakistani food channel. Apparently, in this particular episode, he taught viewers how to cook biryani.
To this, the host snubbed the journalist telling him that he was asking irrelevant questions.
'But before this raid, everyone was accusing the USA!' the journalist protested.
This made the host angry and he slapped the journalist. He threatened the journalist by saying that he would lodge a case against him in accordance with the Islamic hudood ordinance.
The journalist responded by saying that the Saudis had violated Pakistan's sovereignty. Hearing this, the host slapped the journalist again, saying he will get him booked for blasphemy.
At the end of the show, the host and the panelists set fire to a Guatemalan flag and sang the Pakistani national anthem in Arabic. Then, after handing over the treacherous journalist to the authorities, they proceeded to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj.
However, they were soon deported by the Saudi regime for violating Saudi sovereignty.
American and Israeli officials welcoming the induction of Al-Jarara into the fold of the Syrian rebels.
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#7 Xerxes
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Posted 05 September 2013 - 09:38 PM
#8 Felicius
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Posted 06 February 2014 - 09:16 PM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#9 Metanoia
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Posted 07 February 2014 - 12:42 AM
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#10 Felicius
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Posted 18 March 2014 - 08:57 AM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#11 Felicius
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Posted 27 March 2014 - 11:52 AM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#12 Metanoia
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Posted 03 April 2014 - 01:13 PM
Read this when it came out.....this guy is too good lol
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#13 Felicius
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Posted 05 April 2014 - 08:37 AM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#14 Metanoia
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Posted 05 April 2014 - 09:02 AM
As long as you're shouting Allah-o-Akbar before committing any crime whether it be murder, terrorism, corruption....you're safe and a hero in eyes of the people of Pakistan and it's establishment.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#15 Felicius
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Posted 06 April 2014 - 09:24 PM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#16 Metanoia
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Posted 20 April 2014 - 11:08 PM
The Mohajirs (Urdu-speakers) of Pakistan are largely settled in the Sindh province. In the province's capital, Karachi (that is also Pakistan's largest city), the Mohajirs have for long been a majority.
Unlike the country's other major ethnic groups, Mohajirs are not 'people of the soil'. Their roots lie in areas that are outside of what today is Pakistan.
A majority of them began arriving from cities and towns (especially from North Indian regions) after the division of India into two separate states in 1947.
They mostly settled in Karachi and soon became a part of the otherwise Punjabi-dominated ruling elite of the new-born country due to the high rates of education found in the Mohajir community, its urbane tenor and the required expertise it possessed in running Pakistan's nascent bureaucracy and economy.
Socially, the Mohajirs were urbane and liberal. But politically they sided with the country's two major religious parties: the (then middle-class-oriented) Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), and the more petty-bourgeois and populist Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP).
The dichotomy between the Mohajirs' social and political dispositions was a result of the sense of insecurity that the community felt in a country where the majority of its inhabitants were 'natives.'
Lacking a political constituency tied to the historical and cultural aspects of ethnicities of the 'people of the soil', the Mohajirs naturally backed the state's project of constructing a homogenous national identity that repulsed ethnic sentiment.
The Mohajirs also echoed the views of the religious parties that eschewed pluralism and ethnic identities and propagated a holistic national unity based on the commonality of the faith followed by the majority of Pakistanis.
As time would eventually render such projects and demands obsolete and artificial in a multi-ethnic country like Pakistan, by the arrival of Pakistan's first military regime (Ayub Khan, 1958), the Mohajirs had already begun to lose their influence in the ruling elite.
With the Baloch, Bengali and Sindhi nationalists distancing themselves from the state's narratives of nationhood, Ayub (who hailed from what is now the Khyber Pakhtunkha province, slowly began to pull the Pakhtuns into the mainstream areas of the economy and politics.
This is one reason why the Mohajirs' began to agitate against the Ayub dictatorship from the early 1960s onwards.
Mohajirs had decisively lost their place in the ruling elite, but they were still an economic force to reckon with (especially in urban Sindh).
When a Sindhi, Z.A. Bhutto, became the country's head of state (and then government) in December 1971, the Mohajirs feared that they would be further side-lined, this time by the economic and political resurgence of Sindhis under Bhutto.
In response the Mohajirs enthusiastically participated in the 1977 right-wing movement against the Bhutto regime (that was largely led by the religious parties).
The movement was particularly strong among Karachi's middle and lower-middle-classes (and aggressively backed by industrialists, traders and the shopkeepers).
This was also the first time when the Mohajirs compromised their social liberalism to supplement their backing for a movement based on populist religious dispositions.
But the success of the PNA (Pakistan National Alliance) movement did not see the Mohajirs finding their way back into the ruling elite, even though the Jamaat-i-Islami became an important player in the first cabinet of Gen Zia regime that came to power through a military coup in July 1977.
Disillusioned, some young Mohajir politicians came to the conclusion that their community had been exploited by religious parties, and that these parties had used the shoulders of the Mohajirs to climb into the corridors of power. This galvanised the formation of the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (in 1978) and then the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 1984.
Its founders, Altaf Hussain and Azim Ahmed Tariq, decided to organise the Mohajir community into a cohesive ethnic whole.
For this, they found the need to break away from the community's tradition of being politically allied to the religious parties, and politicise the Mohajirs' more liberal social dynamics and character.
The Mohajir dichotomy between social liberalism and political conservatism was dissolved and replaced with a new identity-narrative concentrating on the formation of Mohajir ethnic nationalism that was socially and politically liberal but fiscally conservative and provincial in outlook.
The project was a success; first expressed in the manner the MQM broke the electoral hold of the religious parties in Karachi and the subsequent invention of the Mohajirs of Sindh as a distinct ethnic group.
By 1992, the MQM had become Sindh's second largest political party (second to the PPP).
But as the city's economics and resources continued to come under stress due to the increasing migration to the city from within Sindh, KP and the Punjab, corruption in the police and other government institutions operating in Karachi grew two-fold.
The need to use muscle to tilt the political and economic facets of the city towards a community's interests became prominent.
Thus emerged the so-called militant wings in the city's prominent political groups.
These cleavages saw the MQM ghettoising large swaths of the city's Mohajirs in areas where it ruled supreme.
The results were disastrous. It replaced the pluralistic and enterprising disposition of the Mohajirs with a besieged mentality that expressed itself in an awkwardly violent manner attracting the concern and then the wrath of the state and two governments (in the 1990s).
In 2002 MQM began to regenerate itself after the crises of the preceding decade when it decided to end hostilities with the state by allying itself with the Gen Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008).
The party had already weaned away the Mohajir community from the concept of Pakistani nationhood propagated by the religious parties. Now it added two more dimensions to Mohajir nationalism.
It began to explain the Mohajirs as 'Urdu-speaking Sindhis' who were connected to the Sindhi-speakers of the province in a spiritual bond emerging from the teachings of Sindh's 'patron saint', Shah Abdul Latif.
This was MQM's way of resolving the Mohajirs' early failures to fully integrate Sindhi culture.
The other dimension that emerged during this period among the Mohajir community (through the MQM), was to address the disposition of Mohajir identity in the (urban) Mohajir-majority areas of Sindh.
This dimension explains Mohajir nationalism in the context of Pakistan's status of being a Muslim-majority state.
It expresses Mohajir nationalism through a version of socio-political liberalism based on the modern reworking of 19th century 'rational and progressive Islam' (of the likes of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan). It sees spiritual growth as a consequence of material growth (derived from modern free enterprise, science, the arts and the consensual de-politicisation of faith).
Let's see where this continued evolution leads.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#17 Metanoia
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Posted 29 April 2014 - 02:48 PM
Ali's Sword
On the eve of Pakistan's war against India in 1965, some newspapers in the country reported that people in Karachi and Lahore had witnessed a startling phenomenon.
Quoting eyewitness accounts, the newspapers claimed that a bright light had appeared in the night sky that looked like 'Ali's Sword.'
According to Islamic tradition, Ali Abu Talib was the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law and was also famous for being a man of immense spiritual knowledge and bravery.
Tradition also speaks about a special double-headed sword that he used to carry on the battlefield called 'Dhu Al-Fikar' or the Zulfikar.
News about the supposed appearance of the celebrated sword was soon forgotten after the war ended in a stalemate the same year.
However, interestingly, six years later at the height of the 1971 war between Pakistan and India, many Urdu newspapers again began to report eyewitness accounts of the sword appearing in the night skies of Karachi and the Punjab.
Those who claimed to have witnessed the phenomenon claimed that it was 'Ali's Sword' and a sign from the Almighty signalling a crushing victory for Pakistan.
But Pakistan lost the war and also its eastern wing that became Bangladesh. But even before the defeat some Pakistani scientists had already told newspapers that the so-called sword appeared not in the night sky but during early evening and was nothing more than fading sunlight breaking through a long and thin stretch of clouds.
Such sightings were never reported again in Pakistan.
Nawa-e-Waqt (3 August 1965)
Pakistan Times (4 August 1965)
Jassarat (10 December 1971)
Urdu Digest (December 1971)
The Furqan Battalion
The Ahmadi community were declared a non-Muslim minority by the government of Pakistan in 1974. But even before their relegation, it had faced severe criticism from a large section of the Islamic clergy of the region for its unconventional views on the orthodox beliefs and traditions of the faith.
Much has been written about how the community has been persecuted by the state of Pakistan after 1974.
Nevertheless, the fact that the community was considered non-Muslim 27 years after the creation of Pakistan proves that the state was initially unwilling to give in to the demand of the orthodox clergy of excommunicating the community.
Another much lesser known episode proves the same. An episode expunged from the memories of most Pakistanis.
As Pakistani forces entered Indian-administered Kashmir in October 1947 and triggered the first Indo-Pakistan war, the government also began to raise armed civilian militias for the conflict.
The largest such militia was made up of Pushtuns from the country's tribal areas. But when the battle (that never evolved into an all-out war) stretched into January 1948, the government requested the leader of the country's Ahmadi community, Mirza Mehmood, to form a trained battalion of young Ahmadi men.
Mehmood financed and raised a trained battalion of a few hundred Ahmadi men, arming them with latest British rifles. He then sent them into the Indian side of Kashimir.
The battalion directly engaged in gun battles with the Indian military and lost five men. It was led by Col. Muhammad Hayat Kaisrani and then by Col. Mubarik Ahmad.
An Ahmadi leader consults with the head of the Al-Furqan Battalion, Col. Mubarek Ahmed (1948).
The battle ended in mid-1948 but the government requested that the battalion be left standing and armed. However, two years later, in 1950, the government finally disbanded the unit.
Justice Munir's Report on the anti-Ahmadi disturbances of 1953 in Lahore p.197
The Furqan Battalion (Kashmir Info/E-liberary)
Young Turks in Pakistan
'Young Turks' was a secular and reformist group formed in the early 20th Century to initiate constitutional reform in Turkey and clip the powers held by the Caliph of the Ottoman Empire.
The organisation was made up of some reform-minded military men and student activists. In 1908 a military battalion led by one of the Young Turk's generals managed to force the Caliph to reverse his decision of suspending the Constitution. The Young Turks then made the Caliph restore the parliament.
Ironically, though the founder of Modern Turkey, Kamal Atta Turk, adopted the liberal, secular and reformist agenda of the Young Turks, he eventually suppressed the party after taking over power in 1923.
He abolished the Ottoman caliphate and completely secularised Turkish politics and society.
He also became an inspiration for many Muslim military men, some of whom began to create their own clandestine Young Turks groups.
Major-General Akbar Khan, who was behind the first ever coup attempt in Pakistan (in 1951), was one such man.
Born into a Pashtun family in Charsadah, a town in what today is the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan; Khan gained a commission in the army of British India.
He fought for the British Indian Army in World War II. He became a Brigadier in the Pakistan Army after the creation of the country in 1947. The very next year he was commanding regular and irregular troops against the Indian military in Kashmir.
Major-General Akbar Khan: Young Turk.
All the while, Akbar Khan and his wife had become members of a clandestine group within the Pakistan Army that were influenced and inspired by the Young Turks revolution in Turkey in 1908 and by Kamal Atta Turk.
Khan had a falling out with Pakistan's first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, when the PM ordered that the hostilities against India in Kashmir be halted and the issue of disputed Kashmir resolved through the United Nations.
Akbar criticised the government of abandoning his troops. He and his wife then began to widen the scope and ambition of their Young Turks group by including more disgruntled officers and members of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) into the fold.
Though Khan was given a promotion and became a Major-General by Pakistan's first Commander-in-Chief, General Douglas Gracey (an Englishmen), Akbar's resentment against Gracey and Liaquat over their (allegedly) lacklustre attitude over the Kashmir issue grew.
Akbar began to plan a military coup against the Liaquat regime.
Gracey and future military dictator of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, were aware of Akbar's Young Turks group. But it is only when the group began to recruit more officers and interact with the communists, that the government infiltrated the group with spies.
Pakistan's first Commander-in-Chief, General Gracey. He was one of the first top military men in Pakistan to have alerted the government about a 'dangerous Young Turks group' (led by Akbar Khan) in the Pakistan Army.
In 1951, the coup attempt was nipped in the bud and the plotters arrested. These included Akbar Khan, his wife, famous leftist poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and a leading member of the Communist Party of Pakistan, Sajjad Zaheer. A number of other leftist officers and civilians were also arrested.
They were given sentences ranging from four to 12 years, but were eventually pardoned after only a few years. The Young Turks group in the military was, however, obliterated.
Khan retired from the military and joined Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's left-liberal and populist Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that was formed in 1967. He was made the Chief of Security during the party's first regime (1972-77).
After Bhutto's fall in July 1977, Khan retreated into seclusion and died in obscurity in 1993 at the age of 81.
Lt. General Gul Hassan: Memoirs of Lt Gen Gul Hassan Khan. (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Kazi Anwarul Haque: Under Three Flags (University of Michigan, 1986)
Hassan Zaheer: The Times & Trials of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy, 1951 (Oxford University Press, 1998)
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#18 Metanoia
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Posted 29 April 2014 - 02:52 PM
Double agents or double traitors?
In January 1971, two young men belonging to a Kashmiri liberation group in India hijacked an Indian Airways plane from Srinagar and ordered the pilot to land it at the Lahore Airport in Pakistan.
As the Pakistani authorities were busy negotiating with the hijackers for the release of the passengers, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, arrived on a PIA plane from Dhaka in East Pakistan.
Bhutto's party had won the largest number of seats in West Pakistan. He had gone to Dhaka to hold talks with the chairman of the Bengali nationalist party, the Awami League, which had swept the polls in East Pakistan.
East Pakistan was on the brink of a civil war and the Pakistani government, then led by General Yahya Khan, had accused India of arming Bengali nationalists.
When Bhutto arrived in Lahore, he was greeted by a large number of his supporters. But as he was about to make his way out of the airport, some of his supporters demanded that he talk to the two hijackers and declare them as heroes.
Not knowing exactly who the two young Kashmiris were and exactly what was the Pakistan government's stance on the hijacking, Bhutto was reluctant.
Nevertheless, he was almost carried towards the hijacked plane by a dozen or so of his supporters.
Bhutto shook hands with the hijackers, exchanged a few smiles and hastily bid goodbye. The crowd cheered.
Bhutto beat a hasty retreat but the Pakistani authorities managed to get the hijackers to give themselves up and release the passengers.
But as the passengers (most of them Indians and a few foreign tourists) were being put on another flight back to India, the now empty hijacked plane went up in flames.
It was first reported that the plane had been blown up by the hijackers. However, late Khaled Hassan, a veteran journalist, claims that many years later, the former Head of The Indian Desk in the Pakistani government, Aftab Ahmed, told him (in London) that the plane was set on fire by Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
But just as newspapers were reporting that the two hijackers, Hashim and Ashraf Qureshi, were being hailed as heroes by the people of West Pakistan mainly due to Bhutto's meeting with them, Bhutto insisted that he was forced into meeting them by an emotional crowd and that he had no clue who the two men were or what they wanted.
More irony ensued when the Indian government and press accused Pakistan of masterminding the hijacking, while the Pakistan government not only arrested the two hijackers but also a leading Kashmiri leader who had escaped India and was residing in Pakistan.
The Pakistan government on the other hand accused the Indian government of staging the hijacking to put Pakistan in a tight spot and create a negative image about the Kashmir issue. It declared both the hijackers as Indian agents, whereas the Indian government declared them to be Pakistani agents.
So in a way, the hijackers became villains in the eyes of both India and Pakistan. Both were tried for treason and spying by a Pakistani court and jailed.
After spending 10 years in Pakistani jails, they were released in 1980. Whereas, Ashraf decided to stay in Pakistan, Hashim flew out to Europe. However, after a few years there, he returned to India where he was immediately arrested by the Indian authorities who charged him for high treason and threw him in jail.
Ashraf led a quiet life in Pakistan, while Hashim who had spent 10 years in a Pakistani jail and then another 10 or so in an Indian jail was finally released in the early 2000s. He still resides in India and has become a pacifist.
Khaled Hassan: The Truth about Ganga (The Friday Times, April 2003)
Nitish K. Sengupta: Land of Two Rivers (Penguin Books, 2011)
DAWN (February 1 & 2, 1971)
What's p0rn in Urdu?
The 1970s are remembered as a decade of cultural flamboyance in which lifestyle liberalism dominated the social narrative and expression across the world.
Pakistan was no exception. In 1970s Pakistan was being run by the populist government of Z A. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and it is during this period that the country's tourism and film industries experienced a peak.
By 1975 cinemas and nightclubs in the country were reporting record profits, and tourists were thronging the streets of Karachi, Lahore, Gilgit and Swat.
The freewheeling and swinging times managed to somewhat overshadow the political and economic turmoil the country had found itself in after the 1971 war with India.
The country's cultural scene also began to incorporate clients from classes that were below the so-called elite classes.
For example, in the 1970s, apart from the already established nightclubs like Oasis and Playboy (in Karachi), bars and clubs also sprang up in the city's Saddar area and on Tariq Road that specifically catered to middle and lower middle-class clients.
A 1973 press ad for Karachi's famous Oasis Club. (Taken from DAWN, February 1973).
When (in 1975) Pakistan's first 'For Adults Only' (X-rated) film, Dhulan Aik Raat Ki became a massive hit, some Karachi-based journalists managed to get a license to publish Pakistan's first ever Urdu 'sex magazine.'
American 'adult magazines' like Playboy and Penthouse were only available from some booksellers who used to smuggle them into the country from the US and UK and sold them at a price that was only affordable to a limited number of Pakistanis.
The journalists decided to start publishing a Pakistani Playboy that would be in Urdu and cost only Rs. 3 a copy.
Called Ishtraq (partnership), it appeared on the newsstands in January 1976. Though not published on glossy paper and only carrying black and white pictures, every month the magazine carried a few political articles, some steamy and quasi-explicit short stories, and images picked up from Playboy and Penthouse photo shoots. It also had a column on 'sexual advice' in which readers' questions were answered by psychologists.
Ishtraq was an immediate hit, but only available in the big cities. By November 1976 its circulation had risen from 15,000 copies per month to almost 65,000, in spite of the fact that the publishers had jacked up its price in July 1976 from Rs.3 to Rs. 4.50.
The magazine was, however, banned and its licence revoked when opposition leaders forced a cornered Bhutto regime to close down nightclubs and bars in April 1977.
Interestingly, the magazine's licence was renewed in late 1978 by the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship that had toppled the Bhutto regime in July 1977.
But the magazine was only allowed to function as a social lifestyle monthly. However, it was banned again in 1979 when it ran a completely apolitical story about a journalist's experience of going to buy a goat for that year's Eidul Azha.
The story mentioned how the journalist was made to check the goat's teeth which Zia's Information Ministry claimed was a taunt against Ziaul Haq's teeth! It immediately cancelled the magazine's licence again.
*The publisher has requested not to publish his name.
The vanishing
Pakistan is not exactly known for producing international tennis stars. But recently Aisam-ul-Haq has done well to represent the country as its most well-known tennis player.
But long before him Pakistan had managed to produce a tennis player who not only became one of the first Pakistanis to play at the prestigious Wimbledon tournament, but also played a number of matches against famous international tennis stars like Jimmy Corners and Arthur Ash.
It is thus sad that the name of this player has gone missing from the memories of a majority of Pakistanis. The truth is he too went missing. He suddenly vanished, as if into thin air.
His name was Haroon Rahim and for almost a decade he was one of the most respected and well known Pakistanis in the international tennis circuit.
He first entered the limelight when he represented Pakistan in the Davis Cup at the age of 15 (in 1967).
A tennis prodigy, Rahim rapidly rose to become Pakistan's No: 1. At age 20 he was given a scholarship by the University of California (UCLA) where he became the captain of the university's tennis team and led and partnered future World No:1 Jimmy Connors in many tournaments.
He remains to be the only Pakistani player to have made it to the quarterfinals of the highly competitive US Open (in 1975).
Rahim continued representing Pakistan and it was due to him that various famous tennis stars visited the country for matches in the 1970s. But his personal life wasn't always that glorious.
Though coming from a highly educated and well-to-do family, Rahim was constantly rebelling against his family's aristocratic background.
More and more he began to spend time in the United States. In 1978, while at the peak of his game, Rahim met and married an American woman. This did not go down well with his family who refused to acknowledge the union.
Angered by the reaction, he cut off all ties with the family. Not only did he do that, he also quit tennis and simply vanished. He was just 29 at the time.
Some believe that he joined a roving cult in California, sold all his possessions, changed his name and appearance and just disappeared. This is also the time when his family stopped their search for him.
He was never heard from (or found) again – even though his family believes he's still living in the US (under a new name and identity).
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#19 Metanoia
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Posted 29 April 2014 - 02:58 PM
Smoking gum
You must have seen or heard about ads of cigarette brands in the US that till the early 1950s actually claimed that smoking was good for health.
Of course, this was before a research was made public that for the first time proved that smoking caused serious health problems, particularly lung cancer.
Though this eventually forced the US government to order cigarette brands to put a health warning on their packs, cigarette advertising in the press and television continued till the early 1970s when the US and most Western countries finally banned cigarette brands from advertising on TV.
When anti-smoking campaigns that began to make waves in the US and Europe in the 1970s reached Asian and African countries, cigarette manufacturers, anticipating similar bans in non-Western countries, began to devise unique ways to attract potential (young) consumers.
Though strict bans on cigarette advertising in most Asian countries would not come into effect till the late 1990s, 'bubble gum cigarette' appeared in the general stores and supermarkets of Thailand.
Pink bubble gum was rolled and wrapped in cigarette paper and sold to kids in packs of famous cigarette brands.
The product reached Pakistan as well some time in 1974 and was an instant hit with the kids.
Costing Rs.2 a pack, the local makers used Thai gum but began selling it in specially made boxes of local cigarette brands such as Gold Leaf, Capstan, Red & White and Victory.
My research did not confirm or was able to determine whether the actual manufacturers of these brands were behind the emergence of the bubble gum cigarette in Pakistan.
A former executive of the Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) said that local cigarette manufacturers did not need to indulge in such gimmicks because smoking till the 1970s did not carry the kind of stigma it does today, nor were there any serious restrictions on cigarette advertising in Pakistan in those days.
Health warnings on cigarette packs only began appearing in Pakistan in the late 1980s and cigarette advertising in newspapers and TV was only banned after 2000.
The executive isn't sure how much the bubble gum cigarette influenced young kids to start smoking but he said that the gum didn't last for more than three years.
'These bubble gum brands began to appear in 1973 or 1974 but were gone by 1978,' he said.
First, the bubble gum used in them was of very low quality. Kids began to fall sick after chewing on these make-believe cigarettes. There were also reports of parents discovering small dead ants in the gum. But according to the executive the real reason was the paper that the gum was wrapped in.
'It got wet and sticky and kids began to chew it along with the gum. There were some cases of choking and many cases of stomach ailments.'
Alas, the weird bubble gum cigarette vanished for good from Pakistan.
Howard Markel: Tracing the Cigarette Path (New York Times, March 20, 2007)
K. Nasir: Epidemiology of Cigarette Smoking in Pakistan (Wiley, 2001)
Conversation with a former executive of PTC.
Powder to the people
For decades Pakistan has had one of the largest numbers of heroin addicts. To many, this has always been the case. The truth, however, is that the rise in heroin addiction in Pakistan was quite a sudden phenomenon.
For example, a research was done in 1979 in Pakistan to study the state of drug usage in the country.
Though the research spoke of a large number of Pakistanis who were regular users of the (non-addictive) cannabis-based drugs, there were only two (reported) cases of heroin addiction.
This means that till 1979 very few people in Pakistan actually knew anything about heroin as such. It just wasn't available, even though the report did mention cases of morphine addiction among some doctors.
But within the next five years, or by 1985, Pakistan suddenly had the second largest number of heroin addicts in the world (after the United States).
How did that happen?
Researchers and anti-drug NGOs working with the government suggest two main reasons. First was Pakistan's entry into the so-called 'anti-Soviet Afghan jihad' in 1979. Pakistan opened its borders with Afghanistan and allowed thousands of Afghan refugees to pour in.
As most of these refugees began settling in Pakistan, they began to trade products in the cities that were once only available in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Poppy farms also sprang up in the border areas and the heroin made from the plant was used to further fund the 'jihad' that was otherwise already being bankrolled by the US and Saudi Arabia.
It was in 1980 that heroin for the first time became available from drug dealers in the country's cities.
The second reason given is that a ban on alcohol (in April 1977) forced many alcoholics to take up heroin.
Though alcoholic beverages were available, their price shot up after the prohibition, leaving the less well-to-do drinkers to look for alternatives.
Nevertheless, by 1985, heroin usage and addiction was being reported from across the classes.
Some researchers also give a third reason for the sudden proliferation of the deadly drug. Though they have put their thoughts on paper, their claims have been largely rejected by most researchers and academics involved in studying heroin addiction in Pakistan.
Dr.Rehan Abid who was one of the first doctors to set up a clinic in Pakistan to help heroin addicts (in 1980), says that the proliferation of heroin in Pakistan was done at the behest of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship.
'No country has experienced such a fast growth of heroin addicts,' he said. 'I was a general physician at Karachi's Jinnah Hospital. We started to notice the pouring of young men addicted to a drug we had no knowledge of. We just couldn't understand what was happening to these people. Within a year, I opened my own clinic after only barely understanding the dynamics of this new drug.'
Rehan's friend Naveed who got addicted to heroin in early 1980 explained how the drug was first given to them for free: 'It's an expensive drug. Addicts cheat, lie, beg and even commit theft to get it. But in January 1980, when my friends and I visited the den of the guy who had been selling us hashish for years, he told us that he didn't have any hashish but he does have meethi chars (sweet hashish).'
They were given the drug for free. It didn't look like hashish because it was in powder form.
'Most peddlers at the time began to give their customers this meethi chars,' Naveed continued. 'Of course no one was told how addictive this new drug was, even though nobody injected it in those days. It was mostly smoked in cigarettes. And only later did we come to know that it was actually called heroin. Within a matter of months, we were all addicted. Aching, vomiting, scratching ourselves. And that is when meethi chars stopped being handed to us for free. We now had to pay, or face the pain of withdrawal.'
Dr. Rehan says that this is not the first time a government can be accused of aiding the growth of a crippling drug to silence dissent. He said many black American activists had accused the FBI in the US of flooding the streets of New York and Chicago with heroin to get young blacks addicted and weaken the black liberation movement that was taking shape in the US in the late 1960s.
Yes, many American authors and activists have claimed this but most of them have been criticised for peddling conspiracy theories or theories without any substantial evidence.
When I told the same to Dr. Rehan he replied: 'Then how does one explain the free distribution of an expensive drug like heroin to thousands of unsuspecting Pakistanis in 1980?'
I don't know. Slick marketing tactics, I suppose?
Decades of Drug Use: Data from the 60s and 70s (Gallup International)
Alfred W. McCoy: Drug Fallout (St. Jose University, 1997)
M Gossop: The detoxification of high dosage of heroin in Pakistan (Elsevier, 1989)
From the forests of Eden
In 1983 a powerful and unprecedentedly potent strain of Bhang appeared in the interior of the Sindh province.
Bhang is prepared from the female buds of the cannabis plant and consumed as a beverage with water or milk.
Western scientists have explained its effects of being similar to those of powerful hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and Magic Mushrooms. It is not addictive but can induce hallucinations and an altered state of mind for upto 10 hours.
Bhang has been used as a recreational beverage in South Asia for centuries, especially in the arid and hot areas of India and Pakistan. It is said to have a cooling effect.
It is still popular in large parts rural and semi-rural area of the Sindh province.
The extraordinary strain of the drug that appeared in Sindh in 1983 was aptly nicknamed 'Martial La' (Martial Law).
According to Mehmood Qureshi who did his Masters from the Jamshoro University in 1981 and is a senior officer in a government department today, claims that Martial La was specially formulated by the dictatorship of General Zia to slow down the violent movement that had erupted in Sindh against his dictatorship (1983's MRD Movement).
Uzair Kazi a former member of the Sindh Shagird Tehreek disagrees: 'Martial La was consumed by many young men so that when they were arrested by the police, it helped them bear the torture that was inflicted on them.'
Whatever the case, many Bhang enthusiasts in Sindh claim that the emergence of Martial La was a natural occurrence. They suggest that it grew on its own in the wild of the forests that run across the towns of Dadu and Moro.
One enthusiast said that it grew there till about 1985 but vanished afterwards. He thinks the vanishing had more to do with the effects of deforestation and water pollution in the area than anything else.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#20 Metanoia
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Posted 29 April 2014 - 03:00 PM
Zia's little green book
The armed forces of Pakistan were a secular lot till the 1970s. But from the late 1970s onwards they were systematically 'Islamised', especially by the dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq (July 1977 - August 1988).
Historians commenting on the phenomenon have pointed towards Zia's admiration of famous Islamic scholar and founder of the Jamat-i-Islami, Abul Ala Maududi.
It is true that Zia was an avid fan of Maududi's writings on political Islam, but it was not exactly on Maududi's thesis that Zia initiated the Islamisation process in the country's armed forces.
It was the thesis and theories of a relatively lesser known and obscure figure upon which Zia almost squarely designed his 'Islamic reformation of the Pakistan Army.'
His name was Brigadier-General S K. Malik. In 1975 at the height of Z A. Bhutto's populist regime, Malik quietly published a book called 'The Quranic Concept of War.'
S K. Malik began writing it in 1974 as a reaction to the Pakistan military's defeat against its Indian counterpart in 1971. When he discussed his project with Zia, the latter was highly impressed by Malik's thesis. He encouraged him to publish them in form of a book.
One is not sure whether Bhutto (an avid reader) ever got to read Malik's book that Zia had begun to distribute among the officers, I have a feeling that he didn't because Malik's theory was squarely against any liberal or metaphorical interpretation of the Quran, especially of the verses that deal with the concept of jihad.
To Zia, such thinking was necessary to infuse a more aggressive faith-based streak in the armed forces that he believed had been softened because the institution was steeped in the ideals of 'Modernist Islam,' and was too secular and 'westernised' in its social and political outlook.
Various economic and political factors contributed to the July 1977 military coup that Zia pulled off against the Bhutto regime. Zia rode in on a wave of protests by political parties that had been expressing urban middle-class frustrations and the interests of the trader and wealthy industrial classes that had been directly affected by Bhutto's (albeit chaotic) socialist manoeuvres.
These classes had agreed to let the religious parties take the lead. But when in July 1977 Zia toppled Bhutto, he adopted the anti-Bhutto movement's religious tenor.
As mentioned earlier, though most political historians have suggested that Zia planned out his coming 'Islamic rule' on the models of 'Islamic governance' theorised by Abul Ala Maududi, the truth is, his main inspiration in this context came from S K. Malik's book.
Not surprisingly, in the second year of his dictatorship in 1979, he sanctioned the mainstream publication of the book and volunteered to write the book's foreword.
Zia first used Malik's thesis to 'Islamise' the Pakistani army and turn jihad into a national policy of the government and the military.
He then popularised the book among Afghan, Pakistani and Arab mujahideen who had all gathered on the Pakistan side of the Pak-Afghan border to lead guerrilla raids into Afghanistan against the Soviet forces.
He also made sure that the book was made available to all Pakistanis and thus Urdu translations of the book were made available in bookstores.
By 1986, the book had also been translated into Arabic and Persian.
According to author and counter-terrorism expert, Patrick Poole, 'General Zia embraced Malik's expansive understanding of jihad as a duty extending to soldiers, as well as individual citizens.' He accepted Malik's redefinition of defensive jihad to include the removal of any obstacles and resistance to the spread of Islam. According to Malik, even passive resistance to the advance of Islam is legitimate grounds for attack.
Malik in his book suggests that war should dictate policy and not the other way round. Meaning that war or jihad should work as a pre-emptive tool against anti-Islam forces. It didn't matter whether these (perceived enemies of faith) were hostile or not. According to Malik, Islam permits this.
As Malik went to great lengths to prove this by dissecting various verses of the Quran, it is this aspect of the book that is most popular with violent Islamist groups today.
Malik completely rejects any allegorical or metaphorical understanding of the Quran, nor attempts to study it in a more contextual manner. He simply intellectualises the literalist reading of the Muslim scriptures in light of a standing army of an Islamic country that should always be ready to wage war (in the name of jihad) against hostile and passive, real or imagined enemies of Islam.
Malik then goes on to advocate that every Muslim citizen of an Islamic country should think like a 'holy warrior.'
Thus, many experts believe that Zia used Malik's thesis to also justify the alliances he made with violent sectarian and Islamist forces that sprang up during his regime.
But what about the author himself?
Malik retired from the military to concentrate on becoming a scholar. Perturbed by the criticism the armed forces were being subjected to after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle he set out to answer the military's critics but ended up constructing an entirely reactive and extreme response.
He first came up with his thesis in 1975 in a world in which Islamists, jihadists and religious extremists were still obscure characters that could only be found on the far fringes of society and politics.
Thus, he was largely writing a cathartic tirade for a defeated army as a man deeply disturbed and depressed by what had taken place in 1971.
He didn't seem to be a very ambitious man and never gave any interviews or ever became a prominent member of Zia's government or cabinet. He remained in the background.
My research did suggest that he was a moderate-to-liberal Muslim, and that by 1975 he had become highly religious and sombre, but that's about it. When or where was he born and when did he die, noone seems to know.
Such a private and unambitious character could not have been writing a highly volatile book consciously aiming to radicalise the military and the civilians and then foreseeing the emergence of sectarian and Islamist violence on a global scale.
His was a reactive and angry tirade against what he thought were the premier enemies of his beloved armed forces. He went literal, rigid and myopic in his study of religious texts because to him the military's supposedly lax and liberal approach towards faith had made it weak.
I do wonder though, what he would've thought about his work today in which quotes from his book regularly appear in 'jihadi literature' that not only advocates but boasts of committing terrible violence on civilian and military targets alike and then justifies it as something sanctioned by the scriptures?
Would he have been elated, or distraught by the way his reactive diatribe that he moulded and presented as a scholarly study was first used by a manipulative military dictator to justify his illegitimate hold over power as a 'soldier of Islam,' and then cherry-picked by violent militants and their apologists to rationalise nihilist violence as something sectioned by faith?
Patrick Poole, Mark Hannah: Analysis of the Quranic Concept of War (Wolfpenglos Files)
Joseph Morrison: Political Islam – From Maududi to Ahmadinejad (Abc-CLIO, 2009)
Smashing pumpkins
In 1985, police in Karachi was alarmed by an increasing number of murders committed in a similar manner. Though the murders took place in different areas of the city, all of them included street urchins and beggars (as victims) all of whom were killed by a single hard blow of a hammer to their heads.
In late 1985 when the total number of such murders rose to seven, the police theorised that the killings were being done by a single person.
The single person then became a group after a victim survived the blow. A beggar sleeping on a footpath of Karachi's Burns Road area reported that he went to sleep at about 2 am but was woken up by a screech of a white Suzuki FX car.
He said before he could fully awake himself, he saw at least four men in white clothes and black masks approaching him. One of them hit him on the head with a heavy hammer and he passed out, almost bleeding to death.
When newspapers reported the beggar's story, the supposed group began to be known as the 'Hathora Group' (Hammar Group) by the police and the press.
The killings subsided for a while but came back in mid-1986 to haunt those who spent their nights on footpaths.
No arrests were ever made. Some right-wing Urdu newspapers alluded that the group was actually KGB or Afghan agents, while some scribes suggested that it was the handiwork of the Zia dictatorship to spread fear.
One English magazine wondered if the group was actually made up of members of some satanic cult or a death squad out to clean the streets of drug addicts, beggars, runaway children and homeless men.
The last known case of the group was reported in May 1986.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#21 blueazure
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Posted 30 April 2014 - 01:21 AM
NFP > a mental jerk off literary looser . an atheist with a marijuana problem. intellectually destitute to say the least .
they say childhood abuse leave a permanent mark, maybe he has some , or maybe he was molested by zia police , who knows
#22 Metanoia
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Posted 04 May 2014 - 05:40 AM
One of the most fascinating characters in the initial saga of the painful birth of Pakistan is Fatima Jinnah, the frail-looking, graceful but gritty sister of the founder of the nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. She was a passionate political worker, a determined activist for women's rights and a qualified dental surgeon to boot.
After receiving a degree (in dentistry) from the University of Calcutta in 1914, she became a close counsellor and a trusted confidant of her brother. She enthusiastically backed her brother when (in the 1940s) he finally decided to manoeuvre his party, the All India Muslim League (AIML), towards a more polemical position on the question of the future of India's Muslims.
The move consequently helped the AIML evolve into a mass-based party (among India's Muslims). After the tense 1946 election in the Punjab where the party finally managed to reverse the electoral fortunes of the Indian Congress Party, certain Congress-backed confessional Muslim groups and the Unionist Party, AIML suddenly became the main engine behind what would later come to be known as the Pakistan Movement.
Miss Jinnah worked tirelessly for the movement and was able to win respect and recognition within and outside the AIML. However, after the movement was able to achieve a separate Muslim country in 1947, Miss Jinnah's existence as a Pakistani was wrought with disappointments, disillusionment and eventual isolation.
Much has been speculated about her life as a Pakistani between 1947 and 1967 (the year she passed away).
But one of the best and most authentic accounts of her disappointments arrived in the shape of a book that she wrote in 1955 (My Brother) but which was published 32 years later in 1987!
Even though her status was immediately elevated to that of being a patriotic heroine after the creation of Pakistan, why did it take so long for her book to be available for public consumption?
The answer to this can be found in some of the contents of the book. In it she laments how her brother was quickly 'betrayed' by even some of his closest comrades who had worked with him during the Pakistan Movement.
Jinnah had assumed the role of Pakistan's first Governor General in 1947. But he faced his first surprise when, after his famous Aug 11 address to Pakistan's Constituent Assembly (in which he declared his vision of Pakistan being a progressive Muslim majority state), the bureaucracy of the time (pressed by Muslim League's leading members), asked the country's nascent print media and radio to only publish and broadcast an edited version of Jinnah's speech.
According to Miss Jinnah's book, her brother, who had been suffering from tuberculosis throughout the later stages of his struggle for Pakistan, began to lose his health more rapidly after 1947. In her mind this was due to the disappointments and the sense of betrayal he felt at the hands of some of his closest comrades.
Miss Jinnah seemed particularly bitter towards Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was perhaps Jinnah's closest colleague in the Muslim League.
She wrote that her brother told her that many of his former colleagues were coming to meet him only to determine how much life there was left in him, implying that they were most probably waiting for him to quietly perish.
In her book Miss Jinnah also laments how heartlessly her brother was picked up and put in an ambulance (to be taken to a hospital) and how the ambulance broke down in the middle of the road. Jinnah expired on Sept 11, 1948.
There might have been pressure from the government in disallowing Miss Jinnah to publish her book in 1955, but there is also ample evidence suggesting that it was Miss Jinnah herself who hesitated to get the book published. Pakistan was just eight years old and Liaquat Ali Khan had been assassinated in 1951.
Author and intellectual Khaled Ahmed, in his 2001 book, Pakistan Behind the Ideological Mask quotes celebrated lawyer, Sharifuddin Pirzada (who was a secretary to Jinnah), in saying that when Miss Jinnah appeared on Radio Pakistan to announce her brother's death, the state-owned radio channel's director-general, Z A. Bokhari, got a call from a government official asking him to switch off Miss Jinnah's speech the moment she began criticising the government's heartless attitude towards the founder of the country and how he was left to die in an old ambulance.
She became a virtual recluse after Jinnah's death, until in 1965 when she was pulled out of her self-imposed political retirement to challenge Field Martial Ayub Khan in a Presidential election.
Khan had imposed Pakistan's first Martial Law in 1958 and had enjoyed significant popularity during the early years of his regime.
However, by 1965 his popularity had begun to dwindle a bit and his Presidential candidature was challenged by the Combined Opposition Parties (COP) — a group made up of certain left-wing parties (that were opposed to his staunchly capitalist policies) and right-wing religious outfits (that opposed the 'secular' disposition of his regime).
COP sprang a surprise when it convinced Miss Jinnah to become its candidate for the election. She initially hesitated, but then agreed.
Khan was expecting to sweep the election, but not any more. Though he did go on to win, Miss Jinnah defeated him in two of Pakistan's largest cities, Karachi and Dhaka. She also won in Hyderabad and narrowly lost in Peshawar.
COP accused the regime of electoral malpractice, but Miss Jinnah once again decided to retire to a life of a recluse.
Her last meeting with a noted politician was with Z.A. Bhutto when he was eased out (as Foreign Minister) from the Ayub regime after he had disagreed with the President on his peace pact with India after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war.
According to Stanley Wolpert (in his book Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan), soon after he was pushed into political oblivion by Ayub in 1966, Bhutto, whose house was close to Miss Jinnah's (in Karachi), walked to her house and asked for her advice and guidance over a cup of tea.
She sounded disillusioned and told Bhutto: 'I told you not to trust him (Ayub).'
A year later, she passed away at the age of 71 on July 9, 1967. The government announced her passing due to a heart-attack but to this day a number of politicians, and even Jinnah's nephew Akber Pirbhai, insist that she was murdered.
She was 71 and is buried beside her brother's grave in his impressive mausoleum in Karachi. Ironically, Liaquat Ali Khan too is buried there.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#23 Metanoia
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Posted 26 May 2014 - 12:52 PM
Ever since Jinnah's death in 1948, we have been gazing intensely at our navels to figure out what the founder of Pakistan said and/or didn't say. Many of us have our own set of quotes of a man who passed away just one year after the creation of this country.
I have been going through Jinnah's numerous speeches that he delivered from 1946 till his unfortunate death in 1948.
It seems Jinnah was everything to everyone — a progressive nationalist to the liberals; a faithful religionist to the religious right; a middle-of-the-road Muslim statesman to the moderates.
But the truth (to me) is that first and foremost he was a sharp politician. And like all good politicians, Jinnah was a pragmatist, adjusting his words according to his immediate surroundings.
For example, in multicultural Karachi he would insist that the state of Pakistan was to be progressive and democratic.
In Lahore, the scene of vicious Hindu-Muslim riots, and where many clerics had accused him of being a 'fake Muslim leader' in 1946, he would take a moderate view, suggesting that the South Asian Muslims had a rich cultural and political history that Pakistan ought to match.
In Peshawar, where Jinnah's Muslim League had struggled to remain afloat in the face of the challenge posed by the left-leaning Pakhtun nationalists, Jinnah appealed to the sensibilities of the conservative tribes and clerics opposed to the nationalists.
While talking to the Western press he reminded the world that Pakistan was not to be a theological state, but a democratic Muslim-majority state where all citizens, no matter what their religion or ethnicity, would be given equal rights.
Ever since Pakistan's inception more than six decades ago, its politicians, military dictators and intellectuals from all sides of the ideological divide have talked about working towards building 'Jinnah's Pakistan'.
The liberals and even many moderates have continued to present Jinnah as a progressive Muslim and an unbending democrat. The mainstream religious right and the conservative lot have been hailing him as a champion of 'Muslim democracy' and a modern interpreter of an Islamic state.
Left-leaning parties like the populist PPP, and the other such groups have been vowing to create a Pakistan based on the progressive vision of Jinnah.
Religious parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), on the other hand, want a Pakistan based on Jinnah's desire and commitment of creating a country that would become a bastion and fortress of our faith.
Populist conservative parties such as PML-N, and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), interpret Jinnah's vision as something to do with Pakistan being an 'Islamic Welfare State'.
Then there have been military dictators as well, all of whom claimed to be following the course laid down by Jinnah.
The secular Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69) understood Jinnah as a progressive Muslim statesman. The Ziaul Haq dictatorship (1977-88) claimed Jinnah to be a fearless Islamic figurehead. The Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008) re-figured Jinnah's image and made him to be a 'moderate' again.
But what exactly was Jinnah's Pakistan? This question usually bags numerous differing answers. No party, military dictator, historian or intellectual trying to address this question has been able to come up with an answer that has enjoyed widespread acceptance. Jinnah died just too soon after the country's creation for one to convincingly judge exactly what sort of a Pakistan he really wanted. Between Pakistan's creation in August 1947 till his death one year later, Jinnah usually spoke according to the nature of his audience.
He was still in the process of testing the waters and formulating a cohesive idea about Pakistani nationhood when he died. That's why all that emerged after his demise are just angled interpretations, claims and counter-claims by politicians, ideologues and historians about who Jinnah was and what he wanted.
There is nothing wrong in studying history and, especially, learning from it. But on most occasions than not, this is not really what we have been doing.
We only highlight things about our collective past that are according to what we like and imagine, while shunning, repressing and even decrying those bits that contradict our current stances.
That's how Jinnah has been seen as well. Liberals will mark out the progressive views of Jinnah, whereas the conservatives will loudly quote from books that only mention quotes of Jinnah in which he comes across as a faithful conservative.
Today's existentialist battles in Pakistan are being fought with what the founders of Pakistan said or didn't say many years ago; A battle of existence that is threatening our future like never before. It is a battle lacking the desire to construct a vision or a discourse of what is to be done today and tomorrow.
Even while discussing possible future courses, we keep slipping backwards, quoting who said what in the past to supplement our view of Pakistan so it can dominate over the views of our ideological opponents.
We seem to be stuck in our own imagined views of history.
With so many Jinnahs floating around, the time has come to create a Jinnah of the future. By this I mean a well thought-out, debated and consensual vision of a Pakistan based on today's realities.
Jinnah should be accepted as a pragmatist who today would have addressed issues like extremist violence and acts of bigotry not as an ideologue, but as a pragmatic statesman who would know that such issues were retarding the country's economic, cultural and political evolution.
He would have understood that the rapid proliferation of conflicting ideas in Pakistan in the last three decades or so have made the bulk of the society increasingly reactive.
The pragmatic Jinnah would not sit on the fence like most of today's 'moderates', and call it a middle-ground.
He would assertively create a real middle-ground between religious conservatism and liberalism, for which he would not hesitate to alter, modify and reform a number of things.
Jinnah would not do this out of any ideological compulsion. He would do so for the survival of Pakistan — a country torn and plagued by religious and ethnic strife that is bringing its economics and society to a standstill.
The pragmatic Jinnah would try to find unity in diversity and draw from each ethnic culture, as well as from Muslim sects and sub-sects and minority religious groups in the country, choosing the best that they have to offer to Pakistan in developing its economy, its arts, its sports and its reputation as a modern, thriving and vibrant Muslim nation-state. It's about time we stop studying and propagating Jinnah as an ideologue. He was an astute and enlightened pragmatist, and pragmatism demands we begin to see him in this light and do today what any enlightened and astute pragmatist would do for the country that he so painstakingly created.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#24 Metanoia
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Posted 16 June 2014 - 07:56 PM
Back in the 1970s when we were kids, my cousins and I used to find the ambiance of American movies and TV shows rather odd. Sirens from police cars in the background could often be heard in shows and movies and the actors would continue to deliver their dialogues as if it was no big deal. Also, scenes of newspaper and TV reporters chasing people with mics and cameras or covering acts of various crimes on the spot seemed even odder.
In those days Karachi police didn't have many vehicles and one hardly ever heard a siren go off on the roads. And, of course, we just had one TV channel (the state-owned PTV), whose personnel only seldom ventured out. Compared to what we saw on American TV shows and movies (especially those based in cities like New York), life in Karachi seemed dull.
An aunt of mine (my mother's younger sister) who had settled in New York City in 1970 came to Karachi for a visit in the late 1970s. I was 10 years old and would often ask her whether New York City was really always echoing with police sirens and whether TV reporters actually chased men and women or cover stories directly from the crime scenes. She used to laugh and say yes, the sound of police sirens was very common in New York and TV reporters actually did what we saw them do in all those TV shows and movies.
There couldn't be a better time than now for political and security forces to differentiate between friends and foes, unite and put up a fight … but do they really want to?
Between the late 1960s and late 1980s, New York City had one of the highest crime rates in the world. Corruption was rampant in the police, and gangs of criminals and hoodlums operated openly on the streets, especially after sundown. But in 2012 when I visited New York City for the first time, it had become one of the safest cities in the United States! How did that happen?
In the early 1990s the state and city governments of New York and New York City, used a series of tactics that were based on the social, demographic and economic studies conducted on the New York crime scene. These initiated widespread reforms in the police, which also included empowering the police force to crack down on crimes of distinct nature and varying degrees with equal intensity (Zero Tolerance).
The crime rate in the city, once one of the highest in the world, began to almost immediately go down and within the next decade it plummeted so much that it made New York City one of the safest in the United States.
Today in Karachi, one can often hear sounds of police sirens and gunfire. And on the gazillion TV channels that this country now has, the sight of hysterical TV reporters babbling incoherent hogwash from scenes of crime and terrorism is just too common. Then there are all those rather reactionary vigilante shows that pose as if they are doing us a service by safeguarding the country's moral fibre and exposing crime, but are in fact doing anything but.
The truth is, the whole idea of activistic TV journalism in Pakistan is just another symptom of the chaotic and amoral malaise that is eating up this country; a malaise of which things like corruption, terrorism and bigotry too are a part. Worst hit in this respect is Pakistan's largest city, Karachi. Though this city can remind one of what New York might have been like more than 30 years ago, in New York the criminals were not associated with political parties or vicious extremist organisations.
Today in Karachi, one can often hear sounds of police sirens and gunfire. And on the gazillion TV channels that this country now has, the sight of hysterical TV reporters babbling incoherent hogwash from scenes of crime and terrorism is just too common.
On my trip to New York City I tried to explain this to an old, retired resident of the city. I don't know how much he understood of what I was saying but his response, though simple, said a lot. This is what he said: 'You know, it all depends on the people of the city. A time came when we (the New York City people), got completely exhausted by the economic and criminal mess here and craved for normalcy. The government and the police saw this as an opportunity. This is when they began to enact laws and tactics that they couldn't before for all sorts of political reasons. But this time the people of this city supported them and the results were immediate ...".
I believe the people of Karachi, in fact, all of Pakistan are now feeling a similar shade of exhaustion. And if only Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his government allow themselves to detach from a strange, vacant sense of quiet Zen immobility they seem to have adopted, and if only the ruling parties in Sindh, Balochistan and KP break through the complex political cobwebs they have been caught in, they will find a huge mass of exhausted Pakistanis willing to support the implementation of whatever it takes to pull the country back from the brink.
The people have the will. Now is the time for the politicians and security forces to treat this as an opportunity and exhibit some will of their own as well.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 15th, 2014
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#25 Felicius
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Posted 20 June 2014 - 12:13 PM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#26 platinum786
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Posted 21 June 2014 - 11:14 AM
-=-=-=-=Faith, Unity, Discipline-=-=-=-=
Kashmir is the jugular Vein of Pakistan and no nation
or country would tolerate its jugular vein remains
under the sword of the enemy. -Muhammed Ali Jinnah
These eye's do not wander in lust, for my
queen of hearts has graced them with love.
"We gave our today for your tommorrow ".
#27 Metanoia
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Posted 23 June 2014 - 11:34 AM
Remember that old 1970s novel, Jaws? More so, remember the book's thrilling film adaptation that rocked cinemas across the world in 1975, inventing the whole 'summer blockbuster' concept? Yes, it was about this big, nasty white shark that began to attack and devour unwitting folk in the sea waters that surrounded a touristy little town in the US.
Remember how after a few attacks by the big bad fish, the town's sheriff pleaded with the town's mayor that the beaches of the area be closed until the shark was caught? But the mayor refused, arguing that it was the height of the tourist season and that the town would lose millions of dollars if the beaches were closed. He also went on to accuse the sheriff of creating unnecessary panic and said that the shark was more a figment of his imagination than a reality.
Well, when thousands of tourists and people of the town began to gather on the beaches as they always did every summer, the huge shark went to town for a sumptuous lunch.
Does this little episode from the book/film remind you of anything? How we continued to ignore the fact that the figurative waters that surround us have been filling up with sharks for over a decade and yet we were always looking for all kinds of excuses to deflect and ignore this fact? We invested more in empowering our collective imaginations to come up with the silliest of scenarios and theories about the sharks not being there.
Our minds had been altered in such a manner that we saw enemies where there were none, and none where there were many.Well, some men and women insisted that only talking to the (so-called) sharks could make the (supposed) sharks actually turn into becoming vegetarian fish. The only problem was, no one quite knew exactly how one talks to a shark, though many claimed that they did. But it didn't work because many of those who tried, ended up becoming sharks themselves! Or seaweed.
Some believed that the shark attacks were justified because we had been hunting sharks long before they turned so vicious. But then such wise people added that the vicious sharks were put in our waters by our enemies to eat us. In other words, the (alleged) sharks were attacking us because we attacked them first but they were put in the water by our enemies and now we needed to talk to them. The sharks were alleged/so-called/supposed in case someone wanted to get rid of them, but quite real when someone wanted to talk to them. They were there, but not there.
Well, you see, according to some even wiser folk, there were good sharks and then there were bad sharks circling us. Bad sharks ate Pakistanis and good sharks ate only Afghans. So which of the two were put in the water by our enemies? The bad sharks, of course. But hold on there. It goes on. The so-called bad sharks are actually angry dolphins who became sharks because we slaughtered their kind and they now deserved some peace talking (and feeding), even though they were slipped in the water by our enemies and are bad.
Round and round we went until some Pakistanis finally realised that in our deep analysis of these sharks, we had begun to drown in a whirlpool of wish-wash. Anyway, now that we finally seem to have woken up to do something a tad more urgent and drastic about the pesky sharks, the whole new deal has already become a tad irritating for some folk.
Much of their business was being run on either navel-gazing about the sharks or outraging against anyone trying to suggest that they needed to be flushed out of the water. But recently even those who wanted them flushed out were left disorientated when an operation was finally launched by the shark-hunters to get rid of the troublesome fish. In a show of a rather morbid strain of hilarity, they began to throw harpoons at each other as they wrangled like spoilt, self-centred children fighting over sand-castles on a beach, as a tidal wave rose behind them in which the sharks and shark-hunters were caught in a vicious battle.
The poor onlookers were left scratching their heads. After coming around to finally believing that there were actual sharks in the water (instead of aliens in shark suits), the onlookers' attention was immediately drawn (by hyperventilating men with mics and TV cameras) away from the battle in the water and towards the bratty children kicking sand in each other's faces, and crying, 'Outrage, outrage! That sandcastle belongs to me!'
The decision to launch an operation against the sharks might have been a major event that may decide the fate and future of the swimmers, but it was amazing to notice how the very next day, we were outraging and navel-gazing about children fighting over sandcastles.
The poor shark-hunters were expecting some good old cheering and moral support. Instead they got distracted brats with sand in their faces and their backs turned against the troubled waters.
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#28 Metanoia
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Posted 26 June 2014 - 07:14 AM
Click on the link
1) "We but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor" — Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
2) "It is cream that rises to the top of milk. It is scum that rises to the top of a dirty pond."
#29 Felicius
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Posted 01 July 2014 - 04:52 PM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
#30 Felicius
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Posted 01 July 2014 - 05:16 PM
Napoleon Bonaparte: The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!
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text:
St. Bernard senior looks ahead to stint as Peace Corps doctor
Liz Gaccione liked representing her high school at mock trial competitions, and she thought one day she would be a lawyer.
Then in April, during her senior year at St. Bernard School, Gaccione went to Nicaragua with nine other students for a week to help build an orphanage. When the students were not making and pouring concrete for the building's foundation, they played with the children. When a child was sick, Gaccione said she was the one who reached for the first-aid kit.
Now, she wants to be a doctor and volunteer in the Peace Corps.
"I fell in love with the kids so fast, and I fell in love with the place I was in. I want to spend my life in those kinds of places. That's where the Peace Corps part came from," said Gaccione, 17. "And whenever people got sick, I would automatically try to help them. It was my first reaction. I realized that was what I was supposed to be doing."
Jill Patten, the director of campus ministry at St. Bernard, led the trip.
"What I saw of her was just that capacity to love," Patten said. "I'm thinking of the pictures I have of Liz holding the babies and caring for them, and caring for her fellow student missionaries. She really looked out for everyone."
Patten said Gaccione is determined and focused, and "whatever she sets her sights on, she's going to achieve, I think, through hard work and dedication."
The trip, Gaccione said, not only changed her career plans, but also her outlook on life.
"It made me want to be the person I was to those kids a lot more," she said. "I was kind and open and not self-conscious in any sort of way. I was just willing to give whatever I had. They really brought that out in me, and that's more how I want to be all the time."
After graduating from St. Bernard on Friday, Gaccione will attend Brown University. She plans to take pre-med courses and study Spanish.
On May 23, Gaccione received the Henry F. Salvatori Memorial Scholarship in Washington, D.C. Gaccione was one of eight winners in this year's National Leadership Grant Competition for the Sons of Italy Foundation.
At St. Bernard, Gaccione coordinated projects to raise money for the orphanage and to send candy and letters to troops overseas. She organized events to welcome new and prospective students as the president of the Student Ambassadors Club, and she tutored her peers. She was a member of the National Honor Society and the school's Campus Ministry, the assistant cross-country captain this year and a three-year varsity starter on the lacrosse team.
On Sundays for the past 10 years, Gaccione has sung in the choir at St. Mary Mother of the Redeemer Church in Groton. Gaccione's father, Daniel, is an orthopedic surgeon. Her mother, Heather Wood, is a clinical psychologist and her younger brother, Tyler, is in eighth grade at St. Bernard. The family lives in Groton. For the past year, a student from China has lived with them while studying at St. Bernard.
Gaccione said she is looking forward to this next chapter in her life.
"I feel like I really took everything that I could from these years, and they've been great," she said. "I've grown from them and learned from them, but it's time to move on to other things. I just feel so excited. I know there will be a lot of challenges and times that really aren't good, but I think that excitement and that hope is what keeps me moving forward."
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
THIS Is What Happens After Two Weeks Of HYPOXI
I KIND of want to scream right now.
Don't worry, nothing's wrong! I'm just SO excited!
Before I tell you why, I have to give you a bit of background about me - and my body.
I have always been a size 10-12 and I NEVER fluctuate.
I also really don't mind the way my body looks, but as everyone does, I have places I don't LOVE the look of, and wouldn't mind dropping a few kilos to even out and feel a little lighter.
The best excuse I can think of is my cousin's upcoming October wedding.
I'm a bridesmaid, along with my sisters, who are both size 6-8. I never feel 'bigger' than them, but would probably feel a little better in the clingy 'stone' coloured dress my cousin chose for us if I was a little lighter.
So begins my Hypoxi journey.
I've had six sessions now, which involve me laying in the wetsuit (which I now know is called the HYPOXIdermology), which has the air sucked out of it, and clings to your body. Then the'bubble-style' feeling starts!
To me feels like being inside a champagne bottle, or a nice massage for your butt and thighs.
Then it's half an hour of low maintenance cycling in either the lay down or sit up bike, which has a vacuum inside. Perfect Suits catch-up time.
It's such a pleasant, almost relaxing experience, and you feel so good afterwards. Anyway, I got my first results back after my sixth session and I recorded a video diary to share them with you!
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