a page from my diary... a fragment of me!

When I was in my teenage, I used to wonder why I was born and what God intended to do with me, since I had no clue about what I wanted to do to with my life. At 30 plus I am still as clueless as I before. I still get confused about myself and people around me. The hypocrisy around me leaves me speechless. I mean I get baffled about how people have one set of rules for their actions and another set of rules for other people. I mean they would give you the world of impression that they care about you but when the time comes to practically show that concern, they not just back out but also make you hate yourself for involving them into your troubles in the first place.

The problem with me like any other introvert person is that I feel a lot and think a lot more but don’t share it with anyone. And my mistrust in humanity is re-emphasized with everything and everyone around me. Sometimes I wonder if I would be in any less pain mentally and physically if I shared my thoughts with people. Its not that I haven’t tried but whenever I did I have been badly misunderstood and I had to face myself as my cynic.

I mean I used to think that certain people thought in a certain way about me but now I realized that actually they thought the opposite and it makes me laugh at my own lack of understanding and wishful thinking. This humbles me like so many other things that humble me. But you know what humbles me the most, that I am walking the same grounds, breathing the same air and even making the same decisions about my life that so many before me did, those who were far more greater worthy but they all died and now not a sign of their lives remains. What remains is history who favors achievers and important people but not ordinary ones like me. You know who alexander is and who salahudin is but you don’t know who guarded his room when he slept , who cooked for him and who died to protect him.

Similarly after I die, who would know who ‘Amna’ was, what she thought and what she knew and found out or what she believed in….. no one. This single thought humbles me more than anything. The thought that I would become an insignificant part of the soil , a mere morsel for ants and insects.

money: media media dance to my tunes.............

Aishwaryia Rai gives birth to a girl, makes headline news in my country, she gets fat the whole social media is fanatic to see the picture. Salman khan starts a petition to release sarbajit singh, people from all over the world signs it even without knowing what the issue is. IIFA awards or any other Bollywood awards are released; Pakistani channels give their leg and arm to telecast it first. Any Bollywood movie is released the news channels would tell you about its popularity. Our news channel would give you all kinds of unimportant news, meaningless talk shows, and interviews of political leaders who don’t give two pennies about you or me. But what they over looked in the name of journalism is one of the biggest acts of terrorism being currently done in this world right under our noses, the massacre of Muslims in Burma. The UN , so called American humanitarian organizations are silent, nobody is paying any heed to this violent act of terrorism which will shake you to the very core of your being whether you are a Muslim or not.

Had it been some other religion’s minority especially in any of the Muslim states, BBC, cnn, fox news even our own media would have been up the governments behind to get it fixed. Nato forces , CIA and god knows what other organizations would have been there to raise objections, but since this is not the case , since the victims are Muslims so might as well turn a blind eye towards this issue. The Americans and their buddies have mastered this art of double standards, cry when you see a finger bleeding of any other ethnical group but don’t even open your eyes when the hearts and souls of Muslims are being ripped out. Look at their past experiences Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Burma. This hypocrisy is their second nature (although they claim that Muslims are anti-America, well duh! Attitude reflects leadership and you are the leaders of the world) but what beats me is that why the whole Muslim world and media is all mum about this issue. The most prominent Muslim countries are not raising this issue, is it that they don’t care or is it that the Muslim unity that we are so proud to boast is just an illusion and all this brotherhood is buried under the brands and facilities provided by the west. Our government would not object, I know, come on the government who doesn’t gives two dimes about the people who actually voted for them, who die for them, why such government would care about another country. All they care about is the money, for them everything even the country’s soveregnity, even human lives are nothing but business, means to earn more so that their sons can enjoy the world. The media who claims to be open minded and free has proven to be otherwise within the past few years. The journalism which portrays this bravado that writers like me idolized has been made a mock of by the media’s role. They like the leaders and politicians have learnt the new trade, to earn more, to confuse the people and get fame by defaming. This media who once inspired the likes of me now has made me thank god that I am not into this trade. The silence that media has portrayed in issues like Burma and other domestic issues make me wonder if I should trust what I hear in the primetime news. The people in Burma might not be rich to get your attention or politically important but they are humans, Muslims who are living under this terrorism unjustly. It is my humble request and I would even beg if that works, to the media that for god’s sake please speak up, please inform the people of Pakistan about what is going on in Burma, only a few on Facebook have heard about this but please if you take this issue up hundreds and thousands would know and someone might make a pledge to the self-proclaimed gods of the west or make a petition and get it signed and convince the so called united nations that Muslim minority has right to live. You might not take Muslim lives seriously or they might not matter to you but to us they are brothers, they are one of us and they have the right to live as much right as me or even you!

A very thought provoking program that I saw a week back compelled me to write this, I tried to avoid it like all of us who have seen , witnessed or heard about this. I tried all week not to write about it but couldn’t help it, so here I am. This article would be discussing my self explanation about why people can commit such a heinous crime, killing a girl while she is in the womb. Yes the committing of the female feticide. A practice we all know is around us, a practice misused by our doctors to earn an extra buck, the practice advised by women who themselves claim to be mothers, and finally supported and financed by men who are actually responsible for that girl in the first place. I tried a lot to think about an excuse valid enough to overlook this crime. And after racking my brains for a whole week I could not convince myself that there is one reason that can come close to even validating this idea that can come into a fathers mind or a mother’s mind or a grandmother’s mind or even the whole society’s mind.

How and why a woman who is a mother of a daughter does not want her daughter in law to be a mother of girl, and this feeling is so powerful that she is willing to kill her own blood. What pain the mother would have to go through to let that happen, and I think every mother who came to know that she would be forced to do this would retaliate with all she has and all she could. I thought that why did people even think about doing this, and I read about how this practice has been in this world since ages, with Greeks and Arabs and other races doing this but my questions stays; why?

The answer that came from the men and their mothers was that they want someone to forward their race and another popular one was that we cannot afford the dowry and raising a daughter.

Well is forwarding your race that important to you, I mean who are you seriously, just an ordinary person or family whom nobody knows apart from a few ORDINARY people just like you. People more worthy and more deserving than you, families more powerful and influential than you have gone from this world without a single trace of their existence left in this world. It is up to Allah to keep a name alive or make a family non-existent from this world. And trust me His criteria of judgment do not include how many sons or daughters you have. Please you are not a dinosaur that you would go extinct. If you are worthy of being remembered you will be. It amazes me that we call ourselves Muslims when we practice what Islam shuns. After the spread of Islam one of the most important orders given by Allah was that girls will not be buried alive. And now we who boast ourselves to be the worshipers of this amazing religion defy its orders and do what kuffar did before Islam. And the worst part is that we are justifying it and taking it in our stride. How can we why should we? Have we all forgotten that our prophet (pbuh) did not have any son; he only had a daughter whom he loved and respected. Whom we give the highest regard. Did our prophet need a son to keep his name alive? No. Okay you might not want to compare a divine soul with your unworthy self so I can quote some more human and ordinary example, does Quaid-e-azam needed a son to keep his name alive?  Is he less respected in history just because he had a daughter. We have been under the rule of a queen for 200 years and Britain is still ruled by a queen, did her family name vanished from the face of earth because her father didn’t have a son? No, in fact these people are more respected and known than you or me. I can quote hundreds of examples about people who are famous not because the sex of their children but because of whom they were and what they did in this world. So being a nobody we should not worry about our race being forwarded or not. History will tell you that races have been wiped from the face of the earth by Allah not because they had daughters or sons but because they did what we are doing in our society, killing beings that can’t defend themselves. Being a Muslim I know that it is my duty to protect and fend for those who are in capable of doing that for themselves, this is what jihad is.

As for the matter of dowry, please that is the lamest justification one can think of to commit something so big a crime. Instead of killing girls, kill this practice. We won’t mend our ways but find paths that help us. I don’t know who we should educate? The men; that it is their fault if a girl is born as their chromosome determines the sex of a child, or the women; that please just because you are a mother of a son does not give you the right to take away a child from another woman whether you like or despise your daughter in law but please remember what you are killing is you kin, your own son’s daughter. Just think if your daughter in law’s father would have killed his daughter would your son have been able to get a child of his own. Just think if all men start killing daughters than how would they forward their race without women. Think the kind of mental degradation we are enforcing on the women in our society. The kind of mental pressure and stress we are introducing in our society. Remember a stressed mother will give birth to a stressed and mentally disturbed society. We need to put our faith in Allah not just in words but practically in our actions to become Islamic republic if we don’t and continue doing wrong then we are just another race who will be vanished from the face of earth no matter how many sons we have.

The long standing tussle of power between the two forces of Pakistan is not new to us. These two power houses are the armed forces of Pakistan and political establishment of Pakistan. Before giving my current point of let me first criticize my own opinion which was that the armed forces have been looting our country for decades now and the dictators have been the root cause of downfall of economy and have been the only reason why we are in such a dire state. What made me rethink my point of view, well no surprise there the current government has made the opinion about democracy in a lot of common people change myself included. We all know that these two institutes have been covering each other’s back for a very long time now but to know the lesser evil we face let’s consider their merits separately.

One issue that we hear and repeat without so much as second thought or a proper insight is the defense budget. The much criticized issue by politicians, media personalities, the so called advocates of democracy and even the common man. But no one justifies or explains why this is the bigger issue than any other in our country. We have all heard the much pronounced sentence that instead of giving this much budget to the army why not spends it on education or welfare. Let me first clarify a small point here which I too understood recently, the point that no one gives a thought to is that what a defense budget is. A set amount of money given to the army? Well not just the army but the armed forces which include air force and navy as well. Our army is the 5^th largest army in the world and maintaining that army needs money and we should not overlook the inflation that is growing in the economy. Another big factor is the Indian angle. We know that our defense budget is directly proportional to their defense budget and vice versa. If they buy a new weapon than we need to do that too for self-defense off course , so these factors affect the amount of budget the government sets for defense. Apart from that we are defending or facing animosity from all sides of border, not one side is safe and we need to maintain all borders. I won’t request you to do an economic analysis of the budget and all but if you could just Google the price that the army needs to pay to maintain a single soldier or to load a single weapon or even to fly a single fighter plane and then see how many of these actions they have to do every day you won’t mind paying them that much. As far as the education is concerned or welfare is concerned, I never saw anybody on television or anywhere questioning the accountability of the 32 billion allocated to education or 85 billion for energy crisis or even the 23.1 billion for health all allocated in the 2010 budget and this is 2 years after that but nobody raises a finger. The second problem is the dictatorship that we have had to face in the past, well I don’t think anybody can favor it but if you see the kind of democracy that the vadera politicians or politics run by the influential families has brought isn’t actual democracy as well. I think they have been the unifromless dictators. All of them have used their positions to their own benefits and not even one has delivered what they promised. The politicians have always criticized the military but when in office the same political party has used the armed forces to gain popularity and strength not just locally but in the eyes of the international political scene as well. Each and every politician has forwarded their career in the eyes of the international political leaders claiming that only they are the solution to the issues of the region and to do that they have used the military and made very dangerous decisions.  Decisions that when went wrong were blamed on the army. The dilemma is that due to the code of conduct and discipline of the military these decisions or the actual scenario is never brought in public or is unknown by the common man but anybody who has been studying the recent history of the region knows what actually happened.

I have wondered that these politicians have been defaming the military for so long then why we common people are attached to it, why we support it? Well if you think harder the answer is not that difficult to get. Even though military has been famed to be corrupted but in a recent survey the armed forces are the least corrupt institute of Pakistan and government sector being the highest. Apart from a bunch of top officers I don’t think you can find many corrupt officers in the army. The second reason is that  selection of being an armed forces officer is purely democratic, if you fulfill the merit you are hired otherwise  you can’t be included in it. There is no other criterion, there is no family background no ethical back ground or even the area you belong to is not considered and we have witnessed that officers from very humble backgrounds have become one of the most influential generals of the world in this institute. It’s hard to find a single family in rural or urban areas that has not one army officer or soldier in their family, be it close or far. Now let’s compare it with the political institution of our country, to be a successful politician you have to be influential, be it family wise or business wise. Either your family should be a Bhutto or wattoo or sharif or gillani etc. or you should be owning businesses or charitable companies otherwise you cannot be a successful politician, if you are a nobody from nowhere then you can be a jiyala or a karkun as they call it but you cannot be a leader or politician of any worth…. No sir. When was the last time we had a prime minister or a minister who was a common man from a mohala. This is the reason that army cannot be hated as it comes from our roots. We know they are closer to us and our lives and understand our problems more than the leaders.

Another issue we hear more than often is the ISI agenda. Everyone in the world let alone Pakistan is using this propaganda to defame this institute. Again I don’t need to remind that every politician in power has used this institute against the others but when it is used against themselves they defame it openly and sometimes outrageously. As far as the foreign media is concerned I think that we should educate ourselves into knowing that why intelligence agencies are made? They are made to do the dirty work, the hidden work that common people need not to know or bother about. They are guarding their respective countries interest and trying to keep an eye on people who are the enemies and trying to guard their own stability even if the cost is destabilizing other countries. These institutes work without the knowledge of people around the world and we as people might not appreciate the dirty work they do but when the game is of power play in the region and maintaining your own sovereignty these institutions play an important role. But the question is that why don’t we discuss the role of RAW (Indian agency),CIA ( American agency), MOSSAD(Israel agency), M1-6 (UK agency), FSB (Russian agency) and the list goes on, all of these agencies have been working very hard to destabilize other nations to get what they want and these agencies work independent of the government setup and if I say that the president of America is bound to listen and report to CIA I would not be overly exaggerating. The function of raw and fsb and even mossad in destabilizing the complete region of Muslim countries is quite evident if we study history but we don’t question them, we don’t discuss them, all we do is criticize ISI. Why do people throughout the world pin point our agency, well in a recent survey ISI has been proved to be the most successful intelligence agency with the least amount of funding to operate in. I don’t want you to appreciate ISI or every general that ever came in office in the army because that would be too much to ask for as we have become a confused lot BUT I want that we should realize that political culprits should not be easily forgotten and forgiven by just blaming the army. We should at least give credit where it is due, as much as the current government tries to ignite a response from the COAS and ISI chief, they are maintaining dignity and respecting our constitution more than the constitutionally elected parliament.