Shoe-thrower: Should we be cherishing freedom of expression in Iraq?

On the 14th of December 2008 an Iraqi journalist, Muntazar al-Zaidi threw his shoes, one after the other, at outgoing US president Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, in full glare of the media. This incident immediately made global headlines and the video footage has been replayed repeatedly, becoming a firm favorite to watch on the Internet. Also, the neo-con fantasy to be greeted with garlands in Iraq after waging a war based on lies finally faced and badly failed the reality check.

Opinion over the action of 29 year old al-Zaidi, has been sharply divided. The majority of Arabs considered this an act of heroism and bravery, reflecting their own bitter sentiments about the US aggression in Iraq and the established impotence of their own governments. Al-Zaidi’s brother said, "Millions of Iraqis or rather millions of the people of the world wish to do what Muntadhar did…Thank God he had the guts to do it and avenge the Iraqi people and the country from those who plunder it and have killed its people.” It is noteworthy that Muslims across the world while supporting al-Zaidi’s actions didn’t show concern about whether he was a Shia or a Sunni. If one was to believe British and American propaganda, this shouldn’t have been the case, as they have tried hard to build this sectarian divide.

But likewise there was vocal condemnation from some quarters and understandably from the US-backed Iraqi government. As one local Iraqi stated, "I deem it unnecessary. This thing is unjustifiable. It is an incorrect style. We are not violent. One can voice his opinion in other ways,"
Navigating through this sharp divide, one particular theme emerged that caught my attention and which I want to focus on. This theme was echoed by Bush himself in the immediate aftermath of the shoe-attack, when asked by a reporter, he mentioned that this was freedom of expression.

This statement has been packaged by quite a few to demonstrate the ‘moral dominance’ of capitalism over other ways of life, by posing questions such as: “just imagine what would have happened to the shoe-thrower under the Saddam regime?” or, “would it have been possible in first place that someone would dare throw his shoes on dictators like Saddam, Abdullah or Musharraf in their respective countries?”

These sorts of questions need serious scrutiny as otherwise people will jump to the fallacious conclusion that western capitalism and the US-led invasion has brought some good, which is freedom of expression.

I would like to argue from three different angles, challenging this lie of the superiority of western capitalism and secular democracies.

1. The first point is that whenever Muslims want to evaluate a system it needs to be done on the basis of Islam and therefore the comparison should be between capitalism and Islam, not capitalism and dictatorship, monarchy or oligarchy. If you just try to look for something worse than what you are evaluating, you will always find it and therefore it is a futile exercise giving us no reasonable evaluation or judgment. If we were to compare the state of affairs about freedom of expression to account the ruler in Islam, we would learn that Islam in this case, as in all other domains of life, is the bench mark for justice and fairness. Just to quote one example from many to show how the prophet of Allah (saw) would react to accountability and criticism by his companions, the Sahaba (ra). In the battle of Badr, when the Prophet (saw) was straightening the ranks of the Muslim army, he was walking in front of them with a wooden stick in his hand. Sawwad bin Ghuzzaiya, one of the Sahaba was a step ahead of the others and so the Prophet (saw) pushed him in his stomach with the wooden stick. Upon this Sawwad (ra) said, “Oh Messenger of Allah, you have hurt me and I want to get even with you”. Just imagine the other Sahaba hearing that someone wants to get even with the Prophet of Allah! But the Prophet very calmly said, “Go ahead and he uncovered his stomach”. Sawwad (ra) jumped on the Prophet, hugged him and kissed his stomach. The Prophet asked Sawwad (ra) “Oh Sawwad, why did you do that?” He replied, “You see what we are going to face, and this might be the last day in my life and so I wanted the last moments in my life to be my skin touching yours”.

2. The second point is that when we compare the situation today with the one which prevailed under dictators like Saddam or still prevails under the Arab Monarchies, how can we forget the very fact that these monarchies were/are in reality the puppet regimes of the Western colonialists, be it the British or the Americans? This means that all the cruelties carried out by the dictators were at least sanctioned by their Western masters and therefore they share the blame equally.

3. The third and foremost point that needs to be understood is the deceitful cleverness which this Western capitalist system employs. It robs its subjects from their land, resources, lives, honor and deen, but still manages that they cherish the ‘freedom of expression’ which they are left with! What is the point in having the right to express all your anger, even if it is with throwing shoes at the spearhead of who brought all this evil, when you are not left with any other choice and are not able to resist their occupation and domination? All the widows and orphans of Iraq, the inmates of Abu Gharib, the young and old bereaved of their family members have the right to cry, lament and wail, so should we be cherishing that as well?

Such incidents show the deceptive but influential nature of western propaganda. It is imperative that Muslims do not allow anyone to pull the wool over their eyes such that they become easy prey. Rather deeper scrutiny of these events, linked to the wider political landscape need to be benchmarked and evaluated within the framework of Islam.

Likewise, Muslims should feel a sense of shame – that given the all the armies, weapons, and resources that we have at our disposal, all we can muster is admiration for a shoe-thrower. This speaks volumes about the impotence and treachery of the rulers that blot the Muslim lands.
Muhammad (saw) said, ‘Every traitor will have a flag on the Last Day. And his flag will be raised according to his level of treachery. The traitor of traitors is the ruler who betrays his people.’

Are we all advocates of terrorists?

One 2nd December 2008, Nazeer Naji wrote a column in Urdu, published in Jang which can be accessed at http://www.jang.com.pk/jang/dec2008-daily/02-12-2008/col3.htm. Though the article omits the mention of the very recent Mumbai attacks, it can’t go unnoticed that it has been written in the very backdrop of it. Not only is the context in which it is written around ‘terrorism’, but its title, body and the final conclusive remarks are all unambiguously about terrorism and that’s why I wonder whether this omission was deliberate or unintentional. The article first takes us back in history and while depicting what role institutional influences played in alienating the Bangladeshi people before 1971, the author equates the actions taken by the then Pakistani regime and Army to terrorism like we see it in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq today by the so-called Islamists. He goes even further and claims that the partition of East Pakistan was justified and done in the name of Islam and patriotism “uss waqt bhi hum ne Islam aur hubul-watni ke naam par un dehshatgardon ki waqalat hote dekhi”. This, I must say is not only a gross misrepresentation of facts, but also is a very contradictory duo of words, packed together in one sentence. Patriotism is a very base emotion which, like nationalism, is divisive in essence, uniting only those belonging to a specific part of land to the exclusion of all others and that too only as long as there is a foreign threat. In case of nationalism, the common denominator is a specific race, tribe or ethnicity. By far, Islam is not reconcilable with these parochial ideas and actually fought and obliterated them from the hearts and minds of its followers. This is not to say that there is no history of people using Islam to justify all kinds of heinous crimes, but the fact of the matter is that the escalation of East Pakistan was not seen as an Islamic issue and in no way as one comparable to the issue of fighting occupiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the author is artfully suggesting.

The second anomaly which is worth pointing out is the claim that all Pakistanis are in one way or the other advocates of the terrorists (“dehshatgardon ki waqalat karne waale”) which he divides into two distinct categories, and further claims both are originating from FATA “aj fata ki kamingahon mein bethe chand dehshatgard saari dunya mein issi tarha begunahon ko marne ke mansoobe banate hein”. The first category, according to the article, is of those terrorists who carry out attacks against Westerners in their own countries and the second category is of those who carry out attacks in Muslim countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the victims are innocent Muslims. I wonder whether the author left out the third and most happening category of ‘terrorists’ who carry out attacks against Western soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan because he doesn’t consider them to be terrorists or because their mention would have weakened his case against the other two categories of terrorists. Whatever the reason, I won’t focus on what was not mentioned, even though it is that which is actually supported by the masses in all Muslim countries and most Islamic political parties. Coming to his two claims, let me pose the questions here, are the people, media, government and political parties of Pakistan, or for that matter any other Muslim country supportive of or sympathetic to the terrorists of the above mentioned two categories? Leave aside the mainstream political parties and media, even the more ‘radical’ groups and people (to the exclusion of the few mysterious ones like al-Qaeda, about which we are not even sure if they exist beyond the records and think tanks of pentagon) are never heard of rejoicing in attacks like 9/11, 7/7 or the Marriott blast! Similarly unfound is the claim that all the planning, logistics and finances are taking place in and from FATA, a region which is the least developed in any sense of the word and is being combed by Pakistani security officials, together with their American counterparts with the help of most high-tech technologies like GPS, gunship helicopters, drones and guided missiles for the last 7 long years!

Based on these baseless claims, the author is convinced that American rocket strikes in FATA are justified. He brings the escalating security situation in and around FATA as an evidence for his claim, simply ignoring the direction of causality, to his theory’s benefit. Is it not true that all this fighting erupted and worsened only after the Musharraf regime bowed down to the Americans in 2001 and agreed to fight its own people in the tribal areas under the pretext of ‘war on terror’ before which ‘suicide attack’ was an unheard of phenomenon in civilian Pakistan?

I feel deeply saddened by the fact that instead of asking where the British and Americans draw their moral, ethical and legal legitimacy to bomb and invade Iraq and Afghanistan from, he ends his article by asking about the legitimacy of fighting the occupiers and their supporters. Again, almost nobody including myself is suggesting that attacks of the above mentioned two categories are justified, but shouldn’t we expect our intellectuals to be talking about the causes of this evil rather than its symptoms?

Muslims: Guilty unless proven innocent?

I am writing this post in response to the scores of columns, editorials and op-eds which appeared in dailies across Pakistan regarding the recent attacks in Mumbai. While there were very few which tried to analyze the events and go beyond the Indian account of things, most of our writers were quick to pass judgments on supposed Pakistani involvement and sentence the perpetrators of those attacks. Frankly, while reading through all those articles, I too started feeling as if this is a closed chapter and the only thing left was to handcuff Pakistan, accept responsibility and hand out punishments to those Pakistanis who were involved and/or instigated the attacks. Externally, it was logical for countries to discuss whether the punishment should be in form of a fully fledged war or a surgical strike on Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. In all this jingoistic mantra spelled out by the Indian media and embraced by their Pakistani counterparts, it was difficult to hold on for a second and think about the correctness and fairness of this hastily executed media trial where once again Islam was the scapegoat. But the absence of objectivity that was critically required by the media, during such emotive and politically sensitive events, didn’t allow me to go with the flow. I asked myself simple questions which I would like to share with you, but before that let me state a few facts.

All what we know about Pakistan’s involvement in the Mumbai attacks stems from either Indian media or Indian officials. No objective evidence has been brought to daylight and neither will this happen, least in the name of National Security. Pakistan and India are arch-enemies and have already fought 3 wars against each other. India has a history of inciting anti-Muslim feelings, Babri Mosque, Gujrat carnage and the Samjhota bombing are just a few to mention. Similarly, India has also a history of prematurely blaming Pakistan when attacked internally, only to be proven wrong afterwards. The recent bombing of the Malegon and Samjhota express are proof for this. It is also noteworthy that Hindu extremists, those responsible for the Babri mosque demolition, Gujrat carnage and involved in the Malegon and Samjhota express bombing, form India’s main stream political party, which was in power before the current regime and as its election year, it can’t be ruled out that they are behind the recent events. Indian army’s serving Colonel is one of the prime suspects in the Malegon bombing case with known ties with Hindu extremist groups. Also, three of the very first and most mysterious casualties of the Mumbai attacks were three police officers, Hemant Karkare, DIG Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar, who were investigating the serving Colonel’s involvement in the Malegon bombing. To cut a long story short, the whole event is surrounded by lots of mysteries and open questions.

Having all this in mind, let me now come to the questions which I asked myself and I think every responsible Pakistani journalist should ask himself as well, before attempting to write on this issue.

1. Allah (swt) says in the Quran, "O you who believe! If a fasiq (liar – evil person) brings you a news, verify it, lest you harm some people in ignorance and afterward repent of what you did” [TMQ 49:6]. Shouldn’t we have dealt more skeptically and carefully with the information coming from the mouths of the mushrikeen, not just fasiqeen?

2. As both countries are arch-enemies, how can the evidence provided by one be accepted by the other without verifying it objectively? I recall reading that in the time of Ali (ra) as the Khalifah of the Muslims, he had seen a Jew steal his saddle. Ali (ra) upon catching that person took him to the court and narrated the account to the Judge (Qadhi), who rejected this as credible evidence because it was coming from the plaintiff i.e. Ali (ra)!

3. It is widely known and accepted from numerous declassified reports and former agent’s accounts that intelligence agencies launch ‘false flag’ operations in order to achieve strategic objectives, even killing their own people. Therefore, why is it that mainstream Pakistani media didn’t even bother to consider this as one explanation of the attacks, let alone a plausible one given the predictions in India that the rightwing forces will take advantage of the Mumbai tragedy in the forthcoming election. Interestingly, some Western analysts, like Wayne Madsen, a Washington DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist, have pointed this out in context of a false flag operation, but almost none in our mainstream media did.

4. It is well known that all the evidence brought forward against Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 (and against Iraq for possessing WMD) would not have been sufficient to indict even a thief in US courts. Same is the case with the Mumbai attacks, why is it then that we are readily accepting the Indian version of the story?

5. Even if the individuals who carried out the attacks were Muslims, this does not exonerate Indian and other intelligence agencies entirely. We have to realize that many militant groups are easy to infiltrate and motivate as they rely heavily on money – other forces can direct them for specific actions. This is what can be one explanation of 9/11 in America, where there is credible evidence that the US allowed that to happen in order to project US foreign policy. Even many non-Muslim thinkers and websites have highlighted this issue, with associated evidences. It is well known that a group to whom George Bush belongs to, called PNAC (Project for the New American Century), had been lobbying Clinton to invade Iraq since 1998 and they said on their website that America needs a catastrophic event like Pearl Harbour to project American foreign policy.

6. Whilst there is thick cloud of suspicion over the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, there seems to be clear sky as to who has benefited and who will suffer from the attacks, but this too has not been the focus of our writers. If one was to consider the impact of those attacks, they can be summarized as
a. More pressure on Pakistan from the US and the International community and opportunity to repeat their notorious command to ‘do more’.
b. More pressure on the Muslims of India and an excuse to suppress their rights further and leave them even more helpless in case of another Gujrat like carnage in the face of rising Hindu extremism.
c. More pressure on Muslims residing in UK - though the UK link was dismissed at an early point, nonetheless it can be used as further 'proof' to squeeze the Muslim community - already dealing with 7/7 and a host of legislation targeting them – through more draconian legislation curtailing their legitimate rights of practicing Islam and self-expression.

7. Last but not least, there is no justification for blaming Islam - which is well known for its stance on innocent civilians - as a result of the actions of a few individuals. If one would just keep in mind what the Quran and Sunnah say about the sanctity of an innocent person’s life, it would be impossible to equate Islam with terror, something which has become commonplace today. Why don’t our columnists turn the tables and blame the non-implementation of Islam - in which the colonialists, both former and current surely have a big role to play - for such unfortunate events?

It seems that the age old principle of ‘innocent unless proven guilty’ has been reversed since 9/11 when it comes to Muslims. At least Muslims writers should not follow this inhumane, immoral and unethical practice of demonizing fellow brethren and Islam.

After Democracy and Nation-states, do we now need to adopt religious rituals too?

One 29th November 2008, Irfan Husain wrote a column published in Daily Dawn which can be accessed at http://www.dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/the-paper/columnists/is+yoga+bad+for+you. The article is written in response to a Malaysian scholar’s fatwa (religious edict) that ‘yoga’ should be prohibited for Muslims. Abdul Shukor Husin, the chairman of Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council issued a fatwa in which he considers the spiritual elements of yoga to be in contradiction with Islam. He is of the opinion that merely doing the physical movements of yoga minus the worshipping and chanting might not be wrong in the eyes of the religion; it should be avoided as “doing one would lead to another”. He said yoga has been practiced by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporates physical and religious elements and chants and worshipping, with the aim at “being one with God”. He further told a press conference that, “We discourage Muslims to do yoga as a form of exercise because it will ultimately lead to religious worshipping and chanting which is against Islam. In Islam, one must not do things which can erode one’s aqidah or faith. Doing yoga, even just the physical movements is a step towards an erosion of one’s faith in the religion, hence Muslims should avoid it”.

The fatwa, though well articulated, caused a fuss in the International media a day after it appeared on the 21st of November 2008. In a week’s time our intellectuals also found it worthy to shed some ink on the matter. Irfan Husain’s article discusses the fatwa, but neither from a religious point of view nor from a spiritual one. Rather, it starts with a personal anecdote which is meant to establish the medical benefits of yoga, as if the scholars have denied any of them, or as if these benefits can be acquired exclusively through yoga. The article further makes fun of another fatwa by the same council, in which it prohibits women to imitate men in dress and behavior. Here again, the author brings another anecdote, that of his childhood cousin who according to him is perfectly feminine even after having a boyish past while a kid.
Though the author admits that he is unqualified to challenge these fatawah, this doesn’t hinder him from doing so. As the author doesn’t even bother to discuss how, the process and which evidences from Quran and Sunnah the scholars used to issue the edicts, I will not focus on the fatwa itself. However, it is still worthwhile mentioning here that both the fatawah, whether someone agrees or disagrees, are well grounded in Quran and Sunnah as there are daleel for both. The first fatwa is firstly based on the sharai principle that anything leading to haram becomes itself haram. This is applicable to yoga, because one could start for the physical part of it, but easily get involved into its unalienable spiritual component. Secondly, as yoga is something that emanates from another religion, the general Islamic principle is the prohibition to imitate or adopt such rituals. For the case of women dressing and behaving like men, there is an explicit hadith which forbids that. Without going into further detail, this should suffice just to show that the scholars were not basing their fatawah on their whims or personal experiences. Therefore, anyone attempting to question their validity should also engage in sincere and serious debate within the same parameters of daleel and reason based on the sharai framework. This brings me to my first objection on this article namely, would the author challenge some new research appearing in a medical journal about a disease by quoting his larger family’s experiences with that very disease? Of course not, because to counter such a scientific study, we all (including the author) recognize the need to bring even stronger evidences, within the given scientific framework. Likewise, the scientific and wider community would have mocked such a shallow and insulting effort. This does beg the question why the wider Muslim community is so silent about these and similar articles on matters that require robust Islamic discourse and not anecdotal shallow commentary.

My second objection is related to the author’s playing with semantics. Is he too naïve to know that the term yoga refers to a composite set of actions and ideas which have a specific origin and context attached to it? I would take it that before going to his yoga classes he didn’t bother to look up the meaning of yoga in a simple English dictionary, but did he also not do so before writing this article? Does he seriously believe that a practicing Hindu, Christian or Jew would take up the Muslim prayer (Salah) as an exercise for the body and soul because of its physical component? Did he overlook that the fatwa on boyish dressing and behavior was for adult girls and not minors, or does he deliberately mislead the unwary reader by mentioning his minor cousin? Is he truly convinced that ‘goodness’ and ‘fun’ can be criteria for measuring the correctness of a fatwa? Is he convinced that anything not explicitly mentioned in the Quran is permitted? Does he really think that modernity is by adopting new ‘ideas’ even those attached to a different creed (and contradicting his own) and because he is afraid of us going back to the backwardness of the 6th century? Is he sure that confronting the ‘half baked mullahs’ would result in something constructive if done in such an unqualified and erratic way?

To many, yoga might seem an issue not worthwhile discussing, at least not with such seriousness. The point is that the issue here is not yoga, rather it’s firstly the fact that our intellectuals, by pointing out Islamic opinions on such issues and dealing with them without due diligence, are doing no service to either Islam or intellectual discourse. The second point falls from the first, that exactly due to such an attitude we have today accepted concepts, solutions and systems which are in no way reconcilable with Islam and contradict it in their origin and purpose. Two examples of such conepts adopted by Muslims on equally shallow argumentation are that of deomcracy and nation-states. Of course both of them deserve seperate treatment in dedicated posts.

Given all these points, I really wonder why this article was written in first place. It might be that some of us have started fearing Islam so much that anything uttered in the name of it is simply rejected and ridiculed. Is it that our intellectuals seek the praise, recognition and acceptance of others and feel the need to appease them at all costs? If yes, giving them the benefit of doubt, I think one explanation for this behavior could be that they have never seen Islam implemented in its totality on a people rather what they saw is and was bits and pieces of it, mostly adopted either to silence the masses in their calls for Islam or because it was convenient at that time to the ruler implementing those patches. Clearly the colonial occupation was not merely of the lands physically, but of the people intellectually, and bringing forward correct ideas is the only cure for this intellectual slavery.