To be a Shia in Pakistan

To be a Shia in Pakistan is to court death itself these days. There are literally countless stories out there like this one : http://dawn.com/2013/01/14/a-descent-into-darkness-the-plight-of-victims-families/ - of lives ended too soon; of sole bread-earners of countless households taken away from their families mercilessly; and for what? These atrocities are such widespread now that all of us know somebody who has been a victim of this - a victim of this insane and barbaric killing spree by dogs let loose by the State willingly.

Why is Malik Ishaq still allowed to hold rallies in Karachi and other parts of the country openly threatening action against the Shias? Why is that poison-spewing man even outside roaming our streets free? Why has he been let loose for "lack of evidence" by the supposedly rejuvenated justice system of Pakistan (even after openly confessing many Shia killings)? Why? why? why?!

Whose interests does that serve? Is the State afraid of going against these religious fundamentalists, because it fears for it's own safety when it needs them for Afghanistan and India? At what expense? Thousands are dead. No city in Pakistan is safe anymore for Shias. This is unprecedented and unbelievable for anyone wishing for a modicum of normalcy in their daily life. How can you live this?

You can't!

The recent outcry for justice following the barbaric double bombings in Quetta was heartening to see. For once, the country did wake up to the plight of the Shias. But has anything actually been done since then? Is there someone now magically willing to go after LeJ, SSP, and their friends in TTP? Meanwhile, the killings continue unabated. Two Shia doctors were killed in the space of a few hours two days ago.

One Shia doctor in #Peshawar, another Shia Doctor in #Karachi is gunned down in space of few hours. #ShiaGenocide continues in #Pakistan.
— Ali Salman Alvi (@alisalmanalvi) January 22, 2013

The killings go on, and like everything else in Pakistan, the news fades away. It is the silence that kills. So speak up!

Faith in Religion

At a time when religion (Islam in particular) are the target of much ridicule for being "backward" and "out of date", we need to re-affirm our faith in the real message given by our beautiful religion. Lately, many hard-line and narrow-minded approaches towards religion and life have come to the fore in many Muslim societies sadly. It is, therefore, imperative for us to refer back to the deeds and sayings of the great people that lived before us, and who better to look back to then the people who surrounded our great Prophet (PBUH). At the forefront of those people were Hazrat Ali (A.S). Once Ali (A.S) was asked about faith in religion. He replied:

"The structure of faith is supported by four pillars endurance, conviction, justice and jihad.

Endurance is composed of four attributes: eagerness, fear, piety and anticipation (of death). so whoever is eager for Paradise will ignore temptations; whoever fears the fire of Hell will abstain from sins; whoever practices piety will easily bear the difficulties of life and whoever anticipates death will hasten towards good deeds.

Conviction has also four aspects to guard oneself against infatuations of sin; to search for explanation of truth through knowledge; to gain lessons from instructive things and to follow the precedent of the past people, because whoever wants to guard himself against vices and sins will have to search for the true causes of infatuation and the true ways of combating them out and to find those true ways one has to search them with the help of knowledge, whoever gets fully acquainted with various branches of knowledge will take lessons from life and whoever tries to take lessons from life is actually engaged in the study of the causes of rise and fall of previous civilizations .

Justice also has four aspects depth of understanding, profoundness of knowledge, fairness of judgment and dearness of mind; because whoever tries his best to under- stand a problem will have to study it, whoever has the practice of studying the subject he is to deal with, will develop a clear mind and will always come to correct decisions, whoever tries to achieve all this will have to develop ample patience and forbearance and whoever does this has done justice to the cause of religion and has led a life of good repute and fame.

Jihad is divided into four branches: to persuade people to be obedient to Allah; to prohibit them from sin and vice; to struggle (in the cause of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and to detest the vicious. Whoever persuades people to obey the orders of Allah provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades them from vices and sins humiliates the unbelievers; whoever struggles on all occasions discharges all his obligations and whoever detests the vicious only for the sake of Allah, then Allah will take revenge on his enemies and will be pleased with Him on the Day of Judgment."

Notice the emphasis on acquiring knowledge and studying a subject in detail? Notice how he connects the pursuit of knowledge to the development of patience and tolerance in oneself? Isn't that we, collectively as an Ummah, are not doing at all? Food for thought.

Apologies

I've never ever been known to cuss like I did in that last blog post of mine. So please accept my apologies. I was just so freaking mad at the umpteenth depressing news coming out of my country. I am just so sick and tired of self-serving and incompetent people playing havoc with the lives of millions of my fellow countrymen, and I just HAD to vent. Hope that is understandable.

On the bright side, I hope this has brought me back to blogging.

The Pakistan of 2012

I could not think of any other title for this post. So much has gone on in that country, that it would take an eternity to address how seriously we have managed to fuck everything up that was once nice in Pakistan. I haven't written for a long time, and I do not want to do one of those lame political posts again advocating one political stance over another. Enough of that crap! All that is going in the country defies belief, where a President is basically running the country like a mafia gang, appointing his appeasers on all the important posts. First, that Gilani whose response to every question asked of him began with: "We have a constitution, assembly, and elected members". And now the infamous Mr. Raja Rental. A new low for the country considering the dude is accused and has been requested to be placed on the ECL by NAB!

This government has a lot of fucktards, but Rehman Malik has to take the cake for me. I mean who else can be absolutely inept at their job; have no credibility whatsoever; think and act as depicted in the video below, and still hold arguably one of the most important posts in the government? It defies belief, and it makes no fucking sense!

Where do I begin? What do I say? And all this time, terrorists roam free spreading religious hatred and spouting poison under the garb of following the Sahaba. Lashkar e Jhangvi continues to kill Shias and other minorities it deems as KAFIR with impunity. Our ever so nice Sunni brethren continue to not give a fuck until their local mosque is attacked. Where the fuck is the Chief Justice in all this? Just because there is no political gain to be had here, no one cares to speak about all this innocent killing? What good is a state then? What reason do you have to live in a state without a semblance of justice whatsoever?! Mr. Imran Khan continues to hire lotas to get seats, and his latest appeasement takes him ever so close to Jamaat e Islami. Surprised?

Why do things have to be so unbelievably fucked up?! Leaving the political douchebags aside, why can't the rest of us just do our fucking jobs to make the country at least livable?! Forget 100%, why can't we be 50% loyal to our professions and at least make the country function like a normal fucking country!! Even if Mr. Tabdeeli-Aa-Gayee-Hay wins, how do YOU expect to change the country in 90, 180, or 365 days?! Are you waiting for a messiah before you mend your ways? Will you start throwing trash in the trash cans once PPP is out? Will you stop bribing your way out of everything then? And if then, why not now?

P.S. Sorry for all the french. That was absolutely necessary.

Life in the fast lane

Saw this ad on TV the other day. To me it epitomizes this smartphone-enabled life of ours these days. Everything is just so readily available and accessible now, its crazy!

I love my iPhone as much as the next guy, but too many people are overdoeing this I feel. Constantly staring at your smartpohne when you could be making a perfectly good conversation with the guy next to you isn't my idea of utilizing my time, its dumb. So stop!

Blogger iPhone app

First post from the iPhone app. A good way to share on-the-go. Who knows ... maybe this'll get me back to blogging.

Google+

Ok, I will be first person to admit I wasn't the biggest fan of Google+ when it came out. But despite all criticism thrown at it, it seems to have come out of that early phase and is slowly and steadily increasing its user base. With the addition of Google Pages, business of all size and popular websites are creating their pages on it. Looks like Google+ is here to stay. But how long before companies start touting their Google addresses publicly, in advertisements, in theaters, on TV? Google still has a long way to before it catches up with Facebook, but do we even know if its gaining on it? For example, how many of you have dumped Facebook in favor of Google+ yet? Not many I bet. The only reason I've seen people *really* switch is because they can't stand Facebook, and it's ok. Having 1000+ friends and gradually becoming overly-social can take its toll. But those users are a minority.

What Google+ is great at, admittedly, is gathering new followers. People add me almost daily over there. How many of them are spam bots, I'm not sure though. I love Google as a platform. I love Gmail, I use it all the time. Google Calendar is what drives my iPhone. Google Reader, Images, Videos, Scholar, you name it I use it. But what innovation will Google bring via Google+ that Facebook won't replicate soon, and present it to its much larger user base? But I bet Google has a great plan for it going forward. We'll just have to wait and watch.