The Land of Pious becomes the Land of Terrorists

The Land of Pious becomes the Land of Terrorists

By Zakir Qadir Shams

         WHEN I was browsing the pages of a newspaper on internet, a sentence on the front page magnetized my studiousness that I commenced to peruse, “Somalia ky bad Pakistan dunya main dehshat gardon ka sab se bara maskan ban gaya.” It packed my senses because it was in all the opposite of the meaning of Pakistan, the land of pure people and the sentence meant Pakistan becomes the second biggest home to the terrorists in the world, (according to a study published by a British global risks advisory firm).  

        Pakistan becomes the second among 16 countries at extreme risk from terrorism replacing Afghanistan. Consequently the unofficial and unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the country, more than 2,000 people have been killed since 2007 in a wave of deadly attack by militants, say the security experts.

        Pakistan became the country second most at risk, while Afghanistan slipped from second place to fourth which has been constantly uttering with the neighboring  country India that Pakistan is the epicenter of terrorism from where the all evils of terrorism are emanating.

        The entire world recognizes Pakistan in the front line of terrorism. The American Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen says, “Pak-Afghan border in the world is the most dangerous place. This is the epicenter of terrorist networks and the most who live here are Pakistanis who are attempting to get a hold on the atomic weapons of the country”.

       He will definitely be accurate if we conjecture it from the October 2009 attack on the General Headquarters (GHQ) which was debated in the columns of newspapers long.

       “I am not revealing anything new, the Taliban leaders have been given shelters in Pakistan”, says the head of the Foreign Affairs of France, Bernhaid  Koushner.

       The international intellectuals have openly declared that Pakistan is indeed a failed state.

      The country’s Federal Interior Minster Rehman Malik says in amendment, “there is no external hand involved in creating terrorism in Pakistan”. In addition he points out; it is the local people who are involved in these crimes.

    

Huh! How Unlucky We Are!

Huh! How Unlucky We Are!

We want to go to school.

We want to serve our nation.

I need books to read………

I want to be educated too!

Would that we were students and go to school daily……..

Will a day come that I would be happier………

When will we see the inside of a school…….?

There are millions of such children who lack care.

They are victims of poverty.

Their innocent eyes speak thousands of words.

Who bothers to bestow thoughts upon these???????

A Dead Body Worship

A Dead Body Worship

By: Zakir Qadir shams

       It was very scandalizing to gawk all the News Channels broadcasting quietus news of a MQM leader, Dr Imran Farooq, who was stabbed to death in front of his apartment on September 16, in the UK capital city, London.

      His dead body was brought after more than one and an half month. A day before of landing the flight PK-788, which contained the dead body, to Karachi, the security was made high-powered. Five thousand Rangers and Police men were to guard the integral area, including two hundred more vigorous lads from the associates of MQM were circumambulating with passes to make the security stronger. Two helicopters were to guard the area in the air. Nobody was allowed to carry arms even though with license. All the emporiums, shops and markets were to remain closed.   

       On November 6, the corpse reached Karachi from London; all the security sponsors started their functions. Thousands of mourners attended the funeral procession and said his funeral prayers behind Maulana Asad Thanvi. The law enforcement agencies were high alert and heavy deployment was seen across the city. While passing through each zone, the officers form that sections monitored the body, tell the burial chamber.

      It was so indifferent for to watch this occasion on the tube but I kept watching because it strained my mind to devise torrents of startling thoughts. And my inside consequently précised these all occurrences, just in one phrase which was “A dead body worship”.

       I was dragged to the world of the indigent where they lack utmost care. They are lying on the passages and footpaths. Millions of homeless victims of the recent flood are rolling their twenty-four hours in peneplains. The jobless young cohort is wondering helplessly on the streets of the country. Hundreds of innocent people are being blown up in bomb blasts and too many others are coming to be the victims of gang wars and target killings, who do not get a proper burial, but nobody rather cares for them.

       Where goes the heavy deployment that time when the country’s peace is lost? Why the law enforcement agencies get mislaid when the time of high alertness comes? These can be some of the inappropriately answered questions for the rulers of this country but the fact is that there is no peace at any corner in here. The possessions and life of the common man are not protected. They are putting up with deep-rooted complexities and agonizing setbacks.

       Attributed to the kissing prices of the daily commodities, more than half our population sleeps without a piece of staff of life in their bellies. Facilities of education and better health have not been provided to them. To put it succinctly, in the country the living lacks all the fundamental needs of life but we saw how a deceased was worshiped.  

        Now that must be obvious, it is not the time to apotheosize deceased but it is to save alive.

Arms will change the Heaven into a Hell

By: Zakir Qadir Shams

By the time the human mind got sharper and sharper with the efforts of inventing new invention and discovering discoveries. The wholesome efforts bestowed man felicity in life as he originated computer and television to become au fait with the four corners of the earth sitting inside the air-conditioned room. He invented airplane via that millions of miles are traveled in minutes which human would not be capable to step on for years. Meanwhile, some other inventions glommed the comforts as the weapons of destruction, in fact, were invented to comfort, defend and stabilize peace around man, but all got in vain.

Photo: Wp

The world countries have need of more stabilization as they get the threats from the pace of clashes between them. They are importing more and more arms for defense purposes and are spending more budgets on their militaries.  

It is estimated that yearly, over 1.5 trillion dollars are spent on military expenditures world wide. In 2009, the combined military expenditure was 1.5 trillion dollars and in 2008 an amount of 1.464 trillion dollars was spent.

Attributed to the demands for more weapons, the arm industry is producing an overwhelming quantity of weapons day by day. The countries like The United States, Russia, United Kingdom, China, Germany, Italy, France, and some other European countries manufacturing and selling arms to get economic stability - or to promote peace in the world?

The combined arms sales of the top 100 largest arms producing companies amounted to an estimated 315 billion dollars in 2006.

United States sold 166.278 billion dollars worth of arms. Russia (73.965 billion), France (35.175 billion), United Kingdom (29.379 billion), Germany (19.742 billion), China (13.652 billion), Italy (12.531 billion) and some other European countries sold 43.752 billion dollars worth of arms to different countries from 2002 to 2009.(Stockholm International Peace Research Institute)

Between 2000 and 2009, South Africa has sold weapons to 58 countries. She sold R1.883 billion worth of sensitive weapon equipments to India, R1.419 billion to United Arab Emirates and R1.21 to Algeria. Colombia received R1.085 billion worth of equipments while Nigeria got R84 billion worth of weapon equipments. (The Ceasefire Campaign)     

According to a report of NSOI (Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Institute), fourteen countries in the world are involved in nuclear smuggling, including America, Australia, Belgium, China, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Holland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and South Korea.

The former American president Jorge W Bush, addressing in Defense National University on 11^th February 2004, said, “European and American companies are spreading arms around the world which are mostly linked up with the underworld. Nuclear underworld comprises of 158 companies and 78 of them have been cognized so far, 24 in America, 3 in China, 8 in France, 17 in UK, 6 in Russia, 5 in Japan, 3 in Holland, 7 in Belgium, 3 in Spain and 2 are in Sweden.”

International Action on Small Arms, estimated in 2003 that over 639 million small arms were in circulation, and over 1,135 companies based in more than 98 different countries manufacture small arms from those many fall into the hands of rebel forces and terrorists.

The militant groups are easily getting control of the arms and it is a big threat for the peace in world. Arms are getting into the wrong hands through weak controls on firearm ownership and weapons management.

Major general Yusuf Hussein Osman, who served as the Chief of Staff of Somalia's Military in 2009, in an exclusive interview with Africa News said “The Somali soldiers are not being paid their $100 monthly wage a long period; consequently they offered to sell their guns and ammunition, they get money from rebels and then hand to their arms.”

While international attention is focused on the need to control weapons of mass destruction to stabilize the peace of the world and the arms trade continues.

The U.S. politician, Richard Perle says, “Arms control so easily becomes an incantation rather than policy.” (March 1987)

His assumption has today come true. The countries that talk the words of peace and arms control are today the top traders of highly dangerous weapons and supplying them to the countries they call rouge countries and the homes of the 9/11 hijackers.   

The United Nations Security Council desires to enforce peace in the world but the top five countries profiting from the arms trade are the five permanent members of it, the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China. Together, they are responsible for eighty eight per cent of reported conventional arms exports.

Need for philanthropists

Need for philanthropists

By Zakir Qadir Shams

Rightly a philosopher states that in life of human beings, there comes a period when they formulate and define their traditions and principles and abide by them .These values, traditions and principles include truthfulness, justice, tolerance and unprejudiced leadership. Then such values take firm root in the society and region, the people begin acting upon them and consequently they are able to lead a happy and peaceful life.

Pakistan is more than half-a-dozen decades old now, but is still refusing to grow up. The drastic issues like illiteracy and poverty are still sandwiched in the region consequently the lack of prosperous utopia. It is impotent to catch up with the developed countries. The pressing issues on the minds of our rulers have been only the country’s ‘security’ concerns and then their petty selfish interests, like the swimming pools and firing ranges in the President House and the Polo grounds in the Prime Minster’s residence etc, which in my understanding, detain them abstracted from unprejudiced leadership and invite chronic poverty.

Poverty is rife in entire Pakistan, more then half of the county’s population is poor and the heaven kissing prices of the daily commodities are soaring day by day which has a significant impact on country’s poor cohort. More and more folks are coming underneath poverty line, who become powerless to bestow their children their future and exclude them from schools to accompany them to the factories and farms, where they assist their parents to support their families. And then their burden of labour increases significantly and will have high rates of illiteracy.

Illiteracy has retrospectively jammed the wheels of the country to move towards progress. The mendacious literacy rate is only found in the official documents. They set down it is 60 per cent but it is totally absurd, in accordance with independent sources and educational experts, it is not more than 26 per cent. We can also conjecture it from the inane buildings of the schools and libraries. The library culture has not been cultivated here. There is no trend of perusing books in our libraries, that’s why in other countries the libraries remain unclosed for 24 hours but ours just for few hours and why they should remain open while there is no lad to visit them?

The young cohort has utterly become the victim of poverty and is always thinking to locate ways to win his bread; the children are selling newspapers and flowers on the road crossings or washing and repairing cars. Then who should cultivate library culture? How can we affirm that the literacy rate is above 60 per cent? And how can we promote it to 100 per cent while our two children out of five go to school and three out of five are so unfortunate that they have never seen the inside of school?

Who should bother to bestow thought upon this tragedy?

These are only discernible to the politician pre-elections; they are ace in disremembering things, when they come into power they’ll have no recollection of these all because they become so bustling in spending more budgets on arms than on the elimination of poverty or cultivation of education.

We own oodles of weapons of destruction but also have a scarcity of teaching materials and food for living. The Creator and Sustainer of the universe has blessed us with fertile land and a large variety of natural resources but the tragic point is that our rulers have not fully utilized them to eradicate poverty or cultivate literacy. They have decorated thousands of school buildings but no equity and quality in education.

We have no good scientists, teachers, industrialists, engineers, academicians and even good doctors, then how can we progress?
No prospect of it can be seen proximate. I obviously want to utter that we will deal and brook the same complexities tell that time when a philanthropic leader becomes a ruler and starts eradicating our these drastic issues which have taken place because of the mismanagement of the wrong politicians. This only can be potential later then a prosperous utopia on this abode.

Education is the basic paraphernalia of the structure of nation development

Education plays key role in nation development

By Zakir Qadir Shams

The nations that once trampled underneath are today risen on the pedestal of glory because they greatly valued education. They realized that it is the one solution to various setbacks and is the essential tool for building a nation, so they embraced education and remarkably increased the percentage of literacy. They were absolutely positive to face the global challenges by the power of education; they improved their economy, reduced poverty and built competitiveness for development and welfare of the people and rapidly caught up with more developed nations.

We as a nation are recently facing torrents of problems and are incapable to progress. The problems are visible that we don’t possess good education. We have not provided education to all of us for the development of the nation and even have not given it importance as a religious obligation.

We are Muslims and our religion ‘Islam’ makes it obligatory for both boys and girls, to seek knowledge. The order sent to us by Almighty Allah was "IQRA" which means 'Read'. And the importance of it was also stressed by the benefactor for the entire humanity, Hazrat Muhammad (SAWW).
He said.

“It is the duty of every Muslim to seek knowledge.”

The Ahadith show that education has an unexcelled importance in Islam. It sharpens our mental capabilities, spurs up the asleep side of our cognition and enables to think creatively. It crushes the negative emotions in us and cultivates positive values. It takes away ills from us and endows us virtues.

In today’s competitive era education is the most important aspect of any nation’s survival on this planet. It preserves the culture, customs, beliefs, arts, scientific accomplishments and also transmits them from generation to generation for their survival and development.

Education plays an important role in the development of a nation. It is the basic paraphernalia of the structure of the nation development. Without it no nation can make headway. It is essential for the progression and the economic progress. We unfortunately are one of poorest nations of the world. Poverty is a great issue and the only panacea is literacy to cure such issues by leading us to the better use of our natural resources. It teaches us ways to consume our raw material in our own abode. It reduces poverty and makes us useful and peaceful. Obviously we will be capable to reach the destination of economic stability.

Ultimately I must say that the nation’s future depends on the type of education, so right type of education is must and if we want to make real speedy and substantial progress then we definitely have to well educate our people.

HOW GREAT IS THE DARKNESS

How Great Is The Darkness…

We all can remember the days when the lawyers’ movement was the heart beat of people of Pakistan because they strongly believed that the lawyers, in their black uniform, are not fighting for the sack of their self interests, but for the sack of 160 million people of Pakistan. They raised full-throated slogans for the independence of the judicial system to provide justice to the citizens and to perform it’s certain functions which are very necessary for the life and happiness of the citizens.

The same people, who chanted slogans for the freedom of the judiciary, are still suffering from injustice and knocking the doors of the courts for their rights and justice, even the justice providers are playing the same game with them.

The justice providers, – Oh GOD –, they do not feel shy – when we went the court for getting a signature on the affidavit. I got shocked because the man who is to protect our rights, asked us to pay him fee without any hesitation, as if he has fought a case for us.

Look this is the protection of our rights that the people who are to protect our rights and make justice, are snatching them. The money which they take from people, they have named their fee. Is this the real justice to the citizens?

If this is the justice of our independent judiciary, we pray to Almighty that HE shouldn’t have gotten us this blind one which has shut down its eyes towards the peoples’ problems and to make justice. Now who should punish the crime? The law has gotten blind and the lamp of justice has gone out darkness, how great is the darkness.

Zakir Shams