dominant pop cultures

isnt it just remarkable how deeply influenced global society is by american pop culture.the MTV and mcdonaldization of the world is just amazing.whats more its taken ten years to reach this point.i was watching this piece about disney world opening in hong kong and how commentators were predicting doom and gloom for its financial prospects.but the remarkable point about say this particular example is that people in hongkong will get a piece of small town fantasy america in their backyard with a bit of chinese flavor.instead of hamburgers there will be i dunno kungpao chicken and so on.but the reason the commentators were so sceptical about the whole project was that china had its own pop culture which was different from america and walt disney etc.that might be fine but if you think about it other than the legendary martial arts films asian pop culture is heavily influenced by america.listen to their songs and videos,the lingo might be different but the themes are influenced by america.look at pakistani music scene which is really amazing and we see an explosion of rock groups.we look at our pop singers and the beats they are using are generally western inspired.fine there are exceptions but i dunno. shopping malls,skyscrapers,capitalism etc are all examples of american exports hugely admired and being copioed in a hurry.i think the ability of an american or western brand to fit in another society is ingenious.take pizza hut in pakistan for eg.my favorite pizza is the chicken tikka one.in india theyve got all kind off veggie products.in conclusion i dunno whether this is good or bad.will it fade out or not.but given the immense animosity people all over the world feel for america its remarkable how theyre pop culture/way of life keeps marching on and conquering new lands.

a new idea

i dunno i was just thinking about how cool it was that quite a few of us had started blogging.so it just kind of struck me why not have one single forum where at least some of us can go post stuff about politics/economics etc about pakistan and the world.as a result ive made this new blog whose address is
www.futureofpakistan.blogspot.com

anyone who wants to join in is welcome.obviously id love for all whove commented on this blog as well as elsewhere especially on matters pertaining to politics etc to join in.every one who wants to be part of this unified blog will have the password to it and can obviously post whenever and whatever.look forward to a positive response and cool debates.oh those who want in, just give me ure email address so i can email u the username and password for the aforementioned blog.

my thoughts exactly

read this in saturday's The News.thoughty id share it

Dear Osama bin Laden,

Assalam o Alaikum. Yet again your soldiers have wreaked havoc in yet another Western metropolitan. It is not just the London bombing that has prompted me to pen a letter addressing you. What greatly agitates me is that yet again Al-Qaeda has carried out an act of terrorism in my name and in the name of my religion.

Tony Blair, an elected leader, engaged his country in a "war on terror", despite an overwhelming majority opposing it; he thus exposed his nation to terrorism. You are not our elected leader, yet you are engaging us in a "jihad", despite an overwhelming majority of Muslim countries opposing it, and are thus exposing the ummah to "war on terrorism". Afghanistan and Iraq lost their independence as a consequence of your 9/11 action but 3/11, and now 7/7, has exposed the Muslim diaspora in the West to a backlash.

You justify the killings of innocent Americans and Europeans as revenge for the massacre of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Does the same logic apply in the case of Europeans too? Should they kill Muslim immigrants living in Europe as revenge for the actions of al-Qaeda?

I fully share your indignation at the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq -- even though I hold you responsible for providing them an excuse -- but I strongly disagree with your method of resisting and opposing the re-colonisation of the Muslim world that we both belong to.

While the USA was bombing Kabul, you were arming the Taliban for combat, and I was marching in Berlin along with thousands of anti-war protestors. For different reasons, we both lost. I lost because the cash-strapped anti-war movement failed to compete with war-mongering capitalist media and rulers. You lost because the Taliban had isolated themselves to a point where no Afghan was ready to fight for them. Modern wars are fought and won with mass support.

I wonder how you spent February 15, 2003 at Tora Bora --- your rumoured-hide out. On that historic day I was marching with 40,000 Stockholmites in the freezing cold. Twenty million people, they say, marched across the globe that day, in protest at the war in Iraq. Never before on the face of this earth had such a big mobilisation ever taken place. Two million took to the streets in London and almost one million in Madrid. Hope you know why I mention these two cities.

My historic marches and I --- my method of resistance --- failed to stop the Iraq war. But my marches and I achieved one big success: we de-legitimised it. By planting bombs in Madrid and London metros, you lent legitimacy to the war initiated by Bush and Blair (B2, as my Arab friend and writer Gilbert Achcar, calls them after a US bomber).

Let me further elucidate the contrast in my method of protest, street marches, and your method, planting bombs. Your method belittles the role of the Muslim masses. It reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes towards a Messiah or Mehdi who they hope will come and rescue them. The more "effective" your actions as on September 11 or 7/7, the more they reduce the interest of the oppressed masses in self-organisation. Instead, as soon as smoke from the confusion clears away, life settles into the old rut and the wheels of oppression grind on as before. Rather, the repression increases. And as a result, apathy replaces synthetically aroused excitement. Isn't this exactly what has happened since 9/11?

I also oppose your method because I find I have more in common with the victims of your bombs than with you. Many of the ordinary folk that your bombs blew up on 7/7, 3/11 or 9/11 may have shared my political views. Some might have marched with me on February 15. Some of them would have chanted the slogans as I do, lived in the kind of flat I live in, and travelled by metro as I do.

What, except religion, is common between you and me? Your father is a billionaire while I have a working class background. I find your class character and political views as oppressive and repulsive as the US occupation of our Muslim world. Did you ever give a thought to Tolstoy's fatwa: Behind every big fortune there is a big crime? You have benefited from the corruption in the Saudi system that you now fight against. I, on the contrary, have been a victim of billions of Saudi petro-dollars sent to my country of birth in order to communalise, brutalise and fundamentalise her.

As for the religion we share, your puritan brand of Islam conflicts with the Sufi values practised in Punjab, land of my birth, and the Rishi traditions of Jammu Kashmir, my ancestral country. The humanist Islamic teachings of my guru Bulleh Shah stand in contrast to what your maharishi Ibn e Wahab preaches.

Yet I share your indignation when the French government bans the burka from schools, since it negates a very basic human right, that of the freedom to choose one's own dress. You want me to support our sisters' right to wear the burka but not when they don't want to wear it. It agitates you when the West oppresses Muslim women living in Europe, but you did not oppose the Taliban when they were publicly lashing and thrashing Afghan women. Neither were you moved by the Hazara blood heartlessly shed by the Taliban. Maybe you have a justification for that. But how do you justify your long collaboration with Great Britain and the USA during the Afghan war in the 1980s?

I also wonder how you reconcile with your past and how you see your family running a joint business venture with the Bush family, a business collaboration that is the centre of many conspiracy theories. Incidentally, please do take the time to watch US filmmaker Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, in which he brilliantly documents close ties between the Bush family and the Laden tribe.

Let me clarify, before I conclude, that I do not share B2's criticism of your terrorist actions. I find them hypocritical when they seize every opportunity you provide, to claim the morality of "civilised" nations. It is blood boiling to see them wear cloaks of victimhood, mourning the loss of innocent lives, but not when the innocent lives lost are Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian or Chechen. I don't see why the white man's blood should be redder than the Muslim blood mindlessly being shed in Palestine and Iraq.

But I will still oppose your tit-for-tat bloodletting in my name. I have no qualms in Iraqis taking up arms and blowing up US marines. This is what the Vietnamese did. They fought three battles against three superpowers, losing four, perhaps five million lives. But Ho Chi Min never dispatched suicide bombers to Paris, London or New York. He won.We do not have to look to Vietnam. Our own forefathers who seized national liberation from England, France or Netherlands never dispatched bombs to London, Paris or Amsterdam. They won too.

Our great martial hero, Salahuddin al-Ayubi, is yet another example to emulate. This chivalrous commander reclaimed Jerusalem and defended Palestine but never brought the war to the land of Faranj. Once, while strolling along the Mediterranean, he told his slave that the only way to civilise Europe was to capture it. But he did not.

I could go on and on, but I doubt if my scribbling will make an impact on you. I, therefore, bluntly tell you to conclude: if you cannot join my jaddojahd (struggle), you have no right to wage jihad in my name either.

Fee Amanallah



Farooq Sulehria

Stockholm

hasba act part deux

heres the link to the whole text of the Hasba act passed by the MMA govt yesterday in Peshawar.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_15-7-2005_pg7_43
my commentary now:
the whole bill though ardous to read can also come across as being extremely well intentioned and good.however there are a few clauses which have been cleverly inserted which are the cause for the greatest concern.
article10 clause (b) where anyone can can complain about someone else being unislamic etc.this would obviously mean that your houses are no longer private property.ure neighbor or anyone complains,ure house could be raided so as to protect islam.the very next clause 10(C)basically puts restrictions on the media.i guess no more indian/western entertainment and music channels will be shown in nwfp.no more indus music.probably quran channel and dr israr ahmed channel will be the channels to choose from.
article 14(B):no one can criticise the mohtasib or his decisions.or else he/she will be punished.
art23(1):enforcement of morAL values at public places.hmmm i wonder who'd define these moral values.
Art23(xiv)unislamic and inhuman customs.again who will define them.i know who will and i think what theyll be.please refer back to taliban rule of afghanistan 1995-2001.
Art23(xv)this fascinated me.the cleverest of them all.this refers to checking and stopping indecent behavior which includes female harrassment.very noble but they could easily have said to prevent female harrassment onlychking indecent behavior will probably mean beating women with sticks if one millimeter of their flesh is visible to the easily provoked harrassing males of our society.
Art23(xxiv):this is intersting.advising disobedient children not to disobey their parents desires.hmm so arranged marriages and so on will reign which isnt so bad in some cases but still this one was funny.i hope my parents dont read this clause.theyll start supporting this whole act then.
Art25.this whole article basically states that this judicial system cant be challenged by the existing system of judiciary in the country.no one can challenge the decisions made by the mohtasib in the high court/supreme court etc.basically a parallel judicial system under the direct control and authority of the executive of the province.
now its all very fine talikng abt protecting so and so's rights.but we already have laws that exist catering to these very issues.why do they need another set of laws when the same laws already exist.unless this is their way of talibanisation of society.also this creates a whole new bureacracy.not only does it suck up more of the provinces's already meagre resources it creates a new potentially as corrupt as any other bureacratic department whose sole aim is to scare the people into being good muslims.good muslims as defined by the MMA that is.good news is this bill will get squashed in the courts.bad news we're in for one helluva season of political instability.i guess we are just cursed.the picture below will tell much of the story.its important to note that most of the MMA leadership were the inspiration behind the taliban movement.also most of the MMA supporters learnt everything alongside the taliban in our madrassas.same world view.same culture.same ignorance.

yet some more divinely ordained justice 

talibans hasba police maintaining morality and decency 

hasba act

i kept looking and looking but couldnt find the text for MMA's proposed hasba act.basically they want to introduce "shariah" in NWFP.under this law a whole new department will be formed which will report directly to the CM.it will have its own Hasba force.its primary focus is to enforce and uphold islamic law and tradition as given to us from the taliban.the judge can send the hasba force to any ones house,office and arrest that person and punish him or her as he sees fit.the accused under this law will have no recouyrse to action in the Pakistani judicial system.for instance anyone booked under this act cant appeal his ruling in the high or supreme court.basically a parrallel judicial system in which the executive is in charge of the judiciary.it includes clauses about obscenity and defines its own versions of whats obscene and whats unislamic.thankfully it doesnt look like they'll succeed this time but unless something is done to undermine them quickly this act will resurface soon and probably not in NWFP alone.

railway tragedy

today i woke up to see one of the worst train accidents in our country's history.two quick points i want to raise.initial reports suggest that the karachi express rammed into the quetta express at 3.30 in the morning.apparently the karchi express driver fell asleep at the weel cos he ignored the red light signal that was on.as a result a horrific crash ensued.what puzzles me more is that the tezgam express which was coming from the other direction rammed into the crash site half an hour later.why that train was not alerted and stopped in time is a mystery to me.however these are initial reports.if these reports are confirmed then heads need to roll and i dont mean statiuon conductors etc.i mean min. for railways and chairman railways.in india such accidents unfortunatly are common.each time the minister resigns.accountability is needed and needs to start from the very top.only then will the ministries start functioning like tight ships.

new globalised scenario?

in the wake of london's bombings and the excellent ensuing discussion on meher's blog i thought i'd add my two cents to the debate.we live in tumultous times.not that any other era was not but its become a bit scarier now.9/11 changed the world.like the end of the cold war this was a turning point in current affairs.who did 9/11 and why ill come to later.as many who have commented on meher's blog have said the seeds were sown during the afghan jihad.i'd say the seeds were drawn in the late 19th/early 20th century.barring iran and a few others the entire muslim world as we now know it was colonised by the europeans.for muslims it would take almost two cernturies of repressing colonial rule before they would start to emerge from their deep slumber.in our own homeland we first had sir syed and iqbal on one side and maududi on the other.sir syed and iqbal preached the progressive message.maududi in essence said this was Allah's punishment for us since we had gone astray from the true path.iqbal and sir syed implored muslims to seek knowledge just as the Quran and prophet had ordered.maududi and his like scorned mordern subjects and philosophy.in other parts especially in egypt there was this progressive scholar Hassan Al BAnna(correct me if i have the name wrong).he went abroad to seek higher education from paris and then later on america.this is sometime around WWI.however what he saw instead of enlightening him infuriated him.he didnt see the scientific progress or economic progress of the west.all he saw was vice and debauchery.gambling,drinking and prostitution etc.he came back convinved that the westerners were the disciples of satan.hence was born the muslim brotherhood.his student was a fellow named syed qutb.this guy would be the one along with maududi who would form the basis of fundamentalists islam's ideology.and guess who's osama bin laden's hero and inspiration?syed Qutb who else.qutb basically passed fatwas that there were no innocents amongst the non-muslims.that this jihad took precedence over all the other definations of jihad.obviously jihad being killing and driving off all non-muslims from muslim lands.but why would it take so many years for qutb's message to find resonance amongst the muslims.well for starters majority of the movements that won freedom for their countries were secular and socialist in nature.secondly people were taken in by the charisma of leaders such as nasser,soekarno and later on bhutto.the second last nail in the coffin for moderate muslim societies was the overwhelming failure on the part of the above mentioned leaders to deliever.nasser and bhutto failed misreably.in fact the arabs were so inept that they were totally humiliated by israel time and again.hence the anger on the street and in some drawing rooms started to grow.during this time the funda menatlist who were constantly gaining ground hated the godless state of soviet union more then amreeka.america was hated because of itrs blind support for israel but not as much as the soviet union which was seen as busy spreading its godless message across the wmuslim world.anyway the final nail in the coffin was the afghan war.america seeking to gain revenge funded and trained thousands of jihadis and the rest is history.one thing that our jihadis concluded in the aftermath was that they were invincible.if they could defeat the worlds mightiest army surely they could defeat the iundians in kashmir,israelis in palestine and one day overthrow all the american backed dictatorships in their home countries.it was God's will.i dont how they totally ignored the fact that it was US arms that finally changed the tide of the war in afghanistan.it was the introduction of the stinger missiles that saved the mujahideen.and it was america who provided the stingers.the jihad in kashmir totally destroyed the case of kashmiris in the international arena and india went on to commit the absolute worst human rights atrocities in kashmir not that our brave mujahids were far behind in this department either.

9/11 owes a great deal to american policies.yet 9/11 is not justified.in fact 9/11 has brought america even deeper into our lives and societies.america in its post cold war euphoria totally forgot bt the creature it had begotten in afghanistan.in todays context its unexplainable why they would do such a thing but then it made perfect sense.with the war over and the soviet union crumbling there job was done.they left it to us pakistanis to clean up the mess.unfortunatly the mess had spilled over into our country.uff the policies we had during the 90's drive me insane.what the hell were we thinking promoting jihad and entities like taliban.we are as much to blame for 9/11 as anyone else.and in many ways im glad musharaf did what he did immeadiatly after 9/11.my only regret being we should have done it ourselves much before 9/11.

now post 9/11 the status quo was unacceptable.we see people talking about oic reform,un reform, democracy etc etc and all of this is good and welcome.the reason why i supported the iraq war was two fold.if america succeeded then maybe democracy and reform would have initiated in the middle east.if it failed then america would have had to leave the region to a great extent and would probably not go on any more adventures anytime soon.so far its mixed.middle eastern countries are starting to reform and open up.lebanon just pushed the syrians out.egypt is having elections in which hosni mubarik will have to face challengers.kuwait had introduced democracy and even saudi arabia has has local body elections.however on the negative side and this is bigger than the positives,iraq is proving to be al qaedas biggest recruiting tool.future generation of suicide bombers are being produced.and it is safe to say now that at least the americans wont be invading in these parts anytime soon.so where do we go from here?
OIC will not be credible anytime soon.do we keep on moving towards the clash of civilisations which we'll surely lose cos we r just not strong enough or do we become players and stakeholders in the shrinking globalised world?as societies we need to look inwards and ask ourselves a few basic questions.one is islam going to be represented by the fire breathing mullahs and secondly how is it that islamic law has not evolved since abu hanifa's time?infact weve gone further back and extreme with mr. wahab(founder of wahabiism) and syed qutb and co.do we really need to fight and destroy every non-muslim society?we need to stop blaming everyone and his uncle for our ills.we need to stop living in the past remembering how glorious we were.we need to stop being so fatalistic.we need to grow,we need to prosper and we can do all of that only if we ourselves want to do it.no one is going to hand it to us on a silver platter.there are no free lunches.
for starters if we really want america to leave iraq soon then we muslim countries need to step up to the plate cos unfortunatly the iraqi security infrastructure is no match for zarqawi and his fellow thugs.so if we dont want a repeat of afghanistan during the 90's we need to come up with a credible peace keeping force that can replace the amreekans and the brits.the iraqis deserve a secure freedom plus all of us will be better off for it.a stable iraq means among other things lower oil prices.
sorry for the long length.

oprah, oc and other tv observations

these days i rarely get the chance of watching TV.i used to watch 2 movies per night but thats a thing of the past now.but due to some wierd time changes introduced by star world, the only time when i do get to catch some tv time is when i get home from work.usually bold and the beuatiful is on at that time.that show amazes me.how theyve managed to keep the story going around ridge and brooke is amazing.hehe i mean the twists and turns are non stop.anyway i just watched some more episodes of OC after a long time.i still have a few left to watch but one thing about OC is i really dont know why i watch it.it is non-stop drama with highly annoying people enacting the drama.i dont know.those kids dont even seem like high schoolers.ok this is wierd but ive started watching oprah on sunday nights.can anyone tell me why the audience is so crazy about oprah.people start crying when oprah opens her mouth.she could become the president the way she has people eating out of the palm of her hand.hehehe.my favorite show on the tele these days is a british comedy absolute power.british comedies are taking over the world of comedy shows.they are totally refreshing and original.i love em.on a final note even though i dont watch tv much these days, one thing i can say about our cable here in lahore is that even though there are 90 channels to surf and choose from, usually nothing good is on on any channel.sure beats the ptv,ntm days but one would imagine finding something worth watching on one of the 90 channels.
about our mushrooming local channels.i find business plus and aaj tv to be the best.geo is still the most watched but its standard has really gone down.instead of lifting their standards theyve beome the jerry springer type channel.sensationalising everything from drama to news.hmm i wish opening a tv channel was as easy as starting a blog.

every year its the same.why?? 

boat not car needed.