Comments on: Round Up

By: Saad

Saad — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:20:02 +0000

This dictator is a disqualified person clining to extra-constitutional measures to preserve his illegitimate rule. Habib Jalib very nicely said,

Aisey dastoor ko, subha-e-beynoor ko
Main nahin maanta, main nahin jaanta

By: fugstar

fugstar — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:18:12 +0000

Withholding ‘aid’ isnt such a bad thing in the long term, for everyones benefit. Thankyou Mushy for introducing me to the word malafide.

Duas that it’s not the end of the world and the people get through to the other side in tact. I might check out the london protest to see what kinds of people show up.

By: Ajit

Ajit — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:03:31 +0000

What do you think of Najam Sethi and his Paper Daily Times? I read the editorial today, he seems to be supporting Musharraf coup.He criticized opposition figures for being irresponsible.

By: Saadia

Saadia — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:16:55 +0000

Actually, under the classic ‘ideology of Pakistan’, Muslim fundamentalism makes perfect sense – it was actually ’solidified’ as an actual term and made sacrosanct under Zia ul Haq. Any agitation against his Islamization programme came afoul of this ‘ideology of Pakistan’. Thus it has also always been strategically deployed against _secular_ politics, implying (and often directly stating) that their secular politics was actually against the ideology of Pakistan because it undermined the justification for Partition from India, and so was a ‘pro-India’ move. This is very different, but the seeds of the ‘ideology of Pakistan’, and hence the state, being collapsed into the head of state was laid very early on and made more complete under Zia.

By: Zalan

Zalan — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:03:20 +0000

Jonathan Dresner you have described it so well, its exactly that General-worship phenomenan. You know it’s like a military with a country rather then a country with a military. And remember that dictatorship needs extremists and extremists needs dictatorship, dictatorshipe needs these fanatic-extremists to justify there illegitimate rule and extremist needs dictatorship to prosper as they have never prospered in this history of this country as they did in General-Zia and now General Musaharraf time. Never in the history of Pakistan the religious parties secured more then 5% of the vote in elections (in 1997 general elections only 1 member of these religious parties was elected to a 100 member assembly of Frontier Province) unless under the kind hand/supervision of dictatorship wherein they were given the blessng of forming a government in Frontier Province which is being projected as extremly religious and extremist society but one finds the relity when u visit and spend some time in that society that these extremist forms hardly 5% of that province/society’s and are obiously being funded from outside wheras the vast majority of that society are moderate and even secular.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 07:20:02 +0000

Ah, yes. That would be giving aid and comfort to Islamic extremists and anti-democratic forces, I can see that now.

What’s a good result, at this point? How does Pakistan come through this?

By: sepoy

sepoy — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:28:27 +0000

The ideology of Pakistan is a time-honored, sacrosanct belief that Pakistan was established as a separate homeland for Muslims of India who are historically, culturally, and of course religiously separate from the Hindus. Threats against the ideology, in the context above, would be things like questioning whether the Partition was a good idea or agitating for some sort of union/pan South Asian spirit etc. etc.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:38:05 +0000

I’m actually curious about something in the strictures above: he refers to the “ideology of Pakistan” but I’m not aware of any specific national doctrine….. What, if anything other than General-worship, is Pakistanianism?