[Evelinessa]

This is an interesting read, though i detest the tone and the writer, but gives a glimpse into the 70's-80's (which i know very little of but love to read about) and the Islamization of the establishment and country, oddly it began with ZAB and not Zia ul Haq.

The basic socio-political mindset of the Pakistani society is the outcome of various faith-based experiments conducted by the state and the armed forces.
The party
In 1995, sometime in May, an uncle of mine (an ex-army man), was invited to a party of sorts.
The invitation came from a former top-ranking military officer who had also worked for the Pakistan intelligence agency, the ISI. He was in the army with my uncle (who now resides abroad) during the 1960s.
My uncle, who was visiting Pakistan, asked if I was interested in going with him. I agreed.
The event was at a military officer’s posh bungalow in Karachi’s Clifton area. Most of the guests (if not all) were former military men. All were articulate, spoke fluent English and wore modern, western clothes.
I was not surprised by this but what did surprise me was a rather schizophrenic aura about the surroundings. Though modern-looking and modern-sounding, the gathering turned out to be a segregated affair.
The men’s wives were placed in a separate room, while the men gathered in a wider sitting area.
By now it become clear to me that I wouldn’t be getting served anything stronger than Pepsi on the rocks!
I scratched my head, thinking that even though I was at a ‘party’ in a posh, stylish bungalow in the posh, stylish Clifton area with all these posh stylish military men and their wives and yet, somehow I felt there very little that was ‘modern’ about the situation.
By modern, I also mean the thinking that was reflected by the male guests on politics, society and religion. Most of the men were also clean-shaven and reeking of expensive cologne, but even while talking about cars, horses and their vacations in Europe, they kept using Arabic expressions such as mashallah, alhamdullila, inshallah, etc.
I tried to strike up some political conversations with a few gentlemen but they expected me to agree with them about how civilian politicians were corrupt, how democracy can be a threat to Pakistan, how civilian leaders do not understand India’s nefarious designs, et al.
Then, alas, as if right on cue, the moment I began telling them that I was actually a working journalist (they thought I was a college student in some foreign university), in came two senior journalists who seemed to be very close to some of the men there. These journalists were known for their somewhat right-wing views. They are still around.
I thought hard about what had just taken place. Especially when (quite accidentally) I glanced into the ladies’ section, I saw smart women (designer handbags, blow-dried hair and the works) chatting away, unperturbed by the fact that their gaudy modernism somehow did not include mixed gatherings.
What was even more surreal was the presence of some hijab-clad ladies among the army wives, and I overheard many of them (both the hijabis and the non-hijabis), enthusiastically mixing their tales of fashion-related escapades with sincere talk about what dua to say at what time and how Pakistanis are moving away from ‘true Islam’.
So what was going on?
The experiment
The Pakistan Army was once a staunchly secular beast. All across the 1950s and 1960s it was steeped in secular (albeit conservative) traditions and so were its sociological aspects.
In fact, until the late 1960s, Pakistani military men were asked to keep religion a private matter and religious exhibitionism was scorned at as well as reprimanded – mostly during Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s dictatorship (1959-69).
However, some Islamic symbolism was tactfully used by the military during the 1965 war against India, but this did not last long – especially in an era when a secular military dictatorship was being challenged by an equally secular and left-leaning civilian opposition (the National Awami Party, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Awami League).
The situation in this context remained the same during the early 1970s, during the democratically-elected government of Z. A. Bhutto (1972-77).
Nevertheless, the fact was that the kind of Islamisation which began engulfing the Pakistani society from the 1980s onwards, actually began taking root within the barracks of the Pakistan Army.
Believing that populist Islamic symbolism to be compatible with his regime’s staunchly nationalistic and progressive posturing, Bhutto wanted to strike a balance between secular, left-leaning moves and rhetoric with controlled Islamic bluster.
He thought that this way he would be able to keep in check both the secular opposition coming from radical nationalist groups in Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP and that from the Islamist parties which, although electorally weak, had a large nuisance value.
Bhutto also thought that by bolstering Islamic symbolism and myths in school textbooks, the military and eventually the society in general, it would help him keep Pakistan intact after the failure of the Two-Nation Theory in 1971 when the country’s eastern wing broke away to become Bangladesh.
One must remember that all this remained to be a social experiment during the Bhutto regime and Pakistan’s society remained largely secular until about 1975.
This experiment was first performed in the military. Often, military symbols were fused with those of Islam, and many senior officers began introducing ‘Islamic practices’ in the barracks.
For example, alcohol in Pakistan was first banned in the barracks of the Pakistan Army (1973), a good four years before it was banned across the country (in April 1977).
Apart from also introducing enforced prayers and Islamiyat courses, many officers also began introducing writings of the conservative Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, to the soldiers.
In fact, his books almost became mandatory reading when men like General Ziaul Haq (before he toppled Bhutto in 1977), began handing out books authored by Maududi to soldiers along with medals.
Maududi was a puritan who believed in jihad and his writings had already influenced a number of extremist outfits like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria.
Also, being the chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in Pakistan, his party had actually held demonstrations in the 1960s against popular Arab nationalist leaders like Gamal Nasser whose government had hanged a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt.
The Islamisation experiment seemed to have worked well in an army demoralised by the 1971 defeat against India, and this experiment soon began seeping into the society through revised school textbooks and the state-owned media.
State-owned TV (PTV) and the film industry (Lollywood) were hitting a peak in the 1970s and many of its creations at the time were largely progressive and liberal.
However, in 1975 PTV conducted its first experiment in constructing a popular serial based on the newly conceived Islamised narrative being developed in the military.
A big-budget historical melodrama (produced by young TV director Mohsin Ali) called Tabeer (Reality) was televised. It was based on the history of the Muslims of India from 1857 until the birth of Pakistan in 1947.
This was also the first time when Pakistanis in general were fully introduced to a completely revised history of the region in which Muslims were seen as being completely separate and different from rest of the people of the subcontinent.
For example, the TV series begins during the end of the Indian Mutiny against the British in 1857, an event in which disgruntled Muslims as well as Hindus played leading roles. However, in the serial we only see the Muslims leading the revolt and Hindus are nowhere to be seen.
As the series continued, with each episode more revisions came to light when Muslim characters hardly ever hark back to great proto-secular Mughals like Akbar and Jahangir, and in fact, the last Mughal, the weak and spineless Bahdar Shah Zafar, is shown using words like ‘jihad.’
Also, allusions are constantly made to the Muslim roots lying in Arab nations and lands and India being a land that was conquered by the Muslims but had become a ‘darul harb’ for them after the fall of the Muslim empire.
Such narratives and revised history would soon become mainstream thought by the time Ziaul Haq took over.
The Islamisation experiment in the military too became a mainstay. It especially began consolidating itself during the military’s involvement in the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad in Afghanistan.
As more and more soldiers and officers became radicalised, this radicalisation was then introduced (by the ISI) into the society through a number of militant Islamist groups, sectarian outfits and madrassas that were then used as recruiting grounds for the US-backed ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan. Much of the funding for these came from Saudi Arabia.
The mutation
By the late 1980s, while religion had begun to play a major role in the soldiers’ lives, and the revised historicity first introduced in the late 1970s became the new mainstream historical narrative in Pakistan, one now saw senior officers with even the most liberal and secular habits, spouting Islamist rhetoric.
But this too was about to give in to even more Puritanism. In the early 1990s, the influential Islamic evangelical movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat, began making its way into the military.
Though an apolitical movement that emphasised on ‘correct’ Islamic ritualism and attire, its entry into the barracks produced a surreal mix when it came into contact with the highly political philosophy of Maududi that had by then deeply entrenched itself in the army.
Interestingly, this episode was another example of how an Islamic experiment that was first conducted in the Pakistani army soon seeped out to become a phenomenon in the society in general as well.
The Tableeghi Jamaat which was formed in 1929 had, until the 1980s, been more associated with working/peasant-class Muslims from the Deobandi sect and (in the 1980s) became popular with the trader classes.
A move was seen by the Jamaat from the early 1990s onwards in which a conscious attempt was made to attract upper-middle and middle-class Muslims, and this was achieved when various senior Pakistan Army officers joined the Jamaat.
The army’s influence on the Pakistani society and politics meant that the Jamaat not only began to bag recruits from well-to-do urban classes, but for the first time it also managed to attract a number of celebrities such as TV actors, pop musicians and cricketers.
What I saw at that ‘party’ was actually the socio-political outcome of the above elaborated process.
A process that saw a secular army going through an experiment in political Islam that then was dissipated across the society and consolidated itself as a mainstream phenomenon.
This phenomenon was then fused (in the army) with ritual Puritanism of the Tableeghi Jamaat and this fusion too became a mainstream sociological mainstay amongst various urban classes.
Thus the schizophrenic happenings at the ‘party’ were a modern, upper-middle-class expression of the said process.
Interestingly it is the mindset emerging from this fusion and process that also dictates the choice of the kind of political leaders that the classes embroiled in this phenomenon would like to see.
The choices too have increasingly become equally schizophrenic.
For example, these classes whose politics are a fusion of classical political Islam, Tableeghi Jamaat ritualism and modern-day consumerist capitalism want their leaders to be professional white-collared men, urban in outlook, educated, good to look at, but at the same time, religious, anti-West, anti-India and highly tolerant of Islamic exhibitionism, even sometimes to the point of being apologetic about those who take this exhibitionism to a more violent levels.

[9TWSg835]

Alghuraba,

Ive been reading your posts for some time now about pak army, ttp etc etc and i want to say alot but the forum rules dont allow so i wont say.

Just know that your views are 180º opposite of the truth.

You made a thread some days ago where you posted the sayings of fuqaha about khurooj and baghawat.

It saddened me deeply but at tht time i cudnt post anything as sf was not allowing me to.

Please research the matter with an open mind and heart.

May Allah guide us all.

[Junrlaeh]

I have no idea what the point of the article is? Is it that the army is corrupt? Pakistan is ruled by a secular elite and it has its own military industrial complex. This book

Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy [Paperback]
Ayesha Siddiqa

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Military-Inc...5&sr=8-3-spell

[FalHaitle]

Bhutto also thought that by bolstering Islamic symbolism and myths in school textbooks Mughals like Akbar and Jahangir, and in fact, the last Mughal, the weak and spineless Bahdar Shah Zafar, is shown using words like ‘jihad.’ Whoever this guy is, just stay away from such crappy journalism.

[Karensmith]

Alghuraba,

Ive been reading your posts for some time now about pak army, ttp etc etc and i want to say alot but the forum rules dont allow so i wont say.

Just know that your views are 180º opposite of the truth.

You made a thread some days ago where you posted the sayings of fuqaha about khurooj and baghawat.

It saddened me deeply but at tht time i cudnt post anything as sf was not allowing me to.

Please research the matter with an open mind and heart.

May Allah guide us all.

she isnt alone in her views regarding ttp.
maybe you can invite us all to jamia hafsa forum where you can enlighten us.
im serious

[nAKMzyBN]

she isnt alone in her views regarding ttp.
maybe you can invite us all to jamia hafsa forum where you can enlighten us.
im serious

is it safe to login such forums? Any precautionary measures?

[Karensmith]

is it safe to login such forums? Any precautionary measures?

the only way you can be tracked is through your IP address. besides that if you wish to discuss J!h@d you should always have anonymous emails with which to register at different J!h@di forums.
for IP address the easiest is that one doesn't login to the same account from the same location always. for example one can login to same account sometimes from university, sometimes from a friend's house and sometimes from your own house.
some better tips should be available on the net.
you shouldn't worry much if you are living in indo-pak.

[nAKMzyBN]

the only way you can be tracked is through your IP address. besides that if you wish to discuss J!h@d you should always have anonymous emails with which to register at different J!h@di forums.
for IP address the easiest is that one doesn't login to the same account from the same location always. for example one can login to same account sometimes from university, sometimes from a friend's house and sometimes from your own house.
some better tips should be available on the net.
you shouldn't worry much if you are living in indo-pak.

thanks for the tips
I am kind of more interested in reading stuff than participating. It seems in the jamia hafsa forum, unless one get registered, we cannot read the replies but only the original post. inshaaAllah I will see how I can get there.
wassalam

[FalHaitle]

thanks for the tips
I am kind of more interested in reading stuff than participating. It seems in the jamia hafsa forum, unless one get registered, we cannot read the replies but only the original post. inshaaAllah I will see how I can get there.
wassalam

You have to be really careful, you might never know who is the real face behind that username. I have heard that there are many such forums created by intelligence agecies as a bait. Its just like we tell our kids to not chat with strangers on the internet.

[Karensmith]

thanks for the tips
I am kind of more interested in reading stuff than participating. It seems in the jamia hafsa forum, unless one get registered, we cannot read the replies but only the original post. inshaaAllah I will see how I can get there.
wassalam

true.
moulana can post a good defence over there of ttp and we can all read it/discuss it. alternately he can send his points to me at reachingout2theleft@gmail.com and i'll incorporate them in my blog (or refute them if im not convinced : p)

[Karensmith]

You have to be really careful, you might never know who is the real face behind that username. I have heard that there are many such forums created by intelligence agecies as a bait. Its just like we tell our kids to not chat with strangers on the internet.

i dont think they just let you in like that. i sent my request and after a few days i was admitted. i might get banned soon though : p

[Evelinessa]

Alghuraba,

Ive been reading your posts for some time now about pak army, ttp etc etc and i want to say alot but the forum rules dont allow so i wont say.

Just know that your views are 180º opposite of the truth.

You made a thread some days ago where you posted the sayings of fuqaha about khurooj and baghawat.

It saddened me deeply but at tht time i cudnt post anything as sf was not allowing me to.

Please research the matter with an open mind and heart.

May Allah guide us all.

I hold no views, to understand whats going on in pakistan, reading up on the events that culminated into this backlash of internal war, is important for me. I am doing my own bit of research (you'll have to trust me when i say i am doing it with an open mind) and i include everyone and anyone with any knowledge (or who have been directly affected by the war) in fact the the thread u talk about (khurooj etc) was because i wanted to know the hanafi/deobandi POV as opposed to the Salafi (saudi ullama) in light of today's happenings ie TTP. But I only got emotional outbursts and some takfeeris. Anyway this article had some enlightening points, and since we've been discussing these issues on SF I shared it.

[BodoidearoLew]

For anyone to 'defend' the TTP, there must be adequate proof of something to be defended against in the first place. If someone learnt the fiqh of battle, they would realise that the TTP generally stay within the boundaries of sharia. See here a lecture by Muhammad Tohir, founder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and see what he has to say about those who fight in Pakistan (he fought there himself): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k83sNB_uxvw

He speaks from 8.20 onwards...

[new-nickname-zanovo]

the only way you can be tracked is through your IP address. besides that if you wish to discuss J!h@d you should always have anonymous emails with which to register at different J!h@di forums.
for IP address the easiest is that one doesn't login to the same account from the same location always. for example one can login to same account sometimes from university, sometimes from a friend's house and sometimes from your own house.
some better tips should be available on the net.
you shouldn't worry much if you are living in indo-pak.

Using IPs all over the place will be pretty dangerous. As computers in cafes and especially universities often have filters or moniters involved. To avoid IP detection, it is recommended that you use a PROXY service. You can download software such as TOR or others. Or you can use proxy servers, or proxy lists.

true.
moulana can post a good defence over there of ttp and we can all read it/discuss it. alternately he can send his points to me at reachingout2theleft@gmail.com and i'll incorporate them in my blog (or refute them if im not convinced : p)

Who is this "moulana" you guys are referring to? and whats all the talk about Jhuf? you know.... for people who think im just a nobody, what if i were to say im part of the jhuf loop?.. jhuf is only related to Lal Masjid to a certain degree, its not the "official" forum for Jamia Hafsa, mind u.

I hold no views, to understand whats going on in pakistan, reading up on the events that culminated into this backlash of internal war, is important for me. I am doing my own bit of research (you'll have to trust me when i say i am doing it with an open mind) and i include everyone and anyone with any knowledge (or who have been directly affected by the war) in fact the the thread u talk about (khurooj etc) was because i wanted to know the hanafi/deobandi POV as opposed to the Salafi (saudi ullama) in light of today's happenings ie TTP. But I only got emotional outbursts and some takfeeris. Anyway this article had some enlightening points, and since we've been discussing these issues on SF I shared it.

The TTP struggle started as a result of the Lal Masjid massacre. There's a quote by Mawlana Abdul Rashid Ghazi that said something like, (either it was in response to Pak-govt oppression; or it was in response to the fact that pak govt was preventing Muslims from practicing Islam).."..maybe one day Taliban could start in Pakistan as well".... and thats why TTP goes by the name of "taliban" more or less.

[Knillagrarp]

The basic socio-political mindset of the Pakistani society is the outcome of various faith-based experiments conducted by the state and the armed forces.
The party
In 1995, sometime in May, an uncle of mine (an ex-army man), was invited to a party of sorts.
The invitation came from a former top-ranking military officer who had also worked for the Pakistan intelligence agency, the ISI. He was in the army with my uncle (who now resides abroad) during the 1960s.
My uncle, who was visiting Pakistan, asked if I was interested in going with him. I agreed.
The event was at a military officer’s posh bungalow in Karachi’s Clifton area. Most of the guests (if not all) were former military men. All were articulate, spoke fluent English and wore modern, western clothes.
I was not surprised by this but what did surprise me was a rather schizophrenic aura about the surroundings. Though modern-looking and modern-sounding, the gathering turned out to be a segregated affair.
The men’s wives were placed in a separate room, while the men gathered in a wider sitting area.
By now it become clear to me that I wouldn’t be getting served anything stronger than Pepsi on the rocks!

Loser.
I scratched my head, thinking that even though I was at a ‘party’ in a posh, stylish bungalow in the posh, stylish Clifton area with all these posh stylish military men and their wives and yet, somehow I felt there very little that was ‘modern’ about the situation. Loser.
By modern, I also mean the thinking that was reflected by the male guests on politics, society and religion. Most of the men were also clean-shaven and reeking of expensive cologne, but even while talking about cars, horses and their vacations in Europe, they kept using Arabic expressions such as mashallah, alhamdullila, inshallah, etc. Loser. I tried to strike up some political conversations with a few gentlemen but they expected me to agree with them about how civilian politicians were corrupt, how democracy can be a threat to Pakistan, how civilian leaders do not understand India’s nefarious designs, et al.
Then, alas, as if right on cue, the moment I began telling them that I was actually a working journalist (they thought I was a college student in some foreign university), in came two senior journalists who seemed to be very close to some of the men there. These journalists were known for their somewhat right-wing views. They are still around.
I thought hard about what had just taken place. Especially when (quite accidentally) I glanced into the ladies’ section, I saw smart women (designer handbags, blow-dried hair and the works) chatting away, unperturbed by the fact that their gaudy modernism somehow did not include mixed gatherings.
What was even more surreal was the presence of some hijab-clad ladies among the army wives, and I overheard many of them (both the hijabis and the non-hijabis), enthusiastically mixing their tales of fashion-related escapades with sincere talk about what dua to say at what time and how Pakistanis are moving away from ‘true Islam’. Loser.
So what was going on?
The experiment
The Pakistan Army was once a staunchly secular beast. All across the 1950s and 1960s it was steeped in secular (albeit conservative) traditions and so were its sociological aspects.
In fact, until the late 1960s, Pakistani military men were asked to keep religion a private matter and religious exhibitionism was scorned at as well as reprimanded – mostly during Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s dictatorship (1959-69).
However, some Islamic symbolism was tactfully used by the military during the 1965 war against India, but this did not last long – especially in an era when a secular military dictatorship was being challenged by an equally secular and left-leaning civilian opposition (the National Awami Party, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Awami League).
The situation in this context remained the same during the early 1970s, during the democratically-elected government of Z. A. Bhutto (1972-77).
Nevertheless, the fact was that the kind of Islamisation which began engulfing the Pakistani society from the 1980s onwards, actually began taking root within the barracks of the Pakistan Army.
Believing that populist Islamic symbolism to be compatible with his regime’s staunchly nationalistic and progressive posturing, Bhutto wanted to strike a balance between secular, left-leaning moves and rhetoric with controlled Islamic bluster.
He thought that this way he would be able to keep in check both the secular opposition coming from radical nationalist groups in Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP and that from the Islamist parties which, although electorally weak, had a large nuisance value.
Bhutto also thought that by bolstering Islamic symbolism and myths in school textbooks, the military and eventually the society in general, it would help him keep Pakistan intact after the failure of the Two-Nation Theory in 1971 when the country’s eastern wing broke away to become Bangladesh.
One must remember that all this remained to be a social experiment during the Bhutto regime and Pakistan’s society remained largely secular until about 1975.
This experiment was first performed in the military. Often, military symbols were fused with those of Islam, and many senior officers began introducing ‘Islamic practices’ in the barracks.
For example, alcohol in Pakistan was first banned in the barracks of the Pakistan Army (1973), a good four years before it was banned across the country (in April 1977).
Apart from also introducing enforced prayers and Islamiyat courses, many officers also began introducing writings of the conservative Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, to the soldiers.
In fact, his books almost became mandatory reading when men like General Ziaul Haq (before he toppled Bhutto in 1977), began handing out books authored by Maududi to soldiers along with medals.
Maududi was a puritan who believed in jihad and his writings had already influenced a number of extremist outfits like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria.
Also, being the chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in Pakistan, his party had actually held demonstrations in the 1960s against popular Arab nationalist leaders like Gamal Nasser whose government had hanged a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt. Thanks for the recap.
The Islamisation experiment seemed to have worked well in an army demoralised by the 1971 defeat against India, and this experiment soon began seeping into the society through revised school textbooks and the state-owned media.
State-owned TV (PTV) and the film industry (Lollywood) were hitting a peak in the 1970s and many of its creations at the time were largely progressive and liberal.
However, in 1975 PTV conducted its first experiment in constructing a popular serial based on the newly conceived Islamised narrative being developed in the military.
A big-budget historical melodrama (produced by young TV director Mohsin Ali) called Tabeer (Reality) was televised. It was based on the history of the Muslims of India from 1857 until the birth of Pakistan in 1947.
This was also the first time when Pakistanis in general were fully introduced to a completely revised history of the region in which Muslims were seen as being completely separate and different from rest of the people of the subcontinent.
For example, the TV series begins during the end of the Indian Mutiny against the British in 1857, an event in which disgruntled Muslims as well as Hindus played leading roles. However, in the serial we only see the Muslims leading the revolt and Hindus are nowhere to be seen.
As the series continued, with each episode more revisions came to light when Muslim characters hardly ever hark back to great proto-secular Mughals like Akbar and Jahangir, and in fact, the last Mughal, the weak and spineless Bahdar Shah Zafar, is shown using words like ‘jihad.’ Shame on you.
Also, allusions are constantly made to the Muslim roots lying in Arab nations and lands and India being a land that was conquered by the Muslims but had become a ‘darul harb’ for them after the fall of the Muslim empire.
Such narratives and revised history would soon become mainstream thought by the time Ziaul Haq took over.
The Islamisation experiment in the military too became a mainstay. It especially began consolidating itself during the military’s involvement in the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad in Afghanistan.
As more and more soldiers and officers became radicalised, this radicalisation was then introduced (by the ISI) into the society through a number of militant Islamist groups, sectarian outfits and madrassas that were then used as recruiting grounds for the US-backed ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan. Much of the funding for these came from Saudi Arabia. (1)An 'Arab is not superior to an 'Ajam.
(2) A Muslim is supposed to organize his life around Islam.
(3) You are expecting them to organize their lives around secularism.
(4) Your expectations are not Islamic.
The mutation
By the late 1980s, while religion had begun to play a major role in the soldiers’ lives, and the revised historicity first introduced in the late 1970s became the new mainstream historical narrative in Pakistan, one now saw senior officers with even the most liberal and secular habits, spouting Islamist rhetoric.
But this too was about to give in to even more Puritanism. In the early 1990s, the influential Islamic evangelical movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat, began making its way into the military.
Though an apolitical movement that emphasised on ‘correct’ Islamic ritualism and attire, its entry into the barracks produced a surreal mix when it came into contact with the highly political philosophy of Maududi that had by then deeply entrenched itself in the army.
Interestingly, this episode was another example of how an Islamic experiment that was first conducted in the Pakistani army soon seeped out to become a phenomenon in the society in general as well.
The Tableeghi Jamaat which was formed in 1929 had, until the 1980s, been more associated with working/peasant-class Muslims from the Deobandi sect and (in the 1980s) became popular with the trader classes.
A move was seen by the Jamaat from the early 1990s onwards in which a conscious attempt was made to attract upper-middle and middle-class Muslims, and this was achieved when various senior Pakistan Army officers joined the Jamaat.
The army’s influence on the Pakistani society and politics meant that the Jamaat not only began to bag recruits from well-to-do urban classes, but for the first time it also managed to attract a number of celebrities such as TV actors, pop musicians and cricketers. Barring losers.
What I saw at that ‘party’ was actually the socio-political outcome of the above elaborated process.
A process that saw a secular army going through an experiment in political Islam that then was dissipated across the society and consolidated itself as a mainstream phenomenon.
This phenomenon was then fused (in the army) with ritual Puritanism of the Tableeghi Jamaat and this fusion too became a mainstream sociological mainstay amongst various urban classes.
Thus the schizophrenic happenings at the ‘party’ were a modern, upper-middle-class expression of the said process. Sore loser.
Interestingly it is the mindset emerging from this fusion and process that also dictates the choice of the kind of political leaders that the classes embroiled in this phenomenon would like to see.
The choices too have increasingly become equally schizophrenic.
For example, these classes whose politics are a fusion of classical political Islam, Tableeghi Jamaat ritualism and modern-day consumerist capitalism want their leaders to be professional white-collared men, urban in outlook, educated, good to look at, but at the same time, religious, anti-West, anti-India and highly tolerant of Islamic exhibitionism, even sometimes to the point of being apologetic about those who take this exhibitionism to a more violent levels. I feel like calling you a sore loser unfortunately I had helped myself already.

So dear Mr Dense what do you expect Muslims to do if not implement Islam. Just because the British came to the subcontinent does it become preferable to implement their ways in our lives? You are observing the reality but you are not making the correct diagnosis of its implications for you. Let us offer it to you.

You can relax and behave like a Muslim. It was always meant to be that way for more than fourteen hundred years. Then colonialism happened and we became ashamed of being Muslims. Now the situation has changed again and you can relaxed and feel and behave like a Muslim.

And if you still feel like behaving in the manner of a Macaulian Pakistani then that is what is called schizophrenia.
Get that right.

[Andrew1978]

Also, to add on to what brother has written above, does this guy not know why Pakistan was formed in the first place? If all that we wanted was secularism, what was the need for partition?

[Karensmith]

Using IPs all over the place will be pretty dangerous. As computers in cafes and especially universities often have filters or moniters involved. To avoid IP detection, it is recommended that you use a PROXY service. You can download software such as TOR or others. Or you can use proxy servers, or proxy lists.

i forgot to mention that.
proxies are most recommended.

Who is this "moulana" you guys are referring to? and whats all the talk about Jhuf? you know.... for people who think im just a nobody, what if i were to say im part of the jhuf loop?.. jhuf is only related to Lal Masjid to a certain degree, its not the "official" forum for Jamia Hafsa, mind u.

he is from this forum. and he knows about the ttp and taliban a lot...hence his username taliban1 : p
i mentioned jhuf as we can discuss J!h@d on that forum openly as compared to here. for one i would reply to ahmad12 for his video below and claims of 'ttp following shariat' but this thread would result in another debate and will get deleted.

The TTP struggle started as a result of the Lal Masjid massacre. There's a quote by Mawlana Abdul Rashid Ghazi that said something like, (either it was in response to Pak-govt oppression; or it was in response to the fact that pak govt was preventing Muslims from practicing Islam).."..maybe one day Taliban could start in Pakistan as well".... and thats why TTP goes by the name of "taliban" more or less.

wasnt mufti shamza martyred before lal masjid?

[Karensmith]

Also, to add on to what brother has written above, does this guy not know why Pakistan was formed in the first place? If all that we wanted was secularism, what was the need for partition?

you are correct - but there is more to this:
- are indian muslims getting discriminated in employment in india because they are muslims?
- do they have access to the same facilities and equal access to law as a hindu?
- are indian muslims ably represented in parliament as per their population percentage?
- if yes, what (if any) power do they have to legislate laws that can safeguard the interests of muslims (we haven't even started talking about 'islamic laws and huddod' yet)

sir maripat once wrote somewhere he does not consider himself a second-class citizen. is that true for all or majority of indian muslims?the impression i got from abul qasim nomani sahab's interview was that this was not the case.

[Andrew1978]

you are correct - but there is more to this:
- are indian muslims getting discriminated in employment in india because they are muslims?
- do they have access to the same facilities and equal access to law as a hindu?
- are indian muslims ably represented in parliament as per their population percentage?
- if yes, what (if any) power do they have to legislate laws that can safeguard the interests of muslims (we haven't even started talking about 'islamic laws and huddod' yet)

sir maripat once wrote somewhere he does not consider himself a second-class citizen. is that true for all or majority of indian muslims?the impression i got from abul qasim nomani sahab's interview was that this was not the case.

But when we're talking about Pakistan as Pakistanis, we have to talk about the reason Pakistan was founded, regardless of whether the Muslims in India are being treated fairly and justly simply due to the fact that the founders of Pakistan chose to create a separate country. So even if Indian Muslims are being disenfranchised, the author of that piece is from Pakistan and if he wants Pakistan to be secular, then he is going against the reason for Pakistan's founding, which was to create a country for Muslims, in spite of the fact that there are more ethnic differences within Muslims (e.g. Pathan and Sindhi) than between Muslims and Hindus (e.g. Gujarati Muslim and Gujarati Hindu).

The author of that article was published on the website of a major Pakistani newspaper and he even had the guile to complain that no alcohol was being served at that party he went to - that he was expecting alcohol! Is he a Christian?

[Karensmith]

i am asking independently of what the author wrote or pakistan's conditions.
pakistani nationalists say the Muslims were liberated and saved from India with creation of pakistan. they can show you the points i gave below as proof.