by Shiraz Paracha
First a note from Peter Chamberlin of There is no sunglasses weblog:
[The following report from Khyber Watch website gives powerful testimony on the misery we have inflicted upon our greatest ally in South Asia, Pakistan. The price of friendship with the government of the United States is a demoralized nation-wide state of misery. Add to the misery inflicted intentionally by us, the immeasurable suffering visited upon them by Mother Nature. Our response to all of this should be a greater reaching-out to our old friends, instead of planning an invasion of their western region. God help Pakistanis, because America surely won't. I cannot imagine a worse place to be right now than in FATA or Khyber Pukhtoonkhawa.]
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It was a very hot and bright day in July when I entered the main hall of a newly built private hospital in Peshawar for a medical checkup. A wave of cool breeze touched my face as I opened doors of the air-conditioned hall of the hospital. The semi-dark hall was covered with whiteness from one end to the other. Actually, it was a huge crowd of men in white shilwar Kameesz waiting to see doctors. The majority had beards. All of them had come from different parts of the Khyber Pukhtoonkhawa but almost all of them were wearing the same color traditional Pakistani dress.
While waiting for my turn, I heard the people around me talking about threats to Islam and how bad the Pakistani rulers were. Most people in the waiting area of the hospital had common opinions. They saw the world in black and white.
For the last 10 years, I visit Pakistan every few months. During each visit, I see that more and more of my friends and relatives have grown beards in a race to become ‘good Muslims’. Children are named after Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The number of mosques and visits to mosques has increased tremendously in the past two decades. Young people are joining preaching tours of the Tabligi Jamat. There is a fear that Islam is in danger. Most ordinary people believe in a past that is glorified in school textbooks as well as in the media. People dream of an ideal Islamic society where all their problems will be resolved. Nevertheless, everyone appears to have his or her own interpretation of such Islamic society.
