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The Neenuram Ashram in Tharparkar serves as a beacon to all souls

Deep in the impoverished town of Islamkot in Tharparkar 355 kilometres away from Karachi lies the 100-year-old historic Saint Shree Neenuram Ashram, where hundreds of animals, children and jobless Every day, birds flock to the holy place to get food, and hundreds of cows and buffaloes make their way here to have a drink of water from the many ‘piyaos’ in the Ashram, and get fodder free of cost along the way. This is a place where as many as 4,000 to 5,000 animals come to quench their thirst.

“The Thardeep Rural Development Programme has given us hand pumps,” explains Kala Khushal, 71, shevadari (khidmatgaa) of the Ashram. “We have wells and a water supply system, and about 100 animals can take a drink at a time.”

Khushal has been serving here as a shevadari since 1997, but worked at the Ashram as long ago as 1947 to 1959. Back then, he was a sweeper and used to give water to whoever wanted it. Later, he was a patwari in the district of Dadu, but after his retirement, he came back to serve Saint Shree Neenuram of his own free will. Children from the scheduled caste and adults who cannot afford to pay for food find comfort here too.

“Between 300 and 500 people are served lunch and dinner here every day free of cost,” says Khushal. “Among the people who come here are those who migrate to barrage areas every day because of drought in Tharparkar. They eat here because they can’t afford to get food from anywhere else.”

But at this Ashram, nobody has to beg for food. Trucks loaded with rice and ghee pour in from across the province as a mark of respect to Saint Shree Neenuram, who established the Ashram more than 100 years ago. “It is the love people have for the saint that ensures we are never short of contributions,” says Khushal. “Neen in Hindi means eyes, and Ram is our God, hence the name Neenuram.”

Inside the Ashram is a small temple boasting of a beautiful moorti, which was carved in Jeepur in India. But he Ashram is more than just a place of aesthetic wonder or a haven to feed people. Back in 1962, a school for girls was established at the Ashram, and with Hindi as a medium of instruction, the girls receive not just education, but also vocational training, particularly in sewing. More recently in 2005, it also established a charity hospital.

Khushal is proud to say that the Ashram has never been affected by religious fanatics. “Tharparkar has a unique culture where Muslims and Hindus live in peace,” he says. As far as he knows, there has never been a riot between either group of people. “It is not like Swat and the tribal areas where people are killing each other,” he adds.

Still, he has a word of caution. “Things are changing and nobody knows about the future. The ‘mullah’ has not learnt to forgive.”
Read More
(Submitted by Pritam Rohila)

SATURDAY, MAY 30th, 2009
2 pm – 5 pm
Newton Library
13795 – 70th Ave, Surrey

Free Event
Light refreshments provided

Join us for a public forum and interactive discussion on what the future holds for Pakistan.

ORGANIZED BY:
Fraser Valley Peace Council, Siraat Collective and
Pakistan Action Network (www.pakaction.org)

SPEAKERS:
Haider Nizamani, Sunera Thobani, Huma Dar

“If they snatch my ink and pen, I should not complain,
For I have dipped my fingers in the blood of my heart.
I should not complain, Even if they seal my tongue,
For every ring of my chain is a tongue ready to speak”
(Faiz Ahmed Faiz)

Media headlines and pundits have been inundating us with images of Pakistan as a nation on the brink of disaster. Pakistan is facing many critical issues: the expansion of the U.S. led War on Terror into Pakistan with continued drone attacks, Obama’s AF-PAK strategy, the government’s deal in Swat, the rise of religious extremism and a majority of the population living in poverty without access to basic human rights.

Yet there is also another Pakistan, one in which one of the most vibrant struggles for democracy and rule of law has recently resulted in victory, where poets, lawyers, activists, journalists and other Pakistanis are forging movements of resistance against U.S imperialism, religious extremism and injustice.

In this context, what does the future hold for Pakistan? Speakers will discuss the various issues facing Pakistan and provide an analysis and framework for what we can do as concerned members of the public to contribute to building a movement for justice and peace in Pakistan.

SPEAKERS:

Haider Nizamani is a Lecturer in Political Science at UBC. His specialization is in the fields of International Politics, Security Studies and South Asian Politics. Dr Nizamani authored a book “The Roots of Rhetoric: Politics of Nuclear Weapons in India and Pakistan”. His other publication is “Limits of Dissent A Comparative Study of Dissident Voices in the nuclear Discourse of India and Pakistan” Contemporary South Asia, 7.3 Autumn 1998. He also contributes to Pakistan’s leading English newspapers on national security and political issues.

Sunera Thobani is a professor with the Centre for Research in Women’s Studies and Gender Relations at UBC. She is past president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada’s largest feminist organization. Dr. Thobani’s tenure at the NAC was characterized by a commitment to making the politics of anti-racism central to the women’s movement. Her research focuses on globalization, citizenship, migration, race, and gender relations. Her current projects include “Gender, Globalization, and International Conflict: Representation of Women in the Print Media” and “Television Representations of Women and the War on Terrorism.”

Huma Dar is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Theatre and Film Studies Department at the University of British Columbia. Her work is focused on the intersections and co-formations of gender, religion, class, caste, sexuality, regional, national, and transnational politics of South Asia, specifically analyzing the cinematic, literary, and other cultural texts of the region. Dar has been a President of the Executive Board of Directors of Narika – a South Asian women’s organization that runs an anti-domestic violence helpline in Berkeley, CA.

For more information:
email: pakact@gmail.com
phone: 604-613-0735
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=75989338957

By Tazreena Sajjad (The Daily Star)

Photo: Tayeba Begum LIPI
When it comes to the issue of harassment or abuse, sadly most women have a story. Unfortunately, there is little that is unique in a narrative of humiliation and suffering; experiences with degradation, whether physical, verbal or emotional, invariably reflect a pattern of those in power taking advantage of those without, of those who are ingrained with the belief that they can, exploiting and manipulating those who are limited in their ability to protect themselves.

This forum is not for idealising the perfect victim and portraying the perfect perpetrator; neither is it for seeking personal catharsis. If either were the case, beyond capturing the attention of a few with some riveting stories, and possibly being dismissed by others who are bound to think that it has all been said before, this article would do little else.

After all, the realities of women’s second-class citizenship in Bangladesh in the spheres of education, law, economy, politics, religious practices, and cultural norms, in the public and the private realms, are constant reminders of the power dynamics still at play in society.

Despite my hesitancy in writing a generic article about the biological and social constructions of the masculine and the feminine and the subsequent realities of power inequalities, my decision to write this piece is based on an attempt to reflect a little on the why it is that in the 21st century, more than fifty per cent of the country’s population is impatiently pacing the platform, waiting for the train to equality.
After all, one does not require a degree in women’s and feminist studies to recognise that men and women are treated differently in society and by society; and that institutionalised practices of bad behaviour are cloaked in the guise of culture, religious practices, and social norms.

It’s a Global Problem
Lest we delude ourselves into believing that the struggles of the Bangladeshi women are unique, whether it involves harassment on the streets, domestic violence at home, dismissal and ridicule at the workplace, consistent marginalisa-tion in most public spheres of power, it is critical to remind ourselves that we are all part of a larger context where gender inequality is the norm, not the deviation.
We continue to live in a world where: of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty, 70% are women; 46% of the girls in the poorest countries have no access to primary education; while women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours and produce half of the world’s food, they earn only 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property.

While some countries do perform better than others in the gender empowerment index (GEM), gender inequity is more the norm than a deviation. From verbal abuse to sexual violence or homicide, sometimes it is more of a question of degrees in the continuum of ill-treatment rather than its complete absence that informs women’s experiences.

Daily Star for more

By Yevgeny Bazhanov (Moscow Times)

An ancient Chinese proverb says, “Making a prediction is difficult — especially in regard to the future.” I would go a step further and say, “We have absolutely no idea what the future has in store for us.” There are plenty of instances in the last century of how unexpected, epochal events in global affairs have caught us completely by surprise.

In his memoirs of a trip through Europe in 1911, British historian Arnold Toynbee noted that Europe had enjoyed 40 years of peace and that the borders between states had effectively been eliminated. After traveling from one country to another, Toynbee returned home in high spirits, confident that Europeans had a bright future of integration, peace and prosperity. Just three years later, World War I broke out, and 20 years after that — World War II. Neither the brilliant historian Toynbee nor most of his contemporaries could have imagined this tragic chain of events.

At the dawn of the 20th century, who could have foreseen that the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire would collapse to be replaced by Bolshevism and Marxism-Leninism? In addition, few could imagine that the enlightened German people could vote Adolf Hitler into power. The Japanese also surprised the world by replacing their “tea ceremony” culture with a highly aggressive militarism that subjugated so much of East Asia in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Another shock came shortly thereafter with the collapse of the 2,000-year-old Confucian Middle Empire and the emergence of a Maoist state in which youth brutally stamped out the ancient and refined civilization of their forbears chanting, “We will crush Confucius like a rat in the road.”

The list could be continued, but one thing is clear: The future is unpredictable. This is particularly true in the complex and highly unstable 21st century.

After the end of the Cold War, the world was filled with hope that a new period of peace, cooperation and prosperity would reign. After all, it seemed that the two greatest superpowers had finally ended their long and bitter ideological, geopolitical and military standoff. What’s more, economic cooperation among nations increased significantly in the early 1990s, strengthening the notion of a largely integrated global community. But this did not last long, as religious, ethnic and geopolitical conflicts replaced the shortlived, post-Cold War euphoria. And this was inevitably accompanied by a renewed rivalry between the United States and Russia.

The United States, ecstatic with its perceived victory in the Cold War and its increasing power as the only remaining superpower, presented itself as the leader of democracy, freedom and everything else considered progressive in society. Moreover, Washington’s ambition for leadership quickly grew into an appetite for global hegemony. This was met with resistance in international relations, provoking an anti-U.S. coalition and leading to a new level of confrontation and conflict in the global arena.

Meanwhile, a second problem was developing in Asia. China was growing in economic and military might by leaps and bounds. And although Beijing continued to behave properly and swore that it had no hegemonic intentions, nations around the world spoke increasingly about the need to constrain the “Yellow Dragon.”

Russia became a third source of tension. After “getting up off its knees” during the oil-boom years, it announced its policy of protecting its “privileged interests” among the former Soviet republics. Needless to say, many countries located near Russia and in the West were opposed to the Kremlin’s version of the Monroe Doctrine.

The result is that we are once again moving toward confrontation between multiple power centers, a precarious state of global affairs that has historically led to military confrontation. Despite all the hyped-up, optimistic vision of globalization ushering in a Kantian-like global triangle of perpetual peace and prosperity, it turns out that economic integration has proven unable to prevent another round of fierce geopolitical rivalry.

With the terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001, it seemed that the superpowers had united to combat a common threat. Unfortunately, that did not last long. It took only two years after Sept. 11 for the superpowers to resume their traditional rivalry and friction.

Then came the economic crisis of 2008. The severity of the crisis knocked the United States down several notches in terms of its superpower status. Not surprisingly, Washington is now speaking a different language with Russia — one that includes a “reset button” to improve relations. Will it work this time? I certainly hope so, but there are serious obstacles in the way.

Moscow Times for more

(For the benefit of our readers, immediately following this article, we are reproducing a section from the New World Encyclopedia, related to Aisha’s age at the time of her marriage to Prophet Muhammad (ca. 570-632).

Sahih Bukhari’s hadiths can be found at http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/ and
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/062.sbt.html Ed.)

By A. Faizur Rahman

About a month ago the world media reported a shocking decision by a Saudi judge in which he refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year old girl to a 47-year old man. But to those who are already familiar with the so-called Islamic laws of Saudi Arabia, this ruling was merely the latest in the sequence of several such cases of human rights abuse in the name of the shariah. The question is: does Islamic law really uphold child marriage?

What the Quran says
A perusal of the Quran will reveal that marriage in Islam is a civil contract, meesaaq (4:21), and as such it can be finalised only between persons who are intellectually and physically mature enough to understand and fulfill the responsibilities of such a contract. This can be further understood from the verse; “And test the orphans until they reach the age of nikah (marriage), and if you find in them rushdh (maturity of intellect) release their property to them.”(4:6). It may be noted here that the Quran makes intellectual maturity (which always falls beyond the age of puberty) the basis to arrive at the age of marriage. This is also in conformity with the Quranic description of marriage as emotional bonding between two mutually compatible persons through which they seek “to dwell in tranquility” (see 7:189 and 30:21) in the companionship of each other which is not possible if either of the spouses is mentally undeveloped.

But, even in India?
Unfortunately, Muslim jurists don’t seem to have understood these Quranic teachings. Recently the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, issued a fatwa legitimising the marriage of girls as young as 10. Even in India, Muslim institutions including the Deoband and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board have not outlawed child marriage. Yet they congregated not once but twice to condemn terrorism. It is astonishing that those who claim an Islamic basis for their shariah disregard the primary source of Islamic law, the Quran, to the extent of overruling it through their exploitation of spurious traditions. For instance, child marriage in Islam is justified on the basis of a hadith in Bukhari, which says that the Prophet married Hazrat Aisha when she was just six and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

Hazrat Aisha’s age
This hadith cannot be true for several reasons. First, the Prophet could not have gone against the Quran to marry a physically and intellectually immature child. Secondly, the age of Hazrat Aisha can be easily calculated from the age of her elder sister Hazrat Asma who was 10 years older than Hazrat Aisha. Waliuddin Muhammad Abdullah Al-Khateeb al Amri Tabrizi the famous author of Mishkath, in his biography of narrators (Asma ur Rijal), writes that Hazrat Asma died in the year 73 Hijri at the age of 100, ten or twelve days after the martyrdom of her son Abdullah Ibn Zubair. It is common knowledge that the Islamic calendar starts from the year of the Hijrah or the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina.

Therefore, by deducting 73, the year of Hazrat Asma’s death, from 100, her age at that time, we can easily conclude that she was 27 years old during Hijra.

This puts the age of Hazrat Aisha at 17 during the same period. As all biographers of the Prophet agree that he consummated his marriage with Hazrat Aisha in the year 2 Hijri it can be conclusively said that she was 19 at that time and not nine as alleged in the aforementioned hadiths.

The Saudi judge also abused another hadith when he ruled that the minor girl shall have the right to seek a divorce only after reaching puberty. This is known as Khiyar-al-Buloogh or the Option of Puberty and is based on Ibn Abbas’s report in the collection of Abu Dawood. According to that, the Prophet is supposed to have given a minor girl the option to repudiate her marriage when she informed him that her father had married her off against her will.

False premise
But a reading of this hadith shows that the girl in question was not a minor because the word used to describe her is bikran, which means a grown-up, unmarried girl. Also, there is no mention of puberty in the report. Therefore, the concept of Khiyar-al Buloogh is bad in law as it is based on a false premise. In short, there is no authentic statement of the Prophet justifying child marriage and hence, the question of his advising any minor to wait until puberty to exercise her right to divorce simply does not arise.

The spirit of the Quran
The problem with the present day Islamic law is that most of it is not based on the spirit of the Quran. This is because of the belief of Muslim theologians (particularly the Salafi ideologues, commonly known as the Wahabis) that hadiths have an overriding effect on the Quran. One such preacher Abu Ammar Yasir Qadhi has the temerity to write in his book, An Introduction to the Sciences of the Quran, that the Sunnah of the prophet can abrogate the Quran.
The truth is that the Quran being the locus classicus of Islam, no authority can supersede it. Even the Prophet was commanded to judge by it (4:105, 5:49, 6:50, and 7:203). Furthermore, as the Quran claims to be a guide for all periods, it supports the notion that any law formulated on the basis of its framework has to evolve from time to time.

For this to happen, the doors of ijthihad (independent interpretation) must be reopened and the entire corpus of hadiths must be re-evaluated, to discredit such hadiths that are antithetical to the spirit of justice, equity and fairness embodied in Quranic universalism.
The author is a Chennai-based peace activist.

Hindustan Times

(Submitted by Aslam Merchant)

The age of Aisha at marriage is an extremely contentious issue. On the one hand, there are several hadiths which are said to have been narrated by Aisha herself, which claim that she was six or seven years old when betrothed and nine when the marriage was consummated. On the other hand, there is evidence from early Muslim chroniclers like Ibn Ishaq that indicates Aisha may have been 12 to 14 years old, just past the age of puberty, or perhaps even older.

Most Muslim scholars have accepted the tradition that Aisha was nine years old when the marriage was consummated. This has in turn led critics to denounce Muhammad for having sexual relations with a girl so young. Such criticisms may often be found in the context of criticizing the entire religion of Islam, though many Muslims may consider any criticism of Muhammad as equivalent. A response to this criticism has been that Aisha was post-pubescent at nine and that early marriageable ages were an accepted practice in most of the world before the modern Industrial Era.

However, some Muslim scholars point to other traditions that conflict with those attributed to Aisha in this matter. If the other traditions are right, this would imply that Aisha was either confused in her dating, was exaggerating her youth at marriage, or that her stories (which were not written down until more than 100 years after her death) had been garbled in transmission. If we believe traditions that say she was post-pubescent when married—extremely likely in light of practices in other societies where early marriage is common—then these other traditions from Ibn Ishaq and Tabari and others seem much more convincing.

From the viewpoint of the Islamic clergy, the ulama, this explanation, while relieving them of one difficulty, poses another. It values the biographical and historical literature, the sira, over the canonical hadith, or oral traditions accepted by the ulema. However, anything that threatens the value of the hadith, and especially hadith narrated by Aisha, threatens the whole elaborate structure of Islamic law, or sharia. The Shi’a version of sharia is less at risk in this one instance, as the Shi’a deprecate anything sourced to Aisha.

Liberal Muslims do not see any problem with saving Muhammad’s character at the expense of traditionalism. Conservative Muslims, and the ulama, tend to embrace the “early puberty” theories.

Evidence of age nine at consummation
These traditions are from the hadith collections of Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875). These two collections are regarded as the most authentic by Sunni Muslims.
• Sahih Muslim Book 008, Number 3310: ‘Aisha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old.
• Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 Narrated ‘Urwa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).
• Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64 Narrated ‘Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).
• Sahih Bukhari 8:151, Narrated ‘Aisha: “I used to play with the dolls in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah’s Apostle used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me. (The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for ‘Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty.) (Fateh-al-Bari page 143, Vol.13)
• Sahih Bukhari vol. 5, Book 58, Number 234 Narrated ‘Aisha: The prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six. We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Harith Kharzraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage).
Other hadith in Bukhari repeat this information.

Recent Controversy surrounding Muhammad’s Marriage to Aisha
Controversy hit the headlines in June 2002, when former Southern Baptist President Jerry Vines, speaking at the Southern Baptist Convention on June 16, described Muhammad as a “demon-possessed pedophile,” referring to his marriage with Aisha. His source was a best-selling and award winning book (it received the Gold Medallion from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) by Ergun Mehmet Caner and Emir Fethi Caner, Unveiling Islam (2002) which claims to be “a sympathetic and yet uncompromising presentation of the entire scope of Islam.” Sales have far outstripped that of the most popular scholarly introduction to Islam, John L. Esposito’s Islam: The Straight Path. The Caners did not use the term pedophile, which Vine’s introduced, but wrote, “How a prophet of noble character could wed someone so young, even in the culture of the day, remains a mystery. Many gloss over this act … How could a man consummate a marriage with a nine-year old? This question usually is ignored” (59-60).

Subsequently, sections on pedophilia have appeared on Islamic websites. The site www.answering-christianity.com has a section on pedophilia in which the charge that Muhammad was a child molester is refuted. Author Osama Abdallah argues that puberty began very early at that time for girls. He then cites such Biblical verses as 1 Samuel 15: 3-4 to suggest that the Bible condoned mass murder of children. The debate continues with writers on the rival site, www.answering-islam.net (answering-islam.com takes you to Osama Abdallah’s site which owns that domain name).

In his discussion of Muhammad’s marriages, Esposito comments that polygamy was not only culturally and socially accepted at the time but that a chief was expected to contract ‘political marriages to cement alliances” (1988: 20). He comments that Aisha was the only virgin whom Muhammad married and that she was “the wife with whom he had the closest relationship.” He suggests that to deny or try to obscure the fact that Muhammad “was attracted to women and enjoyed his wives [contradicts] the Islamic outlook on marriage and sexuality found both in revelation and Prophetic traditions.” These emphasize “the importance of family and [view] sex as a gift from God to be enjoyed within the bonds of marriage.”

Indirect evidence of older age
• According to Ibn Hisham’s recension of Ibn Ishaq’s (d. 768) biography of Prophet Muhammad, the Sirat Rashul Allah, the earliest surviving biography of Muhammad, Aisha accepted Islam before Umar ibn al-Khattab. If true, then Aisha accepted Islam during its infancy. She could not have been less than 14 years in 1 A.H.—the time she got married. Sira, Ibn Hisham, Vol. 1, 227
• Tabari reports that when Abu Bakr planned on migrating to Ethiopia (eight years before Hijrah), he went to Mut`am – with whose son Aisha was engaged at that time – and asked him to take Aisha as his son’s wife. Mut`am refused because Abu Bakr had converted to Islam. If Aisha was only six years old at the time of her betrothal to Muhammad, she could not have been born at the time Abu Bakr decided on migrating to Ethiopia. Tehqiq e umar e Siddiqah e Ka’inat, Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi, 38
• Tabari in his treatise on Islamic history reports that Abu Bakr had four children and all four were born during the Jahiliyyah – the pre Islamic period. If Aisha was born in the period of Jahiliyyah, she could not have been less than 14 years in 1 A.H. Tarikh al-umam wa al-mamloo’k, Al-Tabari, Vol. 4, 50
• According to Ibn Hajar, Fatima was five years older than Aisha. Fatima is reported to have been born when Muhammad was 35 years old. Muhammad migrated to Medina when he was 52, making Aisha 14 years old in 1 A.H. Tamyeez al-Sahaabah, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalaniy, Vol. 4, 377

Note: Muslim tradition generally says that Aisha was six years old when married to Muhammad, and that this marriage took place in 1 A.H. All of the above arguments are based on the hypothesis that —as reported by the original sources —the age at which Aisha was married is wrong, while the time at which she married (in the same sources) is correct.

New world encyclopedia

By Pritam Rohila (Editor, Asia Peace)

Extremist violence has engulfed parts of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). It is now spilling into its neighboring areas.
Together with the Jihadi outfits in other parts of Pakistan, extremist violence poses serious threat to the nation’s economy, culture and integrity of Pakistan.

Suicide bombings, and public beheadings and floggings are on the rise. Political leaders, journalists and even guest sportsmen are subjected to murderous attacks. Minorities and women are harassed. Police and radio stations, girls schools, music stores, barber shops are being destroyed. Even Sufi shrines are not spared.

Pakistan Government and Army seem to have finally woken up to the stark reality. After dilly-dallying for months, they appear to have decided to face the menace squarely. Prime Minister Gilani has called the recently launched military offensive against the extremists, “a war for the country’s survival.”

But this military campaign in the Taliban-infested areas, although necessary, has added to the instability of the region.
Innocent residents, already harassed by the Taleban atrocities, are caught in the crossfire. Many people have been forced to leave their homes. The UN has so far registered more than 800,000 internally displaced persons.

Along with the 500,000 refugees, already present in the NWFP, this influx of more people has strained the resources of the region. Soaring temperatures, overcrowding, and inadequate facilities, are adding to the severity of the humanitarian crisis

President Asif Ali Zardari has described the current situation as the “biggest challenge” of 21st century.

But neither the military campaign, nor any amount of foreign aid is going to be sufficient in containing the current peril. Common citizens of Pakistan also need to get involved in a nonviolent resistance to extremism and in defense of the nation.

Efforts already initiated by the Jamia Naeemia and the Sunni Ittehad Council <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6283118.ece> are commendable.

More efforts of this kind need to be launched to persuade citizens to respect the rights of minorities and women, to use their words and hands to make friends with all their neighbors, and to live with others peacefully.

Also, with proper instruction in conflict resolution and peace-building, children will have to be `inoculated” against the virus of hate and violence, and to prepare them for a role as agents of peaceful, nonviolent change.

In this context, with the help of such peace leaders as B. M.Kutty, Karamat Ali and Dr. A. H. Nayyar, we at ACHA (www.asiapeace.org) are preparing curriculum material for use with school children.
All well-wishers of Pakistan must join this battle for the body and the soul of Pakistan. It is not the time for them to wait on the sidelines.
Won’t you please do your part?

A small, lemur-like creature may have been an early ancestor of monkeys, apes, and humans. A magnificently preserved fossil dating from 47 million years ago reveals an animal that had, among other things, opposable thumbs, similar to humans’ and unlike those found on other modern mammals. It has fingernails instead of claws. And scientists say they believe there is evidence it was able to walk on its hind legs [ABC News].

In a study that will be published in the journal PLoS ONE tomorrow, researchers will report that this extraordinary fossil could be a “stem group” from which higher primates evolved, “but we are not advocating this” [The New York Times]. The fossil was first discovered in 1983 in the Messel Shale Pit, an old quarry near Frankfurt, Germany that has long been a World Heritage Site because of its rich fossil beds. The specimen was excavated by private collectors but was then divided into two parts and sold; it was only two years ago that scientists reassembled the complete fossil and began studying it.

Described as the “most complete fossil primate ever discovered,” the specimen is a juvenile female the size of a small monkey. Only the left lower limb is missing, and the preservation is so remarkable that impressions of fur and the soft body outline are still clear. The animal’s last meal, of fruit and leaves, remained in the stomach cavity [The New York Times]. The fossil will be unveiled with much pomp and ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History tomorrow, and the History Channel will air a documentary about the find next week.
Discover for more

By Mukul Dube (Mainstream)

On April 27, 2009, over seven years after the cataclysmic violence in Gujarat, the Supreme Court of India directed the Special Investigation Team (also known as the Raghavan Committee) to look into the role of Narendra Modi, then as now the Chief Minister of Gujarat, in that violence. The focus is naturally on Modi, although the SIT was asked also “to probe the roles of 62 other top ranking politicians, bureaucrats and police officers of the State”.

There have been two reactions to this. One is to say, “Der aye, durust aye: that is, even if it comes late, the right step has been taken (a variant is a dry ‘and about time too’).” The other reaction is to refer to the dictum that justice delayed is justice denied.
I suggest that the second reaction is the valid one in the unusual circumstances that we are considering. The reason is that those who ruled Gujarat in 2002 still rule that State. They are widely held to have been responsible for the violence or at least to have taken no steps to prevent it or, later, to punish the perpetrators. They did nothing to ameliorate the suffering of the tens of thousands of Muslims who were reduced to living in camps. Indeed, their leader Modi was callous enough to describe the camps as “breeding factories”, and his wit was duly rewarded by the guffaws of his acolytes.

Two thousand or more Muslims were killed in the violence.1 This was justified by calling them “enemies”, “outsiders”, “Pakistanis” and “terrorists”. Muslims in Gujarat continue to be described in these terms, and they continue to be treated as aliens who have no rights, not even the right to return to their own homes. The areas in which they live—and these have been called ghettos—are denied the basic amenities of water, sewage collection and electricity. No banks serve them and there are no schools in them. They are in the “Hindu Rajya” yet not in it, in the “Hindu Rashtra” yet not in it. A neighbourhood in which Muslims live is labelled “Pakistan” and is treated as enemy territory. Certainly it is not part of “Shining India”, the fiction about which the Hindu Right cried itself hoarse.

Time is the great healer, they say; and then there is the excellent idea of “forgive and forget”. We have before us the relatively recent example of South Africa, where literally millions of the gravest crimes against humanity were exposed and then buried in the name of “truth and reconciliation”. It is truly sound reasoning to look not at the past but to the future; but there are compelling reasons why that cannot be done in the instance of Gujarat.

“I doubt that that woman’s wounds will ever be healed who was raped, whose husband and brother were killed before her eyes, whose unborn foetus was held aloft on the point of a sword, whose house was destroyed with exploding gas cylinders.” This is what I wrote two years after the Godhra railway carriage fire (‘Answer to a Question’, published on the Internet on February 28, 2004). The truth of it has since been underscored by something I had not foreseen: for all these years, killers and rapists have swaggered about, free as air, and have each day held up the threat of repetition—no less real for being unspoken—to their victims. And the prisons of Gujarat have, over this entire period, housed without trial many hundreds of victims whom a criminal state apparatus has declared criminals.
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