Let us haste to hear it

Side-effect
The writer is an Islamabad-based
poet and author.
Each state and society has its issues. But the intensity and variety of issues we have seem incomparable to any other. It is not something but everything that is rotten in the state of Denmark, to twist a quote from Shakespeare.

Twisted we are. In the twenty-first century, which other society or legal system in the world will allow a minor girl, born into any faith, to be put behind bars on charges of apostasy or blasphemy? In a religious riot, why would we burn buffaloes alive unless we think they have the same faith as their herders? Where else, even in the Muslim world, are the superior courts more concerned about the content of advertisements shown on the television around Iftar time in the holy month of Ramazan rather than people belonging to a Muslim sect being hounded out of a passenger bus and killed in the same holy month? Mind you, that was not the first or an isolated incident of its kind.
Why do we want to stop people belonging to a minority faith from leaving our country, when the message given to us through our clerics, teachers and school curriculum from day one is that they are quintessentially wicked and narrow minded and we sought independence from them more than from our colonial masters? Where else in the world do the political leaders who thrive on torturing or eliminating their opponents, including people who speak a different language, have the audacity to condemn other kinds of killings, like the ones that happen in the name of religion?
In which other nation, would you find a political party whose leader condemns the murder of a man one day and his spokesperson makes a speech in solidarity with the murderer the next day, and the devotees who believe in the promise of this new political choice fail to find any contradiction?
Some citizens of the state of Denmark are not simply intolerant. We are becoming obsessed with eliminating difference – the difference of any kind. It may well be a difference in opinion, political views, ideology, faith, jurisprudence, language, tribe, caste or creed. We want everyone to look like us, feel like us, think like us and act like us.
The other obsession that is seeking new heights among the male population in the state of Denmark is the obsession with controlling a woman’s body and mind. These could be women of our own faith or of other faiths. Particularly the young and attractive ones among the minority faiths must be controlled, betrothed and married, if not raped. As far as the womenfolk from our own faith are concerned, we are capable of burying them alive if they want to marry someone they like. We would throw acid on their faces if they do not obey our commands, cut their noses, parade them naked and blow up their schools. Our pious men do not find the prowess to impose our values on infidel men and women outside the state of Denmark so we settle for imposing these on our own women.
Let us now see how we relate to the outside world today. Speak of the Americans first before we move on to our neighbours. For over a decade, our country is an ally with the Americans and some thirty-eight countries in the war against Al-Qaeda and Taliban. However, when the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was found and killed in a hideout located in a prominent town in the state of Denmark, the whole world was shocked and wanted to know how could this have possibly happened. Were we complicit or incompetent? But that didn’t worry us as much. Rather we found ourselves bogged down with the questions like how the Americans got to know of the hideout and how their choppers flew into our territory without being detected by our radar system. Besides, the more pious among us in the citizenry of the state of Denmark continue to ask a simple question. Why weren’t the intruding American choppers struck down by the elite aircraft that we have bought from the same Americans?
Then they started saying that this never happened. Osama was not there. In the same way as one of my uncles tell me about the pious of his times. They never believed that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. How could an infidel do that? It is only our Ruet-e-Hilal Committee that has the prerogative of deciding anything about the moon.
After Americans, it is the Afghan neighbours of the state of Denmark who impact on our policy choices increasingly. They do not trust us and blame us for fuelling insurgency in their country. We don’t trust them either and apportion similar blames, so that’s fine.
With the good old Indians, the trust deficit, the lack of confidence and an uncertainty about the future stays in the air. While trade and commerce are being promoted, parliamentarians visit each other’s country, track two dialogues and literary events are organised, a morbid animosity towards each other is also allowed to flourish. We must not forget that it was just a few years ago that terrorist attacks in Mumbai took place. Both confusion and embarrassment were compounded by the presence of our foreign minister in India at that time.
We also see an Indian hand in any trouble that we find in our backyard. It may well be true. But for how long cam this tit for tat continue? Indians have given us names and dossiers of those individuals and institutions living in the state of Denmark who had struck in the past and wish to strike more terror in India.
The Iranian neighbours were unhappy for both territorial and religious reasons. They think one of their subversive outfits was provided safe havens and support from our land. We couldn’t stop Iranian engineers and emissaries from being killed and their premises from being attacked. The plight of Shia Muslims in Pakistan also perturbs Iran. We are trying to mend fences with them but it is not the best of relationships. We tend to side with the Saudis who harbour a permanent feud with Iran.
The People’s Republic of China is perhaps the only friendly neighbour that we have. But we allowed a situation where they were pushed to think that even if we did not let it foster, we are certainly not doing enough to curb unrest among the Muslim population of Xinjiang. Rightly or wrongly, China saw links to the militancy in its province to territories that fall within our control. Could we afford losing China as a friend? Has anyone heard China condemn the American drones striking our tribal areas?
It is time for serious introspection in our state of Denmark. We don’t want this to end in a tragedy. We don’t want Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes dead with only Horatio living to tell our tale. We have burnt ourselves down with a fire kindled by a false sense of past glory, bigotry and ignorance. We have to rise from the ashes like a phoenix reborn – the individual embraces the enlightened world of science and art, the society becomes humane and pluralistic, and, the state reinvents its policy paradigm.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad. Email: harris.khalique@ gmail.com