The direction home

Within three days following President Donald Trump’s unveiled message to the Muslim world, just four elite schools in Lahore have reported nearly 100 queries from families currently based in the US about possible places for their children. Similar preliminary emails will have gone out to other schools around the country.

While of course most US-Pakistanis will eventually not make it home, either hanging on in a suddenly perilous country, or finding other places on the globe to live, the panic is very real. Students applying to American universities are reconsidering their options as parents question the viability of an American education, with some universities already advising international students from Muslim countries to return immediately if they are outside the US in case they are denied entry.

The Trump order, aside from legal questions already coming up, essentially contributes to the growing sense of xenophobia and racism that had always lurked in the US, and indeed virtually every other country. Of course it is true that a huge number of Americans did not vote for Trump. He did not attain the popular vote nor the vote of the unregistered, or others who simply opted not to choose between the two major candidates. But it is also true that a very large number did choose to vote, and Trump’s rhetoric has legitimised previously veiled beliefs, with an upsurge in physical and verbal abuse on American Muslims reported since it became clear Trump would indeed be moving to the White House.

The bigotry is likely to deepen, and it is unsurprising many seem to be considering a change in where they live, as sinister swastikas appear on walls and students – Muslim, Hispanic or simply non-American – report receiving hate mail slipped into post boxes. Even Native Americans, the only truly non-immigrant group in the US, have received such missives.

As Pakistanis in the US look homeward, some contemplating quite what their Green Card means in real terms, there is also a need to look at the nation they left. In typical fashion, choosing not to reason or rationalise, Imran Khan has suggested it would be good news if the US banned visas for all Pakistanis, forcing them to remain at home and think about their own country. Beyond the lack of logic, perhaps Khan should ask why so many Pakistanis choose to leave in the first place. Only a very few of course make it to the US. Most go where they can, legally or far more often illegally, searching for the greater opportunity they know they will never find in their own land. Some in the US today have fled simply to safeguard their lives or claim basic freedoms denied to them at home on the basis of their belief or lifestyle.

Others seek a better education, and their choice too is hardly surprising given the global rating of Pakistani universities. Only three rank among the top 800 universities in the world, while in Asia, where the National University of Singapore tops the list, universities from China, India, Iran, Korea, and Bangladesh are rated higher than any from Pakistan. Considering how much we have spent on our higher education since the Musharraf era, this is something to think about.

Perhaps this is an area Imran Khan could concentrate on. If we had better universities, better work opportunities, greater development, people would not leave so readily. Surely this would be a better target to work towards than urging Donald Trump to stop visas for Pakistanis.

The scenario that has unfolded in the US, and which continues to evolve as courts review Trump’s orders and civil activists ask if the inscription on the Statue of Liberty which promises a home to the wretched now needs to be altered, should also make us think about other situations. Trump is not alone as far as bigotry and lack of willingness to welcome ‘outsiders’ go. Pakistan has now expressed a determination to expel all three million Afghans still living in the country. Around 1.6 million of them are registered and over a million were returned home, essentially against their will, in 2016 alone.

The argument now being openly voiced by Pakistan is that it cannot spare resources for these Afghans. But considering the Afghans were welcomed into Pakistan under a government policy in 1979, considering that many of them were born in Pakistan and considering that they are being forced back to a war-torn country where many face unemployment, extreme hardship and possible death, we must ask if we are acting any more morally than the new US administration.

The same question should be asked of the many Muslim countries, many of them well endowed with adequate oil resources, that have failed to take in any Syrian refugees at all, leaving these ‘fellow Muslims’ to die in a country that has been left as a heap of rubble as a result of regional rivalries, indifference, and the actions of external players. It is not Trump alone who lacks morality.

As the world enters a new age, at the forefront of which stands the figure of Donald Trump, we need to question how morality can be introduced and how humanity can prevail. Certainly, for all its claims of defending human rights in countries that it has bombed to smithereens, the US is not leading the way and indeed has never done so.

Today, we are talking about its actions because of the threat to ourselves, because of the very real possibility of Pakistanis having to return from the country and students unable to enter its universities. But even before Trump, there was much about the US and its actions that needed to be questioned. We, as an ally since the 1950s, chose to blindly follow Washington from one disaster into the next. Will we part ways now? Will we look at the possibility of other alliances, other lines of action?

So far, there has been no comment from Islamabad on what it makes of the US president’s calls for tougher scrutiny of Pakistanis entering the country or quite what his threats to bomb ‘terrorist havens’ will mean for us. What we need to do is consider not his words but ourselves. We know terrorists are able to prosper in our country. We have read reports of suicide bombers as young as 10 or 12 sent in from Swat to wreak havoc in major cities. We have no way of knowing if these accounts are correct. But we do know that extremism, bigotry and the same sense of self righteousness that drives Trump exist within our country too.

Perhaps the best course of action at this present moment would be to attempt to address our own problems. We can do little but watch and wait to see what happens in the US. The country has many bold voices who have spoken and will continue to speak for the rights of people in that land and in other lands. We must ask if we have similar people ready to speak out for our own rights and for the rights of the more vulnerable in our country.

Right now, we appear to be making an attempt to stifle the voices of such people and drive them away from our land. This fits in with what Trump seems to be aiming at in his own country. Who are we to say he is wrong?

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com