A Letter to Ansar Abbasi

Jaf­fer Abbas Mirza

Hel­lo to the torch bear­er of Islam and Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of moral police, Mr. Ansar Abbasi!

I am sure that you are doing well and, I hope you will like the titles I have accord­ed you with. After all, a dig­ni­fied per­son like you deserves them. I have had the priv­i­lege of com­ing across your col­umn in Jang about ‘Free Sex Soci­ety’. First of all, I would like to thank you for bring­ing up such a grave issue into the lime­light. I am sure yahoo­di agents would have tried their best to stop you but they are unaware of the invin­ci­ble mard-e-mujahid in you. You should be hap­py to know that you also have mujahids like Zaid Hamid and Orya Maq­bool Jan to help you in this daunt­ing task. Com­ing to the top­ic, I am pleased that you have friends who inform you about wicked schemes of these NGOs and lib­er­al fas­cists to sec­u­lar­ize the land of pure aka bul­wark of Islam. How­ev­er your informer friend failed to update you about some oth­er issues per­tain­ing to the state of piety and moral­i­ty in our soci­ety. But do not fret as being a patri­ot­ic Pak­istani I will help you with this task by rais­ing some ques­tions to you and your friend in hopes of per­suad­ing you to pen some columns on these issues as well.

Didn’t your friend know or tell you that a few extrem­ist out­fits are play­ing with the reli­gious sen­ti­ments of the mass­es? As you have men­tioned in your col­umn that kuf­far are pen­e­trat­ing their val­ues such as free sex, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and free­dom of speech – note that you equate the last with blas­phe­my – but are you real­ly naïve enough to ignore the role of your glo­ri­ous Mus­lim gulf coun­tries in fund­ing extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism in Pak­istan? Addi­tion­al­ly, they are also pro­vid­ing their ‘logis­tics and sup­port’ ser­vices to the kuf­far; oh sor­ry they are still rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Islam accord­ing to you. Are they not?

For­tu­nate­ly, our reli­gion and con­sti­tu­tion allows all minori­ties to prac­tice their reli­gion freely. It’s anoth­er mat­ter that only lip ser­vice is paid to this right, and the prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion is still in lim­bo. Being a senior jour­nal­ist, you should have known or your friend should have told you about repul­sive treat­ment of Ahmadis in Pak­istan. They have been incal­cu­la­bly per­se­cut­ed and forced to flee the coun­try. Not only their lives are jeop­ar­dized by self-pro­claimed defend­ers of Islam but even their graves are not secure.

What about thou­sands of Shias who have been killed by extrem­ists? These lunatics – sor­ry pious mujahids as some may want to call them – freely oper­ate in our cities. They are using Mosques where they pro­mul­gate their agen­da of puri­fy­ing the land of pure by killing heretic Shias and oth­er minori­ties. I won­der how come they for­get that in their pur­suit of ‘jihad’, they are using Kuf­far’s inven­tion i.e. loud­speak­ers?

Do you not know how blas­phe­my laws are used against minori­ties? How many Chris­tians and Hin­dus are jailed under fab­ri­cat­ed accu­sa­tions? Do I need to remind you that Joseph Colony was not burnt by NGOs, nei­ther by the infi­del Amer­i­cans? I hope your friend some­day tells you about the real cul­prits.

Prob­a­bly your friend does not care about the demo­c­ra­t­ic rights of some of the Pak­istani cit­i­zens, that’s why he did not tell you that women in Now­shera and Lak­ki Mar­wat were barred from vot­ing in recent gen­er­al elec­tions. But your con­cern for the empow­er­ment of women can­not be doubt­ed as Malala was also sub­ject­ed to heart-warm­ing com­pli­ments by you and Orya Maq­bool Jan dur­ing a TV show about her book. Also, did your friend tell you about Tax­i­la where some reli­gious extrem­ists threat­ened school admin­is­tra­tion that if teach­ers and stu­dents will not wear Burqa, they will bomb the school?

What is your stance on a boy get­ting raped by a cler­ic in madras­sa? Have you ever raised your voice against pedophil­ia? Would you like to shed some light on your silence on these bar­bar­ic acts? May be it is only because your friend did not tell you about all this. Oth­er­wise you sure­ly care about all the ills of our soci­ety.

In the end, I would request you to please note that all of the afore­men­tioned acts were not car­ried out by lib­er­als. I wish that you crit­i­cize the cul­prits as zeal­ous­ly as you crit­i­cize lib­er­als cum immoral lot of the coun­try. Also I hope that one day you will learn to dis­tin­guish between those ele­ments which are dete­ri­o­rat­ing our soci­ety and those which are try­ing to make it into a pro­gres­sive one. Once my teacher gave me a fruit­ful advice which I would like to share with you; ‘be in the com­pa­ny of wise, you will be wise’.

Your well-wish­er,

A Lib­er­al Fas­cist

The author is a researcher at The Pak­istan Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Affairs and he tweets @mirzajaffer.