How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Mullah

(NOTE: There are some truly historical pictures here, and I don't just mean the old Dawn images. I would highly recommend right-clicking and viewing them in full. i lack the tech know how to get them to fit within the margins.)

a pakistani born in the 1980s, and beyond, lives with an acute delusion.

it is not his fault. the country he grew up in had a monolithic response to his questions about history.

we are muslims.
we have always been muslims.
muslims are the best.
we hate india.
indians=hindus=non-muslims=evil bastards.
we are muslims.

this ethos made it the gospel truth that our entire culture, language, history, experience, knowledge has always been proudly muslim, proudly pious and proudly righteous, and nothing else.

thus when the average pakistani confronts questions about his past that seem to make no sense with the monolithic view - such as why was bangladesh created, or why ghalib was an alcoholic - his brain is confronted with nothingness.

nothing that he has been taught accounts for such questions. so he is left with a blank, inoperative mind which he inevitably fills up with delusions.

i used to blame this phenomenon on having just one tv channel, lack of education, lack of access to alternate opinions and a reactionary megalomanic dictator poisoning the country. but the advent of a smorgasbord of news channels, liberal and illiberal politicos, democrats and dictators and even the fucking internet has done jack all in countering these delusions. in fact, it has made monolithic view even stronger, thanks to constant repetition, and shame.

salman rushdie had it right - we are a nation built out of, on, around, within and comprised of shame. i guess the terror we feel of a vengeful god ready to obliterate our sinful asses makes us so ashamed of any action we commit that even if we felt it was ok, we repent it anyways.

one of the joys of being young of course, is that you can get away with not giving a fuck about doing things which you might feel ashamed of later. one of the sorrows of being old is that you often have to face up to the actions of your youth, and try and deal with them.

if you are equipped with a sound knowledge of yourself, of what you believe and your place in the world, you can perhaps deal with such things. if you are someone who has no tangible idea of their identity, and suffers from shame, guilt and amnesia, you become...

a middle aged former pakistani rock star.

exhibit A, of course, is JJ aka Junaid Jamshed. Tazeen has done a great job of ripping into him of late, and as such there is little need to do so here. but JJ, for those of you not in the know, was pakistan's first pop music superstar.

i mean the chicks loved him like he was paul AND john rolled into one. he sang songs about how it was an era for white chicks, how dark chicks were hotter, how his name was written with yours in some random jungle on a tree. he had his hair long, his eyes wide, and fame all around.

then he became fundo. but not just any fundo. he arrived as the messiah of the "Ashamed" - those who live immorally, have acquired wealth immorally, treat their daughters and their wives and their servants immorally yet want to feel like they're good people.

anyone in pakistan who has money, and access to the internet, has immoral stuff going on. like me - my household practices child labor. my ability to speak english gives me access to opportunities others with the same skills minus english speaking ability are barred from. the AC i run, the car i drive, the text messages i send are a massive waste and misallocation of resources, as the inequities in my country are so vast.

the Ashamed are just like me. we suffer from massive delusions. we wish to have something to make sense of their lives, to have an identity. unlike me, the Ashamed find this identity most conveniently in what passes off as religion in this country.

now the prophet, whose ankle lengths, mustache designs, ittar brands and holding-hands-during-prayer examples you all love to mimc was also a dude who roamed around in tattered clothes and lived in a hovel. which can be a bit problematic because we love our AC and our cars and our big house and our servants and our designer clothes and our imported accents.

so what do you do?

you turn to your Messiah. you say, look at him, he is rich, he runs his own boutique of overpriced, ugly clothing. he rakes in the cash for trumpeting potato chips as holy. and yet, he lives the life of the pious. i mean, he must be pious - fucking look at him. he has a beard and he sings naats right before iftar time on geo. that's proper pious. and if he says that being wealthy, and not giving a fuck about the poor, and using charity drives to cleanse your guilt is ok, then it's fucking ok, ok?

ironically, JJ himself turned to this life when confronted with nothingness in his mind. according to NFP, once the signs had become massive, JJ started getting lonely, confused and directionless. it didn't stop him from milking his fame for all it was worth, but you know, he was lost.

He went about as a man tormented by a sense of burdensome guilt; a guilt about something no-one, not even himself was able to define

and perhaps when he grew older, and felt ashamed at his sexual liaisons, his youthful abandon, his lack of responsibilities, he felt the need to make up for it. if he was normal, he might have done something worthwhile. instead he became who he is.

and he's not alone.

exhibit B, najam shiraz is a proper skitzo - at one time he was making videos showing severed penises, then he became a spokesperson for the vaguely cultish Ar-Rehman-Ar-Rahim. then he became a musician again. then a mullah. then sang a shit song whose melodramatic video tamely discussed rape and incest.

then there's Ali Haider, whose entire career was based on songs which had the gravitas of a sugar-free souffle. all his songs had him doing vaguely suggestive dance moves and singing about vaguely suggestive romantic dalliances. it was enough to get him laid, and little else.

when he grew up, he felt ashamed of the absolute shit he had put out in the world. had he been from somewhere else, he would have sought to redress it with better artistic output. in the land of shame, he came on alim-online to announce he was now a mullah.

so what does it mean? all pakistani rock stars, and all pakistanis, are doomed to being born again muslims who are at the cutting edge of hypocrisy.

NO.

there has been one badass mothafucker who has been rocking out ever since this whole shit began. he fronted the greatest paki band ever. and then when it became shit, he reinvented himself as a solo artist who actually put out music that was good.

ali azmat fucked them models, snorted that coke, spewed the bullshit, acted like a dick, took the money and ran - but he always kept rocking, and he never sold out.

wait a minute.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Blasphemy no. 5

What kind of SMS would the Holy Prophet send?

Which carrier would he decide on? Zong? Telenor? Ufone? (The devil uses Jazz so we can rule that out)

I backed up my blog before publishing this, as i was wary people in their fury at my words might take out their anger on my blogsite. For most people, considering the Prophet, or Allah, or anything remotely connected with religion in any context out of the conventional and sanctioned ones is an invitation to strap on some dynamite and ball bearings.

so back to the conversation. would the Prophet be on facebook? would he use blogger, or wordpress?


are you recoiling in horror? praying for forgiveness for my sins? why?

consider this - it is the belief of muslims that islam is the perfect and eternal religion, which provides for guidance in every conceivable manner of life's varied situations. moreover, it is perpetually put forth that the Prophet's life provides for the perfect solutions to each and any problem that our daily life might throw at us. thus islam has an ordained method of stepping inside a bathroom, a set way of having sex with one's wife, a prescribed procedure for conducting war, for shaving one's pubic hair, for saying hello in the morning, for offering prayers for drought and for funerals, for trimming the beard, for decorating the eyes, for tugging trousers above ankles and below navels...
so it stands to reason that the Prophetic way would also provide for issuing guidance in areas where contemporary muslims are unsure of what to do. but in order to do that, one can not turn to any examples from the Prophet's life, as none exist. ergo, wouldn't one have to depend on interpretations, on analogies, and on consensus to reach a decision?

unfortunately, the prevailing instinct in popular, or perhaps prevalent streams of islamic thought is a strict, literal version of islamic injunctions and orders. of course, it is bleeding obvious by now that i am referring to wahabist, salafist ideologies, most eloquently embodied by the taliban.it would be unfair though to blame solely the taliban - for as long as i can remember, muslims have always looked fondly back at the time of the four caliphs, as an era of utopia, of perfect contentment, of ideal governance and living, of the ultimate realization of humanity's potential. in fact, the panacea to all of today's problems is routinely thought to be setting back the clocks to those glorious times.

let us ignore the historical fact that the era was marred by repeated rebellions against the new state, and of a debilitating civil war, and would go on to deliver a dynastical monarchy which was ruled by men who had much in common with the very arabs that the Prophet had removed ideologically and politically from power.

even if we assume that this said time was Perfect with a capital P, is there any sense in reverting back to it?
to do so would require literally stripping away whatever exists of contemporary life, which includes 14 centuries of buildings, boundaries, structures and technology. even if that were possible, one would also need to destroy 1400 years of cultural development, of linguistic development and intricacies, of intellectual thought. but even if one somehow manages to do those things, it still would not be enough. for you would also need to eradicate a millennium and a half of memory, of identities, of history.yet advocates of such a monumental task of rampant destruction are adamant that this is exactly what would provide Muslims with deliverance. now, as i just explained, a return to such times would need a collective imposition of amnesia. are these advocates even aware of the consequences of what they are asking for?

clearly they are not. why? because their whole manner is insincere.

the mullah denounces the decadent west, and promises a return to simplistic times, through an FM transmission. i know that Hazrat Bilal had a lovely voice, but he was a slave, not a short wave transmitting device. no precedence exists for this digital sermon in our Glorious Past, Mr. Fazlullah.Or how about the band of illiterate bus conductors who proclaim themselves to be the taliban? last time i checked, a talib was a student. expropriating their name might be an example of brand mimicry, or even franchising, but this sly usage is certainly not befitting of a glorious movement striving for the establishment of God's will on earth.

but the extremism on one end does not justify the extremism on another end.

on friday, i was doing a report on ways people could aid the IDP situation. i visited one event which was very well publicized on the net, which had its own facebook page, and radio ads and all the works. it was completely sparse as well, populated only by a variety of MILF-ish aunties in oversized Chanel sunglasses gossiping away while being surrounded by a handful of sacks of food.perhaps ironically, or befittingly, the name of this organization was "Voice of the Civil Society."

their ideologies and ideas were soon exposed as just as insincere, as half-baked and self-serving as the people i mentioned above. for starters, they were passing out these green ribbons which were supposed to show our support for our troops.i recoiled in horror when asked to wear one, as i felt that as the army had created, fostered and nurtured the taliban, the least they could do was fight them when they were threatening to take down pakistan.

in response, the flamboyant designer who was offering the ribbon replied that the only good taliban was a dead taliban, and someone has to kill them, so it might as well be the army. he then served me some drivel about how people like him and me were the only bastions of progressive values in our country.
fuck him.

let us imagine that the Prophet was around right now. perhaps he wouldn't be bothered with using Zong, or twittering. but there are some things he would probably denounce.

he would feel that the air-conditioner i have on right now is sinful in the context of the fact that most pakistanis are suffering from electricity shortages, and don't have any ACs to relieve them when the light does come back. he would not like the fact that my family of six has access to three cars. he would recoil at the amount of water i use in my shower when the country suffers from a lack of adequate water supply. he would question my need to eat the super sized meal at Mickey Dees when most of the people in my society consumer the same number of calories over a week's period. he would probably ask me not to keep my appliances on standby, because the energy they use are causing pollution and shortages.the mullahs in our society use mobile phones to plan and then detonate improvised explosive devices, yet denounce modernity and it's manifestations such as democracy. the mimis and tinkoos in our society testify the kalima of progressiveness, yet routinely support fascist and authoritative actions and ideals.

if the Prophet were alive today, he would not be on the right or the left, he would not be secular or theocratic. he would take a stand against bigots, against regressive thoughts and ideas, against the blind following of ideals just for their sake, he would be against anyone who uses the ends to justify his deplorable means.

i would venture to say that such issues would occupy him far more than the need to flog unproperly attired teenage girls, the compulsion to criticize land reforms and democracy as un-Islamic, the desire to hold charity drives while sipping perrier, the excitable calls for the creators of the demons to protect us from the demons themselves.

the Prophet may have been many things, but he was not an idiot. stop making him out to be one, and stop acting like ones yourself.