Pakistan Link - February 5, 2016

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Friday, February 5, 2016

VOL. 26/6 - 25 Rabi ‘u-thani 1437 H

Sharif to Attend N. Summit in Washington in March Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will represent Pakistan at a nuclear summit in March this year when the outgoing Obama administration would try to reach some understanding with recognized and unrecognized nuclear states to control proliferation, official sources told Dawn.

Earlier last week, Pakistan attended a preparatory meeting for the summit in San Francisco. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry and Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani represented Pakistan at the meeting.

US President Barack Obama will host the fourth and the final Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) on April 1 in Washington.

Leaders from 50 countries and international organizations will participate. Chinese President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also be among the leaders who are expected to attend the meeting.

The NSS process has been President Obama’s flagship initiative since his first term when he underlined security of nuclear materials as a priority of his administration. Since then SUMMIT, P28

Iftikhar Chaudhry Had Cut a Deal with Musharraf

London Police Removes Altaf’s Bail Condition

Maleeha’s Role in Conveying Kayani’s Message Washington:

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“You Fit in Here,” Obama Tells US Muslims

President Obama greets - families after speaking at the Islamic Society of Baltimore mosque. Credit Drew Angerer for The New York Times

Washington: President Obama Wednesday delivered the comforting sermon to US Muslims that their community leaders have been requesting for years, framing Islam as deeply American and its critics as violating the nation’s cherished value

of religious freedom. Obama’s comments came in his first visit as president to a US mosque.

The historic 45-minute speech at a large, suburban Baltimore mosque was attended by some of the country’s most prominent Muslims.

PM Inaugurates Gwadar-Hoshab Portion of CPEC

COAS Raheel Sharif is seen driving PM Nawaz Sharif on the newly constructed patch of CPEC

Quetta: Prime Minister

Nawaz Sharif inaugurated on Wednesday the Rs13 billion Gwadar-TurbatHoshab Road, an impor-

US & Canada $1.00

tant component of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Army chief General Raheel Sharif drove the

prime minister on the newly-constructed 193km long highway, which will connect the western, central and eastern routes

of CPEC with the Gwadar Port.

Speaking on the occasion the Prime Minister said his government accorded top priority to development in Balochistan and regarded the road construction as a dream come true. He termed Pakistan’s prosperity as the prosperity of Balochistan.

Nawaz said Central Asian republics were keen to use the elaborate network of roads in Pakistan to reach to the open seas, adding that the road linkage would benefit as many as three billion people of the region.

He lauded the FWO team for completing the road despite numerous

INAUGURATION, P28

In what appeared to be a counter to the rise in Islamophobia, Obama celebrated the long history of Muslim achievement in American life from sports to architecture and described Muslims as Cub Scouts, soldiers and OBAMA, P28

For news, updated round the clock, visit

www.PakistanLink.com Opposition Requisitions NA, Senate Sessions over PIA Fiasco Islamabad: As the week-long protest by PIA employees turned violent, opposition parties joined hands on Tuesday to requisition separate sessions of the National Assembly and Senate to discuss the matter and register their protest against the government’s privatization policy.

The requisition notice has been signed by 121 opposition members of the National Assembly, whereas 34 senators have put their signatures on a similar notice submitted to the Senate Secretariat.

The requisition submitted to the NA Secretariat contains signatures of the members of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Jamaati-Islami (JI), Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) and Awami National Party (ANP), besides six independent MNAs from Fata.

In the Senate, members from all opposition parties, except the ANP and BNP-Mengal, have put their signatures on the notice.

After the submission of the notices, NA Speaker Sardar Ayaz OPPOSITION, P28

PIA Flight Operations Suspended Indefinitely

PIA employees protest against the airline’s privatization at its offices in Peshawar - Reuters

Karachi: All domestic and interna-

tional flights of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) remained cancelled on Wednesday, airport officials said, as the strike resulting from employ-

Periodical postage paid at Newport Beach, CA and additional mailing offices

ees’ protest against the national carrier’s proposed privatization entered its third day on Thursday.

PIA employees continued their

PIA, P28

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P3

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OPINION

P4 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016

Pakistan Link n By Mowahid Hussain Shah President

Arif Zaffar Mansuri

ArifMansuri@PLpublications.org Editor

Akhtar Mahmud Faruqui afaruqui@pakistanlink.com

Editor Urdu Link & Bureau Chief (Pakistan)

Shabbir Ghori

urdulink@yahoo.com Resident Editor Urdu Link & Director Video Operations

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akhawaja@pakistanlink.com Director Advertising & Sales

Dr Hawa Vahed

sales@pakistanlink.com

Regional Offices YKKB ykkb03@gmail.com Sacramento, CA

Shahid Hussain 530-933-8181

San Fransisco/Bay Area, CA

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Jlodhi@pakistanlink.com Houston, TX Houston@Plpublications.org Phoenix, AZ Phoenix@Plpublications.org Ontario, Canada Ontario@Plpublications.org

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25 Years after the Gulf War

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n September 11, 1990 – 11 years to the day before the devastating 9/11 attacks on America in 2001 – President George H. W. Bush addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Iraq had invaded Kuwait the previous month. The elder Bush demanded Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, applauded the creation of an international coalition to counter Iraq, and declared the objective of a “new world order…freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure.”

Instead of a New World Order, it is New World Disorder.

The bombing and invasion of Iraq, which commenced on January 17, 1991, abetted by the Arab Establishment, was a lopsided massacre. At least 20,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, while losses of US and coalition forces were less than 350. It opened a Pandora’s Box of unforeseen consequences. Desert Storm became a Desert Trap.

Iraq has been the cradle of world civilization and, with its iconic cities of Baghdad and Karbala, also the hinterland of the Muslim world. Already the Mideast had not absorbed Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It was unrealistic to expect its soil to absorb yet another occupation.

The carnage is far from over.

A United Nations report, released on January 19, disclosed that nearly 20,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the past two

Peninsula and, 26 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Russia has reasserted its military presence and influence in the Middle East.

The threat today is more deadly, more asymmetrical. The mayhem against soft targets has now spread to far-flung places, such as Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in subSaharan Africa years.

More than 37 years after the September 17, 1978 Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords, there is a growing insurgency in the Sinai

25 years ago, on January 23, 1991, General Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proudly proclaimed that the military strategy against Iraq

was “very, very simple. First, we head it off and then we kill it.”

Did it?

The threat today is more deadly, more asymmetrical. The mayhem against soft targets has now spread to far-flung places, such as Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in sub-Saharan Africa.

Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates conceded as much before CBS News, on January 18, that the US had more leverage tackling a government than a non-state actor.

Today, there are structural, institutional, and historical impediments to having a fair discourse about Middle East issues in the United States. Socrates had said; “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”

The rise of scapegoat demagoguery and dishing out a diet of vastly exaggerated lies and intolerance operates to slow the flow of US power, exposing its limits.

Yet, in situations grim, there are glimmers of good and hope.

Landmark deals with Cuba and Iran testify to the value of persistent diplomacy and negotiations, instead of succumbing to the siren call of military threats. Narrowly-focused groups in the US, fueled by what Jane Mayer of the New Yorker calls “Dark Money”, have a vested stake in instigating and perpetuating confrontations.

They need now to be shown the results and confronted with the threshold question: has the US use of force in the Muslim world made America stronger and safer?

Pakistan’s Climate Change Efforts to produce 3600 MW of electricity.

LNG burns cleaner and produces lower carbon emissions than oil or coal.

LNG imports will also support CNG for running vehicles. In addition, the government needs to plan to make gas cylinders available for cooking in rural areas to help reduce wood burning which contributes to deforestation and carbon emission and particulate pollution.

n By Riaz Haq

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CA

akistan has made only a small contribution to climate change through carbon emissions.

And yet, it counts among the dozen or so nations considered most vulnerable to its damaging effects. These include rising temperatures, recurring cycles of floods and droughts and resulting disruption in food production. What can Pakistan do to minimize these impacts?

Pakistan is working with both sources and sinks of carbon. Among the sources, the nation is focusing on increasing production of clean, renewable energy that does not produce carbon emissions. At the same time, there is a reforestation effort underway in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province to plant a billion trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Reforestation A reforestation project in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province is part of the Green Growth Initiative launched in February 2014 in Peshawar by Pakistan Tehrik e Insaf (PTI) leader Imran Khan whose party governs the province.

The initiative aims to boost local economic development in a way that uses natural resources sustainably, with a focus on increasing clean energy uptake and forest cover, according to a report in Christian Science Monitor.

The KP government has turned

forest restoration into a business model by outsourcing nurseries to the private sector, including widows, poor women, and young people, according to the paper. It reports that the government buys saplings to plant while providing green jobs for the community.

“At the same time, illegal logging has been almost eliminated in the province following strict disciplinary action against some officials who were involved. Other measures include hiring local people to guard forests and banning wood transportation”, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Renewable Energy Pakistan has installed about 300 megawatts of wind-energy capacity through six projects in the Sindh province, according to a Bloomberg report. That may go up to 800 MW by year-end as eight projects in the

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same region are commissioned, says Alternative Energy Board chief Syed Aqeel Husain Jafri. The Quaid-i-Azam solar park in Punjab province will add another 300 megawatts to the existing 100 megawatts by March or April, he said. Chinese firm Zonergy Co Ltd. will set up 900 megawatts in this 1-gigawatt solar park.

In addition, there are multiple hydroelectric projects and nuclear energy power plants under-construction to add tens of thousands megawatts of clean energy to the national grid over the next several years. The biggest of these projects are Neelum-Jhelum, Diamer-Bhasha, Dasu, K2 and K3.

Liquified Natural Gas Some of the oil-fired power plants are planned to be switched to imported liquefied natural gas (LNG)

Summary Pakistan faces a significant threat from global warming in terms of rising temperatures, recurring cycles of floods and droughts and potential disruption in crop production. The nation is just beginning to take appropriate actions such as renewable energy and reforestation projects to deal with this threat. Greater thought and more focus are needed to execute the plans to reduce carbon emissions as a priority.

Views and opinions express e d by authors and contributors in articles, letters, opinion pieces, reports, advertisements, etc appearing in Pakistan Link and Urdu Link are their own. The paper neither shares nor endorses them and thus should not be held responsible for the views/opinions of the writers & advertisers.

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P5

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OPINION

P6 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016 n By Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai Secretary General World Kashmir Awareness Washington, DC

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.N. Vohra, Governor of Jammu and Kashmir and apparent ventriloquist dummy for some folks a little further south, according to Kashmir Today, “observed that it is the duty of all citizens to protect and preserve the unity and integrity of the nation, adding that towards the attainment of such an objective all of us must join hands to negate all divisive and communal forces and promote societal harmony and brotherhood.”

India is of course celebrating its 67th Republic Day to honor its Constitution that became enforceable on January 26 in 1950. But the world’s largest “democracy” had no such democratic intentions for Kashmir. It was just two years earlier that the United Nations Security Council had been adopted, creating the Ceasefire Line, which was to end the war, stave off further conflict between India and Pakistan and pave the way for conditions in which a plebiscite could be held in which the people of Jammu and Kashmir could decide for themselves whether they wished to be an integral part of India, join Pakistan, or be free to chart their own course as an independent state.

Vohra’s comments sound like nice words, sort of like you might

While India Celebrates, Kashmir Mourns have heard in the sixties in the West’s hippie movement, with the Beatles crooning, “All You Need Is Love.” Perhaps we should all go out and pick flowers and do some of that funny stuff. But in a community where such a speech is accompanied by tightened security measures with drones flying overhead and heavily armed men and vehicles have shut off all access, it’s hardly reminiscent of a lovefest in Berkeley, nor does it reflect the spirit in which a constitution creating democratic process in the Republic of India would otherwise exhibit. One thinks more of the Bob Dylan song written during that era and made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary, “Blowing In the Wind,” with the lyrics, “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” How many roads must Kashmiris walk, it must be asked, before they are given their independence?

The subsequent unilateral actions of India in refusing to permit a plebiscite and declaring then that Jammu and Kashmir and all its people were the property of the state has since defined the conflict between India and Pakistan and led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. For what reason?

India certainly has the right to celebrate this historic day within its legal boundary. But according to all recognized UN resolutions and other policies adopted by foreign states, Kashmir remains a disputed territory. Therefore, India persists in allying itself with a position

that has no legal, moral or constitutional authority to celebrate the

The impartial and neutral agencies of the world testify that when it comes to Kashmir, India is nothing but an occupier. To quote Bertrand Russell, “The high idealism of the Indian government in international matters breaks down completely when confronted with the question of Kashmir” Republic Day in Kashmir which is not the integral part of its territory.

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Its advocacy of this is no doubt the prime cause of continued suffering in Kashmir and persistent violations at the Ceasefire Line, sustaining the potential for more all-out war between the two countries.

All available evidence shows that India has occupied the territory with its military might on October 27, 1947 and that horrendous act took place against the wishes and will of the people of Jammu & Kashmir. Hari Singh, the Maharaja, of course fled the Valley immediately following this crime, raising obvious questions as the legitimacy of his authority as a representative and spokesperson for the country he supposedly handed over to this undemocratic democracy.

For Kashmiris, this is not a day to celebrate but a day of mourning, a day of catastrophe, when their power of self-determination was taken away from them by occupiers.

India claims to be the largest

democracy. The impartial and neutral agencies of the world testify that when it comes to Kashmir, India is nothing but an occupier. To quote Bertrand Russell, “The high idealism of the Indian government in international matters breaks down completely when confronted with the question of Kashmir.”

India violates the basic right to the people of Kashmir, like freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of travel, freedom of assembly and above all freedom to choose their destiny to be a part of India or Pakistan or remain independent. But that freedom to choose has to take place in an atmosphere that is free from coercion, intimidation and the military occupation by 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces who pillage and kill at will.

Mahatma Gandhi has said that Kashmir’s real rulers were its people and not its Maharajas. “If the people of Kashmir are in favor of opting for Pakistan, no power on earth can stop them from doing so. But they should be left free to decide for themselves.” (Gandhi’s Passion by Professor Stanley Wolpert, Page 247) It will be better if India accepts the ground realities that the resolution of Kashmir will guarantee peace and stability not only in India and Pakistan but also in the whole region of South Asia and beyond. But that resolution needs to be explored by all parties concerned - Governments of India and Pakistan and the leadership of the people of Jammu & Kashmir.

- gnfai2003@yahoo.com

OPINION

FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P7 n By Dr Adil Najam

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Boston

Salam, Abdus Salam

our days from now, on January 29, much of Pakistan will forget – or refuse to remember – Dr Mohammad Abdus Salam on what would have been his 88th birthday. Let us choose not to be amongst them.

Imagine yourself in Stockholm on December 10, 1979. In different rooms of a grand hotel, nine of the world’s smartest men scramble into black tailcoats and white bowties; preparing to receive Nobel awards from the king of Sweden. In a tenth room, a stocky bearded Pakistani gets into a black sherwani, a white shalwar, a pair of gold embroidered curled khussa shoes, and then struggles to tie a pagri (turban).

It’s a skill he was once good at but has now forgotten.

Tying that pagri turns out to be as tricky as the physics he is to be honored for. A cook from the Pakistan embassy is called to assist, but is not much help. Finally, our physicist does the best he can himself. If you watch the grainy footage of the day, you will see that it was not quite right after all. But he still stands out as the most elegant man in that royal room. At least to my Pakistani eyes he does.

Later that night, as he rose to make a speech, his message was even more explicit. Breaking into Urdu, he says to his hosts: “Pakistan iss key li’ye aap ka buhat mashkur hai” (“Pakistan is deeply indebted to you for this”). He goes on, then, to recite from the Holy Qur’an and derives from that his central message to the gathering: “This in effect is, the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze.”

As one reads Gordon Fraser’s fascinating biography (Cosmic Anger: Abdus Salam-The First Muslim Nobel Scientist; 2008) one realizes that it is not just that we have appreciated this man so little, but that we know so little about him.

Muhammad Abdus Salam, born in the Sahiwal district in 1926, was a teacher’s son who grew to become a teacher. At 14 he stood ‘first’ in the Matriculation examination in the Punjab, breaking all previous records. At 16, at Lahore’s Government College, he found a love for mathematics under the brilliant Prof Sarvadaman Chowla. Responding one day to Prof Chowla’s homework challenge (on extending one of Srinivasa Ramanujan’s famous simultaneous quadratic equations problem) Salam found an elegant solution that was to become his first academic paper, published at age 18.

By age 20, he had (luckily) failed to qualify for a job in

Prof Salam receives the Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden

the Railways – for reasons of age and eyesight – but already completed his MA in mathematics. With a scholarship from the Punjab government (redirected from funds originally collected as a World War II tax) Salam was offered admission at St John’s College, Cambridge, but only if he were to start as an undergraduate student. He did.

At Cambridge he became close to noted astronomer Fred Hoyle, but it was the 1933 Nobel winner Paul Dirac who really sparked a passion for theoretical physics. By 1950, he had received Cambridge’s prestigious Smith Prize and was already

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wowing peers and being noticed by physics luminaries.

Doing all this much faster than Cambridge regulations allowed meant that Salam could not be granted a PhD just yet.

Having now been away from home for five years, and ‘home’ now being a new country, Abdus Salam declined a research position at Princeton and returned to Lahore in 1951, where he joined Government College as professor and chairman of the Mathematics Department.

Within two years, however, he was back in Cambridge, pushed out by rising anti-Ahmedi sentiments but, at this point, much more by the pettiness of his academic colleagues. According to his biographer he was seen as “a young upstart, too big for his boots, a high-flying student who had escaped the double trauma of the partition of a country and a province.”

Threatened and envious, his colleagues connived to sabotage his aspirations with political manoeuvrings and administrative shenanigans.

Having neither the time nor the interest to play petty political games, Salam returned to Cambridge and immediately plunged into a whirlwind of activity and achievement. In 1955 he completed his PhD. In 1957, he took up a Chair at Imperial College. In 1959, at age 33, he became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society. Most importantly, he became a frantic collaborator and prolific researcher in elementary particle physics. Amongst other things, he introduced the nowfamous Higgs bosons to the standard model and, of course, made ground-breaking “contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current” (from the original citation) for which he was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg.

Even as Abdus Salam became an authority on high-energy physics, his own high energy could not be contained by research alone. Like a force of nature, the multi-tasking Abdus Salam would always be on the move, moving from country to country, institution to institution, from research to policy to management, from writing papers to raising money, from mentoring young scholars to advising heads of state, from steering global discourse to designing national policy.

Despite his bad experiences with societal bigotry and intellectual pettiness, he could never keep himself away from Pakistan; even when not physically there. In 1960 he became science advisor to Ayub Khan and was amongst the founders of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco), the SALAM, P24

OPINION

P8 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016 n By Askari Raza Malik Major General (retd) DHA-II, Islamabad

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isdainfully they allude to the military as ‘The Honor Brigade’ and believe that it is an irrelevant hurdle in achieving an everlasting peace in the subcontinent and South Asia.

The ‘boots’ and the ‘boys’ (the latter a favorite of some youngsters) are linked with every problem under the sun that plagues Pakistan.

The subtlety of the campaign notwithstanding, its malevolence and agenda are too obvious to miss.

In their public façade they are the messengers of love for peace, human rights and all the conceivable higher values of life, that are the domain of the Divine and the exalted. The colorful variety of the oped and TV worthy ranges from the secular humanists, the human rights specialists and liberals, exulting in self-assumed role, proud and boastful. In their view the honor brigade, the ‘duffers’ deserve the ridicule, as they do not possess the capacity to think beyond bellicosity, jingoism and hate, the basest of human traits.

As Mirza Ghalib could not discuss even the holiest without mentioning wine and the cup, no narrative of these intellectuals is complete without a theatrical reference to the Military.

In this world the good and the bad exist together. An idyllic world has never existed nor will it ever. It is to counter the evil that nations maintain police and the armies.

The Honor Brigade The most advanced, educated and cultured, the flag bearers of liberty, truth and justice have men to fight to preserve their values. They train these men and prepare them to lay down their lives for the honor of their country.

‘Hagakure, the 18th century Japanese book ‘asserted that bushido is really the “Way of Dying” and that a Samurai must be willing to die at any moment in order to be true to his lord. His saying, “The way of the warrior is death” was a summation of the willingness to sacrifice, that bushido codified. HONOR is the key word in the training and expectations of this warrior.’

Dr James H. Toner, associated with the US Army, writes, “The preeminent military task, and what separates (the military professional) from all other occupations, is that soldiers are routinely prepared to kill….in addition to killing and preparing to kill, the soldier has two other principal duties…some soldiers die and when they are not dying, they must be preparing to die.”

‘Aggression and virility’ have always been ‘highly prized in soldiers’.

The buzzword in the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) is ‘Honor’.

They strictly follow the honor code, no lies, no half-truths, no cheating, no pulling legs and shop from unattended ‘honor shops’. Where there are the Champs there are also the best losers who lose with honor.

In the units it is the honor of the unit, the Army and above all the honor of the country, its geographic and ideological frontiers, which must be safeguarded even “at the

peril of my life”, the oath reads at the time of passing out from the academy. The ideals are the knight’s ‘chivalric code’ a ‘notion of honor and nobility,’ and Tennyson’s the ‘Charge of The Light Brigade’, “There’s not to reason why, there’s but to do and die; into the valley of death, rode the six hundred’; Iqbal’s “Mard-e-Momin”, and glorious examples from history of devotion, dedication and honor.

These are the honor themes that stamp the soul and provide the impetus for the ultimate, to do and die.

This is the mindset that is developed.

Call it mind wash. The word honor is made to become the fountain of a soldier’s life and those who care to admit, become a national asset.

During World War II, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Gorkha regiments fought tooth and nail and won laurels fighting for the honor of their units and groups identities. Honor was the only driving force when there was no religious or national

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cause to feed upon.

This is the way the Honor Brigade is build. This is the way it lives and dies and this is the only way it knows. The Shaheeds are the icons of honor. Conversely a soldier who can take insult cannot be expected to face the bullets. That is the crux.

They are not barbarians. The martyrdom of a comrade is mourned as a family loss by all and sundry alike. They are compassionate towards their men. They keep them in good humor as they can ill afford to take a disgruntled man to the battlefield. They are truly professionals.

That is why according to ABC News point, General Raheel Sharif tops the list of the best ten generals of the world today.

The elite force of the third largest army in the world looking helpless before a handful of terrorists for days was still cheered on. Our honor brigade has been continuously at war for over a decade without show-

ing any signs of fatigue. The youngest officer to die in the war against terror, a few days after his passing out, mortally wounded, slumped against a rock with his hand half raised in the sign of victory just before he breathed his last signifies its resolve. In the honor brigade honor is the first and foremost. It is highly unfair to term this asset as a fault.

It is the Armed Forces that stand to lose more from war than anyone else. The war is no war games. It is a grim, bloody and gloomy business. If soldiers appear to be stubborn on the question of peace it is only because they want peace but peace with honor.

Nawaz Sharif deserves all the praise as according to Baber Sattar, “In Ufa Sharif bent over backwards to keep working with Modi”. Nawaz Sharif is a politician and he knows his job well. Politics is the second oldest profession and according to Regan it is not much different from the first. No one blames Nawaz Sharif for what he did. No one should grudge Raheel Sharif for not being able to act that way, as Raheel cannot become Nawaz overnight.

Shehryar Khan the cricket chief has done even better than bending over backwards. He has repeatedly pleaded with and begged India for a cricket series. He could do that. Tauqir Zia would have never done it.

We train, mold and expect this poor honor brigade to live with honor and die for our honor. If we also expect it to beg for peace or publically endorse its begging, we are asking for two diametrically opposite behaviors of a person that is impossible to act unless he is a case of serious dissociative identity disorder.

OPINION n By Karamatullah K. Ghori Toronto, Canada

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P9

Guns and Teachers: A Healthy Concoction?

he deadly terrorist assault at the Bacha Khan University (BKU) campus in Charsadda, last week, exacted a toll of 21 students and faculty, gunned down by the TTP marauders.

However, the young Chemistry professor who was also a fatality in the university carnage didn’t go down without a fight. He had a gun on him that he whipped out at the terrorists to defend his students. As it were, he laid down his life with great honor and dignity. What could be a greater act of bravado than standing up to blood-thirsty terrorists and not surrender to them without a fight.

The murder of innocent students of Charsadda at the hands of the terrorists immediately rekindled the nation’s sense of grief and hurt as acutely felt in December, 2014, when vandals of TTP had murdered in cold blood almost a 150 children at the Army Public School (APS) of Peshawar.

The Peshawar carnage triggered the military offensive, Zarbe-Azb, against terrorists and their foxholes which is still going on and will not be stopped until the scourge of terrorism has been uprooted, warts and all, from Pakistan’s soil.

The military sources close to the dragnet against the monster terrorist recently came up with some impressive figures, according to which nearly 22,000 terrorists have so far been killed in the military offensive; more than 1700 of them—and their facilitators— have been caught in the net as part of the mop up.

However, the relative ease with which the murderers were able to breach BKU security—if there was any—is a disturbing pointer to it that terrorists uprooted from their sanctuaries in the no-man’s-land of the tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan have, apparently, infiltrated the urban areas and found refuge there. An even more disquieting auxiliary to it is that they seem to have turned their diabolical focus against the so-called ‘soft’ targets.

BKU, in terrorist parlance, was as soft a target as was APS. Sensing the outrage of the people across the country—and particularly in the Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (KP) province where the monster of terrorism has visited twice in 13 months to script a horrendous tragedy in blood— the political leadership of KP has moved quickly to assuage and mollify the people’s hurt. So, in fitness of things, KP government unveiled its decision to allow teachers to arm themselves—with licensed weapons, of course—in order to fend off the kind of terrorist visitations at APS and BKU. The KP government has sound logic to back up its maverick initiative of arming teachers of educational institutions: there are 68,000 schools and colleges in the province but only 55,000 policemen. In terms of cold statistics, the numbers of law enforcers and guardians of public security are inadequate, even to apportion at least one policeman per school.

come scenarios as Pakistan, where opting for least evil of choices before it becomes unavoidable. It may just be that moment for Pakistan to bite the bullet.

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat) -K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

Urging Iowa Voters to Support a United Vision for America n By Salam Al-Marayati MPAC President

D

ear Friend,

And it isn’t just simply a case of inadequacy of numbers. The police force in KP is as poorly trained and equipped as police in any other province. Sindh may be even worse, given the morbidly corrupt predators masquerading as its rulers, and Punjab, perhaps, slightly better. Our policemen, by and large, are not trained for antiterrorism tasks.

There’s, on top of it, the blight of our endemic—and sickening— VIP culture that relies heavily on legions of police guarding two-bit and worthless human beings donning the VIP garb. The police resources are being wasted, literally, on ensuring unscathed longevity of scums-of-the-earth in every corner of Pakistan. A safe guestimate consigns at least one-quarter of the total police force in each province to VIP-related duties.

The moral of this vicious story is that the state, across the board, is a dismal failure in the primary obligation of protecting the lives and properties of its citizens.

A concomitant lesson drawn from this state of affairs is that, denied the state protection they rightly deserved, citizens have little choice but come up with their own means and methods of saving their lives and ensure their survival against the terrorists stalking their land.

No open, democratic and civilized society should have any room for vigilantism. Guns in the hands of non-state actors aren’t, and shouldn’t be, tolerated. The US is an exception to the rule. It may be civilized, open and democratic and yet allows its citizens free and unobstructed access to guns. But because of it, US has tens of thousands of people murdered in its land because of gun-related violence and not in acts of terrorism.

No sensible and law-abiding Pakistani—in Pakistan or away from its shores—should be advocating for guns in the hands of non-state actors. We have suffered more than any other country in the world at the hands of non-state actors—Taliban and other militant and terrorist groups spewing violence in the name of religion— with free access to guns.

So, logically, Pakistan should be the last country in the world to allow its citizens easy access to guns and other tools of violence.

However, what KP government is mandating for its terrorism-scorched people is not a prescription to allow a US-type gun culture to enter its precincts. It’s a facility that would be only selectively extended to those engaged in the noble pursuit of educating the children and younger generation of Pakistanis in their province.

In other words, the spirit behind the KP government’s novel initiative is to make up for the

As for the caveat that anarchy would be ushered in tow behind the arming of teachers it begs a question: aren’t we already in the jaws of anarchy stalking the land from one end to another? Will it be such a terrible, so much unpalatable, scenario if armed teachers were to fight terror with terror? gaping deficiency of conventional means to fight the chimera of terrorism, which has already taxed the capacity of conventional tools of security to their limit but is threatening to not go away. That’s the sad lesson learned from the repeated episodes of terrorist attacks: that the application of only tried and tested methods of enforcing the writ of the state against its blood-thirsty violators isn’t working.

Conventional wisdom says

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that when in-box methods don’t work, or deliver, out-of-the-box ideas deserve to be kicked into the equation to do the trick. That seems to be the long and short of this maverick move to arm teachers willing to fend for themselves and for their wards, their pupils who are morally their responsibility to defend as long as they are in the class room.

The facility will have parameters guarding against abuse or misuse, as far as the spirit working behind the scheme is concerned.

There will be no compulsion on all teachers to arm themselves. But, there will be no bar against those who would want to equip themselves to take on the terrorists at their own game.

Yes, the idea will not work to perfection and could be prone to abuse. The fear of its misuse or abuse is at the core of voices already rising in denunciation of the idea. It will usher in vigilantism, the nay-sayers are objecting, and may lead to anarchy.

The answer to the first objection is that a restricted and regulated form of vigilantism will not be such an outrageous thing, given the dismal ground realities anchoring the state’s less-thanwholesome score card in the fight against terrorism. There’s reason to believe that when the word goes out that teachers are no longer sitting ducks—and their class rooms not soft targets—the predatory terrorists will think twice before attacking them.

As for the caveat that anarchy would be ushered in tow behind the arming of teachers it begs a question: aren’t we already in the jaws of anarchy stalking the land from one end to another? Will it be such a terrible, so much unpalatable, scenario if armed teachers were to fight terror with terror?

Arm-chair punditry would insist –with cold logic at its disposal—that no citizen out-of-a-uniform should have access to guns.

But equally cold and convincing ground reality would argue in favor of letting in a limited and regulated culture of vigilantism—for want of a more suitable and appropriate title for it—to enter the fray and cut the Gordian Knot.

There comes a time in the life of every nation, especially one as prone to accidental and unwel-

In less than a week, the residents of Iowa will be marking the first electoral test for presidential candidates vying to become the nominees for the two established political parties.

Historically, the Iowa caucuses kick off the presidential campaign season after months of debates and political posturing by contenders (and some pretenders).

It is for this reason that we – in coordination with interfaith leaders – thought it was neces-

sary to share our concerns about the current climate of divisiveness and hate, and to urge Iowa voters to send a strong message to the rest of the country that America is great and strong when it stands for freedom, pluralism and unity.

In our open letter, which is set to be distributed this Friday via The Des Moines Register, it reads, in part: “We understand that our country faces great challenges today, but we also know we are at our best when we are united and at our worst when we turn on one another. Candidates who promote divisiveness among our population would have us forget that our great American experiment, as put forth by our Founding Fathers, is based on us being an inclusive nation working together and building upon the ideas and values established in our Constitution: freedom, pluralism and democracy.”

Read the entire letter here.

Founded in 1988, the Muslim Public Affairs Council improves public understanding and policies that impact American Muslims by engaging our government, media and communities.

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P11

PPP, PML-N Confrontation after Arrest of Uzair Baloch

A PML-N office-bearer said that following Uzair Baloch’s arrest, more PPP leaders may be booked in the days to come, which would definitely hurt the much-touted political reconciliation between the two parties

Islamabad: Prime Minister

Nawaz Sharif is said to have expressed concern over the Sindh Rangers’ handling of cases of corruption allegedly committed by politicians.

In recent meetings, including Friday’s top-level meeting with the party’s senior leaders, the issue of the ongoing Rangers operation in Karachi and PPP’s concerns regarding the paramilitary force came under discussion, sources told Dawn.

The government, a ruling party insider said, wasn’t opposed to action against politicians in cases where there was concrete evidence to prove their connivance with terrorist or militant organizations.

However, he said, “The PM is against the arrest of politicians on mere corruption charges because the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are fully empowered to deal with such crimes.”

When asked, he said the government was in touch with the PPP leadership and had conveyed to them that the paramilitary force would move only against those politicians who are found to be directly or indirectly linked to terrorists.

Following in the footprints of PPP leader Asif

Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had pledged to uphold the same mantra of political reconciliation for the greater good of democracy in the country as was espoused by the PPP during its term in power.

However, the pace at which events have been unfolding in recent months has made it difficult for the ruling party chief to keep this broad political consensus intact, sources close to the PM’s Office said.

The Sharif brothers, both Nawaz and Shahbaz, have expressed their concern over the increasing confrontation with the PPP-led Sindh government in closed-door meetings and have been heard asking their lieutenants to keep things at a manageable level.

But with Mr Zardari in virtual self-exile since June of last year, Dr Asim Hussain in prison, and now the arrest of Uzair Baloch, a Lyari gangster having ties with the PPP, a party office-bearer said, “There are bound to be more sleepless nights for the PML-N leadership”.

It was no secret that the federal government wasn’t happy with the treatment being meted out to Dr Asim Hussain. After meeting the PM alongside Sindh CM Qaim Ali Shah, Sindh Finance Minister Murad

Ali Shah has repeatedly said on record that the federal government also had reservations over Dr Hussain’s arrest. Nobody from the government has so far contradicted Mr Shah’s claim.

Information Minister Senator Pervaiz Rashid, who is the PM’s official spokesperson, wasn’t available for comment.

Apart from the occasional hiccups – such as governor’s rule in Punjab and the Memogate affair – the PML-N had maintained a good working relationship with the PPP during the latter’s stint in power from 2008 to 2013. Political observers have even said there apparently seems to be an unwritten agreement between the two that they will not pull the rug out from under the other’s feet.

In response to a question, the PML-N officebearer said that following Uzair Baloch’s arrest, more PPP leaders may be booked in the days to come, which would definitely hurt the much-touted political reconciliation between both parties.

Unsurprisingly, many PPP leaders have already started comparing recent actions with the much-maligned politics of the 1990s when both parties repeatedly worked to unseat the other from power. Things

are now at a stage where senior PPP leader Senator Aitzaz Ahsan, on Friday, called for the formation of a ‘national government’.

When asked if Mr Baloch’s arrest was made public to derail the war of words that has been raging between Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah, a ruling party legislator said, “A considerable majority within the party believes that Chaudhry Nisar – whose ministry controls the deployment of Rangers in Sindh – is behind the decision.”

He recalled that when the PTI dharna was at its peak the PM had to virtually apologize to the PPP after Chaudhry Nisar clashed with Senator Ahsan during a joint sitting of the parliament.

However, the lawmaker said that some within the ruling party thought that the decision to make Mr Baloch’s arrest public should be viewed in the context of the army chief ’s decision not to seek an extension and the meetings he held in Karachi over the last week.

After one of these meetings, ISPR had said the Karachi operation would be taken to the next level.

“Whatever the reason behind Mr Baloch’s formal arrest, it will only add to the problems of the Sharif brothers. Imran Khan is already after them, now the PPP will also come out into the open with their criticism of the government, both inside parliament and outside,” said a former PMLN senator. “With just two years to go this is the last thing the PM would have wanted.”

A retired federal secretary who has been involved in policing Karachi, said, “There is no doubt that Uzair Baloch was a hardened criminal, a gangster and a murderer. But if he is to be used to push PPP against the wall, it will be very unfortunate.”

Maleeha Acted as Messenger in Conveying Kayani’s Message to Obama Administration Washington, DC: Pakistan’s current envoy to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi apparently acted as an informal messenger between the Obama administration and former army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, according to an email former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received from a senior aide.

On Friday, the US State Department released some 1,000 pages of emails of Ms Clinton when she headed the department but sometimes used a private email and a private server to communicate.

In one of the emails, Vali Nasr, then a senior adviser in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, informs Secretary Clinton that Ms Lodhi had shared with him a message from Gen Kayani.

“I got a call from Maleeha Lodhi, who is in London. She gave a message from Kayani,” Mr Nasr wrote on January 21, 2011.

But the entire message that Ms Lodhi supposedly shared with Mr Nasr has been edited out.

Ms Lodhi, who has also served as Pakistan’s ambassador in the US and

Britain, was not a government official when she supposedly conveyed this message. She was a prominent columnist for Pakistani and international newspapers. Mr Nasr, a prominent academic, has lived in Pakistan and has many friends in the country.

The text shows that Mr Nasr’s message ran into two paragraphs and was sent three days after Raymond Davis was arrested on charges of killing two men in Lahore. The incident had resulted in a crisis in the US-Pak relationship.

MALEEHA, P28

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Uzair Baloch Group Gave a Tough Time to Karachi Police

If there is one word to describe Uzair’s political life, it would be ‘short’. He contested the elections for town nazim in 2001 but lost them to Habib Jan. This was the first time that his name appeared on Lyari’s political map

Karachi: They say the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And it isn’t a pretty sight when that happens. Pictures of a disheveled-looking man being escorted by Rangers personnel took the social media by storm on Saturday.

The man is none other than Lyari’s self-styled don Sardar Uzair Jan Baloch – the gangster-turnedwannabe politician who had challenged the power corridors and set up his own fiefdom in the restive neighborhood.

At the height of his power, Uzair’s security protocol comprised at least 100 guards armed with Kalashnikovs, AK-47s and even rocket launchers. He would travel around his kingdom in a Land Cruiser, surrounded by his trusted guards. His signature look comprised a starched white shalwar kameez, a Sindhi cap and a keffiyeh draped over his shoulders, exuding an aura of invincibility to those around him.

But the humble-looking man who stepped out in handcuffs, flanked by paramilitary men on both sides, hardly exudes the same persona. He had done away with the keffiyeh and sat with a grim face in the law enforcers’ vehicle. His confident smile has been replaced by a look of dread etched across his face.

Making of a gangster If there is one word to describe Uzair’s political life, it would be ‘short’. He contested the elections for town nazim in 2001 but lost them to Habib Jan. This was the first time that his name appeared on Lyari’s political map.

The next time Uzair was forced into the limelight was when his father, Faiz Muhammad alias Mama Faizu, was killed in 2003. Arshad Pappu, the son of a Lyari gang leader Haji Lalu, known as the commander of drug operations in the neighborhood since the 1990s, was accused of killing Mama Faizu, even though it was not planned. Arshad had recently joined his father’s gang and had only kidnapped Uzair’s father for ransom. After an altercation, Arshad shot Mama Faizu in his leg and left him on the road to bleed to death.

His father’s murder was a turning point for Uzair, who vowed to avenge his death. Soon after, he joined a group of Lyari gangsters, led by his cousin Rehman Dakait.

Mama Faizu’s death had unsettled the affairs of the gang led by Arshad’s father. Haji Lalu tried to reach a settlement with Uzair but the latter had already sworn allegiance to the former’s rival, Rehman Dakait. The gang rivalry continued but Uzair was unable to avenge his father’s death.

In October 2006, Arshad was arrested by the police and was imprisoned in jail for several years.

Three years later, in August 2009, Rehman Dakait was killed by the slain police officer, SP Chaudhary Aslam Khan and Uzair became his successor.

It was after Rehman Dakait’s death that Uzair came to rule the restive neighborhood of Lyari. He also came to head the Peoples Amn Committee (PAC), sort of an NGO formed by Rehman to carry out social work in Lyari but later declared a banned outfit due to its involvement in extortion and kidnappings in the city. The PAC emerged as a subsidiary of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and was supported by the now estranged PPP leader, Zulfiqar Mirza.

It was during this reign of terror that Uzair came to avenge his father’s death. In March 2013, he allegedly kidnapped and killed Arshad, a year after the latter was released from jail in February 2012. Arshad was reportedly brought to Lyari and was tortured before his body was cut into several pieces and strewn across manholes in the neighborhood.

The Uzair Baloch group also gave a tough time to the police when the slain Chaudhry Aslam conducted a 10-day-long Lyari operation in 2012. The police were unable to enter the narrow streets of Lyari to apprehend Uzair and his chief operations commander, Baba Ladla.

Differences within Uzair’s gang began to emerge after the 2013 general elections when Uzair allegedly asked Baba Ladla to fight with Lyari’s Kutchi community – something that Baba Ladla was opposed to. Even after Uzair was declared a proclaimed offender in Arshad Pappu’s murder and fled the country, the rivalry with Baba Ladla continued. Since Uzair’s departure from Lyari, Baba Ladla has managed to establish his control over nearly 70% of the neighborhood by joining hands with Arshad’s successor, Ghaffar Zikri. – By Faraz Khan, The Express Tribune

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P13

PIA Standoff: Government Ups the Ante by Banning Union Activity

Islamabad: In a move to stall an im-

pending strike, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday enforced the Essential Services (Maintenance) Act 1952 for six months, barring protesting members of the Pakistan International Airlines from participating in any union activity.

“Any person found guilty of an offence under this Act shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year and shall also be liable to a fine,” the legislation reads.

The law essentially restricts union activity in state-administered sectors, including railways, postal services, telephone and affiliated services, airports and seaports.

The aviation division had sent a summary to the prime minister which was approved Mondady.

Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid, talking to reporters after the enforcement of the Act, made clear that strict action will be taken against protesting employees.

“Let me make clear that those who continue the strike will be treated as enemies of PIA and Pakistan and they will end up losing their jobs.”

Responding to a question, Rashid said flight operations will not be halted from tomorrow, adding that the government had made alternate arrangements for pilots and engineering staff to ensure that operations continue smoothly.

Rashid said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had made clear that no PIA employee will be laid off during privatization, reiterating that the government would not tolerate strikes.

Employees of the national carrier had threatened to go on strike from Tuesday, February 2, because of what they called the government’s refusal to accept their main demand of calling off the organization’s privatization plan.

PML-N Senator Mushahid¬ullah Khan announced on Friday that the government had postponed the privatization of the national flag carrier for six months and requested the protesting workers to end their strike.

Mr Mushahidullah asked the joint action committee of PIA employees to withdraw its strike decision and resume flight operations, failing which the government would use its authority and impose the Essential Services Act. The act was also invoked by the government in January 2013 during the doctors’ strike for better wages and regularization, resulting in the sacking of young doctors for participating in a

strike.

Soon after the PM’s decision to enforce the Essential Services Act was announced, Chief of Joint Action Committee of PIA’s protesting employees Capt Sohail Baloch told journalists that the body will go ahead with the strike they had announced earlier.

“We are going to go ahead with our plan. I don’t know what the restrictions are... but if there are any restrictions we are ready to face them, even if we are baton-charged,” he said.

“The government has till 7am tomorrow for negotiations, after that we will go on strike,” he said.

Representatives of PIA employees announced on Sunday they would continue their strike and reiterated their threat to bring all flight operations to a halt from Tuesday (Feb 2).

Announcing the decision at the PIA head office, the chief of Joint Action Committee of PIA Employees (JACPIAE), Baloch said the government had not accepted the workers’ demand of scrapping the privatization plan.

He said that if the government did not call off the plan by Monday all flight operations would be halted from the following day.

He claimed that the employees were united on the issue and were ready to render sacrifices to protect the national flag carrier.

He said that Federal Aviation Secretary Irfan Illahi had called the JACPIAE leaders on Sunday and informed them that the privatization plan had been shelved for six months and, therefore, protesting employees should end their protest.

But he also told the employees’ representatives that he could not guarantee that the airline would not be

privatized after six months.

Mr Baloch said that because of the government’s response, the employees had decided to continue their protest till the acceptance of their demands.

Meanwhile, the PIA management has asked the employees to call off their protest and resume duty and said that because of workers’ strike for six days the organization had incurred a loss of Rs600 million.

Once a source of pride for the country, PIA’s decay has made it the butt of jokes, one of which goes that its initials actually stand for ‘Perhaps I’ll Arrive’.

Flights are regularly cancelled and engineers say they have to cannibalize some planes to keep others flying.

In recent years, a PIA pilot was jailed in the United Kingdom for being three times over the alcohol limit before he was due to fly. Local media reported that another pilot delayed a New York-bound flight for more than two hours as he waited for a sandwich delivery.

Over the years, critics say, governments have manipulated state corporations like PIA for political and financial gain, giving jobs to so many supporters that the size of the workforce has become unsustainable in the face of mounting losses.

In an interview with Reuters in 2014, Pakistan’s privatization minister Mohammad Zubair had said that PIA’s employee-to-aircraft ratio, at around 600, is one of the worst in the world and keeps going up as more planes are grounded.

He said the government plans to split the ailing national flag carrier into two companies and sell control of the core business to a global airline over the next 18 months, but political opposition to the sell-off will be intense.

Policy, it had become extremely important to have a higher body, one above the existing ministries, to provide toplevel backing of the political leadership to ensure an overall adoption of ICTs, particularly in the government itself There are several countries where similar high-level bodies are driving the ICT adoption. In Japan, the Cabinet Secretariat oversees the ICT for development issues; in South Korea a Presidential Council on e-Government oversees ICT policy matters and directly under the council, a Presidential Committee oversees its implementation.

Even in the US, if vice president Al-Gore had not spearheaded legislation that helped develop the Internet, ICT may not have spread as fast as it did. Then the Internet was still in the

early stages of its development, the vice president provided intellectual leadership that helped create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.

Closer to home, Prime Minister Modi has taken upon himself the major on-going ICT initiatives of the country to ensure that government services are made available to citizens electronically by improving online infrastructure and increasing internet connectivity.

In short, wherever ICTs have made an impact, leadership from the top has played a pivotal role. It has been the same all over the world, because everywhere, all the ministries/authorities consider themselves equal in status, and the older ones find it difficult to be directed by a junior like ICT.

Union to go ahead with strike

Roadmap to Realize Pakistan’s Digital Potential

Islamabad: On 19th January 2016,

a fresh study titled “Realizing Digital Pakistan”, by the second largest Mobile Network Operator Telenor, was launched by Minister of State for Information Technology (IT) Anusha Rahman.

The study, under the title ‘Roadmap’, quotes (from Pakistan 2025 – One Nation, One Vision) the prime minister to create ‘Digital Pakistan Commission’ with key cabinet members along with the private sector, academia and NGO representatives to formulate a plan to accelerate digitalization across all economic sectors in view of matching Malaysia’s key ICT performance indicators by 2020 and implementing all goals of Pakistan 2025.

After launching the new Telecom

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London Police Removes Altaf Hussain’s Bail Condition over Lack of Evidence Karachi: The London Metropolitan Police on Monday informed Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain that his bail conditions, in an ongoing money laundering probe, had been removed as there was insufficient evidence to bring a criminal charge against him.

Altaf Hussain’s police bail was extended for a fifth time on Oct 5, 2015, since his June 3, 2014, arrest in London and, according to an MQM statement issued on Monday, he was due to “return to a South London police station on Tuesday as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of money laundering”.

But a few hours after the release of the above mentioned statement, the party issued another statement claiming that the Met Police sent a “bail cancellation notice” to Altaf Hussain and the two senior London-based MQM leaders — Muhammad Anwar and Tariq Mir. They party leaders were informed that “there is no need for any of you to attend the police station” and that “the bail conditions currently in place are therefore removed”, the MQM statement said.

The Met police notice, according to the MQM statement, stated that “at the time of writing there is insufficient evidence to bring a criminal charge”.

An MQM source privy to the legality of the matter, told Dawn that the British investigators would continue to probe into the money-laundering allegations and the money seized during the raids on two MQM properties would not be returned immediately.

The source explained that the cancellation of police bail meant that there would be no restriction on Altaf Hussain’s international travel and he would not be bound to appear before investigators until they got any fresh evidence.

MQM leader Wasay Jalil, who is currently in London, confirmed to Dawn that Altaf Hussain’s passport would be returned to him.

About the seized amount, he said: “Our lawyers will update us in a day or two regarding the seized cash.”

Celebrations at Nine Zero In Karachi, the news sparked widespread celebrations at the MQM’s Nine Zero headquarters, where scores of workers and supporters gathered and danced to the tunes of party songs.

“We were prepared for the worst,” said a senior MQM leader, referring to a possibility that the investigators could have charged Hussain in his Tuesday’s appearance. “But it was a collective decision that we would not seek an extension in bail and contest all charges, if filed, legally.”

Social media was also abuzz with the news and hashtag #AltafWinsAgain became top Twitter trend in the country by the evening.

Earlier, a Dawn Newspaper report had quoted an MQM official as saying that the party was fully prepared for any eventuality and ready to contest all charges, if filed, in UK courts.

“We want them [British au-

thorities] to conclude their investigation as soon as possible.”

CII Chairman Willing to Review Blasphemy Laws

Islamabad: The head of a powerful

religious body said on Thursday he is willing to review Pakistan’s blasphemy laws that critics say are regularly misused and have led to the deaths of hundreds, to decide if they are Islamic.

Muhammad Khan Sherani, chairman of a body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam, told Reuters he was willing to reopen the debate and see whether sentences as harsh as the death penalty were fair.

“The government of Pakistan should officially, at the government level, refer the law on committing blasphemy to the Council of Islamic Ideology. There is a lot of difference of opinion among the clergy on this issue,” Sherani said in an interview at his office close to Pakistan’s parliament.

“Then the council can seriously consider things and give its recommendation of whether it needs to stay the same or if it needs to be hardened or if it needs to be softened,” Sherani, dressed in a traditional black robe, said.

Intizar Hussain Passes away Lahore: Vet-

eran short story writer, novelist, columnist and poet Intizar Hussain passed away on Tuesday at a hospital in Lahore. The 92-yearold was undergoing treatment at a private hospital.

Hussain was among the 10 finalists for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2013. He was the first Pakistani and the first Urdu writer ever to be nominated for the international award.

His ability to tell a story in a flowing style with a dreamy touch of realism makes Intizar Hussain stand apart from his peers. He is known and loved for intermingling Urdu fiction with mythology, religious traditions and folktales to create powerful images of contemporary social, political and cultural milieu.

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PAKISTAN

FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P15

Pakistan School Closings Stir Confusion, and Fears of More Attacks

n By Saba Imtiazjan

Islamabad: Chaudhry Shujaat Hus-

Karachi: Fears about potential fol-

low-up attacks on Pakistani schools

by Taliban militants created widespread confusion and school closings last week, even as officials urged calm.

The closing of the Pakistani military’s network of colleges and schools around Karachi, a little over a week after the Taliban attack that killed 21 people at Bacha Khan University in the northwestern town of Charsadda, prompted worry among many parents. Though the military’s decision and reasoning were not officially announced, news reports and social media posts about the closings led to widespread speculation that more attacks could be coming.

Those fears were heightened after officials said that public schools in Punjab rovince, Pakistan’s most heavily populated region, were being kept closed because of suddenly dropping temperatures. Though officials assured parents that the schools would reopen soon and that the move had nothing to do with security, many were not in the mood to take chances.

“If there is one more incident, there is going to be a collapse,” said Aliya Agha, 47, a lawyer and activist in Islamabad. “Our greatest asset is at highest risk at the moment.”

Ms Agha said she and other parents in the capital were contemplating pulling their children out of school and home-schooling them instead.

By Thursday afternoon, other parents were publicly pondering the same move, and social media groups were full of rumors and conjecture about the risks to educational institutions, gleaned from friends and relatives who claimed to have heard that more terrorist attacks might be coming.

The faction of the Pakistani Taliban that attacked Bacha Khan University last week has threatened as much: It warned in a video message that it would keep targeting schools.

And officials at the university said it would stay closed until its security could be improved.

But Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said that the government did not feel the security risk warranted the widespread closings of schools. “We cannot close our businesses and schools. This is

A member of Pakistan’s Elite Police Force takes part in a security drill at a school in Peshawar on Thursday. CreditA Majeed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

what the militants want,” Mr Khan told reporters in Islamabad on Thursday, adding that people must not give in to an “environment of fear.”

The Taliban’s targeting of education has long been a concern in Pakistan. But it came to the forefront after an attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014, when militants massacred dozens of schoolchildren.

That attack led to a sweeping Pakistani military offensive against militants in the tribal areas. At the same time, the government told private schools to adopt security measures such as installing barbed wire, hiring security guards and increasing the height of school walls. The result has been that most prominent private schools now resemble mini-fortresses. But many worry that, generally, schools remain at risk.

Putting security measures into effect is almost impossible in a country where private schools proliferate and are often inside houses in residential neighborhoods or crowded alleys, said Norbert Almeida, a security expert based in Karachi. “You’re bound to have misses and impossibilities,” he said.

Mr. Almeida added that last week there was a state of “absolute confusion” given the lack of clarity on the exact nature of the threats.

“With the armed forces’ institutions closing and citing security concerns, why are the private schools in the rest of the country open?” he said, echoing a question raised by parents.

Some universities in Karachi have enhanced their security measures in recent days. On Wednesday, the University of Karachi — which

has over 30,000 students — organized a security sweep of its 1,365acre campus with a bomb disposal squad. “We’ve hired 30 new private security personnel,” said Dr Muhammad Zubair, the head of security at the university, which is public.

Habib University, a private liberal arts school near the Karachi airport — the airport itself was attacked by militants in June 2014 — said it had upgraded its already high security arrangements.

In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, where the attacks at the Bacha Kahn University and the Army School occurred, many schools were conducting security drills so that students would know what to do if gunmen attacked again.

Other schools decided that closing was the safer route, among them the Karachi American School, a high-profile private school that closed on Thursday.

Mina Malik-Hussain, a 32-yearold writer, said her children’s private school in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, was closed because of the government’s directive about the weather. She said that the school was usually upfront about security risks and that the government’s decision appeared to be coincidental. And she described a constant sense of concern that some parents have slowly tried to overcome.

“On WhatsApp groups, there’s always a conversation about who is sending their kids to school tomorrow. Eighty percent of moms send their kids,” she said, describing a shared sense of insistence that their children’s education should not be disrupted. - The New York Times

US Considers Re-Merger of India, Pakistan Desks New Delhi: Seven years after the

State Department was restructured to ‘de-hyphenate’ US relations with India and with Pakistan, it is considering a reversal of the move.

De-hyphenating refers to a policy started by the US government under President Bush, but sealed by the Obama administration, of dealing with India and Pakistan in different silos, without referring to their bilateral relations. It enabled the US to build closer military and strategic ties with India without factoring in the reaction from Pakistan, and to continue its own strategy in Afghanistan with the help of the Pakistan military without referring back to India.

A proposal to re-merge the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP)

Iftikhar Chaudhry Had Cut a Deal with Musharraf

back with the Bureau of South and Central Asia (SCA) that handles India, the rest of the subcontinent and Central Asian republics is under “active” consideration, senior-level sources told The Hindu.

The re-merger proposal is ostensibly timed with the international troops pullout from Afghanistan.

Ministry of External Affairs officials would not confirm whether they had been informed of the move they described as an “internal” matter of the US government. However, asked about the possible impact of bringing India and Pakistan under one bureau again, the former National Security Adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, said: “It looks like a rehyphenation of the India-Pakistan equation that is not in our interest.

Our relationship has grown because

it stood on its own, as it is important that bilateral relations with India won’t be overshadowed by its relations with the region.”

The de-hyphenation policy of the US was crystallized when the SRAP was set up in 2009 soon after President Barack Obama had taken over, with the appointment of Richard Holbrooke.

At the time, Mr Holbrooke had hoped to include India in his mandate, and even to discuss the resolution of Kashmir as a means to extract greater cooperation from Pakistan. India had strongly opposed the move.

According to a diplomatic cable published by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks which was accessed by The Hindu, the then DESKS, P28

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sain, a former prime minister once known as ‘the kingmaker’, has a treasure trove of information on the long reign of former strongman of Pakistan, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf.

Shujaat was the head of the ‘King’s party’ that Musharraf had cobbled together to give political credence to his rule after the October 1999 coup.

Shujaat’s house in F-8 Sector of Islamabad and PML-Q’s secretariat in F-7 Sector used to be abuzz with political activity. And the Chaudhry of Gujrat had a say in all key decisions under the military ruler, including appointments to top government positions.

“Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was elevated to the coveted office of chief justice of Pakistan on my recommendation after Judge Sahib worked out how General Sahib could remain in uniform after his mandated term,” said Shujaat, whose PML-Q is now in its twilight era after its heyday period between 2002 and 2007.

Before parliament adopted the 18th constitutional amendment, the president had a discretionary role in appointment of heads of key institutions, including the superior judiciary, and elevation to the coveted post of chief justice. Article 177 of the 1973 Constitution did not clearly prescribe any rule of seniority for such an appointment in the apex court of the country.

The Supreme Court had shed some light on the matter in the Al Jihad Trust case, but the ruling was not followed up with constitutional changes to make it mandatory for the head of state to follow the seniority criterion.

Musharraf had already reneged on his public promise of doffing his military uniform by December 31, 2004. The promise was part of an agreement the PML-Q had cut with the seven-party religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), for securing its support to pass the Legal Framework Ordinance through the 17th amendment to the Constitution.

The 17th amendment inter alia gave a legal cover to all the actions Gen Musharraf had taken since the October 12, 1999 coup, validated his controversial referendum before assuming the office of president. Now, Musharraf wanted to keep both offices, chief of the army staff and president, in order to keep his grip on power.

Justice Nazim Hussain Siddiqui, who was made chief justice on seniority basis, was about to retire after six months in the office. The General was on the lookout for a replacement, one who could solve his predicament.

Here, Shujaat came to his help. Though Iftikhar Chaudhry was the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court, Musharraf wanted to make sure the next top judge did not create any problem for his dual offices.

Shujaat had good relations with Iftikhar Chudhry. The two used to frequently dine together at Shujaat’s place.

“We [myself and Musharraf] thought he is an outspoken person.

Let’s make him the chief justice. I told the president [Musharraf] that Chaudhry Sahib would be the most suitable choice for the top slot in the Supreme Court. He would do what we say. Musharraf said, ‘Ok, let’s meet him,” Shujaat recalls in an exclusive interview with The Express Tribune.

“We [myself and Iftikhar Chaudhry] left for the Presidency in my Land Cruiser. En route, I briefed

Judge Sahib on what to say and what not to. When we reached the Presidency, Tariq Aziz [the then national security adviser] was also at the Presidency.

The discussion started. Judge Sahib did not say a word. When the president [Musharraf] went to the washroom, I said, ‘Judge Sahib, what are you doing!

Please talk,’ recalls Shujaat, an astute politician, known for his humble demeanor.

“When Musharraf returned, Judge sahib broke his silence and started speaking on how he [Musharraf] could continue with his uniform. He spoke on all the technicalities involved,” says Shujaat, who had the same clout during the Musharraf regime as was enjoyed by the late Pir Pagara under another military dictator General Ziaul Haq. After the meeting, the two left the Presidency on the same SUV. “On our way back, Judge Sahib asked me, ‘Chaudhry Sahib, did I speak well?’ I said, ‘Yes, you spoke very well,” says Shujaat who is writing all this in his soon-to-be-published memoirs. The deal was already done. Musharraf had made up his mind. And subsequently, Iftikhar Chaudhry was elevated to the post of the chief justice of Pakistan on June 30, 2005.

TTP Coming apart at the Seams Islamabad: The Pakistani Taliban face another possible split as a top commander who claimed responsibility for the Bacha Khan University assault is upset with the central leadership for disowning the attack and promising action against the perpetrators.

A joint council of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and the Mangal Bagh-led Lashkar-e-Islam, has also been dissolved over lack of interest by TTP’s fugitive chief Mullah Fazlullah, a Taliban leader told The Express Tribune on Sunday.

The five-member council was formed in March last year after the three groups decided to work in tandem after their hideouts in the tribal regions were decimated in a military offensive. The army says all militant groups now operate from the Afghan side of the border.

“Umar Mansoor faced a huge embarrassment when the TTP’s central leadership disavowed any role in the Charsadda attack,” said the Taliban leader, who requested not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

TTP, P28

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P17

Community Link Friday, February 5, 2016

VOL. 26/6 PAGE 18

PAGE 18 egum PAGE

A Conversation with Chelsea Clinton in LA

Love Poems in the Age of Islamophobia

25 Rabi ‘u-thani 1437 H

PAGE PAGE 19 17

Folsom Holds Second Annual Seerah Event

For news, updated round the clock, visit

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Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Meets Community in California

Aizaz Chaudhry was of the view that Pakistanis living in the West should maintain contact with their native country but they should respect the values of the country where they live

n By Abdus Sattar Ghazali Newark, CA: Pakistan’s Foreign

Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry held an informal meeting with the Pakistani-American community in Northern California. The meeting, held on January 28 at the Mehran Restaurant in Newark, was attended by around 150 people.

Addressing the audience, Aizaz Chaudhry said: Pakistan needs your help in its economic development and investment is the best way to maintain links with your native country.

Aizaz Chaudhry is a career diplomat and referred to his postings in Qatar and the Netherlands.

He said overseas Pakistanis always help in building the national image but some events create problems for our community. In that respect

he referred to the San Bernardino, CA terrorist attack on December 2nd when Syed Rizwan Farook, an American of Pakistani origin, killed 14 people and wounded 21 at a meeting of public health officials. However, Chaudhry said that the establishment in Washington understood that this was an individual act and the whole community should not be blamed for it.

The Foreign Secretary said that sometimes the Muslim community in the West faces a hostile situation. He mentioned the release of anti-Islam movie “Fitna” in 2008 by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. At that time he was ambassador of Pakistan in Netherlands. The short anti-Islam movie created a very adverse situation but he contacted the Pakistani com-

munity and the situation was contained.

Aizaz Chaudhry was of the view that Pakistanis living in the West should maintain contact with their native country but they should respect the values of the country where they live. He said that Pakistanis should not be involved in anything that damages the image of their native land.

About the current political and economic situation in Pakistan, the Foreign Secretary admitted that there are problems in the country but there are several people who are sincere in their efforts to uplift the country.

He said there are ups and downs in the life of nations just like individual human beings. The security situation in the country is improving and

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since June 2014 a national consensus has emerged to combat terrorism. The army has launched an operation in Northern Waziristan.

On Afghanistan, the Foreign Secretary said that Pakistan wants peace in the neighboring country at any cost. “We know that there will be no peace in Pakistan if the situation is not stabilized in Afghanistan.”

He said that the Pakistan government is holding talks with the Taliban and a positive aspect of the meeting was that the Taliban recognized the government in Afghanistan by sitting with them on the conference table. He said talks are the only way to restore peace and war is the last option.

On relations with India, he said that unfortunately some incident happens when the two countries come

closer. The Foreign Secretary said there was consensus that the people of both countries want better relations. “In Pakistan all leading political parties want cordial relations. However, many political parties in India have different views on relations with Pakistan.”

COMMUNITY

P18 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016

O

n By Saboohi Ahmed

n Monday, January 25th, the Hillary Clinton campaign came to Southern California. Chelsea Clinton, representing her mother, flew to Los Angeles from New York to speak to supporters at various events in the Southland.

At the home of Michael and Sholeh Chegini in Newport Coast overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean, Chelsea seemed relaxed and enjoying the warm weather. She had taken an early morning flight from JFK airport in New York City escaping the snowy conditions of the Northeastern United States.

Orange County Democrats had turned out in droves to see and hear what Chelsea had to say about her mother’s campaign. Local political dignitaries, including City of Irvine Councilwoman Beth Krom and Jose Solario, Trustee of the Rancho Santiago Community College District were present as were candidates for Congress Dr Sue Savary who is challenging Republican Bob Dornan for the 48th Congressional District and Lou Correa, running for Loretta Sanchez’s open Congressional seat in the 46th District.

After Henry Vandermeir, chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County, introduced Chelsea to the standing room only crowd of attendees, and called out to the significant political players in attendance, Chelsea took the microphone and participated in a Town Hall type conversation with the crowd.

This election according to her is an extremely important one as it will define the face of the United States for decades to come. The importance of having a Democrat in the White House in the next term is especially important as the next President will get to select at least two, if not three, justices of the Supreme Court. The cases facing the Supreme Court in the next few years are very important as they

I

n By Brianna Curran

t was a crisp January morning as we ascended the stairs to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. With the Washington Monument towering above the city and the Capital building standing firm before us, it was difficult to miss the symbolism of this moment. Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” as declared by the BBC, had been asked to share his poetry on “The Poet and The Poem,” a prestigious podcast published by the Library of Congress. The symbolism was particularly striking when I considered the recent rhetoric I had been hearing from major media outlets concerning Islam in America today. And yet, here was Ambassador Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University’s School of International Service, entering America’s monument for knowledge to read his poetry about love, about peace, and about Islam.

As concerned US and European citizens question the place of Islam in society, and as presidential candidates spout generalizations and prohibitions on entire communities, many are left wondering how vastly different cultures can coexist in the wake of the Syrian migrant crisis. Ahmed’s recently released documentary, Journey Into Europe explores this predicament through fieldwork researching Muslim identity in Europe. But while Ahmed’s ethnographic study presents a compelling academic argument detailing the steps Europe can take to ease religious tensions,

A Conversation with Chelsea Clinton

include women’s reproductive rights, environmental cases, local laws trying to suppress the vote and possibly in the future, a repeal of the Citizens United decision.

Dr Sue Savary, asked Chelsea how she deals with the attacks leveled against her mother by her opponents. Her response was enlightening. She pointed out that she had never known a time when her parents were not being attacked. As a child in Arkansas, when her father ran for governor, she endured campaigns for reelection every two years (as Arkansas in those days had a term of two years). She remembers attending political

rallies for not just her father but for all local offices where Democrats were running for office and Bill Clinton felt a need to support his fellow party mates. The effect of this exposure according to Chelsea was to enable her to withstand the negativity brought to bear on her mother’s campaign.

Asked by another guest why she thought that Hillary would be the best candidate Chelsea provided some very interesting facts about her mother that a lot of people are unaware of.

While her career in the Senate and the Cabinet is well documented, what a lot of people do not know about Hillary was that she had

a remarkable career prior to Bill Clinton’s political success, dedicated to serving poor underprivileged children. Unlike other graduates of Yale Law School, Hillary’s first job was with the Children’s Defense Fund. She worked with the Fund’s founder Marian Wright Edelman, an activist of the Civil Rights Movement. Hillary Clinton helped through litigation to pass the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975 and to make it possible for children with disabilities to have equal access to public education. It seems incredible that until 1975, in the United States, disabled children were not allowed access to public education, and the parents had to bear the full financial burden of educating their children. She also worked on another great milestone which was getting the Courts to agree in 1974 that the juveniles should not be incarcerated with adults and it was the duty of the State to provide education to imprisoned youth. In 1974 the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was passed that allowed children in prison to be housed and educated separately from adults. This work that Hillary Clinton did in her early years is seldom remembered by people currently.

The host Michael Chellini had the final question for Chelsea: “How would Secretary Clinton deal with the question of Iran? Very few Iranians in the United States approve of the current Iranian regime. However, none wants the United States to go to war with Iran.”

Chelsea replied that Hillary had worked closely with President Obama on the relationship with Iran and that she saw her mother progressing in the same direction as set by President Obama and Secretary John Kerry.

All in all, Chelsea did a great job representing her mother to the Democrats of Orange County this sunny January morning in California, days before the Iowa Caucus.

Love Poems in the Age of Islamophobia his poetry reveals an even simpler explanation. “It is love, love, love”, Ahmed writes in his poem, What is it that I seek? He includes names from Abrahamic and nonAbrahamic traditions. There can be no boundaries in the embrace of love. Discussing and reading from his poetry on “The Poet and The Poem” with Grace Cavalieri last week, Ahmed employed the world’s most universal language to express his views on the state of today’s turbulent political and religious affairs. From Shakespeare to Whitman, Rumi to Maya Angelou, poetry has been utilized as a tool for centuries to transcend generations and cultures to convey emotion and perspective. Though many know him as a diplomat, a political commentator, a filmmaker and an academic, few are familiar with his poetry, though they should.

Grace Cavalieri, host of “The Poet and The Poem” complimented the poet for his imagery, language and insights. She dubbed Ahmed “Ambassador of the Heart” as he shared his poems from his recently published collection Suspended Somewhere Between with the program’s widespread audience across the US. Bringing an intensely personal dimension to Ahmed’s career, he described his first memory as a child in his poem, Train to Pakistan. Depicting a bloody scene of the “killing fields of the Punjab” in 1947 Ahmed writes of the first of his many encounters with religious violence. Through the horror and the tragedy, however, Ahmed’s perspective is unique as he recognized this violence as a “desperate need to love and be loved.” It is this raw, compassionate and human interpretation that is so often lacking in today’s attempt to understand

one another in our current state of rapid globalization. But perhaps, as Ahmed shows us, this can be changed through unconventional means such as poetry and the arts.

When asked why he writes poetry, Ahmed replied that since boyhood, poetry has been an escape.

Grace noted how improved our world might be today if each of us reflected inwardly through poetry and mindfulness before reacting outwardly. Among Ahmed’s poems concerning his homeland of Pakistan, his love for his family, and Islam are poems painting distinct moments in history. These historical poems illustrate the vitality of learning from history to create a stronger future.

I was personally struck by the distinct contrast between Ahmed’s unsparingly honest poetry and the rhetoric that is so often associated with Islam today. While presidential candidates and media outlets commonly reject the notion that Islam is compatible with American society, Ahmed’s poetry spoke to exactly the opposite. In his poem To my mother, Ahmed reveals his

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love for his mother and expresses his regret for giving his mother cause to worry such as driving too fast or not answering letters. He pays tribute to her spiritual influence in his life. This particular poem resonated deeply with me, as I know that this relationship between a mother and child is one that is shared universally, regardless of culture or religion. This aspect of universality is incredibly widespread in Islam, though rarely “news” for mainstream media outlets. Sufism, the mystical and loving dimension of Islam practiced

by Ahmed and millions of Muslims worldwide, stresses the idea that we all share a uniquely human experience in this life, and seek love and knowledge through spirituality. This theme is beautifully woven throughout Ahmed’s poetry, and even exemplified by the Library of Congress in which the poetry was shared. Constructed to serve as a temple of knowledge, the Library of Congress is an architectural symbol of America’s founding fathers’ challenge to the people to seek knowledge and to grow in our under-

standing of one another. The spirit of one of our greatest founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, is reflected in the Library of Congress. His vision of creating a new nation based in knowledge and religious pluralism can still be seen in the work of people like Grace Cavalieri.

As a young American recently graduated from university and determined to preserve and fight for the vision of my country as depicted by its founding fathers, I grapple with the best way to engage with the ideas of prejudice and intolerance that have been currently generated during this election year.

I wonder how the founding fathers would have reacted to the leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump declaring that all Muslims should be banned from entering the US. I have heard talk of mosques being closed and even internment of the community.

In this time of heated rhetoric and irresponsible expressions of hatred I believe the answer has to be to reach into our souls and discover what is common to us.

We are facing a crisis bigger than it seems, and the answer must also be as effective as universal.

Poetry reaches us at a primal and a human level, touching the love, hate, anger, joy, and hope that each of us has felt in our lifetime.

Ahmed’s poetry challenges the narrative that Islam is “inherently violent” and instead shifts the focus to the human predicament that we find ourselves in today: the desire to love and to be loved.

(Brianna Curran whose field of interest includes the Middle East and relations between civilizations is a graduate of American University, Washington DC. The Library of Congress podcast is available at http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/ avfiles/poet-poemakbarahmed.mp3)

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P19

Muslim Community of Folsom Holds Second Annual Seerah Event

The exemplary life of moderation led by our Prophet and what we can learn from his example was the focus of the talks at this event

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n By Ras H. Siddiqui

he Muslim community in Folsom, California was proud to host its second Annual Seerah event on Saturday, January 16, 2016 with over 600 people in attendance.

This Folsom Mosque is over a decade old (website http://www.mcfolsom.com/ ) and can commend itself on now having its own Mosque, a fulltime Islamic School and other services like Sunday School for a fast growing community on the eastern outskirts of Sacramento County.

Many of the people that make up this congregation are employed by Intel Corporation (the largest employer in Folsom) and other technology and services companies plus Government in the area. South Asians (Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis) form a large part of the attendees here along with the Middle Easterners and locals.

MCF Imam Aamir Nazir is a community unity builder and it was at his invitation that Imams of many Mosques in the region were present at this event including Mufti Mudassir Owais (ICF Irvington) and Imam Kashif Ahmed (SALAM ), Imam Tahir Anwar (formerly of SBIA in San Jose), Imam Azeez (Tarbiya Institute), Imam Yousef Hussin of Masjid Annur, Imam Ammar Shahin of Davis, Imam Qasmi of the Downtown V Street Mosque, and Imam Mohammed Kamil and Qari Shehrzad of Masjid Rahman. Also present were Qari Zakariya Al Makkaoui who recited from the Qur’an and Hafiz Tulaib Zafir who performed an Urdu Naat.

Seerah or Biography when it pertains to the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) becomes an invaluable resource in the understanding of the Last Messenger of God and the religion of Muslims. Needless to say, he was central to the growth of Islam

from its inception and his “Prophetic Biography” provides a role model for us to follow. Muslims generally (but not always) revisit the Prophet’s life on or somewhat close to his birthday (Mawlid - which falls around 12-17 of the Islamic Calendar Rabi’ al-awwal month). During Seerah events, we go over the Prophet’s life, his simplicity and honesty. The exemplary life of moderation led by our Prophet and what we can learn from his example was the focus of the talks at this event as we focus here on the three main speakers, Mufti Mudassir Owais, Imam Tahir Anwar and Imam Azeez.

Mufti Mudassir spoke eloquently in Urdu (with Imam Kashif translating). He said that we should thank Allah (SWT) for giving us this opportunity to gather here to honor and discuss the life of our blessed Prophet. He said that Allah (SWT) has created a shining example and preserved a role model for us to emulate through the life of the Prophet, a life of balance, tolerance and not extremism. He gave examples of how the Prophet lived his life, like any ordinary human being, with simplicity, helping in housework, cleaning his own clothes and milking goats etc.

He was a role model for kindness and humanitarian values. Mufti Mudassir also said that this is the way our religion should be practiced and frowned on people who lose their flexibility and concern for others while practicing their beliefs, because that is not the example that our prophet has left for us.

That is not what our religion is about, because the basic teaching of Islam is that along with saying our prayers we should become good human beings, good parents and children, and good friends (and neighbors).

Imam Tahir Anwar was especially reflective during his delivery.

He thanked everyone for inviting him to be a part of this blessed afternoon.

He commended Mufti Mudassir for

his wisdom and accuracy. He said that he just wanted to add to what Mufti Mudassir had said that the life of our Prophet (PBUH) was that of moderation. He also said that our Nabi (SWW) was an individual who was continuously smiling. The dictatorial lifestyle that some cultures practice and some bring with them here to America in reality ends up making us lose our links to our own children to the media and society here that we generally do not want to lose them to. He also shared that it is very difficult to get our young men and women (15-25 years old) to attend something like this (Seerah event). The answer to that can be very complicated. Our Prophet through the example of his life was able to communicate with all (including young people) including non-Muslims. The Prophet was known to be fair, he stood up for justice. Whenever confronted with a tough situation he always responded with good, which was the command of Allah (SWT). Imam Tahir added that in America there are a lot of good people (non-Muslims) and all we need to do is find them and join our hands with them. We have a lot of universal values, qualities and ideas in common, he said. Imam Tahir also encouraged all parents to keep an eye on their kids and their interaction on the social media.

Imam Azeez of the Tarbiya Institute in his speech said that this Seerah Conference was a beautiful tradition and he was happy to be a part of it and he felt blessed to be in the company of many Imams from the local Mosques in one place. He commended Imam Aamir for his effort at making this happen. He said that people were encouraged to learn about Islam from our Prophet’s Akhlaq (Manners/ Disposition) even before sharing his knowledge. Akhlaq is that humility, character and the beauty which opens the door to the heart. Imam Azeez also

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shared some South-Asian wisdom to the delight of all in attendance, as it is interesting when an Egyptian speaks in Urdu! But humor aside, the point was made that we are always looking at what others have, instead of counting our own blessings. Azeez said that he wanted to talk to us about the balance and the moderation in the life of our Prophet (SWW), especially everything that the Prophet was not. He shared a personal story about encountering someone who had converted to Islam in America who quit going to the Mosque because of being treated harshly for forgetting to take off his shoes. Imam Azeez said that he will let us make the connection on our own.

We live in difficult times, he added.

With terrorist attacks all over the world with increasing frequency, or extremism which is the exact opposite of the moderation of the Prophet. And since no more prophets are to come, the responsibility of continuing to spread his message of moderation falls on us. How is it that some of the people who pretend to carry out this task today commit murder, he asked. How is that even logical? We are supposed to deliver the message of Muhammad (SWW) to other people so how is it that some (a very small minority) plant bombs that end up hurting not only the victims and their families but the rest of us? And it is happening right here, at our doorsteps, and if we don’t do something about it the Federal Government will do something about it, said Imam Azeez. We need to take the responsibility, tackle extremism, and grab the bull by the horns.

The most popular recruitment media for Daesh (don’t call them ISIS) is the social media and the internet. Do not give your children smart phones before they reach the age of sixteen, he said. Extremism is not just about violent behavior. Extremism has become mainstream, it is about how we treat

each other. Extremism is when we shove our beliefs down the throats of other people and get upset when they don’t follow us! That is not the example set by our beloved Prophet.

North American Chapter of World Memon Organization Established

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he North American chapter of the World Memon Organization (International) has been established in the name of World Memon Organization of North America (WMONA). The chapter has successfully secured the status of 501(c)3 as a Non-Profit Organization from IRS.

According to a press release the World Memon Organization (WMO) is an international umbrella body serving communities through seven chapters worldwide, namely, Middle East, Africa, Europe, India, Pakistan, the Far East and now North America.

WMONA has appointed Mr Hussain Rokerya and Mr “Ike” M. Iqbal Khamisani – well-known in social and commercial circles of not only the USA and Canada but globally - as its advisers and members of the National Executive Group.

World Memon Organization (WMO) was established in 2002 in Dubai to unite, uphold and uplift the Memon community around the world and to continue its tradition of serving humanity at large irrespective of caste, color, religion or region.

WMO’s philanthropic and social activities include providing shelters, education, health facilities and services to deserving and needy individuals/ families in different countries around the world.

WMONA offers membership to every non-Memon organization, institution, and corporation in furthering the cause of humanity.

COMMENTARY

P20 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016

ObamaDenounces anti-Muslim Bias during Mosque Visit

n By Gardiner Harris

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resident Obama reached out to Muslims in the United States on Wednesday in an impassioned speech, embracing them as part of “one American family,” implicitly criticizing the Republican presidential candidates and warning citizens not to be “bystanders to bigotry.’’

In a visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, his first to a mosque in the United States as president, Mr Obama recited phrases from the Qur’an and he praised American Muslims as a crucial part of America’s history and vital to the nation’s future. “If we’re serious about freedom of religion — and I’m talking to my fellow Christians who are the majority in this country — we have to understand that an attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths,” he said.

Although Mr. Obama never mentioned Republican presidential candidates like Donald J. Trump and Ben Carson, the targets of his remarks were clear. “We have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate bigotry,” Mr Obama said.

Mr Obama said that Muslims don’t hear “thank you” enough and that there was no tolerance for the recent “inexcusable political rhetoric” against them.

But he said that too many Americans only heard about Islam after terrorist attacks, and that this must change. “Our television shows should have some Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security,” he said. “It’s not that hard to do. There was a time when there was no black people on television.”

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Mr Obama said that anyone who suggested that the United States was at war with Islam not only legitimized such groups as the Islamic State but also played into their hands. “That kind of mind-set helps our enemies,” he said. “It helps our enemies recruit. It makes us all less safe.”

For Mr Obama, the remarks were an implicit admission of how little progress has been made since he opened his presidency with a 2009

speech he delivered in Cairo that sought to reach out to the world’s Muslims by calling for “a sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another, and to seek common ground.”

Seven years after the Cairo address, which the White House titled, “A New Beginning,” Mr Obama is nearing the end of his presidency at a time when respect and common ground have of-

ten been overtaken by suspicion and angry political rhetoric.

It is the result Mr Obama said in Cairo that he feared the most: that the world would remain “bound by the past,” doomed never to move past historic divisions and mistrust. On Wednesday, Mr Obama urged Americans to look inward to examine the roots of those divisions, and to seek ways to transcend the fear and suspicion.

Concerns about Muslims and Syrian refugees in the United States grew after terrorist attacks in Paris in November claimed the lives of 130 people and after a mass shooting by a husband-and-wife team in San Bernardino, Calif., in December killed 14 people and seriously wounded 22.

Since then, attacks on American Muslims and mosques have spiked, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. At a meeting at the White House last month, prominent Muslim Americans pleaded with senior administration officials to have the president visit a mosque in the hopes of stemming such attacks.

On Wednesday, the president said, “Islam has always been a part of America.” To young Muslims, he said: “You fit in here, right here.

You’re right where you belong. You’re part of America, too. You aren’t Muslim or American.

You are Muslim and American.”

Mr Obama took office pledging to repair the image of the United States among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, that he felt had been tarnished by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a speech before the Turkish Parliament in April 2009, he MOSQUE, P28

Donald Trump Makes ‘Hat’ Joke after Ejecting Sikh Protester from Rally

Sikh man — who was escorted out of a Donald Trump rally — has hit back at the Republican presidential candidate by calling him ‘childish’.

Arish Singh, who wears a red turban, was ejected from Trump’s rally in Muscatine, Iowa on Monday after unfolding a banner that read ‘Stop Hate’.

Trump broke his address to the rally as Singh, 35, was being expelled along with his friend Taylor Williams as the crowd repeatedly chanted ‘ USA, USA’.

What Trump said from the platform as Singh was booed and forced out by security officials is perhaps even more concerning. He asked the audience: ‘He wasn’t wearing one of those hats, was he? And he never will, and that’s okay because we got to do something folks because it’s not working.’

After the flare up, Trump went on to talk about terrorist attacks in Paris and California and mentioned ‘hats’ more than a few times.

It was unclear whether it was a reference to Singh’s turban. However, Twitter users reacted with horror that such a connection could be made.

Speaking to Daily Mail Online Singh

said: ‘I am not sure what he meant when he used the word “hat”.

‘But if he thought I was a Muslim, I

would not have a problem with that because we all have to stand with Muslims and reject the hate that is being directed towards them.

‘How can anybody stand up and say Muslims should be banned from this country?’

While Singh admitted he had interrupted Trump’s address and his behavior had provoked Trump supporters, he said, “This country has a history of civil disobedience and I am proud of that.”

Further, he added :’Those people who cannot tell the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh should be embarrassed of themselves.

‘But I stand with the Muslims and I will always do what I can to stop the hating.’

Earlier in January, A Muslim woman wearing a hijab was escorted out of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign event for standing up in silent protest during his speech.

Despite Hamid’s silence, supporters around her began chanting Trump’s name, as coached by Trump campaign staff prior to the event in case of protests, and pointed at Hamid and Marty Rosenbluth, the man beside her who stood up as well.

This article originally appeared in Mail Online

When Muslims Marched with Christians across Europe’s Battlegrounds

n By Ishaan Tharoor

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n 1683, a vast Ottoman army camped outside the gates of Vienna. For centuries thereafter, the siege and final decisive battle that took place would be cast as a defining moment in a clash of civilizations -- that time the forces of Islam were halted at the ramparts of Christendom.

Yet look just a little bit harder, and that tidy narrative falls apart.

The Ottoman assault had been coordinated in league with French King Louis XIV. And perhaps more than half of the soldiers seeking to capture the Austrian capital were Christians themselves. There were Greeks,

liances, ethnic sympathies and historical grudges” that shaped much of European history.

That sense of nuance fades over centuries, and certainly wasn’t apparent last year when another Hungarian nationalist -- the country’s current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán -- cited the legacy of the Ottoman conquest to justify keeping Syrian refugees from passing through Hungary’s borders.

“I have to say that when it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones who have experience because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years,” Orbán told reporters last year, apparently referring to the period of dynastic warfare and mayhem that was sparked by the initial Ottoman invasion in the 16th century.

Armenians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs, all fighting alongside Arabs, Turks, Kurds and others in the Ottoman ranks.

One of the main figures leading the Turkish charge was Imre Thokoly, who was a Protestant born in what’s now Slovakia and an avowed Hungarian nationalist. Tens of thousands of Hungarian peasants who were angry at the behavior of the Catholic Church, and the imperial Habsburg dynasty in Vienna had rallied to Thokoly’s banner.

It reflected, writes British academic Ian Almond in his 2009 book “Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched With Christians Across Europe’s Battlegrounds,” how “little use terms such as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Christian’ are to describe the almost hopelessly complex web of shifting power-relations, feudal al-

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Orban has hardly been alone with this sort of grand, historical rhetoric. A host of Eastern European leaders, representing various right-of-center, nationalist governments, echoed Orbán’s line, painting the migrant influx as an existential threat, an “invasion” of people whose cultural identity is wholly alien to Europe. A coalition of farright activist groups in the region last week warned of “Islam conquering Europe” and announced plans for joint protests.

Further west, from France to the United States, conservative politicians -- including Republican presidential candidates -- also have gestured at a clash of civilizations when proposing bans on refugees or even halting Muslim migration altogether.

BATTLEGROUNDS, P24

COMMENTARY

FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P21

Why Did the Scientific Revolution Not Take Place in the Muslim World? n By Professor Nazeer Ahmed

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far more precise than those made a hundred years later in Europe by Copernicus (d 1543).

Ulugh Beg’s accurate tables of sines and tangents were correct to eight decimal places. The work of Ulugh Beg found a resonance in the Taqi Uddin observatory of Istanbul (1574) and the string of observatories built by Raja Jai Singh of Amber (1688-1743) during the reign of Mogul emperor Mohammed Shah (d 1748). One of these observatories, called Jantar Mantar, stands in the heart of the modern metropolis of Delhi.

These examples confirm that mathematical pursuits and technological achievements did not cease with the Mongol invasions. The Ottoman, Safavid and Mogul empires that emerged after the Mongol-Tartar invasions produced a galaxy of great architects and civil engineers. The names of the Turkish master architect Mimar Sinan (d 1588) and Ustad Ahmed Lahori (1649), the architect of the Taj Mahal, stand out. The armies of these three empires excelled in metallurgy, military hardware and artillery.

Concord, CA

ummary: The natural sciences did not die out in the Islamic world with the Mongol devastations of the thirteenth century. Indeed, the Muslims held their own in art, architecture, astronomy and artisanship on the world stage well into the eighteenth century. It was only at the turn of the eighteenth century that Europe acquired a decisive technological edge and supplanted the ancient civilizations of Asia and Africa.

This article examines the complex interplay of intellectual, religious, social, political, economic factors and the decisive military events that precluded the onset of a scientific revolution in the Islamic world. Summarily, we find seven discernible milestones in the 1400 year long history of Muslims that influenced the development of science and technology: (1) The Mu’tazalite eruption and its aftermath (765-846) (2) Al-Gazzali’s repudiation of the philosophers (1100) (3) The Crusades (1096-1240) (4) The Mongol Devastations (12191258) (5) Neglect of the printing press and naval technology (1450-1728) (6) The Destructive Shia-Sunni, SufiSalafi Controversies (700-ongoing) (7) Colonialism and the onset of the Age of Discontinuity (1757-1947) The discourse tends to get obscure when questions of philosophy and science are discussed. Therefore, a number of resources from the open literature have been used to construct a narrative that is as accessible to a layman as it is to a scholar.

The Rockets of Mysore It comes as a surprise to some readers that the American National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, was inspired by the rockets invented by a Muslim king, Tippu Sultan of Mysore, India. It was the year 1814. The Anglo-American war was in full swing. The British forces, after burning down Washington and conducting a raid on Alexandria, proceeded up the Chesapeake Bay to capture Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Caught in the cross fire were two American lawyers, Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner who had gone over to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange with the British. Key and Skinner were allowed to board the British flagship HMS Tonant and present their proposals to Major General Robert Ross and Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane while the two were discussing their plans for an attack on Baltimore.

Since they had overheard the detailed war plans, Key and Skinner were held back by the British and were witness to the bombardment of Baltimore on September 13, 2014. Orange and red flashes of rocket fire illuminated the skies over Fort McHenry. The stillness over Chesapeake Bay was shattered by the deafening sounds of explosives. The bombardment went on all night and it was not clear as to which side would prevail in this clash of arms.

At day break, as the first rays of the sun hit the fort and the fog lifted over the Bay, the American flag was still aloft Fort McHenry, fluttering in the morning breeze. This was the moving sight that inspired Francis Scott Key to compose the Star Spangled Banner.

The rockets used in the war of 1812 were a takeoff on the rockets captured by the British from Tippu Sultan of Mysore after the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799. The Mysore rockets used a casing of iron unlike the plaster casings that were in common use in European rockets. The metal casing enabled the sustenance of higher pressures in the bore and increased the propulsive power of the rocket.

The solid propellant was compacted gunpowder. The Mysore rockets had a range of 2 kilo-

meters which was more than twice the range of the most advanced rockets used by European armies. Attached to the end of the iron barrel was a long bamboo pole with an affixed doubled edged sword as the payload. When launched in clusters, the sword-equipped rockets played havoc with concentrations of enemy troops.

The late Dr Abdul Kalam, the architect of India’s modern rocket programs, called Tippu Sultan the father of modern rocketry. Tippu was a technology buff and paid special attention to innovation in armament design. There were thousands of rockets in his armory. Platoons of rocket men were attached to each of his regiments. With the military edge provided by the rockets, the Sultan won a decisive victory over British forces in the Battle of Pollilur in 1780. It was the only major battle that the British lost on Indian soil during their long drawn out conquest of the Indian subcontinent, starting with the Battle of Plassey in Bengal (1757) and ending with the second Anglo-Sikh war in the Punjab (1848-49).

When Tippu Sultan fell during the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799, the British sent some of the captured Mysore rockets to the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich Arsenal in England. A development team led by Colonel Congreve made a systematic study of the rockets using Newton’s laws of motion. Congreve made design improvements to the rockets to make them more stable in flight. The modified Mysore rockets, renamed the Congreve rockets, were used by the British against Napoleon at the Battle of Boulogne in France in 1806.

And it was the Congreve rockets that were used by the British to bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the Anglo-American war of 1812.

Thus it was that the technology invented by an Indian Muslim sultan inspired the national anthem of a great nation, the United States of America, on the other side of the globe. The advances made by the rocket engineers of Tippu Sultan show that as late as the eighteenth century, technological developments in the Muslim world were not far behind those in Europe. Indeed, in some categories they were noticeably ahead. It was only in the nineteenth century that Europe acquired a decisive technological edge over Asia. We offer a few more examples to reinforce this observation.

The Mogul emperor Akbar (d 1605) introduced the matchlock rifle into the Indian armies. The 66 inch long barrel of this rifle was made from fine grained superplastic steel which was tough, fracture-resistant and facilitated a finer, more uniform finish in the bore.

The stronger material could sustain higher

barrel pressures, which together with the long barrel, enabled the extraction of more energy from the products of combustion and imparted a higher velocity to the exiting payload. The matchlock rifle was more than a match for those made in Europe and could take down an enemy soldier at distances of more than 300 yards.

Babur’s armies used a composite bow in their invasion of Delhi (1526). Made from composite layers of wood and animal fiber, the flexed, pre-stressed bows were comparable to the long English bow in their power and range but were considerably lighter, smaller and faster. The Mogul bow and arrow made the difference in the onward march of their armies through the plains of India. One must note that specialized composite materials are used in modern engineering in the construction of advanced aircraft and space hardware.

For instance, I personally directed the use of a

It comes as a surprise to some readers that the American National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, was inspired by the rockets invented by a Muslim king, Tippu Sultan of Mysore.

It was the year 1814. The Anglo-American war was in full swing ... large number of advanced composites in the Hubble Space Telescope (1979-82).

Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), a Timurid prince of Central Asia, built a great astronomical observatory, called Gurkhani Zinj, at Samarkand in today’s Uzbekistan. It was one of the largest and most precise observatories in the world at that time. Ulugh Beg was himself a mathematician of repute and he backed up the work at the observatory with the establishment of universities at Samarkand and Bukhara, turning them into world renowned centers of learning in the mathematical and astronomical sciences. Using observations from the observatory, he published a star catalogue called Zij e Sultani which was a giant leap forward upon the earlier works of Ptolemy. He measured the length of the year at 365.257 days and the tilt of the axis of rotation of the earth at 23.52 degrees. These measurements were

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So, what happened?

How did the Islamic world fall behind Europe? Alternately, what explains the rise of European technology and the decay of technology in the Islamic world? Was there one overwhelming event or was it a combination of social, political, technological, religious and military factors? We will take a brief survey of Islamic history to examine the ideas, the movements, the decisive events and the personages who influenced the development of science and technology and contributed to its flourishing and its decline.

The Mu’tazalite Eruption It was the year 760. The Abbasid Caliphate vaulted across three continents, extending from Spain to India. The Caliph al Mansur (d 775), realizing the need of a new capital for the administration of this vast empire, founded the magnificent city of Baghdad (760) on the banks of the river Tigris in Iraq. The empire brought together the peoples of Europe, Africa and Asia into a commonwealth of cultures.

Baghdad became a melting pot of nations and a crucible of ideas from around the world. The resilient and self-confident Islamic civilization amalgamated these ideas and produced a composite culture that preserved and vastly expanded the intellectual horizons of humankind.

Al Mansur started a collection of classical books in Greek and Sanskrit. Under his successors, the process gathered momentum. The famed Caliph Harun al Rasheed, grandson of al Mansur, is generally credited with establishing a Bait al Hikmah (House of Wisdom) to transcribe and translate ancient texts from Greece, India, China and Persia. Under his son al Mamum, the Bait al Hikmah grew into a vast complex with separate departments for the sciences, astronomy, mathematics, logic and medicine. Here came the scholars from around the world with their books and their manuscripts, their philosophies and their sciences. The Greeks brought with them the works of Aristotle, Galen and Plato. The Indians brought the astronomical treatises of Aryabhatta. The Chinese brought the technology for making porcelain and paper. The Persians brought the technology for windmills.

An observatory was constructed to measure and map the heavens and measure the movement of planets and stars. Baghdad radiated a culture of learning. Secondary libraries sprang up in major cities across the far flung empire, patronized by local governors and wealthy individuals. In later centuries, similar great centers of learning were established in Cordoba, Spain (tenth century) and Cairo, Egypt (eleventh century).

Knowledge is a gift from God. The acquisition of knowledge expands intellectual horizons and provides the propulsive power for the advancement of science and civilization.

The Arabs mastered the knowledge of the Greeks and Hindus, greatly expanded it and

COMMENTARY

P22 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016 invented new disciplines that were hitherto unknown. The accommodation of the sciences and philosophies from distant lands tested the limits of Muslim intellectual tolerance. Of all the sciences that the Islamic world were exposed to, the rational philosophy of the Greeks presented the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge.

Muslim scholars fell in love with the rigor and precision of Greek rational thought and set out with enthusiasm to apply it to the profound questions emanating from the domains of nature, science, culture and faith. The Caliph al-Mansur was so impressed with the power and reach of reason that he adopted the rational approach as the court dogma. Those who applied the rational methods of the Greek philosophers to science, theology and culture were called the Mu’tazalites.

This was the heyday for philosophy and philosophers in the Islamic world. Aristotle was their hero and his method was their guide. For eighty years, from 765 till 846, the Mu’tazalites were the darling of the Abbasid courts.

The Mu’tazalites over-extended their reach, intellectually and politically. Ancient philosophy depended heavily on a linear concept of time. Inherent to Greek logic were the assumptions of before and after, cause and effect, subject and object.

As is now well understood by students of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, these assumptions are approximations and break down both at the sub-atomic and the galactic levels. The Mu’tazalites were unaware of these limits. When they applied their rational methods to matters of faith, they fell flat on their face. In Islam, God is transcendent, beyond time and space, and there is none like unto Him. To maintain this transcendence, the Mu’tazalites advanced the position that the Qur’an could not be co-extant with God and must therefore be construed as “created”. This is a classic example of how philosophers fall into conceptual traps when they take positions on the nature of things without understanding the assumptions and the limits of their positions. For instance, can rational thought explain love? What is the reason to love? Is love eternal? The heart admits of dimensions beyond the space-time dimensions of the mind. In a larger framework, the mind is king of the created world but it cannot understand matters of the heart and is helpless before it. The Nobel Laureate Schroedinger in his book Mind and Matter explained it beautifully: “Mind, for anything perception can compass, goes therefore in our spatial world more ghostly than a ghost. Invisible, intangible, it is a thing not even of outline; it is not a ‘thing’. It remains without sensual confirmation and remains without it forever…. Physical science faces us with the impasse that mind per se cannot move a finger of a hand. Then the impasse meets us. The blank of the ‘how’ of mind’s leverage on matter…is unknown”, Schroedinger, Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1958, pp 42-43.

Faith, which is based both on reason and emotion, transcends the capabilities of the mind.

Modern string theories now admit of eleven-dimensional space and the possibilities of co-extant parallel universes. The limitations of ancient philosophical thought are all too obvious.

The Mu’tazalite position that the Qur’an was “created” produced an uproar in orthodox circles.

A counter-Mu’tazila movement sprang up, led by the Usuli ulema. The Mu’tazalites as well as the opposition invoked the Qur’an to justify their positions. Chief among those who opposed the Mutazalites was Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal, after whom the Hanbali fiqh is named. The Mu’tazalites showed little political wisdom. They applied the whip to those who opposed them. Imam Ahmed was whipped and jailed many times. Faced with determined opposition, the Caliph al Mutawakkil abandoned court patronage of the Mu’tazalites (846). In turn, when the anti-Mu’tazalites had the upper hand, they persecuted the Mu’tazalites.

The Aftermath of the Mu’tazalite Eruption What is significant is that the initial challenge to the Mu’tazalites did not originate from within their own ranks but from the orthodox ulema. The triumph of the usuli schools ensured the pre-eminence of the orthodox religious elements in the spectrum of Islamic knowledge. It also made the pursuit of philosophy suspect in the minds of the masses and relegated it to the elite and the rules.

Philosophy continued but only as a side show to the primary focus of Islamic civilization on the religious sciences of fiqh (800-850 CE), hadith (800-

950 CE) and tasawwuf (1100-1700 CE). In the centuries to come, those who continued to pursue philosophy and science had to look over their shoulders to guard their flank from the religious right. Philosophy and science both suffered.

The crux of the issue was a failure to understand the limits of each branch of knowledge. Philosophy is no exception to this rule. Each branch of knowledge searches for the truth but the ultimate Truth eludes certainty. God is the Truth (Allahu Haq). In other words, the essence of the Truth transcends space-time. Indeed, it transcends human comprehension. This uncertainty principle is stated in different ways by the physicists, the mathematicians, the philosophers and people of faith. The error of the Mu’tazalites was to express this uncertainty principle through logic, in spacetime. The error of the usuli ulema was to reject philosophy along with the positions taken by the philosophers. It was literally the case of “throwing out the baby with the bath water”.

The aftermath of the Mu’tazalite convulsions influenced the development of natural sciences in the Islamic world in a profound way. The Islamic world moved away from the speculative philosophies of the Greeks to the empirical sciences more in tune with the injunctions of the Qur’an. An explanation is in order here. Although generalizations are facile, it can nonetheless be asserted that the primary thrust of Greek philosophy is deductive. It is “top down”. It starts with axioms and proceeds downwards towards deductions and conclusions. The assumptions inherent in the axioms become the limits for the deductions and conclusions. In this process, errors of judgment are made, as did the Mu’tazalites in their speculations about the origins of the Qur’an. By contrast, the empirical sciences are inductive. They are “bottoms up” and are based on observation, measurement, codification and extension. The Qur’an draws attention, time and again, to the many signs in nature and invites humankind to interact with and learn from these signs. In the empirical approach, reason becomes a servant of knowledge, not its autocratic ruler. The limits of reason are recognized and built into the edifice of knowledge as it is constructed from observations and measurements.

Thus, a scientist has his feet on the ground while reaching out to the heavens with reason. A philosopher, on the other hand, has his head in the sky but his feet may or may not touch the ground and he may be left dangling between the heavens and the earth.

The classical Islamic civilization that emerged in the post-Mu’tazalite period was scientific-em-

pirical. Indeed, the Muslims were arguably the originators of the empirical method. They took the pursuit of natural sciences away from the speculative philosophies of the Greeks to the experimental, practical sciences based on observation.

The Muslims had learned the art of paper making from the Chinese after the Battle of Tlas (751). Paper mills sprang up in the major cities, facilitating the transcription and publication of books. Princes, noblemen and the rich vied with each other to establish libraries. The brilliance of this civilization can be gauged from the breadth and depth of its lasting contributions. For more than five hundred years (700-1258), Muslim scientists were the torch bearers of knowledge, advancing human civilization with their discoveries and inventions. It was this light that awakened Europe from its slumber in the dark ages (600-1100). The contributions of some of the eminent scientists of the Islamic Golden Age are summarily highlighted here.

Jabir Ibn-Haiyan (d 815) is known as the father of empirical chemistry. He was the first to use the process of distillation and to attempt a mathematical classification of pure elements based on their known characteristics. His work contains a detailed description of fractional distillation, solubility and volatility of compounds as well as alloying, purification and testing of metals Al Khwarizmi (d 850), was a celebrated mathematician, astronomer and geographer. He was the inventor of algebra. His method of solving quadratic equations presaged the development of algorithms, widely used in modern software development. He was the first one to use the decimal system and to introduce the Hindu-Arabic numerals into mathematics.

Al Kindi (d 870) was a philosopher who wrote extensively on Aristotle and made noteworthy contributions not only to philosophy but also to mathematics, psychology, ethics and cosmology.

Al Razi (d 925) was an outstanding physician and chemist. He is known as the father of clinical medicine. He is best remembered for his pioneering work on smallpox, measles and other contagious diseases. His voluminous works on surgery and therapy influenced the development of medicine in Latin Europe and were required reading in European universities until the eighteenth century.

Al Battani (d 928) was a noted mathematician and empirical astronomer who influenced the works of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. He introduced trigonometric functions into geometry, calculated the precession of the equinoxes and the obliquity of the ecliptic. His measurements on the

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positions of the sun and moon were more accurate than those made by Copernicus some six centuries later.

Al-Farabi (d 950) applied Aristotelian philosophy to political science, ethics and logic. He sought to bring science, politics and ethics out of the fuzziness of symbolism into the concrete world of logic and reason. He was thus the first political scientist. The comprehensiveness of his encyclopedic works earned him the title of “the second teacher” after Aristotle and he influenced the later works of the giants among philosophers such as Ibn Sina and Maimonedes.

Al Masudi (d 956) was the first to integrate history with empirical geography. His travels took him far and wide to Egypt, Arabia, East Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. He documented his observations of the lands he visited in his masterpiece, Muruj adhdhahab wa ma’adin al-jawahar (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems).

Al Buzjani (d 997) was a distinguished applied mathematician. He was the first to introduce the use of secants and cosecants in geometry. He constructed a comprehensive table of sines and tangents, made a detailed study of the inter-relationship between trigonometric functions and used this knowledge to solve difficult geometrical problems using conics. Modern trigonometry rests on a foundation built by Al Buzjani.

Ibn Sina (1037) was the most celebrated physician of the Islamic Golden Age. His masterpiece work, the Canons of Medicine, was the standard textbook in Europe until the seventeenth century.

One of the most significant thinkers of the era, his influence extended to philosophy, psychology, chemistry, logic, earth sciences, astronomy and the philosophy of science.

Ibn al Haitham (d 1040) is celebrated as the father of modern optics. He was the first to recognize that light is perceived by reflection rather than emanating from the eyes, as the Greeks had assumed. He correctly formulated the laws of reflection, studied refraction, the formation of rainbows, lunar and solar eclipses and invented the camera obscura. His work influenced Roger Bacon (1292) of England and the celebrated German astronomer Johannes Kepler (d 1630).

Al Baruni (d 1052) was a celebrated historian whose encyclopedic work on the sciences, civilization and culture of India set a benchmark for empirical anthropological documentation. He was also a mathematician of the first rank as well as a noted astronomer, natural philosopher, geographer and geologist.

Omar Khayyam (d 1131), poet, mathematician and astronomer, left his mark on the sciences with his contributions to the Jalali calendar introduced by the Seljuq Sultan Malik Shah. This calendar was more precise than the Julian calendar used in the modern world. Omar Khayyam developed a method of extracting roots of whole numbers and influenced the development of irrational numbers

by European mathematicians. Through the translations of his Rubayiat, he is celebrated as a poet the world over.

Al Idrisi (d 1165) was a geographer and historian who served at the court of Roger II of Sicily. He compiled a map of the known world using earlier sources as well as his own observations through his travels in the Magreb (North-west Africa) and West Asia. The map was extraordinary for its times and showed Western Europe, the Mediterranean world and West Asia in great detail.

In his book, Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (“The Pleasure Excursion of One Who Is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World”), al Idrisi describes contacts between the Arabs and certain islands near the West Indies of America.

Historians have used al Idrisi’s observations to assert the African and Muslim discovery of America before Columbus.

Ibn Rushd (d 1198) is generally considered the greatest rational philosopher after Aristotle.

His three-volume commentary on the works of the Greek Master profoundly influenced the development of rational thought in the Latin West. Ibn Rushd also wrote extensively on jurisprudence, psychology, astronomy, physics and music theory.

Al Jazari (d 1206) was the most prolific inventor of his age. He was an outstanding engineer and a mechanical genius. More than 100 inventions are ascribed to him, including the cam shaft, rotary to linear motion converters, segmented gears, chain pumps, water pumps, clocks and mechanical robots. (Continued next week)

COMMENTARY

FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P23

Super Bowl 50 - A Battle between the Old and the New

n By Ras H. Siddiqui

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CA

he National Football League’s main event is near, as the 50th Super Bowl game is all set for Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on February 7th. The two teams that will face each other in Silicon Valley this time are the Denver Broncos of the American Football Conference (AFC) and the Carolina Panthers of the National Football Conference (NFC). And if the conference championships played on January 24th were any indication, we can look forward to a great game. So let us get our pizzas, hot wings, samosas, nachos and beverages planned because this game will be between experience and relative youth in the leadership roles of quarterbacks.

Peyton Manning of the Broncos may just be playing his “Last Rodeo” here and Cam Newton of the Panthers is the new kid on the Super Bowl block, as he makes his first appearance in the Big Game. But the way Cam and the Panthers are playing today, their “Rodeo Days” may have just begun.

Peyton Manning is 39 years old and will be 40 this March making him one of the oldest (he started in 1998) professional players in the game. He already has one Super Bowl ring as a part of the Indianapolis Colts in 2007. He is considered one of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time, a five time MVP with the statistics to prove it. On November 15, 2015, Peyton Manning overtook Brett Favre as the all-time passing yardage leader. It does seem that he has been around ‘forever’ playing in the NFL and if experience alone wins Super Bowl 50, then Peyton Manning will lead the Denver Bron-

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cos to victory.

Cameron (Cam) Jerrell Newton of the Carolina Panthers is a relatively youthful 26 years of age and has been playing professional football since 2011. He is not the first

the fact is that he likes to celebrate his touchdowns on the field to the delight of some and the annoyance of others (some think that he is cocky). But the bottom line is that he is a very talented football player

ary 24th was a close competition.

Denver’s superior defense prevailed with just two points (20-18) separating the victors and the defeated.

In reality, either of these two teams could have been playing in the Su-

Many of us armchair football “old timers” would like to see the Broncos win with “Old” Peyton Manning leading them and we have little history or affinity with the Panther team. But that will have little to do with the outcome of this game African-American quarterback to play in the NFL as quarterback and he will certainly not be the last. Race is not an issue here. What is important is that he is as good at throwing the ball as he is running with it. And

n By Paola Marizán/WNIN

s the Islamic State uses social media and the Internet to recruit followers, a group of American Muslim millennials are also using the same tools to clear up misconceptions.

Tired of being called a terrorist, Ranny Badreddine, a youth from Evansville, Ind., joined other young teens to create World Changers, an initiative that uses the cyberspace to combat misconceptions about Islam.

“Kids have to be worried about...going outside and being scared that someone is going to beat them up because they’re Muslim,” Badreddine says. “As a 13-year-old kid, I don’t want to live my life being scared of Americans trying to hurt me because of what I am and my religion.”

Many younger American Muslims say their parents and grandparents have long been reluctant to speak out and risk drawing attention to themselves. But Badreddine and his peers want to take a different approach. They want to use technology to push back against what they see as false portrayals of Islam.

The group is a branch organization of Reclamation Studios, another media initiative that aims to counter the Islamic State group’s propaganda online. World Changers currently works with Reclamation Studios to spread their message and answer questions about Islam online. They also work with other nonprofits to organize public forums.

Romaze Akhram, one of the members, says this battle for the hearts and minds of Americans is not just about religion. For him, it is far more personal.

“The problem is, when they talk about Islamic terrorism, people aren’t necessar-

who is going up against a legend of the game (Peyton Manning), and he could be tested like never before.

The AFC Championship game won by the Denver Broncos against the New England Patriots on Janu-

per Bowl, but the Broncos played slightly better. The NFC Championship game between the Carolina Panthers and the Arizona Cardinals was a completely different story. The Cardinals weren’t just beaten, they

American Muslims Tackle Terrorism with Teens’ Best Tool: The Internet

were mauled 49-15. Cam Newton himself ran for two touchdowns and passed to three more. The Panthers have lost just one game in this entire season as their passing game this year has been almost unbeatable.

And on top of that, their defense has not been too shabby either.

A lot has been said that it is defensive teams that win big games.

The statistics give the Carolina offense the edge both in passing and the rush in this game. Also (according to the statistical data on yards allowed per game) Denver has a slight advantage in defense. So will the Denver Broncos win this game? Not necessarily.

The answer may lie in the first half performance of the Panthers and the second half performance of the Broncos. If the score is close at the end of the first, Denver’s famed defense and Peyton Manning’s experience could grind the Broncos to a victory during the remainder of the game. But if Cam Newton and the Panthers end up leading by a wide margin in the first two quarters, they will continue to make it effortless in the last two.

The Denver defense has been effective against the pass but if the Panthers rushing game is as effective as it was against Arizona, then the Broncos will be in trouble. In any case no matter what some experts may predict (and I am no expert), the team to beat in this Super Bowl is the Carolina Panthers. Many of us armchair football “old timers” would like to see the Broncos win with “Old” Peyton Manning leading them and we have little history or affinity with the Panther team. But that will have little to do with the outcome of this game.

The “Tea Leaves” or “Coffee Grounds” say that the Carolina Panthers will win Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara!

reality as well,” she says. “I don’t think what ISIS is doing is at all Islam. They use some of the language but their objectives are extremely political.”

While that is true, many American Muslims still say they have to constantly deal with the perception that Islam is behind these atrocities.

Mohammed Hussain, a pediatrician in Evansville, says this tech savvy generation is smart enough to use the same online strategies as the radicals. He supports their effort to call out what they see as false Islam.

“We have all realized ISIS has people

The World Changers group brainstorms on what to do to clarify their message of Islam

ily seeing ISIS and al-Qaida. They’re seeing me,” Akhram says. “And they’re seeing the kids that are with us today, you know, and we’re working towards positive things but they’re going to see us as Islamic terrorists.”

Muslim activist Humera Khan says religion is not the only or even the main reason driving the atrocities around the world.

“And so if we want to deal with the issue of ISIS, we must deal with the political

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who are adapted, are using the media, and they have been using it very effectively,” he says. “So we have to convey the right message in the same matter so that it can get across.”

The battle that these young American Muslims are joining is not a new one. Seventeen-year-old Hani Yousef says he’s often asked if it is fair to expect the younger generation to fight a war that they did not start.

“I think it might be beyond the point if it’s fair or not,” Yousef says. “The situation is that people are taking the name Islam and using it in a derogatory way, and what’s really the problem that we need to focus on is not if it’s fair or not, but how to combat it in a way that obviously is nonviolent and aligns with the ways or our religion.”

COMMENTARY

P24 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016

The Case for Market Timing n By Saghir Aslam Rawalpindi, Pakistan

(The following information is provided solely to educate the Muslim community about investing and financial planning. It is hoped that the Ummah will benefit from this effort through greater financial empowerment, enabling the community to live in security and dignity and fulfill their religious and moral obligations towards charitable activities) In the world of investments, the topic of market timing is often discussed. What is market timing? Does it have any validity as an investment approach? Should you consider it in your investment plans? In exploring this idea, bear in mind that know system or approach will work perfectly all the time. Also that market timing as a strategy is best left to the more knowledgeable investor or professional money manager.

As old as the stock market is, investors have tried to develop ways to avoid down markets and benefit from market up trends. A strategy that tries to do this is known as market timing. It involves moving in and out of the market in response to indicators, typically based on mathematical models. The idea is to try to identify market trends and changes in trends.

The concept of market timing is founded upon research studies that have indicated market events are not random; that relationships do exist between different data and the behavior of the financial markets. ToSALAM FROM P7

Pakistan Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology, and the International Nathiagali Summer College on Physics and Contemporary Needs. He headed Pakistan’s IAEA delegations for a decade, was the driving force behind Pakistan’s first nuclear energy plant, and its space agreements with Nasa which included plans to build a space facility in Balochistan.

Internationally, he was founder of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and, of course, the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, which is now named after him and which he had wanted to be based in Pakistan. Abdus Salam’s contributions as an institution builder are, in fact, as vital as his achievements as a scientist. The ICTP, in particular, became his driving passion, especially in his later years as he was marginalized out of Pakistan; particularly hurtful was when his 1987 bid to become Unesco director general was scuttled by his own country, then under Ziaul Haq. Nothing, of course, can compare to the deep trauma and heartbreak of that dark and fateful September 7, 1974, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government had parliament declare the Ahmadi sect – to which Abdus Salam belonged – officially non-Muslim. His diary entry for that day: “Declared non-Muslim.

Cannot cope.”

For Bhutto this was just a political move and little did he recognize the depths of perversion and persecution this would lead to. Abdus Salam tendered his resignation,

day, with computer technology and sophisticated systems, market timing has gained in popularity as an alternative equity strategy.

The primary focus of market timing is to avoid major market downturns. If an investor can successfully avoid some or all the weaker periods in the market and participate in the market and participate in the market up trends, they can obtain a superior return to a buy/hold strategy.

Looking at history, some interesting facts have been published.

From 1980-1989, if you missed the best ten days of the market, your return would have decreased from 17.6% to 12.7% based on the S&P 500 Index. However, by missing the worst ten days, your return would have increased to 26.6%. If you missed the best and the worst 10 days your return would have been 21.1%, which was 20% better than a buy/hold strategy for that period.

Remember, the goal of market timing is to reduce the risk of investing in the stock market. It is also to try to achieve a higher return than investments with similar risk.

Many investors choose to avoid writing: “Islam does not give any segment of the Islamic community the right to pronounce on the faith of any other segment, faith being a matter between man and his Creator.”

According to Gordon Fraser, Bhutto tried to keep Salam engaged: “‘This is all politics,’ [Bhutto] tried to placate Salam, ‘Give me time, I will change it.’ Salam asked Bhutto to write down what he had just said on a note that would remain private.

‘I can’t do that,’ replied the master politician.”

The rest, as they say, is sordid history. Bhutto was never able to put the genie back into the bottle and the injustice has only become more grave and deadly. Ziaul Haq at least had the grace to congratulate Salam and award him with Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, when he won the Nobel. As Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto would not even have the courtesy to grant him an appointment (although she would later send him a note of greetings on his 70th birthday).

Indeed, faith is a matter between man and his Creator. So, let God judge Salam for his faith. It is not for us to do so. It is for us, however, to at least undo the legacy of shameful silence and indecent ingratitude that we have piled upon this finest son of Pakistan.

The fact is that the forces of violence have not succeeded in expunging him from our memory. While the majority may wish to hide in the comfort of silence, I would wager that those who respect Abdus Salam for who he was outnumber those who do not. If I am right in this as-

the better performance that the stock market can provide volatility of the market and/or do not have the patience to be, truly, a long-term investor.

For these investors, market timing can prove to be a worthwhile approach with the goal of reducing risk and increasing risk-adjusted returns.

Market timing, in my humble opinion is a mistake. I believe that the best way to make money in the market is long term investing, with a minimum of ten years, twenty years being better. Good companies and sufficient time will bring superior results.

Let me share my personal long-term investing facts. I bought Dreyfus Leverage Fund in 1961, and invested $1250. The fund has changed names and managers several times,however I still have holdings in the fund. Try and guess how much it is worth today….

We will continue to explore this concept in future columns.

(Saghir A. Aslam only explains strategies and formulas that he has been using. He is merely providing information, and NO ADVICE is given. Mr Aslam does not endorse or recommend any broker, brokerage firm, or any investment at all, nor does he suggest that anyone will earn a profit when or if they purchase stocks, bonds or any other investments. All stocks or investment vehicles mentioned are for illustrative purposes only. Mr Aslam is not an attorney, accountant, real estate broker, stockbroker, investment advisor, or certified financial planner.

Mr Aslam does not have anything for sale.) sumption, let us demonstrate it. If I am wrong, let us change it.

(The writer is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, former Vice Chancellor of LUMS, and lead author of the Pakistan National Human Development Report on Youth) BATTLEGROUNDS, FROM P20

“Today, words such as ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ appear to have all the consistency of oil and water,” Almond writes. But, he goes on, “the fact remains that in the history of Europe, for hundreds of years, Muslims and Christians shared common cultures, spoke common languages, and did not necessarily see one another as ‘strange’ or ‘other.’”

The starkest proof of that lies in the battlefield, where Muslims and Christians died next to one another over many centuries.

It wasn’t just the Ottomans who had multi-confessional armies. Muslims and Christians fought on all sides of the struggles in medieval Spain, where the last Muslim kingdom was snuffed out only in 1492. The Grand Catalan Company, an infamous mercenary outfit, ended up employing thousands of Turks even after it had been paid to fight them.

Frederick II, a 13th-century king who became the Holy Roman Emperor, deployed thousands of Arab Muslim archers and warriors during his wars with rival factions in Italy, including the armies of the Pope.

Chroniclers at the time documented the presence in the emperor’s ranks of elephants bearing wooden towers bristling with Saracen, or Muslim, BATTLEGROUNDS, P28

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Hidaya is currently operating 81 schools with over 10,0 00 students from 1st to 8 th grade in poverty stricken areas of Pakista n.

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Exchange Rates for Currency Notes* Countries

USA

UK S.Arabia Japan Euro UAE

Buying Rs. 106.55 153.50 28.30 0.85 116.50 29.15

(*4 February, 2016)

Selling Rs. 106.80 154.20 28.45 0.88 117.00 29.30

RELIGION

FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P25

Justice, Human Dignity and Human Rights: Our Mission n By Dr Muzammil H. Siddiqi

Gems from the Holy Qur’an

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llah commands justice, benevolence, and generosity towards relatives and He forbids what is shameful, evil, and oppressive. He teaches you, so that you may take heed. (al-Nahl 16:90

We have honored the children of Adam and carried them by land and sea; We have provided good sustenance for them and favored them especially above many of those We have created. (al-Isra’ 17:70) By the passing time,2man is [deep] in loss,3except for those who believe, do good deeds, urge one another to the truth (and right), and urge one another to steadfastness.

(Al-Asr 103:1-3) I have quoted here three foundational and ever relevant ayat of the Qur’an. The first ayah from Surah alNahl is called ‘the most comprehensive’ ayah of the Qur’an. The second is the most universal ayah of the Qur’an and the third is one of the shortest Surahs of the Qur’an in which its whole message is summarized. Justice, dignity and human rights are the basic principles of Islam.

Prophet Muhammad –peace be upon him- was sent as ‘mercy for the worlds.’ The world in which he came was full of injustice and oppression.

His own cousin Ja’far ibn Abi Talib summarized his message in a short speech that he gave before the king of Ethiopia. He said, We were folks immersed in ignorance, worshipping idols, eating carrions, given to lewdness, severing the ties of kinship, bad neighbors, the strong among us preying the weak.

Thus were we till Allah sent to us a Messenger of our own, whose lineage, honesty, trustworthiness and chastity we knew. He called us to Allah that we should acknowledge His unity and worship Him and eschew all the stones and idols that we and fathers used to worship beside Him. He ordered us to be truthful, to restore the pledges, observe the ties of kinship, be good to our neighbors, to abstain from things forbidden, and from shedding blood. He forbade us lewdness and false speech, and to prey upon the wealth of the orphans, and to accuse good women. He commanded us to worship Allah only, ascribe nothing to Him as partner and enjoined upon us prayer, Zakat and fasting…” (tr. By M.M. Pickthall, In-

From the translation by Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) About the translator: Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born of Jewish parents in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his first visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurter Zeitung, and after years of devoted study became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. His translation of the Holy Qur’an is one of the most lucid and well-referenced works in this category, dedicated to “li-qawmin yatafakkaroon” (people who think). troduction to Surah Maryam) This is the mission and message of Islam. The hallmark of Islamic teachings is justice. Islam teaches that justice should be done to all people, in every place and under all circumstances without any exception. Allah says that He sent His prophets and messengers to guide human beings to justice and fair dealings. (Al-Hadid 57:25) Justice is Allah’s balance on this earth. Nations live, progress and prosper as long as they do justice to each other and maintain justice in all their affairs. The opposite of justice is ‘Zulm’ oppression. Oppression destroys the individuals and nations.

Justice according to Islam is not harsh or inhumane justice. It is tempered with ‘ihsan’ kindness and benevolence. Islam teaches that we should be kind and benevolent while maintaining justice. The Prophet – peace be upon him- emphasized that Allah has prescribed ‘ihsan’ on everything and in every matter. We should treat others with justice, fairness and benevolence. Family is a very important institution in which people can learn both justice and benevolence.

It is for this reason immediately after mentioning the broad universal principles of justice and benevolence, Allah mentioned giving to the kith and kin their rights and their dues

(al-Nahl 16:90). The believers should help their family members in particular and relatives in general, but Ihsan should include everyone. Islam is against all and every kind of shameful deeds, evil behavior, aggression and oppression against any person.

The Qur’an teaches us that all human beings have dignity and honor. Allah has conferred honor to all human beings of all colors, races, nationalities, economic status and religions. There is no superior or chosen race in Islam. All people are equal without any superiority of the whites over the blacks or the blacks over the whites. All human beings have rights of their lives, dignity, family, property, freedom of conscience and worship. These rights are God-given rights. They are not human conventions and they are not given when it is convenient and taken away whenever the powerful want to take them away.

The Qur’an tells us that human beings will be losers and they shall never prosper unless they stand for truth and justice and are willing to suffer with patience all the hurdles and difficulties for the cause of truth and justice. Someone said it rightly, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Freedom, justice and liberty are not given by the powerful and mighty as charity to the poor and the weak; they need a lot of struggle, patience and steadfastness.

Muslims in the world are facing many challenges, but wherever we are we must struggle for justice, human dignity and human rights for all people. There are about two billion Muslims in the world today. There are 58 countries where Muslims constitute a majority.

Allah has been very gracious and kind to these

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lands and filled them with rich resources. They have everything they need to grow and become strong and prosperous. There are a lot of good people in the Muslim world. We have millions of individuals who are very pious and righteous Muslims. You will not find in any religious community and culture as many people, who pray, fast, go to pilgrimage, as you have among Muslims. You will not find in any community as many people who avoid adultery, alcoholism and indecencies as you have among Muslims. However, in spite of all these traits of individual goodness, we have problems of establishing just civic societies. Our states in particular do not practice justice, human dignity and human rights. Those who are powerful among us devour the rights of the weak and poor.

We should be thankful to Allah that there are many people who are aware of these problems and are willing to work and sacrifice for these noble values and principles of Islam.

May Allah bless them and give them success. This struggle is not easy; it means sacrifices, patience and steadfastness. It appears that they are failing and they shall not succeed. However, as Muslims we should know that the criteria of success and failure in Islam are not whether you win or lose, whether you achieve or do not achieve. The criterion for success or failure according to the Qur’an is whether you stand for right cause or for wrong cause. The job of the true believers is to work, sincerely, with wisdom and persistence. The results are in the hands of Allah. The last few ayat of Surah al-Ra’d say: Whether We let you [Prophet] see part of what We have promised them, or cause you to die [before that], your duty is only to deliver the message: the Reckoning is Ours. Do they not see how We come to the land shrinking its borders? Allah decides—no one can reverse His decision—and He is swift in reckoning. Those before them also schemed, but the overall scheme belongs to Allah: He knows what each soul does. In the end, the disbelievers will find out who will have the excellent home. (Al-Ra’d 13:40-43) (Khutbah at ISOC – Shawwal 16, 1434/ August 23, 2013)

Chapter 3,Verses 103 to 104 And hold fast together, unto the bond with God, and do not draw apart from one another. And remember the blessings which God has bestowed upon you: how, when you were enemies, He brought your hearts together, so that through His blessing you became brethren; and [how, when] you were on the brink of a fiery abyss [ 1 ], He saved you from it. In this way God makes clear His messages unto you, so that you might find guidance, and that there might grow out of you a community [of people] who invite unto all that is good, and enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong: and it is they, they who shall attain to a happy state!

Chapter 3,Verses 108 to 109 These are God’s messages: We convey them unto thee, setting forth the truth, since God wills no wrong to His creation. And unto God belongs all that is in the heavens and all that is on this earth; and all things go back to God [as their source].

Chapter 3,Verses 144 And Muhammad is only an apostle; all the [other] apostles have passed away before him: if, then, he dies or is slain, will you turn about on your heels [ 2 ] ? But he that turns about on his heels can in no wise harm God – whereas God will requite all who are grateful [to Him]. ____________________________ Translator’s Notes [ 1 ] Literally, “a pit of fire” – a metaphor of the sufferings which are the inescapable consequence of spiritual ignorance. The reminder of their one time mutual enmity is an allusion to man’s lot on earth, from which only God’s guidance can save him. [ 2 ] In its wider implication this verse re-states the fundamental Islamic doctrine that adoration is due to God alone, and that no human being – not even a prophet – may have any share in it. It was this very passage of the Qur’an which Abu Bakr, the first Caliph recited immediately after the Prophet’s death, when many faint-hearted GEMS, P28

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SPORTS SPORTS

FEBRUARY PAKISTAN FEBRUARY5, 5, 2016 2016 –-PAKISTAN LINKLINK – P27

New Zealand Beat Pakistan in Nail-Biter, Win Series 2-0

AUCKLAND: A record partnership by Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson gave New Zealand victory with two balls to spare in a tense third one-dayer against Pakistan in Auckland recently.

The three-wicket win in the rainabridged match also wrapped up the series for New Zealand 2-0.

Initially set a target of 291 to win, New Zealand made a disastrous start with Brendon McCullum out for a first-ball duck.

But Guptill and Williamson restored order with a 159-run stand, a New Zealand ODI record for the second wicket, to set the side up before a lengthy rain delay shortened the match by seven overs.

When play resumed, New Zealand were set a revised target of 53

off 45 balls, which they reached with two balls to spare and with the help of a contentious umpire's call.

With 27 balls remaining and New Zealand still 38 runs short of their target, Corey Anderson appeared to have been caught behind but was given not out and Pakistan had used up their review.

The ODI series win added to New Zealand's golden summer after they also beat Pakistan 2-1 in the Twenty20s and beat Sri Lanka in Tests, ODIs and Twenty20s.

In the decider against Pakistan, Azhar Ali won the toss and opted to bat first which initially proved productive.

While Babar Azam and Mohammad Hafeez were together it looked like they would threaten the

India Win Off Last Ball Against Australia SYDNEY: In a stunning run chase India won their third and final Twenty20 match against Australia off the last ball recently to take the series 3-0.

Australia made a formidable 197 for five but India replied with 200 for three against an inexperienced attack.

They needed 17 to win off the last over and Suresh Raina hit a boundary off the final ball for victory.

Stand-in Australian skipper Shane Watson, who had scored an unbeaten century and also claimed the vital wicket of Shikhar Dhawan, appeared to have won his side the match when he conceded just five runs from the 19th over.

But rookie bowler Andrew Tye (0-51) could not handle the pressure in the 20th. The first two balls went for a four and six from Yuvraj Singh (15 not out), paving the way for Raina's last-ball heroics.

Raina should have been stumped by debutant Cameron Bancroft off the first ball he faced from young spinner Cameron Boyce (2-28), and

made the most of his good fortune to score 49 off 25 balls.

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli again led the Indian batting, both posting half-centuries.

For much of the chase India looked to have the target under control after taking full advantage of some wayward bowling by paceman Shaun Tait (0-46). But Sharma (52) and Kohli (50) both fell to Boyce as the match tightened up.

Kohli, named man of the series, was thrilled to have completed a clean sweep of the T20s after India lost the one-day international series.

"We wanted to finish off well and get a clean sweep and we've done it," he said.

The much-maligned Watson led from the front for Australia in a masterful solo performance.

He probably played himself into Australia's squad for the upcoming Twenty20 World Cup with his unbeaten 124 from 71 balls, the second-highest score in the format at international level.

Eden Park ODI innings record of 340.

Even with Hafeez back in the pavilion, Pakistan were 207-3 with 20 overs remaining.

But they were soon to run out of steam with their last six wickets falling for 63 runs and they were all out for 290 with 15 balls remaining.

McCullum's comeback was very brief after being sidelined for five weeks by a back complaint.

The first ball he faced from Mohammad Amir was hooked to long leg where Mohammad Irfan took a smart catch on the run.

Enter Williamson to partner Guptill in a record stand, two better than the previous best 157 which Guptill had set with McCullum four years ago against Zimbabwe.

Azhar removed the pair in the space of eight deliveries.

Guptill was first to go for 82 caught at point by Hafeez, and Williamson was stumped for 84.

Azhar may consider himself a part-time bowler but showed all the guile of a career leg-spinner when he outwitted Williamson charging down the wicket by getting the ball through to wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed.

Henry Nicholls, who set up the first ODI win, and Grant Elliott both fell cheaply as New Zealand slipped from 165-1 to 210-5.

Lusty hitting from Anderson with 35 off 29 narrowed the gap and with six required off the last over, Mitchell Santner hit boundaries off the first and fourth deliveries to get New Zealand home. J

Sania Mirza, Martina Hingis Win Australian Open Doubles Title MELBOURNE: World number one doubles pairing Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza clinched their first Australian Open doubles title together with a 7-6(1) 6-3 victory over Czech pair Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka.

It was the 12th grand slam women´s doubles title for Hingis while the third for India´s Mirza, all of which have come with the Swiss in the last year.

The pair, who has now won 36 successive doubles matches, are also the reigning Wimbledon and US Open champions.

"Thanks to my partner, we have had an incredible year," Mirza said in a courtside interview. "We keep going and it´s great to have all these records with you."

Both pairs were broken four times each in the first set before Mirza sealed it in the tiebreak after 62 minutes when Hradecka sent a forehand service return long over the baseline.

Hingis, who was knocked out by Mirza and Croatia´s Ivan Dodig in the mixed doubles quarter-finals, took a medical time out at the end of the first set to have treatment to her right shoulder, but did not appear troubled.

Hradecka dropped serve in the first and fifth games of the second set, to give the top seeds a 4-1 lead, and while Mirza lost her next service game they never looked like relinquishing control with Hingis dominant at the net.

The Swiss was then broken while serving for the title, though they sealed it on their fourth championship point when Hradecka´s running forehand sailed over the baseline, the third time she was broken in the set.

"You have won two grand slam doubles so you were very tough," Hingis said of the Czech pair.

"I know everyone will say break, break, break but you guys have the best returns in doubles." J

India, Kohli Top T20 Rankings

Aamir Likely to Get PCB Central Contract

KARACHI: Indian batsman Virat Kohli's excellent run of form in the just-concluded series against Australia has allowed him to hold on to the status of world's numberone ranked Twenty20 International batsman in the latest ICC player rankings for T20 batsmen, which were released recently.

Kohli was the leading runscorer in the series with 199 runs, including a top score of 90.The Indian Test captain was undoubtedly one of the players who shaped India's series win, allowing it to replace the West Indies as the top-ranked T20 side in the latest ICC T20 Championship table.

Australia's opener Aaron Finch has retained his second position in the batsmen's rankings, while Shane Watson, who captained in the Sydney T20 and scored an unbeaten 124, has vaulted places to 11th. He is now just 13 points away from returning into the top 10, his best ranking, of course, was number-one which he achieved in 2012.

In the player rankings for T20 bowlers, India's Ravindra Jadeja has returned to the table in 18th position, while Watson has stormed up 11 places to 25th spot.

The T20 Championship table now has India in the top position, while Australia has dropped six places to eighth.

India now leads second-ranked West Indies by two points.

Pakistan is at the seventh place after losing their last series against New Zealand. J

KARACHI: Tainted Pakistan left-arm pacer Mohammad Aamir is under the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) consideration for a central contracted, just one month after his comeback to international cricket following a five-year ban for spot fixing. Reliable sources in the PCB were quoted as saying recently that PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan would decide on whether Aamir should be given a central contract later this week. "But the national selectors and team management have indicated to the board they believe it will help Aamir's rehabilitation and reintegration process and enhance his credibility if he is included in the contracts list," sources added.

Aamir was given special relaxation by the International Cricket Council (ICC) last April to resume playing domestic cricket before his spot fixing ban expired in September, 2015. The youngster impressed everyone with a series of good bowling performances in domestic cricket and in the Bangladesh Premier League. He was recalled to the national team for the T20 and ODI series in New Zealand last month.

"Everyone is impressed with the way Aamir kept on improving with each match in New Zealand despite being under pressure because of the taunts and insults directed at him in the matches and even otherwise when he went outside the hotel," the source said. Sources said Aamir was likely to be given category C in the central contracts which carries a monthly retainer of close to Rs.200,000 besides the usual match fees and other perks and bonuses.

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PAKISTAN

P28 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016 GEMS FROM P25

Muslims thought that Islam itself had come to an end; but as soon as Abu Bakr added, “Behold, whoever has worshipped Muhammad may know that Muhammad has died; but whoever worships God may know that God is ever-living, and never dies”, all confusion was stilled.

BATTLEGROUNDS FROM P24

soldiers.

The Crimean War of the mid19th century, a conflict a bit closer to our modern moment, saw a similar mishmash of identities and loyalties.

Algerian soldiers were conscripted into the French army; Tatar Muslims were in the Russian ranks; all sorts of Christians -- including Cossacks, Romanian militias and Greek doctors -- were in the service of the Ottomans.

The point is not to romanticize this past -- which, in any event, was rather bloody and brutal. But it’s worth bearing in mind these historical footnotes when thinking about the ideological divides and political rhetoric of the present.

“Strategically choosing when to talk about religious differences and when to keep quiet is the oldest trick in history,” Almond writes. It’s a pretty useful tactic in politics, too.

(Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York) TTP FROM P15

He is now acting as an independent commander and even introduced himself as the leader of the Taliban in the Darra Adam Khel region in a recent interview with a foreign radio that indicates his serious differences with the central leadership. This is the first time he has introduced himself in this manner, the commander added.

Umar, who also recently released a video along with the alleged BKU attackers, did not mention the TTP chief in the recording, although he had mentioned and praised Fazlullah in his previous video messages after the Peshawar school and Badhaber PAF base attacks.

The TTP spokesman did not respond to a query sent to him on the group’s official email address if any action had been taken against Umar for the massacre of over 20 students and staff at the BKU. Some Taliban sources doubt the authority of the TTP leadership to take action against Umar, who is considered among a few powerful commanders still attached to the outlawed group. He was among the three senior leaders associated with Fazlullah at a time when the TTP faced a split after the death of Hakimullah Mehsood in late 2013, a Taliban leader says. The other senior leaders were Khalid Haqqani, the TTP deputy chief and Sheharyar Mehsud, who led a splinter faction of the Mehsud tribe Taliban.

DESKS FROM P15

External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had objected to this when US Ambassador David Mulford paid a farewell call on him.

“He expressed his deep concern about a special envoy with a broad regional mandate that could be interpreted to include Kashmir, and shared his hope that the US-India relationship not be viewed through the lens of regional crises,” Mr Mulford recorded of Mr Mukherjee’s message. (http://bit.ly/1QAu279).

MALEEHA FROM P11

On Jan 30, 2011, Secretary Clinton asked her aide Lauren C. Jiloty to print the mail. “Please print,” she wrote in the email with the subject “latest from Pakistan on Kayani 3.0”.

While most emails about Pakistan have been heavily redacted, one does contain the entire text of the July 3, 2012 phone call between Secretary Clinton and Pakistan’s then foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar.

“I once again reiterated our deepest regrets for the tragic incident in Salala last November. I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives,” Ms Clinton writes.

On Nov 26, 2011, US helicopters and planes attacked a Pakistani military post at Salala, near the Afghan border, and killed 28 Pakistani soldiers. The incident further strained already tense relations between Pakistan and the United States and Islamabad demanded an apology from Washington over this incident.

While Washington did issue a brief statement regretting the incident, the email contains details that have never been disclosed publicly.

“Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives.

We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military,” Secretary Clinton wrote.

“We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again,” she said.

“As I told the former prime minister of Pakistan days after the Salala incident, America respects Pakistan’s sovereignty and is committed to working together in pursuit of shared objectives on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect,” she said.

Ms Clinton said that in this telephone call, foreign minister Khar and she also talked “about the importance of taking coordinated action against terrorists who threaten Pakistan, the US and the region.”

MOSQUE FROM P20

expressed “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith.” Two months later, Mr Obama spoke to the Muslim world from Cairo University and emphasized that there are mosques and Muslims in every state in America.

“So let there be no doubt,” he said, “Islam is a part of America.”

But Mr. Obama’s defense of Islam has been constrained by a suspicion in the United States that he is secretly a Muslim himself, even though he has said he is a Christian and has regularly attended church services.

In 2010, Mr Obama avoided for weeks addressing a battle over a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near the World Trade Center in Manhattan before finally using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to express strong support for the project.

But in the final year of his presidency, Mr Obama has lost much of his reticence in addressing issues he cares about.

Within days of the emergence of Republican legislative proposals in Congress to essentially bar all Syrian refugees and of language demonizing Muslim Americans after the Paris attacks, Mr Obama told reporters at a news conference in Turkey that such talk was “shameful.”

“That’s not American; it’s not who we are,” he said.

In his final State of the Union address last month, Mr Obama returned to this subject.

“When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or our fellow

citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called names, that doesn’t make us safer,” he said.

“That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world.”

Last week, in a visit to the Israeli Embassy in Washington to celebrate those who saved Jews during the Holocaust, Mr Obama, whose 2009 Cairo speech was not popular in Israel, said that “an attack on any faith is an attack on all of our faiths.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a presidential scholar, likened Mr Obama’s mosque visit and increasingly urgent warnings against anti-Muslim language to warnings made by two other presidents at the end of their terms.

“George Washington warned his countrymen against the increasing power of factions which kindle animosity of one against the other while Eisenhower warned against the unwarranted influence of the military industrial complex,” she wrote in an email. – Courtesy The New York Times OBAMA FROM P1

parents, pointing out the mother of the premed college student who introduced him at the podium.

“There are voices who are constantly claiming you have to choose between your identities… Do not believe them…You fit in here. Right here. You’re right where you belong.

You’re part of America, too,” Obama said, his volume rising as he said he was speaking in particular at that moment to young Muslim Americans.

“You’re not Muslim or American, you’re Muslim and American. And don’t grow cynical.”

While Obama has multiple times, including in the last few months, spoken out against anti-Muslim rhetoric, Wednesday’s visit was the longest and most direct such effort, an intimate conversation between a faith community and a president who has at times seemed to put himself at arm’s length. It had the feeling of a pep talk and was interrupted many times by fervent applause.

The speech was one of several almost back-to-back, high-profile Obama addresses to US faith communities, talks he seems to be using to focus on religious tolerance during an election season where faith often comes up in fiery contexts. One week ago he spoke at the Israeli Embassy, saying the impulse to stigmatize people of other faiths is “deep within us.” On Thursday he will address one of the most high-profile evangelical events, the National Prayer Breakfast.

Obama did speak Wednesday about Islamist violence, saying Muslims need to play a key role in how their faith is presented.

Another report says President Obama on Wednesday offered an impassioned rebuttal of “inexcusable” Republican election-year rhetoric against Muslims as he made his first trip to an American mosque, seven years into his presidency.

Invoking the Prophet Mohammed and hailing the tolerance shown

by American political icons from Thomas Jefferson to Dwight Eisenhower, Obama hit out at anti-Islamic sentiment that is “not who we are.”

“We’ve heard inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans that has no place in our country,” he said, lauding Muslim-Americans who were sports heroes, entrepreneurs and the architect behind the skyscrapers of Chicago.

Obama said: “An attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths.”

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He also criticized the media and Hollywood, which he said portray Muslims in a narrow way.

“Our television shows should have Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security,” he said.

SUMMIT FROM P1

Nuclear Security Summits have taken place in 2010, 2102 and 2104. This will be the fourth and final summit as President Obama completes his final term this year.

“Such high-level participation by Pakistan manifests the importance attached to this issue and as a reflection of its strong commitment to nuclear security as a nuclear weapon state,” Ambassador Jilani told Dawn.

The summit meeting will discuss the future of the nuclear security summit process and will determine pathways to secure and build on the achievements of the whole process.

“The United States has been very appreciative of Pakistan’s participation in these meetings and has periodically recognized Pakistan’s active engagement with the global community on the issue of nuclear security,” Ambassador Jilani said.

In a policy statement on Pakistan’s nuclear program, the US Department expressed confidence that the country was “well aware of its responsibilities with respect to nuclear security and has secured its nuclear arsenal accordingly”. - Dawn OPPOSITION FROM P1

Sadiq and Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani are bound to convene sessions of both houses within 14 days.

Besides seeking a discussion on the imposition of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) 1952 on PIA, opposition members in the National Assembly have also included the issue of “insufficient reduction” in the oil prices on the agenda submitted with the notice.

Talking to reporters outside Parliament House after a meeting of opposition parties, PPP’s Syed Khurshid Shah held the federal government directly responsible for the “murder” of at least two PIA employees during the protest in Karachi.

“The rulers will have to answer... we will not let it become another Model Town incident,” Mr Shah said in an apparent reference to the killing of Pakistan Awami Tehrik activists by police action in Lahore in 2014. No one has been held responsible for the incident.

Flanked by PTI’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi and JI’s Sahibzada Tariqullah, Mr Shah said the government would have to identify the ones responsible for the “murders” of PIA employees. “We will ask the government to expose those responsible for the killings. Is it the interior minister or the information minister?” Mr Shah asked.

The PPP leader said the information minister had made ‘provocative remarks’ against protesting PIA employees in his statement to the media on Monday. He warned that if the federal government used Rangers to kill people in the provinces, there could be grave consequences.

Terming the Essential Services Maintenance Act “a draconian law”, Mr Shah said it seemed that the soul of former military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq had entered the parliament.

Mr Qureshi asked the speaker to convene the requisitioned session immediately, without waiting for the two-week deadline, as the country was “on fire”. He said the PTI had already given a call for a countrywide demonstration on Feb 6 to protest

against the government’s privatization and economic policies.

INAUGURATION FROM P1

challenges, and appreciated the army chief for his interest in the project.

Pakistan and China signed an agreement on April 20, 2015 to commence work on CPEC development projects worth over $46 billion, which approximates 20 per cent of Pakistan’s annual GDP. The corridor aims to connect Gwadar port in Balochistan to China’s Xinjiang region via a network of highways, railways and pipelines spread over 3,000km.

PIA FROM P1

protest outside major airports across the country, which came as the federal government invoked the Essential Services (Maintenance) Act, 1952, in the PIA for six months.

PIA representatives at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport, Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International Airport, Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport and Peshawar’s Bacha Khan International Airport confirmed that all domestic and international flights scheduled for Wednesday had been cancelled.

“All PIA flights have been suspended indefinitely,” said a PIA inquiry representative at Lahore airport.

He said two PIA flights from London and Milan landed at the Lahore airport on Wednesday morning, although services of “employees of a private company” were used to handle the arriving flights.

PIA Joint Action Committee (JAC) spokesman Nasrullah Khan said employees had resumed protest outside all major airports in the country and there has been no change in their demands.

As news of the deaths of two protesting PIA employees in a clash with security forces spread on Tuesday evening, the national flag carrier’s flight operations across the country began shutting down in solidarity with the protesters, officials said.

Director General Sindh Rangers Major Bilal Akbar has formed an investigation committee to launch a probe into the killing of PIA workers during the anti-privatization protest, DawnNews reported.

The committee, headed by a brigadier rank officer, will look into the case keeping in view all the aspects which resulted in the death of the two employees.

‘Four PIA employees missing’: JAC spokesman Nasrullah Khan claimed on Wednesday that four PIA employees “went missing” last night. Among the four are Deputy Convener JAC and President of People’s Unity Union Hidayatullah Khan, Senior Vice President of People’s Unity Zameer Chandio, and two employees Saifullah and Mansoor.

The committee will approach the police to register First Information Reports against their disappearance, he said.

Later addressing a press conference in the evening, JAC Chairman Sohail Baloch said “the four members are still missing” and that the PPP Karachi President Najmi Alam has said that they are not in the custody of the police.

“Alam said that if the ‘missing members’ are in the custody of Rangers or any other security agency, the government will try to bring them back by the evening,” said Baloch.

“This will decide our future course of action. If the government thinks this is becoming a law and order situation, then it should make efforts to resolve it,” maintained the JAC chairman.

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P30 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016

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FEBRUARY 5, 2016 - PAKISTAN LINK

ENTERTAINMENT

ENTERTAINMENT & LIFESTYLE

T

wo Pakistani actresses make their debut in Bollywood this year -

FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – PAKISTAN LINK – P31

Mahira Khan with Raees on July 3 and Mawra Hocane with Sanam Teri Kasam on February 5. Before any-

one compared the two, Mawra's gone and said that "there is no competition" between her and Mahira.

"When Mahira's show Humsafar released, I was not even an actor," recalls the 23year-old Mawra. "I look up to her. She is stunning and truly gorgeous in the real sense.

There is no competition at all.

She has been longer in the industry. It has been only twoand-half years for me."

"I feel great that we will be debuting in Bollywood in the same year," she continued. "I am really proud of her. It will be wonderful because we both will be nominated as debutantes and that is something fantastic."

"I feel great that we will be debuting in Bollywood in the same year," Mawra says of Mahira. "I am really proud of her.

Mawra also shared why she signed on to the film Sanam Teri Kasam. However, her logic has us a little confused: "[The directors] Radhika and Vinay had called me and they started the narration on Skype. The moment they said that it's a story of a simple, bespectacled girl I knew I would be doing it.

Because when you have a girl with spectacles, you will also have her transformation. I will get to show both the sides. I was on board instantly," she said.

The young starlet can't stop gushing about the opportunity she's bagged: "No one my age has come to India and done a film. Nobody has been 'launched' in that sense. I am extremely grateful that I am a part of this film."

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P32 – PAKISTAN LINK – FEBRUARY 5, 2016

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