An Open Letter to My Fellow Pakistanis in the Post-Osama World

Link to Original Article at The Huffington Post.

"Only 3000 Americans died in that 9/11 drama. But they have killed many more in response."

Fair enough. The young, educated English-speaking Pakistani man who sent me these words may have thought 9/11 was a "drama," but at least he got his numbers right -- even if he missed the bigger point.

He was speaking out in response to popular Pakistani journalist and TV anchor Kamran Khan's recent fiery monologue stressing that we Pakistanis must accept the fact that our country now holds the status of the largest and most notorious terrorism haven in the world.

"Unless we recognize the disease, how are we going to cure it?" asked Khan, clearly frustrated.

"For the Pakistani people to be saved from this life-threatening illness, it is imperative that instead of feeding them the American/Indian/Israeli conspiracy lollipop, they should be told that in just the last three years, 3900 Pakistanis have been killed in 225 suicide attacks."

Reviewing some of the major Islamist terrorist attacks in the last 25 years, Khan went on to show how all of them revealed some kind of connection to Pakistan, whether at the planning stage, training stage, execution stage or as the place where the perpetrators were eventually caught or killed.

And on the attacks carried out within Pakistan, he emphatically noted that neither mosques, nor marketplaces, nor schools were spared.



That not a single Indian, American or Israeli was killed.

That every one of the victims was a Pakistani, the vast majority Muslim.

So, by pointing out that "only 3000" Americans died on 9/11, the young man angered by Khan's broadcast was playing the body count game that many Pakistanis often do at introspection-demanding times like these. While it isn't wholly insignificant to cite, say, the number of civilians that have died as a result of the legitimately irresponsible Iraq war, the intent behind citing these body count figures serves to deflect the blame elsewhere -- and it often works.

This time, however, things are a little different.

After decades of getting away with blaming "foreign hands" for virtually every minor inconvenience, Pakistan has reached a point -- following the wretched failure of our government, intelligence agency and military leaders in the wake of the bin Laden operation -- where for once, the rest of the world's fingers are also pointed squarely at us.

The situation is reminiscent of Kurt Cobain's tragic, pre-suicidal poetry from Territorial Pissings:

"Just because you're paranoid
Don't mean we're not after you."

And this is where my young friend missed the point.

Focusing all of our attention on the drone attacks, Raymond Davis and India -- while denying that the majority of Pakistani deaths have been the result of our very own, home-bred jihadis -- is not going to reduce the death count.

Continuing to burn more American flags, blow up more KFC restaurants (with Pakistanis inside!) and destroying more Pakistani property every time we're angry about a "foreign incursion" -- is not going to reduce the death count.

Elevating the assassin of the elected governor of the country's largest province to the status of a hero and cheering on the acquittal of Mukhtar Mai's rapists, while labeling a convicted terrorist the "daughter of the nation" -- is not going to reduce the death count.

And turning back to Allah yet again, considering all the affection He has shown us recently -- devastating floods, multiple earthquakes, terrorism, bombings, political violence, assassinations, floggings, victimization of minorities, a dismal economy and the unprecedented corruption that has earned us a spot among the top 10 failed states in the world -- is not going to reduce the death count.

Here's the thing: it's understandable if you suffer a few blows here and there, learn from your mistakes, fix them and move on. But when you've been a perpetual, whining victim for over thirty years, continuously deteriorating, it is more likely representative of an utter lack of introspection -- a collective malaise -- and you probably need to start sharing some of the blame.

So, for once, let's please forget about who is an "agent" of who. Let's not allow every conversation after an incident to devolve into random whodunit speculation. Let's stop trying to focus on who killed how many people and why.

That's not in our control. Let's work with what's in our control.

Fewer people die in America because the U.S. government looks out for its people and protects them around the world. They send former presidents like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to rescue captured Americans from places like North Korea. Israel often releases prisoners -- including convicted murderers -- in exchange for the dead bodies of its soldiers. That is how you respect the citizens of your country.

It is not America's job to ensure the safety of Pakistani lives -- they're just looking out for their interests like anyone else. It is the job of Pakistanis to do that.

Let's direct the jihad where it needs to be directed: against the bearded mullahs that have done more damage to the Pakistani and Muslim identity than any American or Jewish "conspiracy" could ever hope to.

Let's acknowledge that the reason that democracy has never properly taken off in Pakistan is because it has always been tainted with military influence and theocracy, against the wishes of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who supported a secular, democratic state. Let's move to separate religion from government.

And finally, let's not reflexively call everyone who does make an effort to be introspective and criticize the country an "agent" of India, the CIA or Mossad. Khan's point is well-taken: if a loved one had a terminal illness and was deteriorating, or had a bad drug addiction and was in denial, wouldn't you stage an intervention to help them? How do you treat a disease without a diagnosis?

Please -- let's stop with the conspiracy theories. I understand it's a difficult addiction to kick (considering Pakistan's president himself thinks that the U.S. was behind the Taliban attacks), but we have a clear choice:

We can do something like what Japan did after Hiroshima and Nagasaki [grow to become a leading global industrial power], what the Jews did after the Holocaust [pull themselves back up and go on to earn 36% of all American Nobel Prizes while making up less than 3% of the population] or what the Africans did after centuries of slavery and oppression [having one of their descendants go on to be elected to the White House].

Or -- we can continue to burn more flags and effigies, revere shoe-throwers and the assassins of our governors as our heroes, lay our lives down to protect ridiculous issues like the blasphemy law and keep shouting "Amreeka Murdabad!" (Death to America) slogans -- and see which country goes "murda" first.

It really is now or never. Kamran Khan has a very good point.

Religious Fundamentalism Spreads... Beyond Islam

In the same week that Hindu fundamentalists obliterated plans to build a Charlie Chaplin statue, on the grounds that Chaplin was a Christian who made no contribution to India, video clips of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Varun Gandhi surfaced online, showing him glorifyingly speaking of "cutting the throats" of Muslims, and mocking their "scary" names.

Meanwhile, the Hindu nationalist group Sri Ram Sena vowed to continue its attacks on women drinking in bars and couples courting in public -- expanding their target population to include female British tourists in the city of Goa.

In the Varun Gandhi videos, Hindu extremist groups like the Taliban-inspired anti-statue, anti-woman Sri Ram Sena may feel as if they've found a high-profile voice: Varun is the grandson of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, a declared secularist and atheist who couldn't have been more removed from his descendant's crazed religion-fueled nationalist diatribes.

It isn't just the Hindus. Mere days after ending the controversy over his lifting of the excommunication of Holocaust denier and 9/11 conpiracy theorist Bishop Richard Williamson, Pope Benedict XVI decided to elaborate further on his view that abstinence works 100% of the time as a birth control method (right, ask The Virgin Mary how well that worked for her) by declaring that the use of condoms aggravates the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Now, the Pope has publicly pulled several other Ahmedinejads in the past. He has written that homosexuality is an "intrinsic moral evil" and an "objective disorder". He has also claimed that non-Catholics are in a "gravely deficient situation", without the "fullness of the means of salvation". Most recently, the Vatican declared its support for the Brazilian Church's decision to excommunicate a group of doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year old girl -- pregnant with twins -- as a result of being raped by her stepfather.

The Pope's homophobia and bigoted statements about non-Catholics who don't necessarily think Jesus is their savior aren't all that different from Varun Gandhi's Muslim-bashing -- which, in turn, isn't all that different from the sentiments that fuel the ideology of the Taliban. There are millions of people in the world who think that way.

However, these two examples are unique: one of these men is the most significant spiritual and religious leader in the world, and the other belongs to a family that gave the world's largest democracy three of its most legendary prime ministers, including its first.

So, is Talibanization going mainstream? To religions beyond Islam?

Well, we know that the Catholic authorities aren't throwing acid on teenage girls' faces like the Taliban do. That, actually, is something that Jerusalem's Jewish Haredi Modesty Patrol did to a 14 year old girl last year. Her crime? Wearing pants. In the same week as the Pope's condom controversy and Varun's inflammatory videos made news, a member of the Modesty Patrol was sentenced to four years in prison in a separate incident -- a sexual gang assault on a divorced woman.

Although it's tempting to dismiss these incidents as aberrations, religious extremism and bigotry do seem to be going mainstream in Israel. On the same day that the Modesty Patrol mercenary was sentenced, news broke that Avigdor Lieberman, the right-wing hardliner whose Israel Beiteinu party had a strong showing in Israel's recent elections, is in consideration as Israel's next foreign minister.

Lieberman is a man who has, among other things, openly advocated the expulsion of Israeli Arabs from the Promised Land, and offered to provide buses to transport Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea, where he has recommended drowning them.

More disturbingly, Lieberman suggested in 2006 that Israel should conduct itself in Gaza like Russia did in Chechnya, that is, without any concern for civilian deaths. This moves the issue beyond the realm of aberrant extremist ideology, not only because Lieberman is now a prominent leader in the Knesset possibly destined to become Israel's foreign minister, but because his suggestion was put into practice in a significant way during Israel's recent offensive in Gaza.

In last week's investigation into the Israel-Gaza conflict, IDF soldiers talked about how they were encouraged to kill Palestinian civilians. They also described how the assault was framed as a religious war by military rabbis, who distributed literature to the troops saying among other things that this was a holy war, that "we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land" and that they needed to "fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land." Somehow, Israeli authorities appear to be drawing inspiration -- like Hamas -- from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Taliban.

Meantime, the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv sold hundreds of T-shirts, caps, and other items of clothing custom-made for Israel soldiers, featuring pictures of dead children and bombed mosques. Included was one of a dead baby clutching his teddy bear, his mother weeping at his side, bearing the inscription, "Better Use Durex".

In Canada, a different aspect of religious fundamentalism surfaced last week, when Federal Science and Technology Minister Gary Goodyear, a central figure in the controversy over the science funding crunch in the country, was asked whether he believed in evolution. He refused to answer. "I'm not going to answer that question," he said. "I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate." The Pope, I'm guessing, would have been a little more unequivocal in his response.

These events, most of which occurred in the span of one week, are reflective of a dangerous resurgence of religious fundamentalism in non-Islamic countries. The most perplexing part of it is that it isn't just limited to a few seemingly random incidents fueled by fringe extremist groups. The characters in these stories -- the Pope, a member of India's Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, a powerful Knesset leader, and a Canadian federal minister -- are influential, mainstream figures whose ideas and decisions impact the lives of billions of people every day.

In the early days after 9/11, a lot of false dichotomies were created in an attempt to place the attacks in some sort of context. It was said that terrorism has no place in Islam. That it is not religion, but the "cultural distortion" and "misinterpretation" of it that's the problem. That Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. That Sharia law has nothing to do with Islam. That all religions preach love and peace.

Unfortunately for the apologists, people who couldn't reconcile these assertions with the events they were witnessing around the world found it easier to see through them than ever before.

The Torah, Bible, Quran, and other ancient religious scriptures are easily available online in their entirety, complete with translations in multiple languages, by multiple translators, supplemented with commentary. Easy -- and searchable -- access to these these texts has opened them up to intense scrutiny, and the anonymity-driven confrontation-friendly forum provided by the internet has resulted in unprecedented, taboo-shattering, critical discussions on their contents.

One consequence of this is that religious people who believe that the scripture of their respective faith is truly the word of God -- the majority of whom only selectively familiar with it -- have found reinforcement for their beliefs.

For example, it isn't difficult to sell the idea of a holy war to Israeli soldiers when passages from the Torah such as Shmot 23:31-33 instruct them to drive non-Jewish inhabitants out of the land promised to them by God himself (described in detail as "from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines"), and to "make no covenant with them." This gives some hefty, divine weight to Avigdor Lieberman's arguments, and shatters the misconception that Zionism is merely the "politicization" of Judaism.

While the religious Jewish community has remained adherent to these scriptural accounts of the Promised Land, it has, for the most part, been quick to brush aside other passages from the Torah that advocate, for instance, death by stoning for everything from not being a virgin on your wedding night (Devarim 22:20-21) to blasphemy (Vayikra 24:16). Interestingly, stoning people to death is a practice associated more widely with Islamic law, probably because it is still practiced widely in many parts of the Muslim world. This is not without reason: while not explicitly mentioned in the Quran, stoning is widely accepted as punishment for sins such as adultery in the hadith (traditions of the prophet Muhammad).

Also, even though the majority of Muslims are horrified by the idea of child marriage or domestic violence, both of these practices have strong footing in Islamic history and scripture, and it would be naive to dismiss them simply as "cultural distortions". By almost all accounts, Muhammad did take a nine year old bride as his eleventh wife; and beating your wife if you "fear disobedience" is permitted in Islamic scripture (Quran, verse 4:34). Other concepts like armed jihad against infidels (9:5) and resistance against Christians and Jews (5:51) are also present in the Quran.

The Christian Bible, which recognizes the five books of the Torah as the Old Testament, forms the basis for the beliefs of Pope Benedict XVI and evangelists like Pat Robertson about issues like homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13). And the aggression against women practiced by Indian extremist groups such as Sri Ram Sena has its roots in the sacred Hindu text Manu Smriti, which purportedly contains the word of Brahma, the god of creation, and allows men to have virtually complete, unfettered authority over women.

While this renewed interest in scripture has affirmed the beliefs of many, giving legitimacy to their extremist leanings and possibly even radicalizing them, it has also allowed skeptics, rationalists, and even some moderately religious people to question that which was previously unquestionable. Many who believed that it wasn't religion at fault but the people who "misinterpret" it, are beginning to ask whether it might actually be the other way around. And they're speaking out. How do you condemn the occupation of Palestinian lands and still defend the Bible or Torah -- which command it explicitly as an instruction from God -- as sacred books? Can you denounce a 47 year old Yemeni man's marriage to an 8 year old girl while you defend the prophet Muhammad's child marriage with an even wider age difference? If you speak out against the Torah/Old Testament-endorsed execution of gay men and stoning of non-virginal single women, does that make you anti-Semitic? Or a "Christophobe"?

Questions like this, which would easily have made one an outcast in the recent past -- or worse, invited a death fatwa -- are now being asked more frequently and more loudly. Most of the response to these completely legitimate and important questions has come in the form of ad hominem accusations of religious bigotry directed at the questioners, taking offense, and hurt feelings. Flawed terms like "Islamophobia" and "Christophobia" have emerged, and accusations of anti-Semitism are being flung around so loosely that the phrase is in danger of losing its deserved significance.

And this is where a fundamental distinction needs to be made.

Hating Jews, Muslims, or Christians for what they believe is clearly wrong. Criticizing the belief systems themselves, however, is not. Human beings have rights. Cultures, religions, and ideological belief systems do not.

This basic concept was sadly lost on the United Nations when it passed a non-binding anti-blasphemy resolution last year, curtailing any criticism of religious belief. The resolution, brought forth by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is a massive impediment in the fight against human rights abuses carried out under systems such as Islamic Sharia law. Rational, reasonable people worldwide are rightly outraged by this move to put ideology before human beings.

There is now a push by the OIC, a group of 57 Muslim countries, to make the resolution a binding one. But this isn't a one way street. Will Arab and Muslim countries still be able to criticize the Torah-supported Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory under the same legislation?

Or is Islam finally losing its long-held monopoly on fundamentalism?

Where is the Muslim Outrage over Darfur?

In a part of the world not far from the Middle East, there is a war-ravaged country whose government is supporting a brutal military offensive against a population of Muslims living on territory under its control.

According to UN estimates, 300,000 people have died in the conflict so far; the Coalition for International Justice put this number at almost 400,000 - and that was in 2005.

The United States has officially termed it a "genocide".

In July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan - who has funded and supported the Janjaweed militia that has carried out the murder and systematic rape of non-Arab African Muslims in Darfur - charging him with war crimes, genocide, murder, and crimes against humanity.

For five years, the Arab League was functionally silent.

But last year, they finally spoke out - against the head of the ICC's prosecutorial team against al-Bashir, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, slamming him for having an "unbalanced stance".

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), made up of 57 Islamic countries, issued a statement declaring its solidarity with al-Bashir, calling the indictment "unwarranted and unacceptable".

Less than a year later, at the Arab Summit held in Kuwait City January 19, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria called on other Arab countries to brand Israel a "terrorist state". Millions of Muslims worldwide voiced their outrage against Israel's military offensive in Gaza. Massive protests were organized in most major cities across the world. Real-time casualty counts were posted on Facebook statuses. I was asked to sign more petitions in support of Gaza in three weeks than I have for Darfur in five years.

Where are the large-scale protests and outrage from the Muslim community over the senseless deaths and rape of hundreds of thousands of poverty-ridden African Muslims?

Why is there such a glaring discrepancy between the Muslim world's response to the atrocities in Gaza and the atrocities in Darfur?

If the Darfur genocide was being carried out by Jews or Christians instead of Arab Muslims, would we see a different response?

Bush Pulls a Jeremiah - and Unites the Democrats

It's pretty obvious that Karl Rove has left the White House.

John McCain's association with George W. Bush is more of a concern to voters than Barack Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright: A Gallup poll conducted on May 1-3, 2008 shows that 33% of voters are less likely to vote for Obama because of the Wright association; however, more - 38% - are less likely to vote for McCain because of his Bush association. On top of that, 64% say that the Obama-Wright association won't affect their vote at all - significantly more than the 54% who say that the McCain-Bush association will not affect their vote.

Today, the reason for those dynamics is a little clearer.

Speaking to the Knesset (the legislature of Israel) in Jerusalem the morning after Israel's 60th anniversary of independence, Bush casually compared the intentions of Democrats, particularly Barack Obama - who support exercising diplomacy with the governments of countries like Iran and Venezuela - to those who wanted to "appease" the Nazis over sixty years ago.

The extremism of this allegation and its evident hypocrisy is reminiscent of the extremism and hypocrisy of Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright: Bush implied that Democrats will somehow be complicit in the imminent destruction of the United States or Israel because of their foreign policy strategy, just as Wright implied that America was complicit in the 9/11 attacks on its soil because of its foreign policy strategy.

The difference is, Bush said these words himself, in a foreign country, as the President of the United States, not the pastor of some church in Chicago. He has virtually handed the Democrats a loaded gun, with enough ammunition to last well into November.

Bush's comments have reportedly sent a wave of excitement through the Democratic party, particularly within the Obama campaign. He has not only managed to unite Democrats (many of whom didn't even agree with Obama's proposal to talk to Iran in the first place) and given them a platform to justifiably voice their outrage - including Joseph Biden calling the remarks "bullshit" - but also handed the Democrats an advantage in a debate in which most analysts felt they, especially Obama, were disadvantaged: foreign policy.

Here are the problems with what Bush said:

1. George W. Bush himself has not only held talks with, but openly negotiated with Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who is alleged to have sponsored the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. This diplomacy led to the successful end of hostilities between the two countries over Libya's nuclear program, which Gaddafi agreed to discontinue.

Also, among the three "Axis of Evil" countries Bush named in his State of the Union speech in 2002, North Korea is the only one that has openly conducted nuclear tests and possesses confirmed nuclear weapons. Again, the Bush administration has not only held talks with, but openly negotiated with Kim Jong Il, attaining reasonable success in the partial curtailment of the country's weapons proliferation program.

2. Speaking of the Axis of Evil, Iran is stronger now than it was before the Iraq war.

To go into Iraq - the only Axis of Evil member that actually did not have a declared nuclear program, not to mention a single nuclear weapon - all it took was a little unsubstantiated suspicion and a few convenience-based, selective intelligence reports. But despite several years of Iran's Ahmedinejad shooting off at the mouth about wiping Israel off the map, holding Holocaust denial conferences, directly threatening America, speaking at both the United Nations and Columbia University in New York, and most notably, adamantly continuing to pursue his country's nuclear program, America has barely taken any action.

Why?

Because the Bush administration has stretched the country's economic and military sources too thinly across the world, funding (on borrowed money, the majority from China) and fighting two wars, at least one of which can arguably be called a quagmire.

Ahmedinejad knows that no matter what he says or does, the United States is not in a position to do much more than slap sanctions on him, even that with restrictions, considering Iran's a pretty big oil producer. (By the way, China and Iran are strong allies - funding an intervention here won't exactly be a breeze.) So Ahmedinejad, Jong Il, and Hugo Chavez - also the head of a prominent oil-producing country just miles from the U.S. - can say all they want, as loudly as they want, and do all they want, because they know America can't come and get 'em. This has strengthened countries like Iran - and weakened the United States - probably indicating the need for a significant policy change.

3. Ronald Reagan, the darling of all of the Republican candidates this campaign season, helped bring the Cold War to an end through intelligent, tough diplomacy, not a stubborn refusal to speak to the USSR government.

4. Bringing up the Nazis wasn't a good idea on the part of Bush. Here's why:

The business dealings of Prescott Bush, W.'s grandfather, and father of George H. W. Bush, were the subject of a lawsuit brought forth against the Bush family a few years ago by two former Auschwitz slave laborers, alleging that Grandpa Prescott Bush, former Connecticut Senator and director of the Union Banking Corporation - whose assets were seized by the U.S. government during World War II - helped finance Adolf Hitler himself, aiding his rise to power.

This lawsuit from these two Holocaust survivors led to the unveiling of previously secret documents that shed light on the issue a short while before W. was up for re-election. Fortunately for W., the Dems didn't find it within themselves to Swift-Boat him at the time.

By the way - for those who are suspicious of this being left-wing propaganda, the network that was instrumental in digging out these documents, as evidenced on their own website, was Fox News: Click here.

Apparently, Senator Prescott Bush, founding officer, vice president, and director of the United Banking Corporation (UBC), was also managing partner for Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), a firm led by E. Roland Harriman - heavily invested in UBC, owning the majority of its shares - and his brother Averell, a former New York Governor.

BBH dealt closely with Fritz Thyssen, a German industrialist who significantly helped to finance Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, though he severed his relationship with him in the later part of the decade. The UBC was the primary hub for the US-based part of Thyssen's business, which is what led to the government's seizure of its assets during the war. Prescott Bush continued to work for the bank for long after America entered the war.

There is no more evidence that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazis than there is evidence that Barack Obama is sympathetic to Ahmedinejad or Hamas. But the Bush family's association - by money and just one degree of separation, to Adolf Hitler, with an ensuing multibillion dollar lawsuit from two Holocaust survivors - probably appears significantly stronger than some Hamas leader saying Obama would be a good leader for America.

The Democrats couldn't have dug a deeper hole for John McCain than George W. Bush has.

5. Finally, William E. Borah, the Idaho senator that Bush quoted in his speech as saying, "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided..." and credited with harboring a "foolish delusion" - was known to be a progressive politician; a maverick so known for his independent thinking that President Calvin Coolidge once remarked about his horseback riding, "It's hard to imagine Senator Borah going in the same direction as the horse."

Borah was renowned and often fiercely criticized for occasionally deviating from the party that he belonged to: The Republican Party. Good luck, John McCain.

George W. Bush has singlehandedly thrust himself ass-first into the 2008 campaign season and, in collaboration with some very amateur speechwriter(s), done the Democrats a huge favor.

It's pretty obvious that Karl Rove has left the White House.