As I see the images of lush green valleys of Swat and malakand,the army helicopter landing on beautiful hilltop,on great heights of Peochehar, my mind wanders to people,philosophers ,thinkers like Hegel, Marx.They were also trying to understand, find answers. passionate people,in quest of truth! Persons of significance in history are all people who did great scolarship in trying to find answers in relation to existence, and human condition...people like Marx, Hegel, ,they produced great works and questioned.
I am also trying to understand in my such a small capacity as to what is really happening to us Pakistanis.After reading books by Ahmed Rashid , Jason Burke and so many others who have written on the subject of Taleban and Islamists, I want to understand this concept,this movement as an ideology not with romantic inclination to justify or embrace it, but cold calculated non-west point of view. One thing I am clear of is that I would never ever be convinced of choosing any ideology that professes violence as a means of its popagation. It has to be intellectual debate and that is all.
As Dr Tariq Rahman explains in Dawn newspaper(14th May issue 0that there is a question that poor people are joining Taleban and there is a romantic urge to adrress this issue. He explained the answers in common man's language.(The irony is that English newspapers are read by such a small population and now these learned writers have to use simple plain language ,previously it was difficult ideas and language which the reader had to understand!).I was not so satisfied by the answers though I agree.
The debate now is intellectual!
Marx writes...that Proletariat is the class with chains which needs total redemption.He places the
redemption and humanity's freedom in economic terms. unlike Hegel whom he followed intellectually ,he does not bring the religion or suprahuman concept into his liberation and freedom theories. The Islamists or Taleban like groups are putting the Hegelian concept back into Marxian concepts. Their backers in our cities and many of our so called religious political parties justify that lack of oppotunity,poverty,etc are behind this phenonmenon .I question this .
Does the system the tribal areas are living in does not provide them with life sustaining activities. What we are seeing through contemporary tv images ,there is an infrastructure of roads ,schools, hospitals,police and administration buildings,
qiute good modern living,the people are goodlookin,nutritionally stable,not emaciated and deficient.The children and women are expressionally ok,do not look chronically anguished. Their system appears to have been working for them. This question of Taleban bringing in prosperity and adressing poverty issues appears a lie, a sham.These people are steadfast muslims,content in their expression of religion,This Taleban assault on their practices appears to be annihilatory, not reformist. Again the means are violent.
The third thing and very important that shariat should be the overall Law/system, and not the constitution of Pakistan... The people have accepted Pakistan as the state ..these Taleban ,are they secessionist? Are they non-tribal? How do they take tribes which are non-breaking systems in the frontier going to decimate themselves and become modern ?middlle classes as in urban societies or as in Marxist proletariate??
These Taleban sympathisers are a confused lot. They need first to shun the politics of violence as a means to achieve any goal. This debate has to be solved through intellectual discussion only. Is the Taleban like mentality questioning the state of Pakistan? What did Pakistan came into existence for? Why did the frontier regions vote for Pakistan?
If the Frontier people want Shariat implementation, then what are the means ?Do they have to be violent and by shaking the foundations of state? And this has to stop somewhere!Is the current war effort not a reflection of the difficulty faced by us as a people by not adressing the issues of justice and egalitarian distribution of power and wealth, not adressed at intellectual level(parliamentarians sorry most of them are illiterate and are not trained to lead or read anything).
We have to address so many issues urgently. Pakistan is moving in a very fast forward manner and the West instead of studying this amazing Nuclear nation has to debate its existence in the manner Hegel, Marx and other philosophers,historians looked at the questions of social existence and not just the narrow, ill concieved, political prism of War On Terror and some such slogans.
It is high time we as Pakistanis and those who are muslims amongst us realize that if we decide to choose a narrow , violent ideology as our Messianic message then we are doomed to be exterminated by the rough and cruel hand of history. Let it be known that only those people are remembered by people in good terms, who are honest in their quest not violent!
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