PostMan's Law of Coke Studio Pakistan

Sit back, relax, plugin your earphones, turn on the song - and your wife will start talking to you.

PostMan's Law of Alarm Clocks

You will snooze the alarm the first time.

Times of Our Lives

I, buying a Quran from a shopkeeper.

I: Show me Quran with translation.
Him: I only have one Quran with translation and the rest without it.
I: Why?
Him: Nobody buys Quran with translation these days.


How Awesome.

25:30 - And the messenger said: "My Lord, my people have deserted this Qur'an."

Qisas and Diya - In Quran

Qisas is a very important aspect in Islam and specifically its implementation in the society. The real life example of it is being played out currently in Shah Rukh Jatoi and Shahzeb murder case in Pakistan. You can read the details here. To summarize: Shah Rukh Jatoi's servant teased Shahzeb's sister in a wedding, their altercation led to escalation and finally Shahzeb being shot dead by Shahrukh Jatoi. There was great hue and cry in Pakistan in 2012 since its very common in Pakistan for influentials to get away with murders by 'paying' the victims family, as an out of court settlement. The Supreme Court of Pakistan took suo muo notice. It was in media everywhere. The criminal remained behind bars but the case could not see culmination. The Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) did convict him (terrorism clauses were added in case) but it went into the appeal process. 

Up until now that is.

The lawyers successfully argued for the criminal that since he was a juvenile (he was not) when he committed the crime so terrorism clauses cannot be applied to him. A court ruled in their favour and thus only murder charges were left against Shahrukh. Then, the usual happened. The victim's family 'pardoned' the killer 'in the name of God', the court was accordingly informed about the agreement between the two parties and Shahrukh was released today on bail. 

This has become a repeat scenario. Influential people with money and links, kill someone and then force the victim's family for 'pardon' by settling out of court. The victim's family cannot naturally bear the brunt of this situation alongside threats of these influential people and in the end reach out of court settlement and get released. Its the abuse of the law and religion but its so rampant that one feels totally helpless.

Qisas and Diya in Quran

First thing first. How does Quran treat a murder?

For intentional murder...  

2:178: O you who acknowledge, equivalent execution (qisas) has been decreed for you in the cases of killings: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female. Whoever is forgiven anything by his brother, then it is to be followed with good deeds and kindness towards him; that is alleviation from your Lord, and a mercy. Whoever transgresses after that, he will have a painful retribution.

and for unintentional murder...

4:92: And it is not for a believer to kill another believer except by accident. And whoever kills a believer by accident, then he shall free a believing slave, and give compensation (diya) to the family; except if they remit it. If he was from a people who are enemies to you, and he was a believer, then you shall free a believing slave. And if he was from a people with whom you have a covenant, then a compensation to his family, and free a believing slave. Whoever does not find, then the fasting of two months sequentially as a repentance from God; for God is Knowledgeable, Wise.

The State and Murder

It is argued that that homicide and unintentional homicide are considered to be an inter-party dispute in Islam and the state does not get involved in it if the parties decide to settle between themselves. I don't know where this comes from  but it does not make any sense at all. Perhaps the wording involved in it is perpetrator-victim's family specific which somehow indicates that the state will not get involved but its not the case at all. 

Quran no where states the 'Roles and Responsibility of a state'. Consider for example the issue where it asks for establishment of justice but does not ask for establishment of courts. Quran nowhere states establishment of a government, parliament, court or police - it states the basic principles and leaves the implementation of it unexplained. Why? for obvious reasons that every culture and society will find ways to implement these measures one way or the other and the establishment of a state has proved to be that mechanism where a collective will of people is established. So if a crime has been committed, then the 'state' machinery 'police' is used to arrest the parties involved, investigate the case, argue the case in 'court' by hiring 'state prosecutors' who plead in front of 'judges'. The 'court' then decides the matter and the convict is sent to 'jail' based on a 'law' devised by 'parliament'. Notice anything about where I am putting quotation marks? these are all roles devised by the collective will of the people manifested in the form of State. 

The argument that settlement of murder case is between parties involved is clearly missing the broader objective - missing the forest for the trees literally. So what is it that Quran is telling us whereas we get to face such ridiculous situations where influentials go scot-free?

Capital Punishment in Quran
In such hostile environment of today's wherein Islam and Quran are blamed for all the mess in the world, the following statement will be considered a shocker. 'Quran is Pro Life!' Yup. Unbelievable right?

Lets re-cap qisas (equivalent execution/ a just retribution) by going through another verse of Quran.

5:45: And We have decreed for them in it that a life for a life, and an eye for an eye, and a nose for a nose, and an ear for an ear, and a tooth for a tooth, and wounds to be similar; and whoever remits anything of it, then it will cancel sins for him. And whoever does not judge with what God has sent down, then these are the wicked.

Quran focuses on forgiveness and considers it to be laudable act. But It still has a broader objective set for society:

2:179: Through equivalent execution, you will be protecting life, O you who possess intelligence, that you may be righteous.

See? Quran is against capital punishment and is pro-life. As of today, more than 150 countries have abolished the death penalty. Pakistan still supports death penalty. If we really believe in Quran, should we not be following it?

State and Murder - Revisited

So what can the State do in light of the discussion above? First and foremost, do not absolve itself of the duty of protecting the victim's family. Yes the victims have the right to pardon the murderer but only for 'life for life' - meaning thereby that the murderer will not face death penalty. Secondly, the State can devise law to incarcerate the murderer for whole life behind bars. Thirdly, the State needs to abolish capital punishment - because no matter how much we do not like this fact, the murderer's life needs protection as well. And finally, put Shahrukh behind bars because of obvious horror of horrors that an influential bought himself out of the murder.

God have mercy on all of us.

Peshawar Burns - Again

There is something about attack on students that riles me up. First it was the 2014 attack on Army Public School and today on Agricultural Training Institute in Peshawar. My city has seen around 2 dozen terrorist attacks this year; barely 2 weeks earlier an Additional Inspector General police was martyred in a suicide attack. Today, 9 precious lives of students were lost in cowardly attack owned by Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan.

The scourge of terrorism will take many years and more innocent lives to be removed. Our police, citizens and any personnel have lost lives. The core of it, the anti state extremist ideology which is religion based needs to be addressed. The mere slogan that they are terrorists and can't be muslims needs to be rephrased: these are terrorists, whose actions are anti state, whose actions are attributed to religion of islam by themselves which is totally false and that Islam does not allow it.

Down with terrorism, down with extremism, down with religious ideology that espouses hatred and intolerance, down with people who support terrorism, with people who support such ideology, with ulema who spread hatred, down with any measure that somehow supports such ideology.

Rise up Pakistanis. We need to stand up to this extremism that supports the militant ideology. Stop to hatred and intolerance. No more.

Edhi sb - The Great

Pakistan has been rendered orphan today.
God bless you Edhi sb.

PostMan's Law of Expenses

Your expenses have a life of their own - they keep growing.

PostMan's Law of Desktop Creep

The number of icons on your desktop will increase to cover the screen.

Men's Status

There are two statuses of men:
1 - Married.
2 - Weird.

Pregnant Hands

Ahem. Reference to the below link here in which an imam has stated that masturbation will lead to hands being pregnant in the after life.

Well, one thing is for sure, I bet left hand will see the most pregnancies.

Peshawar Massacre

I have never been afraid of the refresh button of my browser as much as I did yesterday when innocent children were being killed in a school in Peshawar because every refresh increased the count of dead.

None of them were my children but it felt like all of them were. God bless them.

Does Prayer Stop Misdeeds?

 Recently, the Governor of an Indonesian province ordered government servants to offer prayers together so as to discourage them from cheating on spouses. This caused a ruckus amongst commenters online. Does prayer (salat) really save one from doing misdeeds?

Quran says so: 29:45 - ... and hold the contact prayer; for the contact prayer prohibits evil and vice ...

Would prayers really help in the case when people are ordered to pray? Let's examine.

We used to have a neighbour who was very religious. He was part of a religious outfit called Tableeghi Jamaat. He used to gather people to take them along to mosque for prayers and religious sermons. He had 2 sign-of-prayers (mehraab) on his forehead. And he was a drug smuggler. But I agree. Individual acts cannot be termed as applicable to the whole population.

Religious seminaries in Pakistan, called Medressah, are nortorious for phsyical and to some extreme, sexual abuse of children. Now these are men of the scripture, they eat and drink religious sermons. They pray together too. So why did prayers not stop them for committing such atrocities against children?

You might argue that there might be black sheep amongst the people and they portray a bad reputation of Medressahs, which is not actually the case. I agree. Honestly I do.

A group of religious scholars comes up with an Islamic financial instrument based scheme and swindle out people to the tune of 5-6 billion PKR. Now this is not the case of ordinary people becoming teachers in Medressah and doing their misdeeds. They are religious scholars who actually guide people to do good deeds. And they pray too.

You might argue again that criminals in the garb of religious scholars do not constitute as such. They are criminals and need to be treated as such. Even a non-religious person could have done that as well. I agree to this too. I swear by God I do.

We have Taliban in our country who claim to be the purest, and really really purest of us all. They pray and they kill. They slaughter in the name of God. There are some really badass Taliban in our midst even though they perform ablution. They pray too. They even prey on prayer goers in mosques.

Do you see the point of stating these examples? That anyone can do any of the misdeeds whether you pray or not pray. Apparently, that does not have an effect. Is Prayer the answer or is there something about the prayer itself?

107:4 - Ah, woe to the praying ones!
107:5 - Those who know not what their prayer is meant to be
107:6 - They only want to be seen and praised.

So what is a person doing when he is actually praying but only to show off? He has not God on his mind... but his wordly desires.

45:23 - Have you ever noted him who makes his desires his god? Consequently, God lets him go astray despite his knowledge, seals up his hearing and his heart, and places a veil on his sight ...

Take a look around, you see loads and loads of people thronging mosques for prayers. You see more and more people in religiouis attire. Beards are common. There are dedicated religious channels. Ramazan feels like the whole universe is fasting. But deep down, something is amiss. There is moral degradation. Women, children and minorities are not safe - my apologies, let me rephrase - 'No one is safe'. Purity of the heart is missing and till that time, no matter how many times you pray or the Governor of a particular province of Indonesia wishes, nothing is going to change. Yes the prayer will help, just as stated in Quran at the start of this blog, but only for those who wish to be saved from misdeeds.

PostMan's Law of Moronic Behavior

Moronoic behavior of an occupant of the vehicle is directly proportional to the value of the vehicle.

Malala, Nobel and Pakistan

As soon as the news was released that Malala did not win the Nobel Prize, many Pakistanis offered prayers of thanks since Pakistan was saved from a huge embarrassment of being awarded with a Nobel Prize.

PostMan's Law of Rickshaws

The manoeuverability and speed of a rickshaw by the driver increases with the presence of passengers and decreases otherwise.

Sign of Things To Come

"Lanat Hai wants to join you on FaceBook"

Education in Native Languages

There is a very interesting blog published in Express Tribune titled What happened when a Pashtun child tried to read Urdu. In it, the author has talked about the need to provide education in native language so that a child can develop the learning skills quickly and can come to terms of having a decent start to his/ her education. The author has provided a video as an example in which a child, whose native language is Pashto, is given a book in Urdu and told to state what he makes out of it. The child displays creativity by making sense of what is in book by using some of his vocabulary in Urdu and compensates for his deficiency in vocabulary by replacing Urdu words with his native language sounding equivalents.

Education is vital for societies to develop and primary education is the base where this development takes stage. Pakistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world and education standards are only dreams. The GDP spending on education has averaged 3% over decades and there seems no effort to spend on education anytime soon. State education is rotten to the core with countless ghost schools and zilch provision of education to the children.

Without doubting the efficacy of early education in one's native language, is it really workable in Pakistan? Let’s probe.

Minding Our Languages

According to author in the blog, there are 75 local dialects in Pakistan lead by Punjabi, Seraiki, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Hindko and mainstream communication language of Urdu.  He also states that Province of Sindh is at the forefront of introducing Sindhi as primary education level language whereas Punjab is the total opposite. KPK falls in between wherein the Govt last year introduced measures to promote native language education. To provide education in native language requires the curriculum be present in that language. How many languages in Pakistan boast of this feature? Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto come to my mind - I don't have any research data at my disposal to include more languages in the list. Even considering Urdu, which is not a regional language per se and is used more as a communication language, the courses and curriculum are woefully inadequate. So do we really require 75 curricula? Who is going to modify the curriculum in native languages? Who will keep them up-to-date? We can't even keep Urdu curriculum up-to-date – how on earth can we manage 75 languages?

In my opinion, and I can be dead wrong, the problem lies somewhere else. I can see three major problems.

‘S’ is for State

First and the foremost is the State’s responsibility of fulfilling it. Seriously.  No Pakistani Govt ever has focused on education for the betterment of people. After the 18th Amendment in Constitution of Pakistan, education has been devolved to the Provinces but the role of state (provincial or federal) does not change. They need to pump in more funds for structural improvement in education system. Make education up to 10th standard free and remove ghost schools and teachers.

‘T’ is for Teacher and Training

Refresher courses for teachers and their capacity development are vital for better education – whatever the medium of communication. If the teacher is capable enough, he/she can explain e.g. a scientific fact in student’s native language with English terminologies. But for that to happen, teachers have to be properly trained themselves. Using native language curriculum and handing it over to poorly trained teachers is not going to improve anything.

‘C’ is for Curriculum

The bone of contention let’s say.  I have already alluded to the fact that managing curriculum in 75 languages would be an extremely difficult task. Currently there are two mediums of education in Pakistan – English and Urdu. Public schools tend to be Urdu medium based and private schools English medium.  The disparity is stark when Urdu medium schools educated children come in contact with English medium educated students.

If you look at it – there is one thing pretty clear. You can't have 75 native language based curricula and you have issues with one language (Urdu) based curriculum. So that leaves English as the only medium to provide education. This does not mean that the teacher and children are supposed to talk in English from 8 am till 1 pm. This is nonsense. What should be done is that all terminologies should be English based and mode of communication could be Urdu or native language. (Note: this scenario will work for levels up to middle class and subject of science and maths) This has to be supported by developing English language skills in students so that they don’t face issues in higher education which is all but based in English for Pakistanis at least.

The A-Z

I have to agree with the author of that blog that no matter what the way forward, it is a difficult task and it needs to be dealt with in earnest. Education in native language might be the best but there are difficulties in its implementation here in Pakistan. Quite frankly, why discuss imparting education in only English, Urdu or native languages, as I discussed the mode of making students understand is whatever language they use as communication language with English terminologies and phrases combined. We are talking of imparting education and not doing masters in any particular language hence students should be provided the quickest and the most effective way of learning.

Primary education is all about teaching children how to construct sentences and identifying words that are the building blocks – of any language for that matter.  Once they get the hang of it, even multiple languages, imparting them with education in any language in higher studies would not be a problem.

Respect for everyone who is imparting education.

Peace.

Wife's Certainty Principle

A husband is always wrong.

Certified Opportunity Cost Specialists

Never heard of them? Are you sure? I can assure you that are you are well aware of them. They  can make you realize what it cost you for the options you did not take OR they can make a complete assessment for the current cost of not deploying a particular resource*. You will then realize that what you have done and are are currently doing - is plain ridiculous. These Opportunity Cost Specialists are very common in fact. You know one already - she is your wife.


*Consider the following example. Suppose you have not done a particular thing she has reminded you of doing. She will then keep telling you everything other instance - that how no doing that particular thing X1, it is resulting in non-completion of things A, B, C, D E,F... X,Y,Z. She will prepare a list what extra could have been done had you done that task by now - even though she will never herself do them BUT since you did not do it hence it will cost you. The world is one tough place my friend.

Swipe To Irritate

Today's smart phones have a screen lock features - some use PIN, some screen patterns and couple of them face recognition. If you use PIN or pattern, how many numbers or simple a pattern would you choose? just simple enough so that the screen does not automatically unlock by accident or finger movement. Some people, it seems, are not even satisfied with that.

A person came to me with a phone and it had a screen pattern lock enabled. He also had a paper chit on which the pattern to unlock the phone was given. Quite safe to say that I had never seen anything lke that. It had all the arrows guiding pattern movement steps and it seemed more like a treasure map. It took three of us people to keep trying to unlock it but to no avail. I somehow figured out that the pattern should follow something else - a slight change from what was written on the chit. Anyhow I managed to open the screen lock. Now let me share with you the swipe pattern. It goes like 1,5,7,5,3,5,8,6,9,8,5,4,2. Unimaginable seriously. Why would anyone do that?

You think you have seen it all but it keeps coming and coming.