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.

Time for Electronic Voting

I feel sorry for Hakeemullah Mehsud. To his utter dismay (as if he cares), people went out to vote and made the current elections a milestone in Pakistani history. The bloodiest of all elections , the turnout was more than ever before (around 60%) in which Pakistanis of all hues and color took active part. PML (N) stole the spotlight overall whereas PTI made history in KPK. In all this environment of festiveness, competitiveness, ugliness on social networks, fights amongst party workers, violence, bomb blasts and rigging concerns - One thing was for sure; Pakistanis went all out to show the world that they are the really the bravest lot in the world.

One aspect that kept raising its head was rigging and it seems that it will take quite a while where this issue attains a low profile. Now that the elections are over, lets discuss now how can the next election process can be made more transparent.

1 - Elections Under Army Supervision.

Now, this one makes me uncomfortable. Yes, Army is the most powerful institution but come election day, where do you see them apart from the TVs? They are no where to be honest. Also, living in Karachi, I have come to this conclusion that Rangers are just figurine of people in army fatigue; completely useless and just a drain on the finances. So why give them more importance by calling them every time in elections? I say No to army for elections.

2 - Electronic Voting

Now this gets me more buzzing. Voting through electronic means indicates a natural evolutionary step. I do not know how many countries go through elections by electronic means but I do know that ECP and Nadra have a service called 8300 that has all my electoral data! That is a huge step ahead. So what measures can be adopted? Let’s examine.

a) SMS Based Voting

If ECP/ Nadra has all my voting credentials, why not registering one further info? My cell phone number. This would be the number officially registered with ECP/ Nadra which could be used as an authentication of my being a genuine voter. Bogus voting would require someone snatching or sending a vote through my phone without my knowledge to the ECP database. Still better than the scenario wherein you are being forced to vote by peer pressure (the person standing alongside you forcing you to vote for a certain party). The voting can be SMS based or App based. The communication can be encrypted as well as the database. All political parties can be made aware of the security mechanism for credential and data protection adopted.

The trouble would be that only people of the urban areas would be more inclined to this mode of voting, people of rural areas might not have the knowledge/ interest of using this facility - or the fact that they do not have a mobile phone for that matter. Other issues could be ECP server overload, communication signal strength or no signal at all or IT based attack of Denial of Service (DoS).

b) Electronic Booth Voting

The issue of mobile phone availability, signal strength or the issue of difficulty of usage of electoral means through it can be addressed by Electronic Voting Booths.  Here, the voting machines would be connected to the electoral database and by keying in your CNIC, your electoral credentials will appear. Select the candidate and your vote will be locked.

This will obviously of no help considering the fact that in the current mode of manual voting, person standing alongside you belonging to a political party forces you to vote for someone of their choice. Also, procuring machines in such a large number for all the polling stations would be a hugely expensive exercise.

What can be done is that polling stations can be reduced. The cost of manning polling stations and printing the ballot papers would be reduced. The voting machine can be placed in secured selected spots easily accessible where people can go and poll. There will be no issue of separate electoral list for every polling station because the electoral lists would be centralized.  If voters of a certain area do get blocked out because of the high handedness of any political party workers, any machine can be utilized to vote. The only issue would be to make people reach that machine and that would be a real problem for voters.

Electronic voting can reduce the instances of rigging – forcing people to vote for someone, stuffing ballot boxes, influencing polling staff, taking over the election material. It obviously cannot remove rigging but it sure can make elections in Pakistan more transparent to the satisfaction of people. ECP can opt for any one or a combination of the above for conducting the next general elections.

As for Hakeemullah, any news of his implosion yet?

PostMan's Law of Stirring

The spoon will clang against the walls of the glass when you stir liquid in it.

PostMan's Law of Public Profile Picture - II

A woman's profile picture would be more presentable and thought out over than a man's.

And You Think You've Seen It All - III

PostMan's Law of Child's Instincts

While accessing archives of photos and videos on the electronic device, a child will always find the delete function.

Family Planning in Pakistan

Forget contraceptives, forget pills, forget One Child Policy - the most potent tool to promote family planning in Pakistan ? The School Fee. Current exorbitant Fee requirements for a child in a good private school will render any couple to think a thousand times about extending their family. Take note doctors.

Gul Makai in Timbaktu

Yesterday was a very bad day. Nothing happened to me but you never know. God forbid. Two reports that came out yesterday really hammered in hard the fact that Islam today is being eaten by a cancer and that it requires therapy on urgent basis.

Who, Where & Why - I

A 14 year old girl, Malala Yousafzai, was shot in Swat yesterday. Her shooters? Messers Taliban and Co. Why? because '"She was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her ideal leader... She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas." Ehsanullah Ehsan, Taliban Spokesman, said by telephone from an undisclosed location. And people actually praise the Taliban? They shot an unarmed 'teen girl' just to settle the scores? That is an insult to religion, chivalry, Pushtun culture and humanity and everything in between. Malala used to write a personal blog on BBC under the name of Gul Makai in which she described Taliban atrocities and lamented the lack of education facilities for girls under their rule.

She did that when she was only 11 years old and Taliban ruled the valley of Swat terrorizing its people and inflicting misery upon them through their strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. In recognition of her courage, she was awarded the First National Peace Award by the Pakistani Govt. She was also nominated for International Children's Peace Prize in 2011. 

Who, Where & Why - II

The place is called Timbaktu. Its a city in the west african nation of Mali. Do you know it holds a special place in muslim civilization? Timbaktu became the London of Africa in 12th century when it was the trade route of salt, gold, ivory and slaves. It had the Sankore Madrassa which was the largest library of its time containing precious books. It could house 25,000 students. Timbaktu was the centre of knowledge and still has treasure trove of books dating back to 12th century which contain amongst others Arabic manuscripts, books ranging on topics from Islam, Philosophy, Maths and Astronomy.

Now Timbaktu is in the news because a local Islamic militia 'Ansar Dine' is exerting influence in Mali. They too have a strict interpretation of islamic shariah. They have recently been busy smashing the ancient tombs of Mali calling them idolatry. Deja Vu eh? Correct. Taliban did the same to the famous Bamiyan Buddha statue of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The tombs are part of International Heritage.

The Who, Why and what the hell?

See the link? Malala Yousafzai and city of Timbaktu are threatened by whom? The same set of ideology. Call them Ansar Dine (Mali), Boko Haram (Nigeria), Shehab (Somalia) or Taliban - they all are of the same creed. They all believe in strict implementation of Islamic sharia law - and that too forcefully. For them, every other person, who does not conform to their point of view, is a non-muslim and hence 'deserves' to be punished. Women are the target of most scorn and education (western that is) will be eradicated as it is a handy work of satan. They will use all the legitimate grievances (lawlessness, crime, poverty, political instability etc) to further their vested interest of gaining power under the name of Islam. They are bunch of criminals and thugs and not the 'pure muslims' they portray themselves to be.

Call me bigoted, but I think the root cause of all them is Salafism. Salafists believe that the teachings at the time of Prophet, people associated with him and society of that time was the best model to be followed.  Every other thing is just heresy. People might argue that salafism is not the problem but Wahhabism is. Call it whatever, this brand of islam does not let the 'other' opinion and has gained militant form.  Let me rephrase - the ideology of salafism, though pure in nature, is currently being held hostage by people whose aim is just to gain power in the garb of Islamic shariah law. This is a cancer which needs to be treated. Islamic societies in general and especially of Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Mali need to reign in this strand of sunni islam.  Maldives is currently being threatened as well but they have not yet taken hold of it.

People of Pakistan have to rise up to this form of extremism that is creeping up and eating inside out the society of Pakistan. Today it was Malala Yousafzai, someone else's daughter,  Tomorrow it might be yours. Let Malala be the rallying cause for ordinary Pakistanis who want peace and nothing else. She is a special soul, may she be the guiding light of future generations of Pakistanis. May she be the force that changes the mindset of clergy and people who condone acts of Taliban unknowingly and totally being oblivious to the fact that they are committing murder.

Peace.

Related Post
- Why Do I Hate The Taliban

The Most Tortured Fan

Yes there is one. No kidding. Seriously. A Pakistani Cricket fan is the most tortured soul in this world - the tormentors being the Pakistani Cricket Team itself who offer the most nerve wrecking play of all cricket playing countries.

My sympathies with them. The fans I mean.

Q & A - Pakistan For Sunni Men

Question: 'Our population is one that heavily dictates their life through religion... Pakistan could slowly become a country strictly for Muslims, then strictly for Sunni Muslims and then strictly for Sunni Muslim men and who knows what else after?'

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/13359/pakistan-is-not-only-for-muslims/

Answer: Looking at the brighter conclusion of this scenario... homosexuality will be allowed for Sunni men at least.


Related Post:
- Question For a Mullah

Pakistani Cellular Companies and Scam

Umm. No. I do not mean that they indulge in scam (the way the use hidden charges might tempt people to call it so though). I am more concerned with how they condone those acts which come under the category of scam. Consider this.

The other day I received a message from 'Coke' in my inbox that my number has been chosen to be a winner and that I will get GBP500,000! My joy knew no limits...

'Your Mobile number have won 500,000 GBP on 2012 Coca-Cola Intl Mobile Draw UK. To claim your prize send your name, No, email and address to cokelive5@live.com'

The dumbnut in me urged me to check anyways on net whether it was a scam because the logical one in me was telling me it could not be wrong! It was from a pre-identified number having 'Coke' as ID - surely my cellphone provider must have done the homework, it cannot be that careless. Turns out, the dumbnut in me won. It indeed was a scam and I was left ruing my GBP 500k.

Sigh.

But this begs a question. Why did my cellphone operator provide an ID to this number? (provided my assumption is true that they are provided by them). I get transaction report SMSs on my number from the bank whose financial services I avail and they too are with the Bank's ID. I did not create a contact. So a message is sent by a number which basically is a scam having ID of a reputed company which my cellphone operator provided? That does not sound right. Right? My cellphone company might not be part of this scam but they surely provided some legitimacy to it. 

I contacted my cellphone operator and surprise surprise... they did exactly as they were supposed to. They did not reply me back. I don't know how many people woul have sent in their particulrs and then be told to submit xxx amount of fee for processing of the case and then left them dry.

Poor us.