Frenchmen killed in Karachi ‘over submarine money’:

CHERBOURG: A probe into the 2002 killing of 11 French engineers in Pakistan is focusing on France’s failure to pay a commission for the sale of submarines to Pakistan; a lawyer for the victims’ families was quoted as saying, claim a report of a foreign news agency.
The lawyer, Olivier Morice, said former president Jacques Chirac and former premier Edouard Balladur had been mentioned in the decision to halt the payments.
Morice spoke after two French anti-terrorist investigating magistrates had met with families of the engineers killed in the attack on May 8, 2002 in Karachi. A car packed with explosives was driven into a minibus carrying the Frenchmen, all engineers working for a French state firm, DCN, which was building submarines for Pakistan. The 11 engineers and three Pakistanis were killed.
Investigators had been looking into an Al-Qaeda link to the attack.
But Morice told media: ‘The Al-Qaeda track has been totally abandoned. The motive for the attack appears linked to the non-payment of commissions.’
Morice said the payments were stopped when Chirac became president in 1995 because he wanted to stop part of the money financing the campaign of Balladur, who was his political rival on the French right at the time.
Magali Drouet, a daughter of one of the men killed, quoted one of the anti-terrorist judges, Marc Trevidic, as telling the families that this theory was ‘cruelly logical’.
She added that according to this scenario, the attack was carried out because the special payments were not made by France to Pakistani government officials.
High-ranking politicians would likely be called in to testify, said Morice. Details of the payments emerged in 2008 as part of an investigation into French arms sales.
Police seized documents from the French firm, now known as DCNS, which discussed the companies used to pay fees in connection with arms sales.
One unsigned document spoke of Pakistan intelligence services using militants.-

Figure It Out: Reporting on Trafficking in Women

This article Figure It Out: Reporting On Trafficking In Women written Laxmi Murthy and Rajashri Dasgupta was first published by Infochange News & Features (www.infochangeindia.org) and is reproduced here.

Media coverage of trafficking of women and children, migration and sex work is confused and inaccurate. Media wrongly uses the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘trafficking’ synonymously, perpetuating stereotypes and stigmatisation and contributing to the violation of women’s right to free movement and livelihood options, say these authors
If media reports were to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal. Oft-quoted figures such as 5,000-7,000 Nepali girls being trafficked across the border to India every year and 150,000-200,000 Nepali women and girls being trapped in brothels in various Indian cities, were first disseminated in 1986 and have remained unaltered over the next two decades. The report that first quoted these statistics was written by Dr I S Gilada of the Indian Health Association, Mumbai, and presented in a workshop in 1986. Subsequently, a version of this report was published as an article in the Times of India on January 2, 1989. The source of this figure remains a mystery to date. Unfortunately, such a lack of clarity is more the norm than the exception when it comes to reporting on trafficking in women and girls.
Not surprisingly, figures about the same phenomenon differ vastly. For example, the news report ‘Majority of girls trafficked are minors’, Indian Express, Guwahati, March 9, 2007 cites the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as estimating that 150,000 people are trafficked within South Asia. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that between 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked across borders. The news report quotes estimates by the same organisations, that between 5,000-10,000 Nepali women are trafficked every year to India for purposes of 'commercial sexual exploitation', with an estimated 40,000-200,000 women and girls from Nepal working in brothels in various cities across India.
However, another report, from a different news agency, IANS, that appeared in The Tribune on October 24, 2007, quoted the UNODC chief Gary Lewis as saying that 5,000-15,000 women and children are trafficked to India from Nepal. Where does the truth lie? Or do 5,000 women this way or that not matter at all?

People on the move
Today, more than ever before in history, people are moving across the world in search of better opportunities of life and livelihood. Made easier by faster and cheaper means of transport and communication, migration for employment and its linkages with development as a phenomenon occurs in most societies the world over.
As global capital moves, so must global labour. In South Asia, the movement of persons is usually from the poorer regions, rural areas and less developed regions and countries, to the more developed, in search of greater employment opportunity. With growing urbanisation, availability of services as well as the opportunity to earn cash income, rural migrants are drawn into the big towns and metros. Many argue that people move from labour surplus-low wage areas to labour shortage-high wage areas. In some cases, it is also due to political instability and religious persecution.
In 2005, the five major South Asia labour-sending countries (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan) sent over 1.5 million migrant workers abroad legally. India sent 549,000 migrants; Bangladesh 253,000; Nepal 184,000. The number of migrants deployed rose in each country by 2007; for instance, according to Migration News 2008, the number of Indians deployed was 800,000, the number of Bangladeshis 833,000.
Remittance by migrant workers is said to be a major pillar that supports the economies of some countries. In 2007, the five major South Asia labour-sending countries received $40 billion in remittances, led by $27 billion in India, $6.4 billion in Bangladesh and $1.6 billion in Nepal. Most South Asians earn about $200 to $400 a month in the Gulf oil-exporting States.
Globalisation and the phenomenal economic growth in some parts of India have resulted in complex patterns of migration across borders in the region. According to a 2006 report of the International Labour Organisation, women are increasingly migrating and now account for half the international migrants. With the right safeguards in place that protect women without infringing on freedom of movement, migration can be profitable and strengthening, and women should not be discouraged from exercising this right. However, domestic laws, as well as regional laws and policies in South Asia, have not kept pace with these population movements. Security concerns, as well as political upheavals and internal conflict in most of the countries in the region, have also prevented the development of a comprehensive migration policy.

Grey areas
The lack of easy avenues to migrate has resulted in a plethora of illegal activities and organised crime in the business of getting people/labour across borders. Trafficking for the purpose of debt bondage, child labour, organ trade, begging, sex work and mail-order brides are only some of the more glaring manifestations. Smuggling of persons across the border, through dangerous means, albeit with their consent, is another outcome of the lack of safe migration opportunities. Further problems arise because of the common perception that all movements of women (especially across borders) are forced, and mainly for the purpose of prostitution. This also leads to the conflation of ‘prostitution/sex work’ with ‘trafficking’, with these terms wrongly being used synonymously.
Stigmatisation and the perpetuation of stereotypes by the media add to the violation of human rights of each of these categories of persons: migrant workers, trafficked workers and smuggled workers. Within these categories, women are more vulnerable; gender discrimination and violence makes women soft targets of trafficking, while traffickers thrive on vulnerabilities. However, due to these vulnerabilities and risks, all women who migrate are lumped (in popular perception, the media, laws and policies) with children in need of protection. Such a protectionist approach often ends up violating women’s right to free movement, to livelihood options, and choosing a country of residence.
Globally, anti-trafficking initiatives have stemmed from a crime-control perspective, rather than a human-rights perspective. Thus, the focus tends to be on stamping out a vice through stringent laws and effective enforcement, in order to rid a society of a social evil. Such an approach dwells little on the lived realities of women, their complex situation, and their human rights which might get violated in the process of vice control. The media has tended to mirror and reinforce this view, rather than focus on safe migration for individuals and their families.
Media coverage on issues of trafficking of women and children, migration and sex work over the years has been far from ideal. In the first place, issues of migration and trafficking do not receive adequate coverage in mainstream media. For example, a study by the Office of the National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Women and Children, ONRT-NHRC Nepal (2007), found that there were only 184 news/views in nine leading dailies, both English and Nepali, over a period of one year (2006). Besides the scanty coverage, the quality of coverage is also a major concern. Moreover, misinformation, alongside commonly held myths, overridden by the prevailing morality, contributes to media coverage of these issues being shoddy and lacking in a factual base. Further, when journalists are unable to recognise and keep aside their own prejudices and biases, they are unable to tell it like it is.
An analysis of clips of selected English, Hindi, Nepali and Bengali newspapers and electronic media clips over the period 2007-08, reveals certain common threads, despite the differences in language, region, and specificity of issues. A significant finding of the media analysis was that reporters have a confused understanding of the terms trafficking, migration, sex work, child abuse, child labour and exploitation. Often, one is mistaken for the other, and at others, the official or police version – also guilty of wrong definitions – is quoted without analysis or critique. The attempt to sensationalise the issue and draw more attention is also perhaps one contributory factor to ‘spicy’ but confused headlines and reports.

Facts, lies and statistics
One of the pre-requisites for dealing with a problem is the availability of accurate data from reliable sources. However, media coverage on trafficking of women and children clearly reveals scanty and unverified data; different newspapers quoting the same source but different data and very little original investigation.
For example, a report in The Deccan Chronicle (India), January 23, 2007 by a staff correspondent, ‘UN Official: 20,000 girls are trafficked in India’, quotes the UN official, Gary Lewis, as saying that at least 20,000 girls are being trafficked in India, and that 90% of them do not cross national borders.
Interestingly, another UN official, P M Nair, is quoted as saying that 45% of the girls in brothels across the country are from Andhra Pradesh, but the source of Nair’s figure is not mentioned. This figure differs vastly from the report in The Statesman one year later that claims that 93% of girls in brothels are from West Bengal.
Besides falling in the usual stereotype of equating trafficking with prostitution, a report in The Statesman, Kolkata, January 2, 2008 by Rajib Chatterjee, ‘State (West Bengal) tops woman trafficking list’, quotes the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), and goes on to say that 93% girls sold for prostitution in brothels in India in 2006 were from West Bengal. While the total number is not mentioned, it is stated that 114 out of a total of 123 cases of “selling girls for prostitution” reported from various police stations in the country, were from West Bengal. Interestingly, the NCRB figures were disputed by the inspector-general of police. No NGOs or affected people were quoted in the story.
The news report states that there was a 146% rise in the number of girls being sold to brothels in 2006 (from 19 in 2004 to 50 in 2005). Yet, the reporter does not analyse this sudden spike, nor wonder whether it was a rise in incidence, or could be because of better reporting due to the setting up of the Anti-Human Trafficking Cell in the CID (year of setting up not stated). Further, by mentioning ‘girls’ it is not clear if the reporter actually means minors, or whether ‘girls’ also includes adult women. Such ambiguity does not enable accurate assessment of the problem.
To quote another example, the Indian Express, Guwahati, of March 9, 2007, in an article by Samudra Gupta Kashyap (‘Majority of girls trafficked are minors’) quotes Rajib Haldar, executive director of New Delhi-based Prayas Institute of Juvenile Justice saying that 20,000 young women were being trafficked across the country at any given time. The report does not make clear what time period he is referring to. According to Haldar, an alarming 2.3 million individuals, mostly women, had been trafficked in India in the past 10 years. He goes on to dispute the NCRB figures that say 25 cases were reported form Assam. He claims the figures for the rest of the Northeast (nil cases), cannot be believed. The news report however offers no explanations of these statistics.
Discrepancy in agency reports is particularly significant because the same report is picked up by publications across India. Similarly, a Press Trust of India (PTI) report that appeared in The Sentinel, Guwahati, on October 15, 2007 quotes Malini Bhattacharya, member of the National Commission for Women, India, calling human trafficking a “kind of international terrorism”. Yet, the same news item says that it is estimated that 90% of India’s sex trafficking is internal. Trafficking from neighbouring countries accounts for only 10% of the coerced migration into India, with approximately 2.17% from Bangladesh and 2.6% from Nepal. These figures (the source of which is not revealed) debunk the popular impression that the majority of trafficked women in India are from outside the country.
‘International trafficking’ undoubtedly makes for a more juicy story. A report in the New Delhi edition of Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi) of August 31, 2007, ‘Ladkiyon ki taskari par police ko notice’ (Notice to police on trafficking of girls), is an agency report about the trafficking of girls from Delhi to the Gulf, via Ajmer. The entire report is based on the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) notice to the police forces of Delhi and Ajmer, in response to a news item about such trafficking. The story is however unsubstantiated by any figures, broadly saying that “many girls” are trafficked in such a manner.
Another item with the sensational headline ‘Ladkiyon ko bheja ja raha hai Bangladesh’ (Girls are being sent to Bangladesh) in Dainik Hindustan (Hindi), New Delhi, September 26, 2007, is about one case of kidnapping, which, on very scanty evidence, is being called trafficking. The news report is based on a high court case filed by the missing woman’s parents against her husband, who in turn accused his wife’s parents of “selling” her to relatives in Bangladesh. The report does little to inform the reader about trafficking.
According to an article published on July 3, 2008 in Nepal, a weekly magazine published out of Kathmandu, each day 600 young Nepalis leave the country to work. “The government has given 774 manpower agencies permission to send those people abroad. The 2007-08 statistics show that there were 263,033 young people emigrating to find jobs”. Simple arithmetic shows, however, that the average daily departure would be 720 persons, not 600.
A report in Qaumi Patrika (Hindi), New Delhi, January 16, 2007, quotes NGO sources as saying there are 1 crore women and children trafficked, and the revenue generated is 100,000 crore. This agency report goes on to quote the figure of 10 lakh dollars as the revenue generated from trade in children and women in Delhi alone. Apparently, there are 100,000 sex workers in Mumbai alone, of whom half are Nepali. It says according to the Centre for Development and Population Activities, about 200 girls and women join sex work on a daily basis.
As is evident from the sample of data quoted in the reports above, accurate, reliable data is scare. Data is cited without quoting the source, and even when sources are quoted the data varies and is contradictory. What is of more concern is that inaccurate data is regularly recycled in the media.
Very little data is available on the actual implementation of the law, and convictions arising out of anti-trafficking laws. A rare report is that on nepalnews.com dated November 2, 2007 (‘5,000 sex workers in Valley: A study’). According to this report, “About 7% out of the total of 2,210 prisoners are serving jail terms in the Kathmandu valley in cases related to human trafficking. Most of the imprisoned male traffickers are from Sindhupalchok, Nuwakot, Dhading and Makawanpur districts.” However, no source for this data is quoted.

Recycling unverified data
The analysis of newspaper clippings and electronic clips revealed that data tends to make the rounds of media outlets. Even if the data is not attributed to any reliable source, it is quoted repeatedly, thus almost assuming the status of ‘fact’. Following is one such example:
The Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi), New Delhi, of January 14, 2007, in a report titled ‘Deh vyapar ka karobar ek lakh karod ka’ (Flesh trade to the tune of one lakh crore) contains some interesting facts and figures:

1. After drugs and arms trafficking, trafficking in children and women is the next biggest moneyspinner in the world.
2. These women and children are used in the sex trade, and the business amounts to 10 billion dollars annually.
3. India shares 1/4th of this booty.
4. In India, 1 crore women are trafficked, and 1 lakh crore rupees change hands.
5. In Mumbai the women involved in sex trade goes up to 1 lakh.
6. In India, there are 500,000 women from Nepal and Bangladesh.
7. Every year, around 10,000 women from Nepal and 7,000 women from Bangladesh are trafficked to India on the promise of employment and better marriage prospects.
8. Most of these are below 16 years of age.
9. The girls from Nepal are sold for Rs 2000-60,000.
10. According to Centre for Development and Population Activities, every day, 200 women are added to the sex trade in India.

A point to note is that the source for the data for points 1 through 9 is attributed to “various human rights agencies and NGOs” without naming them.
Significantly, these statistics were quoted in two news reports on major TV channels in India: The report ‘Tackling Trafficking’, aired on NDTV 24x7 on December 4, 2007, while reporting the newly launched Ujjwala scheme, quotes the Dainik Bhaskar data, but no primary source. Similarly, a report on Doordarshan on the same day (December 4, 2007) on the Ujjwala scheme, also quotes the same Dainik Bhaskar figures. Journalists must be alert to the process of recycling data without checking original sources, especially when the data thus quoted is contradictory.

Getting off the beaten track
The majority of the reports analysed can be called hand-out journalism – either from official sources, press releases, or NGO publicity materials. There is almost no attempt to follow up stories, track the issue, dig out primary sources, or do investigative research. Rarely did any of the stories explore new angles, or break new ground in exposing the roots of the problem, leave aside suggesting innovative solutions to the problem of trafficking in women and girls. A few articles did attempt to highlight little-known facts, such as the extremely low conviction rate for the crime of human trafficking (‘5,000 sex workers in Valley: A study’), the lack of training for police (Sreyashi Dastidar's ‘Never too young to be sold’ in The Telegraph, Kolkata, October 15, 2007). But these continue to be rare, illustrating the need for more analytical and investigative reporting of these issues.
This critique of coverage in print, online and electronic media must be read in the context of the crucial role played by the media. The media can provide information and awareness about safe migration; investigate and expose violations of human rights of women and children who are trafficked; build public opinion by providing the context of the real experiences of women; influence and impact public policy on migration and trafficking by highlighting all sides of the issue, and as significant, the media can also provide a platform for healthy debate and airing divergent views. However, if the media takes it upon itself to play either moral guardian or police mouthpiece, little is possible in terms of generating an informed debate.

Pakistan most violent nation: PIPS Report

Senseless violence consumes at least one life every hour in Pakistan. This has been revealed in the annual report of the 'Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies' (PIPS).

PIPS report said 7,997 people were killed and 9,670 injured in 2,148 incidents of violence in Pakistan during 2008. The incidents include terrorist attacks, clashes between security forces and militants, military operations, political violence, inter-tribe sectarian clashes and border clashes.

In a sensational disclosure PIPS report said there were on average six terrorist attacks a day. "A comparison of the security situation in 2008 with 2005 indicates a 746% increase in terrorist attacks." "Terrorist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and Taliban are using sophisticated techniques employed by insurgents in Iraq," it said. "Such a progression could be traced in three major terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2008" - the attack on the Danish embassy and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and the FIA headquarters in Lahore

The Daily Times in an exclusive report said highest number of terrorist attacks was reported from NWFP (1,009), followed by Balochistan (682) and the Tribal Areas (385). The report said 35 attacks took place in Punjab, 25 in Sindh, seven in Islamabad, four in Azad Kashmir and one in the Northern Areas.

More than 3,182 people were killed and 2,267 injured in operational attacks, 655 killed and 557 injured in clashes between security forces and militants, 162 killed and 419 injured in political violence, 1,336 killed and 1,662 injured in inter-tribe sectarian clashes, and 395 killed and 207 injured in border clashes.

More than 95 clashes between security forces and militants, 88 incidents of political violence, 191 incidents of inter-tribe sectarian clashes and 55 incidents of border clashes took place during the last year.

At least 2,267 people were killed and 4,558 injured in at least 2,148 terrorists attacks reported in 2008. Some 967 people were killed and 2,108 others injured in 63 suicide attacks in the country during the last year.

The NWFP faced 32 suicide attacks in which 389 people were killed and 688 injured, Punjab was second with 10 suicide attacks that claimed more than 201 lives and injured 508. Sixteen suicide attacks were reported in FATA due to which 263 people died and 497 were injured.

More than 112 people were killed and 321 injured in four suicide attacks in Islamabad while one suicide attack was reported in Balochistan in which two people were killed and 22 others injured. The report said 381 rocket attacks, 46 incidents of beheading, 112 remote controlled bomb attacks, 110 landmine explosions, 451 incidents of shooting and 373 blasts by improvised explosives were recorded during 2008.

As many as 4,113 suspected terrorists including 30 from Al Qaeda, 3,759 affiliated with Taliban and other such groups, and 354 Baloch insurgents were arrested during the year. According to the PIPS report, at least 907 people were killed and 1,543 injured in 675 incidents of violence during 2006, and 3,448 people were killed and 5,353 injured in 1,535 incidents during 2007.

The Power of the Pulpit - The Saudi-isation of Pakistan

By Mohammed Hanif

Maulvi Karim, who taught me to read the Quran and led prayers in our village mosque for 40 years, was one of the most powerless men in our community. The only power he assumed for himself was that of postman. The postman would deliver the mail to him and then he would walk from house to house distributing it. He would, of course, have to read the letters for a lot of families who couldn’t read.

He was also a dog lover.

I joined him a number of times as he played with his little Russian poodle outside his house, then walked to the mosque, did his ablutions and led the prayers. After prayers he would hang out at the door of the mosque exchanging gossip with regulars. There would be people loitering outside the mosque when he went in. They would still be around as he finished the prayers and came out. It never occurred to him to ask these people to join him. It never occurred to the people who hung outside the mosque to feel embarrassed about not joining the prayers. They all lived on the same streets, not always in harmony, but religion in any of its forms was not something they discussed on the street. What was there to discuss? Wasn’t faith a strictly private business? Something that happened between a man and his god and not something that had to be discussed in your living room.

A minority went regularly to the mosques, another minority opened a bottle of something in the evening, but most people had secular pastimes like watching soap operas on TV and placing small bets on cricket matches.

He may sound like a character from the early 20th century but Maulvi Karim died only about a decade ago, and till his last days he had not given up his routine. In the social hierarchy he was somewhere between the barber and the cobbler. His basic functions were limited to being present at births, death and weddings. If he had been alive today and watched an episode of Alim Online, I wonder what he would have made of it. I wonder if he would have felt envious of all the celebrity maulanas who have become a staple of satellite television programming. Not only do they crop up on every discussion on every topic on earth but now they have their own TV channels as well, where they can preach 24/7, interrupted only by adverts for other mullahs.

The mosque imam, who served an essential social function, has given way to another kind of mullah: the power mullah, who drives in a four-wheeler flanked by armed guards; the entertainer mullah, who hogs the airwaves; and the entrepreneur mullah, who builds networks of mosques and madrassas and spends his summer touring Europe. And then there is the much maligned mullah with his dreams of an eternal war and world domination.

Since “mullah,” when pronounced in a certain way, can be read as a derogatory term, and since we don’t want to offend them (because we all know that they do get very easily offended) we should call them evangelists or preachers.

Mullahs, maulvis, imamas, or ulema-i-karam as many of them prefer to call themselves, have never had the kind of influence or social standing that they enjoy now. A large part of Pakistan is enthralled by this new generation of evangelists. They are there on prime time TV, they thunder on FM radios between adverts for Pepsi and hair removing cream. In the past few years, they have established fancy websites with embedded videos; mobile phone companies offer their sermons for download right to your telephone. They come suited, they come dressed like characters out of the Thousand and One Nights, they are men and they are women. Some of them even dress like bankers and talk like property agents offering bargain deals in heaven.

I grew up during the time of General Zia, the first evangelist to occupy the presidency in Pakistan. But even he had the good sense to keep the beards away from prime time television. But the ruthless media barons of today have no such qualms. They have turned religion into a major money-spinner. Pakistan’s economy remains in its endless downwards spiral, but it certainly seems there is a lot of money still to be made in televised preaching.

They have also tailored their message to the aspiring middle classes. Recently on his show on Haq TV, Tahirul Qadri (and he has gone from being a maulana to Allama to Sheikh-ul-Islam) thundered that religion doesn’t stop us from adopting new fashions. You can change your furniture every few years, there is nothing wrong with getting the new car models, but it should all be done in good taste. The man could had have given his lecture on Fashion TV. “But you shall never question the basic tenets of religion,” he went on. The implication was clear: you shall never question what he has to say. The message is even clearer: make money, spend it and it’ll all turn out to be okay if you keep tuning in to my programme.

And the message is being taken seriously by the upper classes of Pakistan. I walked into a new super store in Karachi’s Clifton area and was pleasantly surprised to see what looked like a books section. It was a books section indeed, but it was called “Islamic Books Section” and all the books in it were about Islam.

I went to a Nike store, and it was no different from any Nike store in any part of the world: over-priced, shiny sneakers and branded football shirts. But in the background instead of the loud gym music, the hallmark of such stores, speakers played recitation from the Quran.

The multinational companies, sensing the mood of the people, have also joined the bandwagon. Mobile phone companies offer calls to prayers for ring tones, and Quranic recitations and religious sermons as free downloads. During the month of Ramadan a number of international banks were gifting their preferred clients fancy boxes containing rosaries, dates and miniature Qurans.

It’s the perfect marriage between God and greed.

Traditionally, what a preacher needed was a pulpit. For the pulpit he needed a mosque, and to get to a mosque he needed to do a long apprenticeship in which he had to prove his worth to the community before he could be allowed to sit at that pulpit. With the arrival of satellite TV channels, evangelists provide the most cost-effective programming and, as a result, have found a pulpit in every living room.

Even the Sindhi and Seraiki language channels, which were known for their liberal political approach and sufi messages, have found their own evangelists to fill the slots.

And their influence has changed our social landscape beyond recognition. Twelve years ago, an old friend from school tried to recruit me into a militant anti-Shia organisation. After dropping out from high school, Zulfikar Ahmad had started a motorcycle garage and joined one of the sectarian organisations that were flourishing in the area. We had a heated discussion over his politics, and I reminded him of a number of common friends who were Shias and were as good or bad Muslims as any of our other classmates. Visibly unconvinced, Zulfikar gave up on me and wished me luck in my godless life.

Zulfikar’s attempt at converting me was one of the many signs of religious intolerance creeping into our lives. Taliban-ruled neighbouring Afghanistan and many middle class Pakistanis, while enjoying the relative freedoms of a fledgling democracy, hankered for a more puritanical, Taliban-style government. But these zealots, despite their high profile, remained marginal to society as religion was a personal affair, not something you discussed in your drawing room.

As I moved back to Pakistan a few months ago, I was overwhelmed by the all pervasive religious symbols in public spaces and theocratic debates raging in the independent media as well as in the drawing rooms of friends and relatives. The graffiti on the walls of Karachi, blood-curdling calls for jihad, adverts for luxury Umrahs are omnipresent. And for those who can’t afford to go all the way to Mecca, neighbourhood mosques offer regular lectures and special prayers sessions.

I spent the Eid holidays in my village in Punjab and attended prayers at the mosque, which Maulvi Karim used to run. My village folk are very wary of radical mullahs and have appointed an imam who is Maulvi Karim’s son and has spent most of his youth in Birmingham. His sermon was probably the most progressive I have ever heard. He advised his male congregation to share household work with their women. He gave examples from Prophet Mohammed’s life and said that he used to clean his own room even when he had more than one wife. “You must attend to your stock yourself. It doesn’t matter if you have servants, feed your buffaloes,” he said. I looked around in amusement, trying to imagine these men, steeped in centuries of male chauvinistic tradition, going home to do their dishes.

What puzzled me in the end was that his prayer included get-well-soon wishes for Baitullah Mehsud, who according to local TV channels, was ill. I couldn’t reconcile the imam’s message for equality of the sexes and his good will for Mehsud, whose crusade against women is as well known as his anti-American jihad.

For answers I turned to my old friend Zulfikar. He still sports a long, flowing beard but his conversation is peppered with Punjabi expletives which I found quite refreshing amidst the wall-to-wall piety in my hometown. “I have left all that jihad-against-Shias business behind,” he told me. “I have college-going daughters now. Bringing up children in these times is a full-time jihad.”

He told me that he was worried about the others. “I look as if I am a Taliban supporter but I am not. But these clean-shaven people you see here,” he pointed to some clients and workers at his garage, “inside they are all Taliban.” He explained that with Pakistan coming under repeated US attacks even people who have voted for moderate political parties are looking towards the Taliban for deliverance.

In Karachi, there are frequent warnings that the Taliban are headed this way. There are posters warning us about Talibanisation. Altaf Hussain thunders about them at every single opportunity. But nobody seems to warn us about the preachers who are already here: the ones wagging their fingers on TV always tend to precede the ones waving their guns, smashing those TVs and bombing poor barbers.

Preaching is also turning out to be an equal opportunity business. Driving my son to his new school one day, I listened to a woman talking with a posh Urdu accent on a local FM radio. With a generous smattering of English, she was trying to persuade her listeners to dress properly. “When you prepare for a party, how much do you fuss over a dress? You select a piece, then you find something matching, then you have second thoughts. All because you want to look your best at the party. You want to flatter your host. And do you prepare like this when you know that one day very soon you are going to go to the ultimate party, where your host will be Allah?”

The speech, we were told, was brought to us by al-Huda Trust, which is located in the upscale Defence Housing Authority and has its own website.

Later, I ran into a relative, a mother of two who was wearing jeans and a shirt, and who asked our opinion about her new hairdo. She was fasting, I was not. She quoted me some rules for fasting: situations in which one is allowed not to fast, along with some more injunctions for lapsed ones like myself. When are you going to start wearing the hijab? I asked her jokingly.

Probably never, she said. “The Book tells us only to wear something loose, not to draw attention, not to wear anything tight. There are so many rapes, abductions. We must not provoke.”

“How do you know all this religious stuff?” I asked her.

“I have read it in books,” she said nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal thing for a liberated working mother to pore over religious texts to decide the length of the hem of her skirt or the size of her blouse.

“Where does it say?” I challenged her. “In the Quran. I have read it myself.” She started another mini-lecture, which ended with these words: “The point is that Allah doesn’t want a woman to draw attention to her bosom.”

Listening to these preachers, people in Pakistan today seem to believe that God is some kind of lecherous old man who sits there worrying about the size of a woman’s blouse while American drones bomb the hell out of the Pashtuns in the North. You can blame the Pashtuns for many things, but no true Pashtun has ever been accused of wearing tight dresses.

Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, stumbling from one crisis to another, has been accused of many things, but nobody has ever accused him of having a political philosophy. He was asked about this a while ago in an interview, and he parroted some clichés about Sindhi Sufi poetry and world peace. “I am a great admirer of Sindhi Sufi poetry,” but I doubt Zardari would get very far reciting it to one of the thousands of evangelists unleashed on this hapless nation. Because if Zardari has read Sindhi Sufi poetry – or, for that matter, Punjabi, or Pushto Sufi poetry – he would know that it is full of more warnings about mullahs than all the CIA’s country reports lined end-to-end. Sometimes I am also puzzled at my own reactions to these preachers: why do these overt symbols of religion bother me when I myself grew up in a family where prayers, Quran, and rosaries were a part of our everyday life. One reason could be that the kind of religion I grew up with was never associated with suicide bombings and philosophies of world domination. Religion was something you practiced on your own, between meals and going to school. It didn’t involve blowing up schools, which seems to be the favourite pastime of Islamist militants in today’s Pakistan and something that our televangelists never talk about. Maybe people are just buying into the symbolism as a way of expressing their defiance towards the Pakistan government’s policies that many of them see as a mere extension of the US. Maybe, like many other expats, I just hanker for those good old days when saints and sinners, believers and sceptics and preachers and their bored victims could live side by side without killing each other. (Newsline)