| PAKISTAN CRICKET
BOARD SHOULD WORRY ABOUT THIS! Khaled Ahmed’s Review of the
Urdu press |
| SECOND OPINION: Pakistan Cricket Board should
worry about this! —Khaled Ahmed’s Review of the Urdu
pressAl Qaeda members have claimed connection to Tablighi Jamaat,
including the ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh, and
Iyman Faris who tried to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. The PCB must
worry about the Tablighi penetration before the team is refused visas
It is good news that Pakistan’s top batsman Yousaf Youhanna
has embraced Islam, but there could be repercussions from this event
that we should not overlook. It is not enough to complain vociferously
after unfair things happen; it pays to be cautious before they happen.
National cricketer Yousaf Youhanna was quoted in daily Pakistan (September
16, 2005) as expressing his dismay and anger at the repeated false
stories in the press about his conversion to Islam. Two days later
Nawa-e-Waqt and others reported that Yousaf Yuhanna, now Muhammad
Yousaf, had indeed embraced Islam in Makkah along with his wife Tania,
renamed Fatima.
His Christian parents were deeply offended. His brothers,
too, remained Christian. He had moved out of his Defence house where
his parents lived, had taken his children out of an English-medium
school and enrolled them in an Islamic school. He was influenced
by fellow-cricketers and Tablighi Jamaat. His mother complained that
famous Pakistan’s retired cricketer Saeed Anwar had led her
son ‘astray’. There was news that Tablighi Jamaat had
penetrated the PCB’s Lahore camp.All this is of no import at
all, but one has to be careful about the fact that Tablighi Jamaat
is on the watch-list in the West, and our increasingly bearded cricket
team could become targeted — through refusal of visa —
under the new anti-terrorist laws being introduced in the UK and
Australia. Iyman Faris, the Ohio truck driver involved in a terrorist
plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, came to Pakistan in late 2001
to attend a Tablighi gathering. Americans say many Al Qaeda members
have claimed connection to Tablighi Jamaat, including the ‘American
Taliban’ John Walker Lindh, captured in Afghanistan. While
the conversion is welcome, the PCB must start thinking of what might
happen to the team ‘unfairly’ in the coming days.Writing
in Jang (August 8, 2005) Nazir Naji stated that during the rise of
the Taliban in Afghanistan, Allama Iqbal’s son Justice (retd)
Dr Javid Iqbal went to Kandahar and Kabul after growing a beard deemed
compulsory by the Taliban. He returned praising the Taliban government
as a truly Islamic force. Later, the Americans delayed the grant
of a visa to him and thus prevented his travel to the US.Dr Javid
Iqbal has not denied Naji’s version, but if he did grow a beard
this could be the subject of his ‘reverse’ confessions
if ever he published a sequel to his Gureban Chaak memoir. He punctured
piety with his secular behaviour; now he can puncture secularism
with a bit of piety. Quoted in Awami Jaddo-Jehad (Number 23) leftwing
scholar sand intellectual Hassan Gardezi strongly denied Adnan Khan’s
claim in an earlier article that Noam Chomsky was an anarchist. He
said it was most unfair to call a great leftwing genius an anarchist.
He said Pakistanis should themselves read Chomsky’s books easily
available in Pakistan and see for themselves if he was an anarchist,
which he was not.Anarchism is the purest form of utopianism you can
think of and in that sense Chomsky is an anarchist. He is the rare
writer who actually says he is. In his For Reasons of State; (The
New Press, New York, 1973 reprinted 2003), he agrees with the anarchists
who faulted Lenin for creating a ‘socialist’ state and
destroying the Marxist utopia of a classless, stateless society.
Muslim Islamists are in a way also anarchists because of their literalist
purism. Russian anarchists used to be violent, so are Muslim anarchist-Islamists.Writing
in weekly Azm (August 8, 2005) Tanvir Qaisar Shahid stated that MMA-JUI
leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman was recently deported from UAE because
he had gone and met Libya’s Qaddafi who had in the past insulted
the Saudi king who had even withdrawn his ambassador from Libya in
protest. It could be that Saudi Arabia asked UAE to deport him to
prevent him from entering Saudi Arabia. It was also possible that
UAE deported him thinking he was Fazlur Rehman Khalil the militia
leader of the banned Harkatul Mujahideen. Maulana Fazlur Rehman had
also visited him in Islamabad just a week earlier to hear him say
that he should ask the government not to arrest him again.With the
new UN Security Council resolution making ‘incitement’
to terrorism punishable, Maulana Fazlur Rehman (and possibly even
Imran Khan!) could now be treated most shabbily at international
airports. While this will be most unfair, we should be careful about
what we say; or simply accept that we would stay at home and not
go to countries we dislike.According to weekly Azm (August 1, 2005)
Hizb al Tahrir was recruiting Muslims from Green Acres area of Sydney
for Al Qaeda. It stated that Muhammad Atta, the pilot of 9/11, had
contacted the Hizb in Germany and that the 7/7 London bomber Shehzad
Tanvir also had contacts with Hizb Al Tahrir. The organisation was
found distributing pamphlets among the Muslims of Australia. Meanwhile,
head of Islamic Teaching Institute in Australia Sheikh Khalid Yaseen
had asked Muslims not to make friends with non-Muslim Australians.
He also said that disobedient wives should be beaten up and homosexuals
should be put to death. But mufti of Australia Sheikh Tajuddin Hilali
had condemned this fatwa.Navid Butt and his Hizb al Tahrir are being
unfair to Pakistan by carrying out a most unrealistic Islamist campaign
through pamphlets. We could actually get the rough end of the stick
because of what Hizb is doing.
It would be most cruel to the small
expatriate Pakistani community in Australia. Some Pakistani who fled
from Pakistan to Australia to avoid Pakistan’s religious extremism
might soon regret their decision. Writing in Jang (August 19, 2005)
Abdul Qadir Hassan stated that had Zia ul Haq not stood up to Russian
imperialism there would have been no mosques, no Quran, no Muslim
names and no Arabic in Pakistan. The Russians would have annexed
Pakistan to get to the ‘warm waters’ of Indian Ocean.
Zia was all alone when he confronted the imperialist challenge of
Russia, which had tasted the blood of Muslims.Zia was not ‘all
alone’. He was helped generously by the Americans and the Saudis.
This help was not only diplomatic and military, it was also monetary.
He raked in a lot of it personally. |
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