Pakistan's Response to the Peshawar Attack

LOSING HEAD AND HEART

Maryam Sakeenah

Tragedies like the one in Peshawar are litmus tests for any nation- either bringing out the best, or exposing the bare bones. Pakistan’s response is curiously similar to the U.S response to 9/11. The fact that the U.S’s counter-terror strategy accounts for the genesis of a much more brutal TTP and ISIS is lost to us. In the same manner as the US filled up prisons contravening law and depriving suspects and inmates of fair judicial process in its paranoia after 9/11, Pakistan is all set to establish special military courts in contravention of constitutional procedure, for swift conviction of ‘terrorists.’ The horrors that were unleashed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in the name of national security are a forgotten narrative in the new Pakistan post 16/12.

Our collective response to the tragedy shows a febrile national demand for vengeance. Ironically, we are baying for the enemy’s blood just like the enemy is baying for ours- in the process, we lose the moral high ground we think we possess. In the process, ‘the faces change from pig to man and man to pig, and pig to man again- and already it is becoming impossible to say which was which.’

At present there are two extremist discourses in the country: the first, of course, is personified by the likes of the clerics at Lal Masjid and other fanatical groups, invoking religion to justify fanatical militancy. This religious extremism has come handy for movements like the Taliban who hide behind it for moral cover of their actions. There is, however, another extremist discourse: it comes from the liberals who have joined the chorus for an unrelenting militarist approach in response to the Peshawar attack. This high-pitched chorus decries any counter narrative or stirring of dissent. In the new Pakistan post 16/12, no one can take a different approach to dealing with the problem of terrorism in Pakistan, and have their opinion respected.

Anyone who does not take sides in these extremist discourses and believes in giving a chance to stable peace through justice and effective longterm peacebuilding is termed unpatriotic at best, and a terrorist-sympathizer, even supporter more commonly. There is no room for dissent. In this extremist furore, all hardline stances seem to have suddenly been vindicated. The iron-fisted policies of Musharraf that helped create the TTP are now being interpreted as farsighted wisdom. Frenzied calls for razing madrassahs to the ground or burning down mosques no longer sound outrageous in the spirit of febrile jingoism.

The strongly militarist strategy  gives overweening powers to the army to deal with an issue that requires a more variegated longterm approach. It is likely to turn the country into a military state. The policy is uninsightful as it aims to do more of the same that created this monster, in order to eliminate it. The TTP emerged as a much more brutal and militant force than the original Taliban movement as a result of Pakistan’s disastrous decision to support the US in Afghanistan and sending its forces in the tribal areas to stop support for the anti-US Afghan resistance. This made the fiercely independent Pashtun tribes turn their guns against the Pakistan army and state. A renunciation of this ill-advised national policy is necessary as a first step to heal and rebuild, even as we take necessary firm action against the unrelenting perpetrators. Besides, the clandestine channels of support and funding to these militant groups must be traced and exposed before the nation. The enemy is not just the gun-toting Taliban militant, but his trainer, financier and facilitator. These vital connections have always been the state’s well-kept secret. And now, questions cannot be asked as we give a free rein to the military to ‘exterminate all brutes.’

In the tide of this nationalistic fervour to exterminate the brutes, drone operations in Pakistan suddenly and silently receive endorsement by national consensus. Questions are no longer welcome about civilian casualties or other fallout of the operation in the tribal areas. Answers are no longer deserved by the nation. The supreme ultimate goal is invincible national security, and ‘to this end, all means must give way.’ While the need for security is vital and understandable, bypassing all that is legal and rational and moral ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.   

The deeper problems have to be dealt with through a wider, more insightful non-military approach: combating extremist discourse that misuses religion to justify terrorism and creating an effective counter discourse; listening and understanding, dialogue, mutual compromise and reconciliation; rehabilitation and peacebuilding. There are numerous examples in the past- even the recent past- of how war-ravaged communities drenched in the memory of oppression and pain, seething with unrelenting hate, have undertaken peacebuilding with some success. Possibilities to create the conditions that had led to ceasefires that brought temporary respite to the nation during this war, should have been explored with sincerity.

The series of executions after the Peshawar tragedy is also regrettable on many counts.  Many of these convicts were juveniles when they committed the crime, brainwashed and swayed by passions. Many had confessions extracted through torture. These were the small fry, while the big fish have escaped the noose. So many high profile murderers and criminals go scot free, whereas these brainwashed juvenile offenders from an ethnic minority, a disadvantaged background are picked out selectively for blind 'justice.' Selective justice is injustice. Two such cases which have been highlighted by human rights groups are that of Shafqat Hussain convicted at the age of 14, and Mushtaq Ahmed who was tortured into a confession without being given access to a fair trial.

Our uninsightful reactionary policies reflect a loss of head and heart in the wake of the Peshawar tragedy. In this feverish frenzy of extremisms baying for each others blood, voices of moderation , justice and peace are dying out.  And the rest is Silence.    

Waa Islaamah! (Alas, for my Islam!)

IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS: ‘WAA ISLAMAH!’

Maryam Sakeenah

The rising death toll, the blood and the gore hurts_ but the searing, tearing hurt like a thorn lodged in the very heart which will outlast the last rotting corpse is when these and other enormities are committed in the name of the faith of Islam: a faith that declares the sanctity of innocent life to be greater than the sanctity of the Kaabah itself... And like the humiliated Muslim woman from Madina 1400 years ago disrobed in the marketplace had exclaimed in distress, the believer’s bloodied heart cries out, ‘Waa Islamah!’ (Alas, for my Islam!)

When indiscriminate violence uses religious beliefs and ideals to seek cover under, it viciously defaces those. A grotesque wrong has been committed against Islam by extremists and fanatics, and our collective inability to reject it in clear terms has had grave consequences. Responses to Islamist extremism from Islamic scholars have often been ambivalent and ‘politically correct’ rather than passionately censorious of this being done in Islam’s name. This is for two reasons: the clergy’s preoccupation with minutiae of fiqh, denomination and sect; and sympathy for the original motives of religious militants who launched a defensive struggle against unwarranted occupation and oppression against Muslims.

By all means, selfless sacrifice for a higher cause (justice and truth) is the most beautiful that the human being is capable of: Islam assents, through the doctrine of Jihad and the esteem in which those who undertake it are placed. But there is a lot of murkiness out there, especially on this side of the Durand Line. The original impetus for the defensive struggle has spiralled into no more than naked violence for an ideologized power struggle, and the damage done by fanatical groups in the name of Islam is irreparable in its psycho-social consequences.

It is these psycho-social consequences that are the gnawing, deep hurt. I struggle as a teacher on Islam, with confused young minds full of questions, confusions, bitterness. There is deep resentment and unease over the failure of Muslim religious leadership to provide clarity and answers. Among those still struggling to hang on to faith, there is a seething, muted anger over traditionalist scholars’ failure to rescue the narrative from politicized and ideologized contemporary Jihadism and Salafist fanaticism. There is today a clear trend of disenchantment towards religion in Pakistan’s middle and upper middle classes, the gravity of which is yet to be recognized, and to meet which we are utterly unprepared.

The media has often played the role of Agent Provocateur stoking controversy around serious subjects of Islamic jurisprudence. Sensationalist talk-shows deal in half-truths and untruths, relaying featherweight opinions on issues of gravity, by scatterbrained demagogues and con artists. Clarity remains elusive as young minds are confused over these matters of complexity. Given the fact that the source of all information for most these days is primarily if not solely the popular media, it is not surprising that many growing up post 9/11 have come to associate religion with regression, backwardness and even evil, thinking we would do better without it. When you pit a madrassah-graduate religious scholar against a squealing and irate Liberated English Speaking Woman giving him a couple of minutes to explain away the barrage of allegations of misogyny often born of a superficial understanding of religion and society, you make Islam seem incapable of withstanding the secular-liberal assault; you reinforce the idea that religion being a thing of the past, needs to be cast off for a progress that apes the Western model: Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's; Give unto God that which is God's.

The struggle is not entirely about the physical elimination of violent religious groups through military strategies. There is a greater and more formidable challenge to face: to undo the terrible damage that the religio-ideological underpinnings of extremist groups have done to Muslim societies, and to hearts and minds.

Our failure to rescue the religious discourse from its abusers who have the audacity to pose as its defenders  is a huge blemish on the pages of our history. History’s verdict shall be unrelenting and merciless against us.

Islam in this society faces an unprecedented crisis. And yet, hackneyed and simplistic as it may sound, in the heart of this darkness there is a flicker of hope. At the heart of crisis is often opportunity, if we learn the right lessons: that religious violence is a hydra we created with our silence towards grave injustices against our own people on the dictates of the Global Bully, thinking the unholy alliance would bring us boons. We then nurtured this hydra and owned it with our silence towards the crimes it committed against other innocents in the name of Islam. And now the genie cannot be bottled back up again. Two wrongs do not make a right. Two silences slowly kill us all, till all we hear is the haunting echo, 'Waa Islaamah!' 

A realization is slowly sinking in even though we took far too long to learn- that extremists use religious sources to justify their ideology, hence the responsibility on religious scholars to spearhead a progressive interpretation of Islam rooted in its sources is great, and that this has to come from the highest authorities on religion venerated by the generality of Muslims. Traditional Muslim scholars need to assert, as Sheikh Hamza Yusuf puts it, that indiscriminate violence in the name of Islam is‘neither from religion nor sanctioned in any reading from our pre-modern tradition. It is a modern phenomenon, and those practising it have learned it from nihilistic elements in Western tradition who innovated from Marxism and Asian philosophy like the kamikaze...’

The current crisis is also gradually bringing the realization that denomination and sectarian orientation are secondary when the attack is on the very soul of Islam, and that the reply has to be proclaimed with a single voice. It is helping us understand- though the cost of our unwillingness to learn has been too dear- that our condition cannot be traced down to an externalized enemy to give us a comforting sense of ‘We the good and true versus They the evil and false.’ Often it is more complex than that, the evil more insidious and closer to home.

The pulpit has to assume responsibility to set the record straight and disseminate the eclipsed tradition that has no equivocation regarding the rejection of fanaticism and violence against innocents, and the sanctity of human life. As the crescendo of the salvaging voice for Islam rises, the narrative will be rescued from the unworthy and undeserving. It has been a long, hard way but in Pakistan there is a clear shift in public opinion against the TTP and other religious hardliners. With their atrocious acts, these groups have dug up their own graves, as the human heart’s  innate moral criterion balks at such an inversion of basic morality in the name of religion. In the Heart of Darkness, holding on to hope is still possible.      

The Stasis of the Muslim Mind

THE STASIS OF THE MUSLIM MIND

Maryam Sakeenah

“Lost in the loneliness, we turn inwards- with a knife in our hands and a lump in our throats”, writes Muhammad Fadel describing the deep crisis in contemporary Muslim consciousness. The loss of the Khilafah has imbued Muslim sensibility with a deep and haunting nostalgia for a bygone glory. The direction of foreign policy taken by Western nations vis a vis the Muslim world has not helped assuage the raw sentiment, leaving Muslims to harbour the supposition that the ascendant West is locked in a crusade against the Muslim world in the throes of despondency imposed by a malevolent external enemy. The frustration this engenders often makes itself felt in spasmodic bouts of violence like the gasps of an etherized patient laid across on the table.

The experience of long-drawn colonial rule across Muslim lands intensified the nostalgic longing for a lost glory as well as the need to hold on ever more strongly and exclusively to religious fundamentals as a means of self-preservation and protection of religio-cultural identity. This exacerbated the disconnect between ‘deen’ and ‘dunya’ in Muslim consciousness in general and education in particular. Aurangzeb Haneef notes in his article, ‘Learning from the Past’, that one of the most important effects of European imperialism in Muslim society was that the pursuit of rational sciences (maqulat) was abandoned in favour of transmitted sciences (manqulat)in the spirit of preservation in an attempt to re-center and standardize the traditions of religious knowledge. Madrassas ceased to be the training grounds for the intellectual and cultural elite and increasingly came to be identified with religious education only, which was an aberration from the tradition.

The rising popularity of Salafism is a reactionary response out of a prevailing sense of defeatism, victimhood, vulnerability and insecurity over what is seen as the encroachment upon Muslim identity and culture by an ascendant Western civilization. The call for a puritanical ‘return to the sources’ down to the letter shunning the accretions of theology and jurisprudence over centuries is distressingly ahistorical, uncreative and mimetic. It refuses to recognize the need to creatively and rationally respond to the exigencies of the times. Ironically while it claims fidelity to authentic Muslim tradition, it actually betrays the essential dynamism of the same. This dynamism is the defining trait of Islamic jurisprudence which traditionally accorded space to diversity. Muslim jurists were remarkably tolerant of ‘ikhtilaf’(difference of opinion), and were adept at the ‘adab’ (etiquettes) of ikhtilaf. Towering jurists of the sunni school like Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Malik discouraged blind following (taqleed) of their opinions, encouraging critical thinking and research.

These Muslim groups demonstrate all or most of the traits of fundamentalism, that is: ‘a sense of chosenness tied to the demonizing or damnation of all others who refuse to get behind the truth subscribed to by the subject himself.’ (Farid Esack) By refusing to defer to historical understandings of Islam in theology and law, these Muslim groups place themselves at the fringes of Islamic tradition they claim to be guardians and restorers of.

Due to a radical subjectivism that confers quasi-divine authority to a certain set of literalist opinions these innovation-resistant groups refuse to subject their opinions to rational inquiry. In so doing, they implicitly refuse to recognize intrinsic human diversity as well as the status of individuals as rational subjects imbued with the Divinely-bestowed gift of intellect and free will. “Unto every one of you have We appointed a [different] law and way of life. And if God had so willed, He could surely have made you all one single community: but [He willed it otherwise] in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto, you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works! Unto God you all must return; and then He will make you truly understand all that on which you were wont to differ.” (5:48)

At a subconscious level, the deep realization of the untenability of opinions that refuse to defer to critical examination has resulted in an inward-looking stasis characterized by an uncompromising exclusivism and exceptionalism.

Muslim exceptionalism betrays the Quran’s universal embrace of humanity with its consistent appeal to mankind as the creation of God, a single family. ‘O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13) The Quran attaches sanctity to all humankind when it narrates how God blew of His own spirit into the first created person. Muslim exclusivism refuses to recognize the fact that our well-being as a species on a finite planet is tied to the well-being of all others we share it with, and that in the face of this reality, all labels and artificial boundaries are secondary. It is only the extremely narrow-minded and short-sighted who would refuse to recognize the fact that our well being is inextricably tied to the well being of all others.

A further corollary of such exclusivism is the tendency to view ideas as mutually exclusive, with an either/or approach. The middle ground, the many grey areas of overlap are lost sight of. This generates a characteristic intellectual extremism that infects Muslims en masse. It is not understood that neither of the extremes is an acceptable alternative to the other, hence the world appears all black and white, like an arena for a clash of ideas. The ‘Us versus Them’ psyche translates into ‘Islam versus The West.’ This is dangerous as it understands both Islam and the West as monoliths and glosses over the many instances both historical and contemporary, of coexistence, intercultural exchange, common grounds and shared values. It denies the universality of commonly held values, viewing them as ‘Western’ or ‘Islamic.’ The actual confrontation as recognized by Islam, is between Haqq and Baatil (Truth versus Falsehood), and before deciding if anything that passes for Islam is the whole truth, we need to ask ‘whose Islam?’, given the fact that the Quran and sunnah are open to diverse readings and interpretations and the self-appointed spokespeople of Islam are as many as the possible interpretations. Nor is Falsehood equivalent to all that the West is about, given the fact that the military-industrial complex and the clique of influential policy-making elites are responsible for the highhandedness of foreign policy decisions and the injustices that have wreaked havoc and provoked backlash among Muslim populations.

Muslims often invoke the ideal of Islam comparing it to the reality of Western society which often betrays its own values such as freedom and liberty, to show the degeneracy of the latter as compared to the Divine system they have been denied- unmindful of the many ways Muslim societies consistently betray the values of Islam.  

The myth of ‘Islam versus the West’ also denies the collective heritage of Islamic and European civilizations and the instrumental role Islam had in making the Enlightenment possible. “Arab science altered medieval Christendom beyond recognition. For the first time in centuries, Europe’s eyes opened to the world around it- Arab science and philosophy helped rescue the Christian world from ignorance and made possible the very idea of the ‘West.’” (Jonathan Lyons, ‘House of Wisdom’) Aime Cesaire beautifully and powerfully reminds us of this collective human heritage and that attempts to claim a monopoly over the achievements of human civilization are a form of intellectual dishonesty, whether done by scholars in the West or the Muslim world. "But the work of man is only just beginning, and it remains to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of our passion, for no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force. And there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory." - Aimé Césaire 

In the same vein, there are other binaries like ‘Islam versus Democracy.’ In the recent Pakistan elections numerous religious groups propagated that casting a vote was an act of ‘kufr,’ because democracy is based on the sovereignty of the masses over the sovereignty of God. While the system of electoral politics in Western societies has elements that are incompatible with Islam, the values of democracy are universal and are part and parcel of Islamic governance. Following the majority opinion a standardized practice in Muslim tradition (‘Ijma’ has many forms, the last of which sanctions general voting by the public to settle questions that bear upon the interests of the general masses and can be put to a public vote). Moreover, respecting popular sentiment and being accountable to the public are fundamental Islamic political values. The procedural rules of electoral politics can and should be reformed to conform to Islamic standards and shari’ rulings made exclusively the job of a panel of qualified ulema, beyond the purview of general voting- and it no more is ‘an affront to God’s sovereignty.’ Numberless Islamic scholars have talked of the compatibility between democratic principles and Islamic politics. Sameen Sadaf notes the irony in ‘The Dynamism of Islam”: The alternative, they say, is ‘Khilafat’ (which in many ways is democratic in its ethos). However, since there is no comprehensive system and candidature for khilafat at the time, one can suppose that all we can do is wait for a savior while the forces of actual ‘Kufr’ take over and ruin us.” Pro-Sharia activists seem to assume that mainstreaming the Islamic way of life through dialogue and dawah can be discounted without any loss and they can march straight to an Islamic Khilafah state that will somehow miraculously tame the Muslim masses into believing slaves of God. 

The binary thinking pattern and exclusivism has made Muslim consciousness be preoccupied with narrow, parochial concerns considered ‘Islamic.’ It is forgotten that being slaves of Allah means being good human beings first and that as Muslims everything in the universe is our business. Zaid Hassan writes of the need to ‘reclaim our relationship to the whole’ in his wonderful article, ‘Notes towards an Incomplete Manifesto for Liberating the Muslim Mind.’ The growing distance between ‘deen’ and ‘dunya’ in Muslim consciousness has made Muslims unconcerned about aspects that belong to the secular domain as profane and unworthy. Hence there is an intellectual degeneracy, and a clear absence of contemporary Muslim discourse in science, philosophy and the humanities, a near-absence of Muslim contribution to research.  In the recent elections, Islamic parties in Pakistan exclusively talked of the need for a return to rule by Islam, invoking Shariah, the Islamic identity and ethos of Pakistan. Talking of issues that resonate with the masses like poverty or the energy crisis was considered redundant given their ‘Islamic’ credentials. The growing unpopularity of these parties and their less-than-expected performance comes as no surprise.  

This ghettoization of Muslim thought threatens to make us dwindle into a cult at the margins of civilization. Religious discourse that fails to take account of the modern mind and appeal to the youth with their voracity for rational argument cannot be shoved down people’s throats. It is condemned to survive as no more than a fringe-cult.  

Still more lamentable is the fact that Muslims are failing to realize the need to introspect in these critical times. Any manifestation of the deep crisis in Muslim consciousness is dismissed as ‘unrepresentative of Islam’ at best, and ‘propaganda against Islam’ at worst. Self-criticism is noble, highly needful and the essential trait of the faithful. Muslims have abandoned it altogether, and any voice helping us to examine ourselves critically or calling for a reform is disdainfully rejected with suspicion and sneering self-righteousness. The belief that terrorists or criminals or misogynists ‘use’ the name of Islam to justify their deeds is comforting but unhelpful because it does not recognize the fact that many interpretations of the Quran and sunnah actually give some grounds to sanction such acts and that therefore there is great responsibility on Muslim thinkers to expose and oppose the textual basis of such arguments.

The stasis of the Muslim mind is a daunting project before us. Muslim society is terribly fragmented and polarized between the extremes of the secular and the religious. So much of Muslim scholarship today is pitiably out of touch with the vicissitudes of contemporary society, rationally indefensible, in a language far removed from and inaccessible to the mass man and incognizant of the psychology of modernity and post-modernity. ‘Maqulat’ must be brought at par with the ‘Manqulat’ as central to a holistic Muslim education, precisely because that is how it had always been and was supposed to be before things went awry. The need today is for Muslim scholars to negotiate between entrenched extreme positions, address issues of the here and now in a language that appeals to the common man, and to appeal to modern sensibility in a manner that is faithful to the ethos of Islamic tradition. Such voices need to collate, organize and rise to a crescendo that can drown out the clamour of extremisms. It is a grand project and an urgent one, but cannot be begun until we first realize the need for such effort today and cease to live in denial of the terrible crisis that threatens to rob our faith of its very soul and reduce it to perpetual irrelevance.

The Need for Empathy in these times...

THE MURDER OF HUMAN EMPATHY

Maryam Sakeenah

Following the reprehensible attack on Christian homes in Lahore, a spine-chilling, grotesque image of an arsonist cheering over the burning flames went viral. One wonders what sort of man thumps his chest over destroying innocent lives and how human beings can become capable of such naked, audacious sadism that seeks justification in a faith that decrees ‘Whosoever harms a non Muslim citizen of a Muslim state, I shall be the complainant against him on the Day of Judgement.’ (Sahih Bukhari)

Throughout history human beings have shown themselves to be capable of wreaking terrible destruction and causing great suffering- from burning ‘witches’ at the stake, crucifying God’s noble messengers, butchering refugees in sacred precincts, gassing Jews at Auschwitz, to the nationalistic wars of the twentieth century, the liquidation of millions in nuclear destruction and poisoning of the biosphere through relentless commercial-industrial activity.

Yet Jeremy Rifkins in his phenomenal book ‘The Empathic Civilization’ insists that human beings are ‘Homo Empathica’, that is, defined and distinguished for the ability to empathize. He writes, ‘Human beings are soft-wired to experience others’ plight as if we were experiencing it ourselves.’

Empathy allows us to stretch our sensibility to another so we can cohere into larger social groups. It is curbed and limited by defining these social groups through narrow, parochial banners of ethnicity, nationalism, race and creed so that the empathic drive does not extend to the out-group. The Prophet (SAW) said: "He is not one us who calls for `Asabiyah’, (prejudiced, parochial association)" (Abu Daud.) The out-group is then ‘otherized’, made out of the reach of our empathy. This creates indifference and apathy towards the suffering of people belonging to a different classification. However, a more severe form of limiting and deflecting the empathic impulse is dehumanization of the other ‘as flies to the wanton boys’, often institutionalized by the social superstructure: state and government, media, education, religion. Through stereotyping, essentialism, ethnocentrism, prejudice and propaganda as well as censorship and selective relaying of information to the public, minority groups and those whose interests clash with or threaten one’s own are systemtically dehumanized  and even demonized to appear less than human despicable, lower-order bestial ‘others’ whose eradication may not be of any great loss to human civilization. In the process we forget that as members of the human family, we all share a common, precarious existential predicament- our ‘little lives rounded with a sleep’- on a little finite planet in the mystifying universe.

Der Spiegel carried a report last year on the psychology of American drone operators whose button-clicking while reclining in plush chairs in air-conditioned offices decrees death to anonymous distant targets. The method of modern technological warfare seems to be designed to keep empathy at bay- the victim is invisible and remote, represented by a red dot on a laser screen, annihilated by a light, single click. Drone pilot Vanessa Meyer said, “When the decision had been made, and they saw that this was an enemy, a hostile person, a legal target that was worthy of being destroyed, I had no problem with taking the shot." (Nicola Abe: ‘Dreams in Infrared’) Gitta Sereny writes of Fratz Stangl, the annihilator of thousands at a Nazi camp: “Prisoners were simply objects. Goods. “That was my profession,” he said. “I enjoyed it. It fulfilled me. And yes, I was ambitious about that, I won’t deny it.” When Sereny asked Stangl how as a father he could kill children, he answered, “I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass. … [T]hey were naked, packed together, running, being driven with whips. …” (Chris Hedges: The Careerist)

Few and far between, there may be those whose empathy grows militant and unkillable. Brandon Bryant was able to humanize his victims in his drone operations_ he noticed the details of their lives and patterns of behaviour akin to his own. "I got to know them. Until someone higher up in the chain of command gave me the order to shoot." He felt remorse because of the children, whose fathers he was taking away. "They were good daddies," he says. He felt ‘disconnected from humanity’ while at his job, going through terrible unease and remorse. Having quit his job, he wrote in his diary, "On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed. Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot." (Nicola Abe: ‘Dreams in Infrared’)   

Perhaps the most integral parts of this institutionalized dehumanization embedded in the superstructure of modern industrial society are the ‘Careerists’- the good men and women efficient at their jobs that make the system function. Chris Hedges describes them as ‘...armies of bureaucrats serving a corporate system that will quite literally kill us. They are as cold and disconnected... They carry out minute tasks. They are docile. Compliant. They obey. They find their self-worth in the prestige and power of the corporation, in the status of their positions and in their career promotions. It is moral schizophrenia. They erect walls to create an isolated consciousness. They destroy the ecosystem, the economy and the body politic... They feel nothing. And the system rolls forward. The polar ice caps melt. The droughts rage over cropland. The drones deliver death from the sky. The state moves inexorably forward to place us in chains. The sick die. The poor starve. The prisons fill. And the careerist, plodding forward, does his or her job.'

In Pakistan religion is increasingly used as one of the most powerful means of deflecting empathy from those outside the faith and sectarian affiliation. Religious intolerance in a culture of violence and anger is a fatal mix and has gone on a bloody rampage.  While the causes, factors and agents responsible for the ongoing madness are complexly intertwined, the resistance, rejection, counternarrative and healing that ought to have come from the representatives of religion in this part of the world has been inadequate, half-hearted, ambiguous and equivocal. The voice of condemnation from the pulpit is faltering, and this has been extremely damaging in a number of ways. The contemporary discourse of political Islam in Pakistan is heavily lopsided, selectively highlighting the plight of victims of American, Israeli and Indian misdemeanours (which certainly are important human rights issues), while keeping mum or issuing periodic enfeebled and rhetorical statements of condemnation over the plight of minorities and other innocent victims of those committing violence in the name of religion.

For Islamist groups, the cost of this silence has been and will be crushingly enormous. The disappointment felt by members of the civil society and educated youth over a criminal silence and inability of the religious leaders and scholars to rise to the occasion and give clarity to the public with a single voice has been shattering. This has not only alienated scores of good, intelligent people belonging to Pakistan’s educated urban middle and upper classes from Islamic groups and organizations but in many cases from the faith itself.  A colleague posted the picture of the gleeful arsonist with the comment, ‘Happy mob rightfully burns down Christian homes. Another great day for Islam. Another victory against the forces of evil.’ While this is an extreme reaction showing inability to draw a line between despicable, crazed fanatical elements and the faith itself, but it increases the onus on spokespeople of religion to address the burning issues that blur the lines.

Going to college in Pakistan shortly after the U.S declared all-out ‘war on terror’ and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, I witnessed scores of young people around me turning to Islam, primarily out of empathy for the Muslim victim, the underdog. In this country, the Islamist persona has now understandably metamorphosed into a perpetrator devoid of compassion, rationality and empathy, and this has alienated and repelled hundreds of thousands, resulting in a completely opposite trend that I, now an educator, see around me: a clear de-Islamization of Pakistan’s urban educated youth. While there also is a swing in the opposite direction, but the de-Islamization trend is clearly on the rise, understandably fuelled by the aforementioned.

Islamists in Pakistan are not cognizant of this terrible loss as they perceive themselves to be locked up in a crusade against the onslaught of the West, the secularists, the Zionists et all. Any voice calling for the need to provide clarity, answers and solutions is dismissed as ‘Westernized’, ‘secularized’, ‘liberalized,’ hence misguided and insincere, unworthy of serious consideration.

The narrative in Pakistan needs a rethink: the ethos of the Quran is the extension of identity to embrace the human race as fellow sojourners held together by a common human nature and destiny: ‘Mankind is but a single nation, yet they disagree.’ (2:213) Secondarily, we are taught to understand our responsibility towards those outside the faith fraternity not merely through divine directive but lived example and established paradigm.

In 628 C.E. Prophet Muhammad (s) granted a Charter of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai:

“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them.
Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.
No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims' houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God's covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight.
The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.
Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”

Empathy humanizes and civilizes. Its suppression intensifies secondary drives like narcissism, materialism, violence and aggression. The task of religion, education and the media must be to bring out the empathic sociability stretching out to all of humanity and prepare the groundwork for what Rifkins has called an ‘empathic civilization.’

Mercy and gentleness, said the Prophet (SAW), are defining traits of believers: ‘Allah is gentle, and He loves those who are gentle.’ (Sahih Muslim)   Mercy and gentleness beautify the spirit: "Whenever kindness is in a thing it adorns it, and whenever it is removed from anything, it disfigures it." [Muslim]

Empathy is engraved into the core of our consciousness as human beings- that softest part inspired from the Divine Ruh (Spirit). Those who confine or deflect it are on the wrong side of humanity and history. In the long run, their narrative will lose out and history’s merciless verdict against them shall be ineradicable.        

Long March, January 2013.

AN INSTRUCTIVE ABSURDITY

Maryam Sakeenah

Much has been written about the Theatre of the Absurd in Islamabad on the Ides of January. I wouldn’t dignify it with comment on the agenda, the proceedings, the success or the lack of it. But I am interested in examining how it could have happened, with the support of the many thousands who braved the cold and the rain and stood their ground. Hope is a great thing. What drove the many to Islamabad in the face of security threats under the grey skies was hope. But what makes it ironic and poignant is how unworthy was that which they pinned their dreams and expectations to.

But when deprivation, helplessness, desperation beat hope up to a frenzied furore, and when you add to this the ignorance and gullibility of the average Pakistani, you have what you saw in Islamabad: men women and children risking all to lend strength to a controversial cult figure ensconced in his well-furnished mobile cabin crying hoarse about justice while the devotees that had made his absurd drama happen shivered in the cold in the open, given the ever-present fragile security situation in this country.

While the parallel with how the Lal Masjid crisis was brutally dealt with brings out the merits of democracy- any democracy, even as bad as this one- there are other lessons to be learnt. With crowds cheering to the sensational rhetoric emerging from the Hallowed Container, I wondered why the many far less controversial veteran Islamic scholars that have lived and died in this country, could never manage to call the shots or muster up a following as large or as willing to brave the billows to rally to their leader’s call. Yeats wrote: ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.’  

There are lessons to be learnt by Islamically inclined leaders and organizations. Qadri’s inclusive appeal, his embrace of diversity and reaching out to minority groups and sects has been clearly articulated. In the wake of 9/11, his masterstroke was in managing to emerge as one of the few voices from this part of the world categorically rejecting extremism and the Taliban’s misuse of religion to justify violence. The voluminous treatises on tolerance in Islam, virtues of non violence and the fatwa against terrorism and suicide bombings was an instant hit for the very fact that it was presented from this part of the world by a beard-sporting individual in religious headgear, when others of the kind busied themselves criticising US policies solely and exclusively, deflecting criticism away from the malaise within. The international acclaim and support he has garnered is something to speak of.

One can compare this to the fact that many religious groups and individuals had in this time produced article after article and delivered sermon after sermon almost entirely focused on refuting deviant innovative practices among other sects, democracy as a kufr-based system and the media as a vicious propaganda-machine. Islamic institutions produced work on the intricacies of theology, the curse of nationalism and the need for ruling by Islam, all in a language and manner that relates little to the average Pakistani Muslim. When the nation was beset with challenges to its very integrity and survival at the hands of those operating in the name of Islam, Islamic scholars busied themselves in traditional theological discourse, occasionally issuing fiery critique of American policy and the Zionist and secular lobby. Few voices rose to reject the rise of extremist religiosity that took up violence against non combatants and had the audacity to sanctify it in the name of Islam. Few voices reached out to the public confused between the extremist and the secular-liberal discourse, seeking a satisfying, middling narrative. Few addressed with precision and clarity the problems of the mass-man. Few addressed growing concerns in the rest of the world about violence in the name of Islam on the rise in this part of the world. It is a fundamental principle of conventional morality that self-criticism is nobler. By failing to rise to the occasion, they have reduced themselves to utter irrelevance, ceding ground to ambitious opportunists wearing the ravishing guise of religiosity like Qadri in a nation peopled by the religiously sentimental semi-educated and illiterate.

And this brings us to the most vital point- in the final analysis, the grandiose Theatre of the Absurd in Islamabad highlights like never before the fact that the greatest challenge we confront is the ignorance and lack of awareness among the common man- and this threatens to make a mockery of our still nascent democracy. It reduces a nation of 180 million to slogan-chanting, gullible, hero-worshipping rabble taken in with whoever can play the Promised Messiah best. And as long as we do not take on this enemy within, demagogues and those practised in the art of publicity-seeking theatrics will continue to claim attention they do not merit- by the sheer numbers of their ignorant, juvenile, emotionally charged and intellectually naive fan-following. 

Lessons from Egypt

LESSONS FROM EGYPT

                                                                Maryam Sakeenah

Given a similar baggage from the past, the social spectrum in Egypt and Pakistan is built on ideological polarization as a result of political decisions- on both domestic and foreign policy- by leaderships unrepresentative of the public sentiment. These were unguided by understanding of social reality, creating a gaping split between religious and secular-liberal extremes over ideology, opinion, identity, worldview, lifestyle and affiliation: both strongly entrenched in passionate ideological commitments, feeding off one another and unwilling to budge.

Both nations suffered years of unscrupulous authoritarian rule directly or indirectly supported by the United States and allied Western nations. In Egypt, the resentment this created boiled over in the Arab Spring last year. Heartening and exciting, yet it also was in many ways a detonation of pent-up feeling with little organized political planning behind it. That should not however, take away the deep admiration the resilient protesters at Tahrir Square inspire. However, a huge question stared in the face: where to, and what now?

It still haunts the mind. While the Muslim Brotherhood has won an historic electoral win, for many the options were limited between a pro-Mubarak military man and the Brotherhood’s candidate. The vote was more against the continuation of a dictatorship many had given blood sweat and tears to defeat, than in favour of what the Brotherhood symbolized. Ruling over a populace so diversified in level of religious affiliation, Morsi faces huge challenges to bring to fruition the Brotherhood’s Islamist dream. The opposition against the attempt to increase presidential powers and the eventual success of the referendum approving the  draft-constitution by an Islamist-dominated council resonates with vital lessons Islamists in Pakistan have much to learn from. 

For starters, governing a society divided between the fiercely secular and the warmly religious is to have a hand in the hornet’s nest, unless one realizes that as human beings we all share in common the need for justice and basic freedom, for dignity and a decent life and two square meals a day. And if rulers set about delivering these, schisms and ideological affiliations do not stand in the way of achieving the common human good. The secular-liberals and the conservative Islamists are united by their basic human need for a dignified existence. In fact, for a government aspiring to rule by Islam, providing bread and rights is not about expediency, but a primary moral responsibility.

The Muslim Brotherhood with its well articulated prioritization of economic welfare, egalitarianism and social justice seems to have reached political maturation. In his first address after the referendum, Morsi said,"The coming days will witness, God willing, the launch of new projects ... and a package of incentives for investors to support the Egyptian market and the economy,"

Islamic political groups in Pakistan and abroad have made the mistake of putting the achievement of political ascendancy as their prime goal while ignoring the social project that must accompany it. Groups calling for a return to the Khilafah believe the establishment of Islamic government is the panacea, while religious parties often claim that the promulgation of the Shariah law shall crystallize a veritable Utopia. This runs contrary to the  precedent we have from the sunnah of the Prophet (SAW) whose epic spiritual and social mission preceded the establishment of the Shariah.

Both law and political policy are means to greater ends. Religious political groups make the mistake of seeing them as ends in themselves. The Shariah of Islam is the guarantor of the maqasid e Shariah, the guardian of Islamic values by which life is to be lived. Similarly political power is a means to establish an order that guarantees rights indiscriminately. Islamist groups in Pakistan have not so far proven themselves here. The talk of Shariah and the dream of Khilafah cannot be sold to a public writhing in the throes of poverty, ignorance, oppression, disease.  

Before launching a political struggle, Islamist parties need to embark upon the social project to mend a broken society, moderate between the dangerous ideological polarization and address social injustice. Such an effort can act as a secure launching pad for a political movement and a support base for a stable government. Without demonstrating this ability, political struggles of Islamic groups will be stillborn.

So far, an intellectually robust discourse mediating between the ideological polarization has not emerged from Islamic scholars in Pakistan. A comprehensive strategy to address the real problems has not been presented. 

As long as polarization between the religious and the secularized exists and grows, any religious group winning power will have to deal with stiff opposition leaving its hands tied.  That is the lesson from Egypt’s dilemma which the ruling Islamists seem to have dealt with skilfully. With a council including sizable diverse groups like Coptic Christians, leftist social activists and women, the draft constitution referring to the centrality of the Shariah managed to scrape through. The president has assured that the concerns have been taken seriously and that the constitution offers protection for minorities. The decision to put the draft to vote by a public referendum demonstrates the Brotherhood’s commitment to democratic process and its inclusive vision. Opposing groups quit protests in the wake of the Brotherhood’s conciliatory gestures, settling for a ‘wait and see’ approach.

Most ordinary people protesting in Egypt’s streets in 2011 and now have always been more interested in liberty, equality and rights than Shariah or the lack of it. Those calling for a return to the Shariah or actively opposing it will always be at the fringes, even if loud. The mass man wants things more tangible than legislation. As long as religious parties fail to take on social ills, they will remain unattractive to the man in the street.

Putting the cart before the horse by making Shariah law precede the provision of basic justice has proven disastrous. When the letter of the law is imposed without first actively promoting the value it exists to protect, this becomes brutal and spiritless. The experiment with the Hudood laws in Pakistan in the 80s allowed Islamic law (or the pretense of it) to fail by not creating the necessary conditions for it to work. Such disasters are likely to be committed by those seeking to win legitimacy by appealing to religious sentiment.

Islamic groups must also be conversant with modernity. Both freedom and democracy are part of the inevitable modernizing process in societies today. Egypt is livid over what is perceived as Morsi’s attempt to curtail both these hard-earned gifts. While the democracy package bred in Western society may certainly not be suitable for Muslim societies, the values of governance by popular will, decision-making involving public participation and accountability before the public and the law are values Islam vigorously promotes. Certainly, the intricacies of how these democratic values can best be ensured is something scholars and leaders have to work out given their social contexts. Other than that, the implementation of laws must be done in a manner that does not encroach upon personal liberty. While an Islamic society will facilitate and promote the values of Islam, it must not call for moral policing that trespasses the line between the public and the private. Individual morality in an Islamic system is promoted through education and gentle ‘dawah’ and no imposition is acceptable in the private lives of individuals as that is between a man and his God. Islamic groups in Pakistan are still unclear and uncomfortable with both these aspects of modernity and what these mean to them: freedom and democracy.

The Muslim Brotherhood seems to be learning the right lessons and growing in the right direction. Josh Rogin writing for Foreign Policy terms the Egyptian government an ‘honest broker in the Middle East.’ Morsi’s aide Essam Haddad makes it clear that the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to create a theologically based state in Egypt, but that it does want shariah to inform governance and law going forward. The Brotherhood's religious leader, Mohamed Badie, tweeted on the eve of the referendum approving the constitution by a 64% vote: “Let's start building our country's rebirth... men and women, Muslims and Christians."

Their Pakistani counterparts, while in awe of their victory, still have a long way to go- with a good deal to be unlearnt and a good deal to be learnt. 

Attack on Swat girl

A METHOD IN THE MADNESS?

Maryam Sakeenah

That attacking a child who expressed her will to educate herself and others like her is a crime most heinous is something every right-minded human being would assent to. There is, quite unsurprisingly therefore, an absolute consensus among Pakistanis and the rest of the world about the reprehensibility of the act_ and that certainly tells us our hearts are still in the right place. It is also a given that whoever is behind this attack is evil. 

Thinking thus is not leftist or rightist, or liberal or conservative or religious or secular. It is just common decency. 

But I must risk being controversial beyond the facile narrative of this episode. There are vital questions that need to be asked. For one, who would do this, and why really? I am told it is the thing called Taliban. But I must be cautious against unproven assumptions. Not because I am a Taliban sympathizer, but because I do not know enough to make that conclusion other than the fact that one Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed it was the Taliban. Mr. Ihsan however, does not quite have the credibility I need in order to believe him. He also tells me he wants her killed because she ‘promoted secularism’ and had the shamelessness to quote to me the Quran and the sunnah to justify the most despicable act. Indeed, the devil can cite scriptures for his purpose.

I would really like to know and condemn whoever is behind this in the strongest possible terms. But I cannot but put my finger on a murky, dubious and elusive entity that is called Taliban. I do not know what that is, except that it is an umbrella-term for something far more nuanced and complex than the term implies; used more liberally, loosely and expediently than it should- by both those who call themselves the Taliban as well as those who use it for others. Because while it originally described a popular defensive struggle against warlordism and civil strife in Afghanistan and thereafter against the US occupation of the same, it is now adopted by a band of sorts, consisting of mercenaries, petty criminals, hired assassins, agency funded terrorists, double agents, spies and pathological fanatics. Their link with the original Pashtun resistance by this name in Afghanistan remains unclear and questionable, and often denied by mainstream Taliban leadership in Afghanistan.

The skewed up mindset I read in the letter by Ihsanullah Ihsan is sickeningly diabolical. I stop and think what kind of a mind would call for the killing of a mere child using a completely irrelevant, ill-fitting and utterly out-of-context sacred text to justify the point-blank targeting of a female child who had come to mean so much for so many. Even if one cannot expect moral scrupulousness from the Taliban, this sounds like a masterstroke of grandiose stupidity in terms of political consequences as well as psychological repercussions. It is an absolutely suicidal move on the part of the Taliban, given the fact that the very natural and very expected sympathy for the innocent victim will bring utter condemnation and ruination to their cause. It is only natural that a pretty little girl wanting to educate herself and getting shot in the head by misogynistic terrorists for it will deflect any sympathy there may have been for what the Taliban fight for and will provoke the ire of all feeling hearts.

But perhaps there is method in this madness? For one, the episode came to light right after Imran Khan’s peace march against drone strikes had managed to draw attention to this issue that ails the heart of many Pakistanis, and just when there was talk of creating grounds for an operation in North Waziristan.  A news report in ‘The Express Tribune’ on September 17, 2012 entitled ‘North Waziristan Operation to Stay Under Wraps’ quotes a Pakistan government official saying that Pakistani authorities plan to create a ‘necessary environment’ for the Waziristan operation. Moreover, soon after the attack_ given the overwhelming public sympathy_ there is conspicuous effort to swing opinion in favour of the necessity to use drones to hit targets in the region and the necessity to begin a military operation in North Waziristan agency. This had been a demand from the White House since some time. 

I must be allowed to wonder who really is the beneficiary of it all? The pattern I detect is a familiar one. Before the Swat operation some years ago, opinion had been swung in support of it after the screening of a video that showed the Taliban lashing a yelping woman. Months later, a small news strip revealed the video had been a fake one. It did not matter then, for the deftness of the forgery had come in handy to justify the operation and to give an inept regime reasons for self-congratulation over something the Former Dictator had failed to do: rally public opinion before a military move into the restive, bleeding north.

Last month’s joint report by Stanford and NYU on the impact of the drone strikes in Pakistan calls them ‘damaging and counterproductive’ as opposed to the false US narrative of these being ‘surgically precise effective tools’ to hit specified targets with minimal collateral damage. The report documents 2562 to 3325 casualties by drone strikes since 2004, out of which 474-881 are civilians including 176 children.  The number of injured is roughly between 1226 to 1362 individuals. The report includes harrowing narratives of survivors and victim communities in a region where the ‘free media’ of the country cannot dare to tread.

I may be dubbed a hopelessly illiberal fanatic for linking up the Malala incident to the drones when I say that the sympathy generated for Malala must also be for all victims of terror, drone strikes, sectarian and ethnic killings, indiscriminately. We cannot discriminate between dead bodies just because it may not be ‘politically correct’ to question and condemn the cause of the deaths of some, depending on who the killer is. However, the necessary link between Malala and the drone strikes is best drawn by an anonymous lady holding up a most unforgettable placard that confounds the senses: ‘Drones Kill so that Malala can Live.’ I commend her scathing honesty. Few can put so succinctly the political agenda behind the state-sponsored media campaign for Malala and the vital link that does exist between the two. It is, in fact, quite ordinarily a strategy of psychological warfare to generate favourable opinion and support for a planned military offensive which may otherwise be opposed and questioned on moral grounds. In American military terminology, this vital strategy is called PSYOPS (Psychological Operations). Wikipedia explains: 

“Psychological operations are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.The purpose of the United States psychological operations (PSYOPS) is to induce or reinforce behavior favorable to US objectives. They are an important part of the range of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic activities available to the US. Strategic PSYOPS include informational activities conducted by the US government agencies outside of the military arena.”

So now again I hear talk of military operations with renewed vigour while public outrage is toned down and muted. Hawks who cannot see beyond a military solution to the complex, deep-rooted phenomena on the rampage in the tribal north must be patting themselves on the back for yet another tawdry, meaningless triumph. I shudder to think of the possibilities being contemplated.

And I wonder if this really is all about girls education as it is being made out to be? How effective will this be to further the cause of education for the girlchild in this country? Or will it blow to smithereens more lives, generate more terror wreaking havoc on human lives and keeping little girls away from school? And I think of those other victims it is not good manners to make mention of: those battered anonymous and unsung lives connected to so many other lives; of children whose dreams of brighter futures die away and recede into the falling debris; and of my religion audaciously sinned against and made a malleable ploy to the whims and unholy ambitions of evil self-appointed guardians of it.

But if we wish to reach solutions we must be ready to understand, ask questions and wonder why, really? If it is really an ideology that motivates the Taliban’s diabolical moves, I wonder why the ideology never drove these misogynistic Pashtuns into paroxysms of fury and frenzy when Swat hosted tourists and many young honeymooning couples a decade ago? A friend born and raised in Swat speaks of the cheerful, chivalrous, hospitable people with well-knit and warm community lives. My mother who went to school in Nowshehra and Peshawar reminisces of ruddy chivalrous Pathan youths escorting groups of girls to school and of bright-eyed Pathan girls following their dreams into high school and college, many of whom graduated as professionals. So where exactly has it all turned awry? Ideologies do not take birth instantaneously; but vengeance does.

And, if it really is an ideology that motivates the madness, can the use of wholesale, blind brute-force that does not discriminate, defeat it? The answer is a most basic lesson of history it would serve us well to learn.

And somewhere, this simplistic narrative I must believe, just does not cohere.

The pointer here is that maybe this uncontrollable hydra of insane extremism and terrorism is the work of our own fumbling, bloodied, sinning hands? Maybe it is the inevitable result of the dirty deals we brokered and the unholy alliance we forged in indecent haste and sinister hush? And maybe the monster will not be tamed and cut down to size unless we dare to understand that violence begets violence, and the victim does not forget or forgive; that drones don’t see the faces in the dust nor hear the moans in the darkness, but that the faces are people and lives and stories forever knitted into several other stories with the silken ties of love. And by being complicit in this unholy mission, we make these sad stories ugly, grotesque, haunting, terrifying, vengeful. And our own story of ignominy and annihilation is writ indelibly by the Moving Finger.