A Surfeit of Politics

A Surfeit of Politics

Maryam Sakeenah

 
"'Twas grief enough to think mankind 
 All hollow servile insincere
But worse to trust my own mind
And find the same corruption there." (Emily Bronte)

'Politics' is the raw human nature I carry within magnified onto the world map. Strangely enough, studying political intrigue, conflict, conspiracies, power struggles, war and peace, human motivations, aspirations and errors, I only find my own nature magnified onto the chasm of History. History: that embarrassing account of our communal actions as a species, and our communal mistakes.

History repeats with a pattern all too familiar, predictable and regular. It is a record of human mistakes that mattered. Fatal Mistakes that affected millions of anonymous lives. Mistakes that repeat themselves: relentlessly, tragically, incorrigibly. It is only the names, the faces, the dates that change. Not our inner rawness of nature. It is the context that changes, not the motives; not the actions; not the impulses_ not the feet of clay, not the tail between the legs.

First it was the primordial jungle where our predecessors tore each other up for space, or food. Now it is the Brave New World. No more stones and spears, no more caves. We have our Ministries of Defence. Our Smart Bombs and Dirty Bombs. And we fight for oil. We grew more sophisticated in our tastes, but in the process of the onward march of time, we forgot to learn the little lessons on the way, those little signs God signposted to direct, guide, warn, assist. We refused to learn from the consequences of our deeds and misdeeds. But mostly misdeeds. Sigh.

We chose to thrust fingers in our ears when the cry came loud and clear: “And travel in the land and learn from the fate of those before you...” (The Noble Quran) and “Many a nation have We destroyed before you...” (The Noble Quran) We forgot the greatest lesson of all: the realization that at the end of the day it is, after all, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, and that the only thing that makes “our little lives rounded with a sleep” have worth, is to

“leave footsteps in the sands of time

 Footsteps that perhaps another

 Forlorn and shipwrecked brother

 seeing, might take heart” (Longfellow)

 We chose only to leave stains of grease from heavy military boots thundering relentlessly onwards, trampling the small things, leaving behind stains of blood and the stench of death.

I remember some years back I saw a newspaper cartoon from Italy under Mussolini in the 1930s, which showed a volcano smouldering and full of lava, with a tag ‘freedom of speech’ written at the side. Atop the volcano sat ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini with his fists firmly holding down the crater of the volcano. The caption beneath read, “This will hurt you more than it hurts me.” Time took it to the logical conclusion: Mussolini lost, living only as a pariah in history. Freedom triumphed. History taught the lesson it always does.

Yet decades down the line, we are still languishing for true and meaningful liberty and freedom_to live, speak, BE. Other tyrants hold down the volcano’s crater. Lesson: we forgot to learn from history. Again. And so we have our Abu Ghraibs, Bagrams and Guantanamos, we have Gaza and Baghdad, Mazar e Sharif and Srinagar where we let loose the Reign of Terror and then hold down the crater with boiling lava within, hoping it will not hurt us. We refuse to learn.

We refuse to learn that:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away” (Shelley)

We refuse to learn that the carrion littering the streets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and Fallujah in 2003 had been once upon a time faces that smiled, eyes that twinkled with hope, hearts that pulsated with life... and that the victimized and oppressed do not forget their dead. The hurt keeps festering till it maddens, metamorphosing human beings into suicidal human bombs who laugh life to scorn, because they have seen life devalued, wrenched away with wantonness.

In our narrow, selfish and disgustingly self-righteous megalomania, we pursue our agendas toying with lives, desperately trying to perpetuate our petty selves, leaving ‘light footprints’, planting flags and arrogant bawdy nationalistic emblems over bleeding cities where those ‘people we do not know’ dwell otherized, dehumanized. We forget that the Greater Plan too is at work, as it always has been. “And while they plan, God also plans. And the best of planners is God.” (The Noble Quran) We forget that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends towards justice.’ (Martin Luther King)

Political intrigues, strategies, agendas and ambitions in this larger context seem puerile child’s play, the chessboard moves of politics a mere Game of Chess. We keep playing the Game with pretentions of grandeur, calling it ‘Great Game’ , and we refuse to read the writing on the wall, the destiny writ large, the Hand of Justice constantly at work. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Multitasking and the Sunnah

MULTI TASKING AND THE SUNNAH

Maryam Sakeenah

You have to be a multitasker, or you’re old fashioned. It is just so normal nowadays to have a conversation while smsing a friend, listen to a song while typing an email, update your facebook status while looking up a reference on Google, watch the television while at the dinner table with family. This just goes to show the magnitude of the transformation the technological revolution has brought about in our social and even personal lives. Multitasking is the Way of Life.

While the modern lifestyle almost dictates multitasking, is it really an efficient way to get things done and get them done well? Much has been written about it, and concerns voiced about multitasking taking its toll on human relationships, work efficiency and quality, time management, mental concentration and human behaviour.   

What in the old-fashioned eighties would be considered rude manners, disrespect, attention deficit or disinterest is now the way to go about things. In a comedy show, Jerry Seinfeld explains his reasons for not possessing a Blackberry Smartphone: “Blackberry people... their pupils do not focus. They’re not really there. They hold the Blackberry in their hands all the time, because this is what it commands them to do. And they listen to what you are saying and compare it to what is on the Blackberry, and which one is really more interesting...”

It is interesting to note that the term multitasking is derived from computer multitasking. It is a basic computer function. But while machines are built to multitask, can we apply it to human lives as well? The modern way of life demands just that, but it is common observation that it leads to attention deficit, poor time management and poor efficiency. Psychological studies have disclosed that people show severe interference when even very simple tasks are performed at the same time, if both tasks require selecting and producing action. Many suggest that the human brain can only perform one task at a time. (‘Is Multitasking a Myth?’ BBC News, August 20, 2010). Psychiatrist Richard Hallowell has gone so far as to describe multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.” (Hallowell, Richard. Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life.) Researchers examined how multitasking affects academic success and found that students who engaged in more multitasking reported more problems with their academic work. (Junco, R. & Cotten, ‘Perceived Academic Effects of Instant Messaging Use.’).
Inability to manage time is a frequent complaint one gets to hear so often. We are by far busier today than ever before, we have more things to do today than ever before, our lives are faster and our tasks speedier than ever before, but we get to accomplish little, if not nothing. Multitasking achieves little. With our uninsightful and rather thoughtless embrace of technology, the ‘barakah’ has quite fled from our lives as we race against time and breathlessly chase deadlines, doing nothing to the heart’s content. We remain perpetual underachievers, perpetually dissatisfied.
As Muslims, the inspiration and guidance always comes from the life of the Prophet (SAW).  While we all know that the Prophet (SAW) possessed a multi-dimensional personality and lived out many roles that inspire all sorts of people, what must be highlighted and reflected upon is how he did justice to each of these roles, lived each aspect perfectly well, and accomplished all of his diverse range of duties remarkably. Whether it be his family life, his political life, his social sphere or his spiritual life, Muhammad (SAW) did it all to perfection. So then, dispensing so many tasks altogether, fulfilling so many of his duties that his position demanded, did the Prophet (SAW) multitask?
Here are some insights from his life that give us some clarity in this regard. For one, the Prophet (SAW) was a beloved husband, and spent quality time with his wives and children. To his friends he was a mentor and a loveable companion. As a military strategist and soldier, a jurist and lawmaker, a head of state, leader and statesman, a teacher and guide, the Prophet (SAW) was the paragon par excellence. Ayesha (R.A) narrates, “The Messenger of Allah talked to us and we talked to him. However, he was as if he had not recognized us when it was time for prayer, and he turned to Allah with his all existence.” This shows that the Prophet (SAW) would give his best to each task, one at a time. While at home, he would be fully involved in domestic affairs, spending time with the people of his household, listening to them, talking to them and attending to their needs. And when it was time for other duties for instance the duty of prayer to his Lord, he would shut out everything else and turn towards his Lord with heart and soul, with complete submission and thorough involvement. This perhaps is why he derived from it an intense pleasure that eludes us today, and could feel that Salat was for him ‘the coolness of the eyes.’ This is also why he managed family matters exceedingly well, and all his wives loved his noble companionship thoroughly.
It is also interesting to note the Prophet (SAW)’s manners of conversing with others. It is said he would speak little, but with gravity, precision, balance and wisdom. More than that, he was an intent listener and would listen to others patiently with complete attention till they had finished. In fact, when spoken to, he would turn himself with full involvement and interest towards the speaker, making him feel thoroughly understood and given importance. It worked wonders in gluing together a closely knit and firmly bonded community of companions, disciples, associates, lovers and devotees who later became integral to the spread of the Islamic mission.
In matters of the state or of military planning, the Prophet (SAW) applied himself fully and achieved astounding results. The fact that the Prophet (SAW) is universally acknowledged by all as perhaps the most successful figure in human history, must make us analyze his approach and methods with some seriousness. The way of the Prophet (SAW) was clearly what may be called ‘uni-tasking’, taking one thing at a time, performing it to the best of his ability till its conclusion without interruption, distraction or interference. It is only when one allows oneself to be possessed by a single idea and executes it to its successful end does one become an achiever with a deep sense of satisfaction. This deep contentment for having attained your target after successfully finishing a task you devoted yourself wholly to is an unparalleled feeling that is the privilege of the Sunnah-abiding Muslim to relish. Muslims are essentially uni-taskers.

Human Rights Violations in Kashmir

KASHMIR: SINKING INTO OBLIVION, RISING FROM THE ASHES  


Maryam Sakeenah


The jarring report on over 2000 unmarked mass graves in Indian Held Kashmir that came to light last month failed to elicit a response from the United Nations. When pressed for comments, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon apologized that he had ‘no comments for now.’ This is not just the UN lacking teeth; it is the UN being reduced to virtual dysfunction_ that is, irrelevance to global context altogether. With emboldened contraventions of its Charter by the most powerful states of the world as well as the much larger role and unrestrained power enjoyed by regional strategic organizations like NATO, the UN, like its predecessor, grows pathetically feeble and ineffectual. Nobody lost a lot of sleep over the contents of the report, and no uncomfortable questions were asked of anyone either.


The failure of human rights abuse in the world’s conflict zones and occupied regions to arouse significant concern shows how violence in the world’s conflict zones has become routinized in our collective consciousness. The world’s collective conscience is desensitized to human rights violations in places that routinely experience them. This silence implies a tacit sanction of occupation and its accompanying practices and doles out licenses to kill for trigger-happy men in uniform that help to maintain an arbitrary hold on suffering populations. We accept the brutality that is the work of human hands and the expression of men’s lust for control, dominance, power as an indelible destiny that some of the unfortunate ones among mankind have to live with. And life goes on.

Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri journalist and author of the novel ‘The Collaborator’ writes: “Brutalized people are made to behave normally as an acquiescent citizenry... The Indian State wants the world to believe that Kashmir is an integral part of India, and hence speaks often in the language of conquest. Dehumanized conflict management impinges upon the lives of ordinary people. This is a system that allows the executor to live in comfortable moral ambiguity, and wants the victim to renounce all claims to asserting his identity. This is what violence, torture, brutality are meant to do_ to reduce a person, a mind, a collection of minds to a spiritless body; the complete destruction of the will of the victim, which ensures a people are kept in submission and slavery...”


While it is possible to understand and even perhaps empathize with victims whose interminable suffering kills their hope and gradually renders them numb and insensate to the blatant injustice that happens around them, this is not so easily condonable in the case of those who are distanced from conflict and watch it as third persons on television screens. The 60-odd years of the reign of terror in the Occupied Valley , the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the illegal detentions, disappearances and the Draconian laws to justify these and give cover to perpetrators; and most importantly the state’s refusal to bring violators to book are a damning sentence on Indian state policy on Kashmir. This is important particularly, given Indian aspirations to regional dominance and permanent membership to the United Nations Security Council. These blood-drenched statistics signify an irredeemable loss of India’s ‘high moral ground’ as an aspirant to global power and prestige. It all adds up to a grotesque illustration of and a powerful indictment on the state of the world’s collective conscience and our failure to apply ethics to international affairs.


The Kashmiri is doomed to suffer as long as ‘War on Terror’ realpolitik holds hostage universal ethics, human rights, justice and common decency. In the post-9/11 global dynamics, India has closely allied its Kashmir policy with the larger anti terror narrative of the U.S by selling Kashmir as a classic case of ‘Islamic militancy’ and ‘cross border terrorism’ against a Secular-Democracy, garnering the world’s sympathy and deflecting attention from its own dirty tactics. A world dumbed down by a media governed by corporate interests and powerful lobbies readily swallows the narrative, and Kashmir sinks deeper into oblivion.


The U.S has chosen to bury its head in the sand regarding Kashmir. This exposes the meaninglessness of its rhetoric of democracy, self-determination, freedom, human rights etc, and the sheer hypocrisy of its claim to higher moral ground. The global recession that has hit the U.S economy hard accentuates the importance of the Indian market for the U.S, underscoring the need for stronger bilateral ties. Keeping mum on Kashmir serves everyone’s interests_ or, the interests of everyone that matters.


Pakistan on the other hand, caught miserably as it is between a rock and a very hard place, has very noticeably loosened its hold onto Kashmir, with its focus shifted to its Western border and the bloody, nationwide fallout of its blundering into the northwestern tribal areas. The War on Terror has concentrated itself in Pakistani territory, with Pakistan desperately trying to play up to its ‘most allied ally’ status while an increasingly suspicious, imperious United States threatens to ‘go it alone’ as the trust deficit gapes wider.


Kashmir is the tragic casualty in the new alignment and dynamics in the subcontinent. Amnesia is imposed on Kashmir by India with tacit approval from the U.S, and pathetic, inaudible whimpers of discontent from a hapless Pakistan.


However, in a way, this new state of affairs comes with opportunity. Kashmir has previously been caught between a ceaseless tug of war between India and Pakistan with a terrible national egotism and ideologically loaded stances defining the narrative. With Pakistan loosening its grasp , the indigenous, homegrown Kashmiri narrative acquires greater authenticity. Kashmir emerges as an indigenous, independent struggle for freedom and self-determination springing out of its saffron fields_ regardless of Indian intransigence, Pakistani ambivalence and American caprice.


Allegations by India of the Kashmir struggle being sustained by Pakistan have defined the Indian position on Kashmir and have been used to justify its highhandedness and its relentless militarism in the region. The theory loses ground as Kashmir emerges boldly as an independent movement of its own and on its own, in the face of Pakistan’s diminishing influence and national distraction.


It is this new, emergent trend that the occupier is frightened of and tries to eradicate through desperate measures: mass arrests, custodial murders, cover ups of evidence of diabolical deliberation behind all these. As India aspires to regional dominance and a permanent UNSC seat, it naturally has to be conscious of keeping up an image befitting of the world’s largest secular democracy that it goes about as. This requires gagging the voices from Kashmir and hushing up the noise made by human rights groups; it involves burying corpses in unmarked mass graves in the thick of the night, and whitewashing the blood stains. India’s desperate strategy to crush the bolder, genuine Kashmiri counternarrative is to create victims or potential victims out of all, using constant fear of the arbitrary occupier that creates a sense of helplessness destroying aspirations, hopes, courage; killing the resisting spirit and the will to act in defence. This impels the cycle of violence to continue endlessly and indefinitely, with little moral qualms given India’s powerful media and its global influence.


However, the false, dishonest, morally bankrupt narrative must be defeated by the Kashmiris through their stronger, deeper, genuine counter narrative that goes beyond Indo-Pakistan conventional wrangling, beyond shifty and capricious interests of Someone Else, beyond cosmetic face-lifts by oppressor nations aspiring to global power, beyond spineless leaders and dysfunctional organizations: “For me, what gives hope is the rise of more and more young people articulating their own narrative, their own experiences, their own policies...” (Mirza Waheed)