Yesterday, I was riding on the public bus, on my way to visit a very good friend of mine, and a pair of Mormon guys got on the bus. They were wearing the white shirts with the name tags—missionaries. One of them came back and sat near me, and started up a conversation with me. Now, I am from the Southern United States, the land of Christian evangelism, so I immediately knew what his goal was. We started by talking about the weather and the landscape of Boston and Massachusetts versus that of Utah (where he was from) and the South.

Karachi at dusk

We've had a lot of angst, and whatnot about the events in Karachi. Please do read the piece below. Kamal is a friend, too, but he's evolved into one of the most objective observers I know in the business--anywhere. [Yes, more so than I.]

I came across an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times concerning interaction between Mormons and Muslims in Southern California. Some Evangelical Christians in America have dubbed Mormonism the “Islam of America.” I remember even Tablighi Muslims would draw favorable comparisons between Mormons and mainstream Muslim beliefs. Like Islam, the Mormon faith was founded after the Gospels of Jesus by a Prophet who revealed a “revelation” that was seen as a compliment to the previous Revelations.

The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
                                                                                                               – Joseph Heller, Catch-22

           After a failed trial whose verdict was declared by Time Magazine to be “one of the Justice Department’s most embarrassing legal setbacks since 9/11,” the American government has been resorting to legal ruses and an outright manipulation of the judicial system to keep the high-profile Palestinian-American professor Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Now, after five years of imprisonment under conditions condemned by Amnesty International as “gratuitously punitive,” Dr. Al-Arian could be sentenced any day to at least five more years. His case has been powerfully presented in this gripping YouTube video.

The Western fascination with protesting monks from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma to the autonomous region of Tibet in the People’s Republic of China is usually told in the following scheme: open-minded peaceful religion under siege by autocratic authoritarian regime with ideological leanings derived from the West be it a military junta in Burma or a nominal Communist regime in Beijing.

I think I’ve finally found the phrase that identifies me, at least with regards to the kinda guys I go for. According to part 3 of the Gay Muslims documentary, I would be a “Mohammed queen”. (Similar to how a white guy who likes East Asian guys is called a “rice queen” and a non-white guy who likes white guys is called a “snow queen.”) I feel like my ideal lover and life partner would be a guy who identifies as Muslim and practices the faith (or, at least, shows some genuine love/affection for it).

So DA left Islam, I wonder if he joined the world’s youngest major religion – Sikhism.  He told me he had an interest in this Punjabi faith.

I find it funny how Pakistanis are always amazed at my admiration for Sikhs, well Afghans love Indians and India, we share a contentious relationship with Islamabad over issues of terrorism, meddling in Afghan affairs since the days of Benazir Bhutto (I liked her, she was part Iranian hence explaining her fair skin) and a frontier that some feel is an artificial border drawn by the British.

It boggles the mind. Fortunately, international pressure has forced Hamid Karzai’s government to give him a new trial. Hopefully it will go better than the first one.

There’s an old (from our youth :p) Bollywood song that goes “Main ro’oon ya hansoon; karoon mai kyaa karoon?!” or “Should I cry or laugh; To do, what do I do?”

Users subscribing to the Internet though the PTCL (Pakistan Telecom Corporation Limited, the semi- or formerly-government-owned corporation), in particular, have been getting the following message today if they tried to access YouTube:

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Dear Internet Users