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.]

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

Sorry I have been MIA for a bit. A couple or three things jump out from the New York Times, NPR and the ‘Net this morning.

Firstly, there’s an op-ed in the NYT this morning by the country director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting providing his personal perspective about the bombing of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, a watering hole (and just a place to hole up) for expats, particularly. And there have been other stories about Afghanistan in The Times, on NPR, other places in the last few days. It seemed to hit me; is it a coincidence that the Western Media and Zeitgeist is sitting up and noticing—or should I say acknowledging, since some information has always been around—that Afghanistan is down the tubes because the Taliban, as Mr. McKenzie tells us, have now started a policy of targeting westerners?
The other thing that jumped out at me was from a series that NPR is doing on Muslim Women in Britain.

Mohsin Hamid’s latest op-ed is pretty good. Recommended reading for anyone who wants to know how things looked/look from the perspective of the every day life in Pakistan.

"Civil Society" has become the new touch phrase in Pakistani politics. And it’s gotten to the point where people express the same kind of cynicism about it that is usually reserved for words like "Islamist", and "War on Terror", and, well, "Progressive Islam". A friend on one of our alumni mailing lists was getting pretty disgusted by Nawaz Sharif’s piling on to the Civil Society bandwagon.

... so said Faiz Ahmed Faiz, probably the most popular poet of revolution in the latter half of the 20th century in South Asia; Pakistan, India, and particularly on the Left.

... lives.

That’s the first reaction I had to a piece a young friend of mine who lives and works in Hyderabad sent me. I have been wondering what I can say about recent events in that city, and just as when "my city" was burning, or when a sister city burnt across the sea, I was in pain, this young writer has had to deal with what he has always described as a stab to the heart of the place he loves dearly. And now, he has captured his feelings in a way that is too beautiful not to reproduce in full here; it is the same spirit that has led to great and noble things in that region of the world—from the Taj Mahal, to the deepest, most profound sufi poetry in the world. And it is uplifting to see it alive in those younger than oneself. Here is Manzoor‘s piece:

The Sultan’s Prayer
Hyderabad is a multi-religious and multi-cultural abode for millions of people, and this is not any recent phenomenon. Multiculturalism is the very foundation of this great city. It is said that some 400+ years back, Prince Quli Qutub Shah of the Qutub Shahi dynasty fell for the beautiful Bhagyamati and rebelled against his father, the King, to marry her. On becoming King himself, he bestowed upon his beloved Bhagyamati the title of ‘Hyder Mahal’. It was this romantic and chivalrous king who—like the emperor who created the more famous monument to love in Agra—built a whole city on the banks of river Musi, and named it after his beloved wife.

That is how Hyderabad happened.
...

The Robert Jensen article keeps coming up…where, as I saying earlier, we have Farid Esack, Junaid Ahmad, and Robert Jensen telling us that Pakistani liberals, it seems, "[i]nstead of talking about these fundamental questions of justice" "might ignore …