These days Pakistanis are in a gung-ho war mode owing to #ThankYouArmySharif. We are boasting about our capability to build more nuclear warheads than we have clean public toilets in the whole country. We are rearing to teach those Indians a lesson for having intolerance issues within their own country. Four of our celebrities have seemingly suffered setbacks due to this, and PCB had to come back after cancelling a planned meeting with the BCCI. We are up in arms! We cannot tolerate this kind of attitude from ‘those Indians who claim to be secular’.
How dare they treat the Indian host of the Kasuri book launch (not Kasuri himself) the way they did? How dare they stop their own BCCI from holding talks on resuming cricket ties with us? How dare they send back our commentators and one umpire? (They didn’t, it was BCCI’s suggestion to ensure the safety of the three since the match was going to be held in Mumbai). Army Sharif’s big mouthed bigots and their thousands of minion followers were going blue in the face shouting intolerance: down with Shiv Sena! Down with the Indian government!
In the meantime, we were able to kill an official total of 40 people in three days during Moharram, because of their faith. No follow up on that, because they were not sexy enough, or maybe the poster boy fears he will alienate half of the minions who follow him because he dared speak about people from ‘the other sect’.
Not so long ago a red bereted mad hatter Pakistani was put in prison and allegedly served with umpteen number of lashes for criticizing the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen. According to news reports currently more than 4,000 Pakistanis are languishing in jails in Saudi Arabia. This figure includes women and children and all of these people are kept there without fair trials. In fact at times they are not given a chance to be represented by a lawyer.
How many times did our socialites raise their voices against Saudi Arabia? How many of them said ‘down with Saudi Arabia’, ‘down with their barbarian methods’? The Saudis have been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last few months. First there was the rape and mistreatment of Nepalese maids in India by a Saudi diplomat and his family. This was followed by bizarre unethical behavior by yet another Saudi in USA, the stories of which have appeared in all English newspapers in Pakistan. And the latest is a Saudi prince being caught with 2 tons of drugs on his private plane. Saudi Arabia punishes common offenders of sex outside of marriage with 100 lashes or in some cases death by stoning. The punishment for drug smuggling is death. It seems though that these punishments are only meted out to the commoners.
Thankfully all is not lost yet. Recently Mr. Abdul Sattar Edhi, Pakistan’s biggest humanitarian who comes to the aid of human beings regardless of their faith, gender and life choices, won the day for us. He showed the people of the subcontinent what human beings should be like, by looking after a daughter of India for all these years with care and love, without expecting a single penny or even any acknowledgment in return. He showed the world that there are perhaps others of his inclination in Pakistan, who are humans before anything else. He gave some hope for Pakistan – a country which has become notorious for its REAL bigotry against people from other faiths – which kills rather than throw black ink on the faces of those who dare to be atheists/non-Muslims/Shia /Agha Khani /Bohra /Sufi – where the percentage of people belonging to other faiths has fallen from 20% to less than 2% in the last 68 years.
And do you know who else made the news for the right reason along with Mr. Edhi? It was India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Yes, the very same person who we all love to hate; the Indian poster boy for intolerance against Muslims; the face of hatred against Pakistan. Modi acknowledged and appreciated the Pakistani humanist Mr. Edhi, offering his charity aid equivalent of $200,000. Modi was also one of the first heads of state (yes, way before Saudi Arabia) who came forward to offer support and all kinds of assistance to Pakistan as it reels through a natural disaster. More than 200 people are killed in Pakistan alone, and many others devastated as a result of last week’s earthquake.
Now what are we going to say to this? Oh don’t worry, people have already started saying we don’t want anything from a kafir country’s murderer Prime Minister. But there are others who have said thank you, and have recognized a good gesture for what it is. These are the people who are not hate mongers, who are not Muslim supremacists and who are the real hope for India and Pakistan.
Selective criticism and intolerance against only a particular set of people is further enhancing the great divides which exist between tolerance and pure vile hatred in our society. If we are serious about development in its real sense, this growing trend of hypocrisy has to be checked.