Non-Muslims and our textbooks

First purge your textbooks of the hatred you reserve for ordinary non-muslims – glorifying a select few will not serve to eliminate the negative images that you create in young minds. Unless you can tell kids (and mean it) that they should feel the same way about their compatriots regardless of their religion, it will be impossible to make non-muslims feel that they belong in Pakistan.

Recommend

We have successfully managed to incorporate bigotry and religious intolerance into our education system. It is frightening the false, jingoistic nonsense taught to children in our schools.

Recommend

@BlackJack:
Respect =)

Recommend

Sir, I cannot help but recall an incident from my own childhood. My father always used to say to keep the mind as stress free as possible from hatred, anger, jealousy and insecurities viz a viz other students and from every body. The reason being, A human mind however gifted and powerful has its own limits. So if it is filled with the above said emotions, then where would the mind have space to think and perform. It is only natural that there would be a dip in not only our performance but also personality. I hear by plead to the powers that be in Pakistan to stop promoting hatred and extremists views. It is one thing to show history in its true light, with impartiality but other to pepper it with hatred and victim mentality just for the sake of promoting ideology. It would certainly stunt the growth of the future generations.
Rgds
P

Recommend

I am beginning to like Express Tribune more and more after reading your editorials in your paper about tolerance. It is madness out there in school text books.
Here are some examples:
“Hindu pundits were jealous of Al Beruni,” according to a Social Studies textbook for Class VIII (Punjab Textbook Board, page 82). “The Hindus… had always been opportunists,” reads another one (Social Studies, Class VI, Punjab Textbook Board, page 141). And yet another one: “The Hindus have always been an enemy of Islam” (Urdu, Class V, Punjab Textbook Board, page 108).
No wonder that we are getting more and more intolerant. The indoctrination and hate start right from school, and are not just limited to madarssas, but also spread out to other schools as well. Growing up with such hate messages, many get angry on the other hand if anybody mentions atrocities of Muslim warriors. Islamofobia, they say. Really? There is good and bad in all of us. The problem is how to get out of this mess. I wish I knew

Recommend

Well written article while we are discussing the constitutional rights of minorities this should not be annulled but unfortunately many hero of independence and wars etc skipped from schools curriculum books this is fact. Further more minorities of Pakistan should be given opportunity to chip in for pointing out like minority MPA of Sindh assembly raise his idea about introducing their vision.

Recommend

@Abdullah: “Pakistan is a secular State and this got nothing to do with Islam.”

Definition of a secular state is that the government does not interfere with people’s lives based on religion. Individual bigotry while undesirable may exist in a secular state. By that definition Pakistan is is NOT a secular state. Consider the following facts which show state level discrimnation based on religion:
1) Pakistan calls itself an ‘Islamic’ republic. In its identity itself people of other faith are excluded
2) Blasphemy against Islam is punishable by death per law. Blasphemy against other religions is not only unpunished but institutionaled.
3) President or PM of Pakistan cannot be non-Muslim by law.
4) The constitution says that no law maybe passed that is against Quran. No other religious books are considered.
5) Recently the court ordered that the dome of an Ahmadi ‘place of worship’ bedestroyed. This is not consistent with freedom of worship.
6) There is no proces for registering Hindu marriages in Pakistani law.
7) Pakistan’s population of minorities has ben decimated from 22% at the time of independence to less than 2% now and state has been a silent spectator.

Recommend

@blackjack,

This is coming from Indians who don’t even trust their own textbooks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCERT_controversy. So, in what sense, the patronizing tone against Pakistanis when you own anti-Muslim hatred is projected in your reading of your own past.

@ayesha_khan,

Let’s assume for a moment that you are truly a Muslim from India; it boggles me to understand that you didn’t even recognize that the first war for your country’s independence was fought with a Muslim emperor in mind. That war struggled to elevate a Muslim emperor to be the Emperor of Hindustan. So, it was not the Congress party which started it all or sacrificed the most. 80-90 years earlier, a Muslim emperor was the locus for your country’s first war for independence. That man’s family was massacred and he was sent into exile. That struggle was fought including by Muslims who died and were expelled from your current capital. The Congress simply inherited an empire from the British. Kudos to the Muslim League, Congress could not inherit all the bounties.Recommend

@Zeeshan:
OH SIR, you are delusional at best……..
bahadur shah was proclaimed emperor of india not because everybody wanted him to be one, infact he was only a poet and had no quality of being a ruler to a town, let alone of entire india,….but becuase he was scion of a dynasty which ruled india for long, and common masses could recognise him…and would support struggle against the britishers….
to even think that bahadur shah would be next emperor, had india won the war is ridiculous,,winning rulers would again be back to their ways………

and also the muslim who revolted against the were mainly from present indian landmass…..muslims from punjab were mostly loyal to the british troops, and were infact used in crushing the rebillion…
so, muslim league sabotaged the rights which belonged purely to indian muslims…..

Recommend

History teach lessons to the sadists, divisive forces, selfish leaders and the best example is PAKISTAN. A country exclusively created for Muslims is hated by even Muslim countries and neighbours.

Recommend

@ayesha_khan:

Britain call itself Christain State so it is not secular? PK is Islamic only in name
Blasphamy againt secularism is punishable by death and disobeying secular law in many western states can get you killed. There is also what is called hate speech against religions (Islam) under the banner of extremism / fundamentalism / terrorism. Think WOT
President of Western country can’t be non secular or for that matter Communist. Think Mcarthyism
Western countries constitution says no law can be made but it needs to be secular
Recently Swiss banned mosques and France banned niqabs
There is no process to allow Islamic laws in eg in UK

Secularism IS NOT universal nor a melting pot. Allow Muslims in PK and muslim world to live by Islam and stop secular terrorism and extremism.

Recommend

@Wellwisher: Thanks for making nameless reference to the science genius of Pakistan, called Dr. Abdus Salam. He was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. But you will never see his name mentioned in any text-book or any mention of his laboratory/scientific research work or its results in any science book. All this due to the little,limited prejudiced way of thinking merely because this simple man, yes very self-negating, sacrificing physicist belonged to the Ahmadiyya Community of Pakistan. Similarly many other Pakistani Ahmadis, who had played great role not only in the creation of Pakistan but also served their motherland in outstanding manner, are not allowed to be mentioned in the history books of Pakistan. Such outstanding Ahmadis include Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, the first Foreign Minister of Pakistan from 1947 to 1954. Mr. M.M. Ahmad, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission of Pakistan, Gen. Akhtar Hussain Malik and his younger brother, Gen. Abdul Ali Malik, heroes of 1965/1971 wars. All these proud sons of the soil are admired, praised for their out-standing achievements in their respective fields. But they are totally ignored in their own country.Anyhow a time will definitely come when all such ignored sons of the soil will be given their due place of recognition inour national history books, too.

Recommend

So, I am going to resort to answer a few people:

@Deb,

Muslim League was fighting for Muslim independence from both Britain and India. Just like Kashmiris are struggling against you, the struggle by Muslim League viewed Indians as the neo-colonists. The British was a honest colonist but it seemed to escape Indians that they themselves were and are the neo-colonists.

“As for your comment ‘congress inherited an empire from British’, I don’t even know from where to start. First, British empire was far beyond India, congress on behalf of people of India got the country back to where it belongs.And in the process thousands of them gave their lives to British bullets or under the gallows.Not one from Muslim league spend time in prison.”poke person.

Deb, I am always surprise to know how fast Indians normalized and naturalized the boundary of their empire without considering the imagination involved in creating that boundary. The boundary of India was inherited from the British empire. Congress “did not speak on behalf of “people of India”", it anointed itself to be the spoke person. Muslims never viewed Congress as their voice. While Muslim was the sole community to resist Indians as the neo-colonists and succeed in keeping Indians at bay, the people in the south of the subcontinent also resisted neo-colonist India before succumbing to it later. Only Muslims, namely the Kashmiris, still refused to submit to the neo-colonist India. Their struggle is still ongoing as of today. Those people have given up their souls in resisting your colonization. So, Muslims are capable of giving up their souls for the sake of nationhood.

To say that Mughal is the sole empire is to ignore that you too are an empire. If you were to argue that anointing Zafar as the emperor of Hindustan was about shifting the power from one empire to another, then what would you call 15 August 1947? Muslims viewed that as changing the batons from one colonizer to another. One was foreign, another was self-proclaimed natives.Recommend

“Siddhartha Shastri

The key slogan of the sepoys in 1857 was “Falaq Khuda-ka, Muluk Badshah-ka, Ammal Zhansi-ki Rani-ka”. Of ocurse Bahdur Shah was too old to lift a finger and just went with the flow. That is why while Hodson summarily shot the princes and the British went on a killing rampage in revenge, Bahadur Shah was spared. He was no more than a symbol for the sepoys who knew no other political structure than dynastic royalty. His best contributions to India may be terms of his support of Urdu poetry.”

The key slogan of 1857 called for going to Delhi and not Jhansi. This flew on the face of Indians who viewed the Mughal as a foreign empire and Marathas as the native resisters (by the likes of Deb and others above). The fact that the sepoys went on to anoint a Muslim Mughal emperor as their symbol and emperor despite the presence of Marathas didn’t sync with today’s Indians view about the Maratha and Mughal. Zafar’s best contribution to South Asia was to reign over Delhi when it was a Muslim’s cultural and intellectual center . It was during his reign that Ghalib and Zauq emerged.

Recommend

Thanks for enlightening us about Honorable Justice Patel who stood up for Justice and stood up to the worst dictator! Recommend