I am proud to be a desi liberal. We do not go around bombing people, nor do we defend murderers.
MELBOURNE: Ths is with reference to Yousuf Nazar’s article of March 1 titled “The CIA, the ISI and ‘desi liberals’”. I am proud to be a desi liberal. We do not go around bombing people, nor do we defend murderers. We don’t have a warped sense of dignity or honour or any misguided opinion on ‘sovereignty’ (when we don’t have any). ‘Desi liberals’ don’t go around passing edicts based on how a person looks from the outside, neither do they judge people based on how many times he prays.
We form our own objective opinion on things based on the information we have, for which we are labelled desi goras, elitist, traitors, CIA agents and so on. But we don’t sacrifice reason when putting a point across. We try to understand people based on who they are and not based on their belief. We love Pakistan and want to see it prosper. However, we question what we believe is wrong or harmful for us and society in general.
We don’t believe that the world is out to get us or that CIA’s sole agenda is the destruction of Pakistan and the ‘ummah’. We are not keen on conquering the planet so that we can hoist the flags of the ‘ummah’ everywhere and we do not daydream about having a khilafat. We believe that all institutions, including the armed forces and intelligence agencies, should be under the command of a civilian government. Yes we are ‘desi liberals’ and we are proud of it.
Haris Chaudhry
Published in The Express Tribune, March 2nd, 2011.
