Neither Taliban nor US seen as acceptable allies

‘Pakistanis not so extremist as the media is projecting them to be’.

LAHORE:

One doesn’t have to support the United States to oppose the Taliban or vice versa. Both are working against the people of Pakistan and it’s high time we debate for a third option, said Ali Jan, a teacher at Lahore University of Management Sciences, on Wednesday.

He was responding to a question criticising the left-wing political parties for their opposition to the Taliban as well as the US. The questioner said that these parties opposed both but “did not tell us who to support instead”.

Jan said that the thinking that one must support either the Taliban or the US had been radicalising even educated youth. He said that branding every man who wears shalwar kameez, has a relatively fair complexion and a beard as an extremist was racism and should be discouraged.

Ali Jan was speaking at a seminar titled National Security vs Human Security at Kissan Hall off Mozang Road.

Earlier, Dr Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, a professor at Quaid-i-Azam University, said that a new social contract could only be provided to the people by recognising that a number of different peoples were living in the country and by making the state responsible for their welfare and not their security alone.

He said that rather than the institutions of the state, the ideology promoted by them was more important in understanding the current problems of the country. “The perception that all Pakistanis are one and that the country was founded to protect the Muslims of India from the non-Muslims needs to be opposed,” he said. “Had protection of Muslims been the concern, Pakistanis would have been living happily ever after the creation of the country,” he said.

He said that because Punjab had been accused by other provinces of marginalising them, it had more responsibility on its shoulders to work for the creation of a state that valued people’s welfare more than national security.

He said extremism was a way of thinking and it was wrong to debate whether Pakhtuns were more extremists than Punjabis.

He said the role of media could not be ignored in the debate. He said that had the media promoted Mumtaz Qadri as a terrorist and not as a hero after the murder of Salmaan Taseer, the public opinion would have been against him. He said the common man in Pakistan was not as extremist as the media was projecting him to be.

An audience member said Pakistan was not formed in the name of religion. “It was the fear of economic marginalisation that united the Muslims against the Hindus,” he said.

“There had been several religious communities living in India. What was the need of dividing India into Muslim versus Hindus?” he said. He said that the Two-Nation Theory was originally adopted by Jews, “They branded themselves as the chosen ones and all other nations as different,” he said.

Labour Party Pakistan’s Farooq Tariq, however, rejected the idea that the role of religion could be ignored in the creation of Pakistan. He said that the Muslim elite of the Punjab and the United Provinces used religion to safeguard their economic interests.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2011.