[According to the Holy Qur’an, peace, amity and brotherhood among the
people are among the blessings of Allah, Correspondingly, the Divine wrath and
punishments take different forms, including civil strife and “violence of one another”. In the last
decade, Pakistan’s descent into chaos has been observed with deep anguish and profound
sadness by the Messenger of Allah of our times, Hadhrat Munir Ahmad Azim Sahib (atba) of Mauritius. Time and again, he has warned the Muslim country and its religious and
political leadership against the egregious violations of freedom of conscience,
of basic human rights and the norms of Islamic propriety and decency in the country. Recent
events from there confirm that country is in the grips of Divine wrath: the
deer prophecies and warnings made by the Divine Messenger have been proved to
be presciently true and correct.
For the benefit of our readers, we reproduce below an essay on the cult of militancy in Pakistan from
one of the leading writers from contemporary Pakistan, the Award-winning
novelist Mohsin Hamid who is the author of the novels 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' and the forthcoming 'How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia'.
The essay was originally written for, and published in, the New York Times.
India’s leading newspaper, The Hindu also carried it on February 24, 2013].
At the heart of Pakistan’s troubles is the celebration
of the militant
On Monday, my mother’s and
sister’s eye doctor was assassinated. He was a Shia. He was shot six times
while driving to drop his son off at school. His son, age 12, was executed with
a single shot to the head.
Tuesday, I attended a protest in
front of the Governor’s House in Lahore demanding that more be done to protect
Pakistan’s Shias from sectarian extremists. These extremists are responsible
for increasingly frequent attacks, including bombings this year that killed
more than 200 people, most of them Hazara Shias, in the city of Quetta.
As I stood in the anguished crowd
in Lahore, similar protests were being held throughout Pakistan. Roads were
shut. Demonstrators blocked access to airports. My father was trapped in one
for the evening, yet he said most of his fellow travellers bore the delay
without anger. They sympathised with the protesters’ objectives.
.JPG)
The universality of this spiritual principle
is a recurring theme in the lived history of Divine Messengers and their
spiritual communities. The most important testimonial of its practical
application is available to us from the times of the Holy Prophet of Islam (sa)
when the early believers have had to literally confront, far superior armies on
the battlefields. It is the readiness to struggle and sacrifice, make efforts
and change destinies that characterizes and distinguishes a believer from
others. Through grit, determination and a sense of pure belief, the small band
of believers go on with their tasks and missions, achieving what are, otherwise,
apparently formidable and un-achievable. 
Through recurring revelations
of unmistakable intensity and clarity, Allah the Almighty has charged Hadhrat Khalifatullah Munir Ahmad Azim Sahib (atba) of Mauritius
with a heavy responsibility as a Warner sent unto mankind: to alert and warn
the world about the impending Disasters. Thus, in his Friday
Sermon of 01 March 2013 (17 Rabi’ul Aakhir ; 1434
Hijri ) Hadhrat
Sahib has had to convey to the world the spine-chilling news about the Disasters
waiting to unfold in a striking way all over the world. The world appears to be
condemned to witness the consequences of its evil ways : for the chronicle
of earth-shattering events foretold include wars, calamities, ethnic conflicts,
communal violence/racial riots, the destruction of despots and the desecration
of cities.
In the
dark chapters of human history, social relations were characterized by exploitation,
oppression, subjugation, domination and hegemony. Perhaps slavery represents the
worst example of this social order. On the other hand, Islam seeks to create an
egalitarian social order where traditional practices that unjustly discriminate
against fellow beings will be contained and eventually abolished. Islamic
teachings are, thus, designed to reduce and abolish the class differences and the
institutional vestiges of inequality in society. Islam imagines a social space where
diversities lead to creative ensemble and the flowering of the human spirit and
not to oppression and injustice and the unjust enrichment for a few over the
many. [Inset: Watercolor by unidentified
artist, depicting plantation slaves dancing and playing musical instruments;
banjo player and a percussion player (possibily playing a gourd) at right. Image courtesy of The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record ]