Pakistan Link - December 18, 2015

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Friday, December 18, 2015

VOL. 25/51 - 6 Rabi ‘ul-awwal 1437 H PAGE 4

Trump Must Know Contribution of S. Asian Muslims Pakistan Part of Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism Dubai: Saudi Arabia on Tuesday announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a joint statement published on state news agency SPA. “The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations,” the statement said.

A long list of Arab countries such as Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, together with Islamic countries Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and Gulf Arab and African states was mentioned.

The announcement cited “a duty to protect the Islamic nation from the evils of all terrorist groups and organizations whatever their sect and name which wreak death and corruption on earth and aim to terrorize the innocent.”

The United States has been increasingly outspoken about its view that Gulf Arab states should do ALLIANCE, P28

Sindh Assembly’s Resolution Seeks to Curtail Rangers’ Powers Karachi: The Sindh Assembly on

Wednesday passed a resolution asking for checks and conditions on Rangers’ special powers to raid and arrest suspects.

Sindh Home Minister Sohail Anwar Sial presented the resolution on the critical issue of Rangers’ powers on the floor of the Sindh Assembly, amid chants and slogans by opposition members.

The resolution, which was approved by the House, was criticized by opposition members who claimed the government wanted to seriously curtail the paramilitary force’s powers.

The resolution states that Rangers will only have powers with respect to the following: Target killing, extortion, kidnapping for ransom, and sectarian killing. “That any person, who is not directly involved in terrorism and is only suspected of aiding and abetting terrorists or by way of terror financing or

RESOLUTION, P28

US & Canada $1.00

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PAGE 13

Interfaith Conference at the White House

Center, Sindh in Fiery Rhetoric over Role of Rangers

Blood of Innocents Unites Us

Peshawar: As the nation

marked the first anniversary of Peshawar’s Army Public School (APS) massacre on Wednesday, the country’s top civil and military leadership honored those who lost their lives during the attack in a somber ceremony at the school.

Blood of innocents united us: Addressing the ceremony, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif termed the APS attack “an incident that shook the nation” and announced December 16 as the day of “national educational resolve”.

He also announced the construction of APS Shuhada University.

Following the APS attack, the premier said, the military and civil leadership sat together. “It was then when I said desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Pakistani children hold candles during a vigil to pay tribute to victims of a school massacre. On Wednesday, December 15, 2015, Pakistan observed the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Army Public School Peshawar in which 144 students were killed

Nawaz thanked the political leadership with whose cooperation the constitution was amended to set up military courts, and the National Action Plan was formulated.

“Our brave forces, security and civil institutions have come together as one in this mission,” the prime minister said, adding that operation Zarb-iAzb has broken the back

of terrorists.

“The blood of our children speaks in our war against terrorism.”

Speaking directly to the slain children, INNOCENTS, P28

Our Enemies Will Not Divide Us

A moment of brotherhood captured between Dr Salam Al-Maryati and Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti

n By Salam Al-Marayati MPAC President

Los Angeles, CA: As about 1,000 members of the Los Angeles interfaith, civil and Muslim

community gathered for the#United4HumanityLA Rally to commemorate the loss of life in San Bernardino, the words of MPAC co-founder Dr. Maher Hathout, may God

rest his soul, rang true more than ever. He always encouraged us to “stay together.” Here we were -- Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs and members of other faiths gathered

together proclaiming that we would not be divided after a horrific terror attack took the lives of 14 Americans.

This rally for humanity is a testament to the strength of our nation.

We were honored to have the Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti and Mayor of San Bernardino, Carey Davis speak at the rally, along with numerous other esteemed leaders. Mayor Garcetti reminded us to not let these difficult times break us apart from each other, but rather bring us together.

I am inspired by our resilience and ability to not allow our enemies to divide us. We are one society, one people and one human family. We are US, P28

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www.PakistanLink.com Pakistan to Develop ICT Infrastructure to Bridge Digital Divide Beijing: President Mamnoon Hussain said on Wednesday Pakistan is pursuing a vision of accelerated digitization in order to transform itself into a knowledge-based economy, Radio Pakistan reported.

“Our focus remains on development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure” with special emphasis on serving marginalized segments of society and bridging the digital divide.

Mamnoon said the government realizes the potential of ICT for socio-economic growth, and considered it a key enabler to achieve self-sufficiency, transparency, good governance and empowerment of the people.

The information revolution has fundamentally altered perceptions of reality, time and space, Mamnoon said, adding that Information Technology is rapidly reshaping identities, geo-politics and the security dynamics of the 21st century, as well as other paradigms.

The conference was held in ICT, P28

China Approves $1.2Bn for Mining, Power Plant in Thar Islamabad: The State Council of the People’s Republic of China granted approval for an investment of $1.2 billion in the surface mining of Thar coal and the establishment of 660 MW power projects, as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC).

The final lending documents in this regard will be signed on December 21 in Beijing.

According to details shared on Wednesday, China’s State Council for Financing gave its final nod for the establishment of 660 MW coalfired power plant in Thar and the surface mining of 3.8 MTPA (million tons per annum) of Thar coal.

Earlier, in October, the Chinese government had agreed to increase the financing of Thar Coal project to double the generation capacity of Thar Block-II from 660 to 1,320MW, and to add project capacity and increase the mine size from 3.8 to 6.5 million tons per annum as part PLANT, P28

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P2 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P3

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OPINION

P4 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

Pakistan Link

How Would Trump’s Muslim Ban Affect Pakistanis? n By Riaz Haq

President

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eading Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”. While Trump’s supporters have cheered at this move, top Republican party leaders have denounced it.

The notion of banning all members of one religion from the country “is not what this party stands for,” said Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan at Capitol Hill.

Ryan’s rebuke is rendered more powerful by the fact that he typically avoids commenting on the presidential race. “More importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.” US allies in Europe, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls have also condemned Trump’s call.

While the chances of Trump’s plan becoming reality are remote at best, there’s clearly widespread concern about immigrants from Muslim nations that could lead to certain restrictions selectively applied to future Muslim immigrants entering the United States. Besides impacting Syrian refugees’ entry, such restrictions will also affect future immigrants from Pakistan.

These restrictions will make the process more difficult and could significantly reduce the flow of Muslims and Pakistanis into the United States.

Why Pakistan? For two reasons: a) Tafsheen Malik, one of the two suspects in San Bernardino massacre, came from Pakistan on a fiancee visa last year, and b) Pakistan is among the top Muslim nations sending immigrants to the United States.

The US granted 83,000 green cards to immigrants from Pakistan and another 83,000 to migrants from Iraq between fiscal years 2009 and 2013, according to a chart produced by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest using Department of Homeland Security data. Immigrants from Bangladesh received 75,000 green cards, those from Iran received 73,000, and

those from Egypt received 45,000 to round out the top five. In sum, the US granted 680,000 green cards to immigrants from Muslimmajority nations between 2009 and 2013, according to a media report.

Pakistani-Americans (pop: 409,163 in 2010 US Census) are the seventh largest community among Asian-Americans, behind Chinese (3.8 million), Filipinos (3.4 million), Indians (3.2 million), Vietnamese (1.74 million), Koreans (1.7 million) and Japanese (1.3 million), according to Asian-

a bachelor’s degree which is higher than 49% of all Asian-Americans and almost twice the 28% of overall American population with college degrees.

Here are some of the highlights of Pakistani-American data from US Census 2010 as gleaned from a report titled “A Community of Contrasts Asian Americans in the United States: 2011” published

by Asian-American Center For Advancing Justice: 1. There were 409,163 Pakistani-Americans in 2010, the 7th

With median household income of $63,000, Pakistani-Americans earn more than an average American household. 55 per cent hold at least a bachelor’s degree which is higher than 49% of all Asian-Americans and almost twice the 28% of overall American population with college degrees American Center For Advancing Justice . They are still a minuscule fraction of the overall US population. However, their numbers have more than doubled in the last decade due to increased immigration, according to US Census 2010 data. With 100% increase since 2000, Pakistanis are the second fastest growing Asian immigrant group in the United States.

With median household income of $63,000, Pakistani-Americans also earn more than an average American household. The most common jobs of Pakistani-Americans include doctors, engineers, accountants, salespersons, administrators/managers and financial analysts. 55 per cent hold at least

largest Asian-American community in America.

2.Pakistani-American population doubled from 2000 (204,309) to 2010 (409,163), the second largest percentage increase after Bangladeshis’ 157% increase in the same period.

3. The median household income of Pakistani-American families is nearly $63,000 versus $51,369 average for all Americans.

4. 55% of Pakistanis have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

5. 55% of Pakistanis own their own homes.

6. 6% of Pakistani-American population is mixed race.

7. 65% of Pakistanis in Amer-

Trump Should Know How Much South-Asian Muslims Have Contributed to America’s Growth n By Kaleem Kawaja

U

than anything else, such hateful remarks hurt he US itself.

Indeed since mid-1960s a very large number of highly educated and enterprising Muslims have moved to US from South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) alone. A very large number of highly skilled Muslim physicians have provided yeoman medical services to non-Muslim Americans, while working in hospitals, clinics and US military medical facilities, saving lives, helping the sick get better, and enabling children grow into productive American citizens.

A large number of highly edu-

Washington, DC

S Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s attitude towards Muslims reminds us of the abhorrent attitude of Nazis towards the Jews that resulted in World War II, one of the most traumatic tragedies that mankind has faced over the millenniums.

Donald Trump’s statement suggesting that the US put a ban on the entry of Muslims into US is very galling and absurd as now Muslims are an integral part of the American society, not to mention America’s immense trade and relationship with most Muslim countries. More

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ica are foreign-born. 57% of foreign-born Pakistani-American population is made up of naturalized citizens.

8. There are 120,000 Pakistani legal permanent residents of which 42% are eligible to naturalize.

9. There were 69,202 immigrant visas issued to Pakistanis from 2001 to 2010, the 5th highest among Asian nations.

10. 28% of Pakistanis have limited English proficiency.

11. 15% of Pakistanis are classified as poor; only 1% of them are on public assistance.

12. 8% of Pakistanis are unemployed, a figure lower than the general population of Americans.

13. Median age of Pakistanis in America is only 29 years, lower than most of the Asian groups and the national median age of 36.8 years.

The Pakistani-American community is still relatively young when compared with other immigrant groups. More of the Pakistanis in America are college educated than the general population of whites and various immigrant groups. They work in high-tech and entertainment fields, start and lead companies in Silicon Valley as entrepreneurs, own major professional sports teams, look after people as health care providers, serve in the US military and hold public offices.

The youthful energy and higher education levels of PakistaniAmericans are opening doors for them to rise and shine in America, in spite of the current environment of religious discrimination and other difficulties in their adopted land of opportunities. cated Muslim professors in a variety of science, technology and business fields have provided education and training to the non-Muslim ASIANS, P9

Views and opinions express e d by authors and contributors in articles, letters, opinion pieces, reports, advertisements, etc appearing in Pakistan Link and Urdu Link are their own. The paper neither shares nor endorses them and thus should not be held responsible for the views/opinions of the writers & advertisers.

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P5

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OPINION

P6 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015 n By Syed Kamran Hashmi

E

Westfield, IN

rasing every doubt from the mind of skeptics, MQM once again scored a decisive victory in the third phase of local body elections in Karachi last week.

Nonetheless, I won’t expound on how and why the Sindh-based political party has won the elections, nor would I thrash the voters for voting in favor of ‘corrupt politicians’ and ‘criminal elements.’ As the bottom line, for me, stays crystal clear: despite all the negative publicity in local and the international media and in spite of the allegations of its involvement in violence and crime, MQM has managed to retain the confidence of an overwhelming majority of the Urdu-speaking immigrant population of the city. They voted in favor of Altaf Hussein no matter how deep his legal problems appear to the rest of the world.

Instead, I would like to focus on the political paarties who lost the elections when they thought they had nailed the MQM down after two years of hard work. Having properly identified them I would also want to touch upon the reasons why they failed to grab the spills of an ‘endangered political party.’

So, tell me first, who do you think has lost the elections last week? Do you reckon it was the political alliance led by Imran Khan’s PTI and the Jamat e Islami (JI) under the leadership of Siraj ul Haq? True, yet, politicians were not alone

who had to face a humiliating defeat; the powers who forged their alliance and provided them a media boost too have fallen flat on the ground.

To put it in a different perspective, and by using Imran Khan’s own analogy, let me say that MQM took at least three wickets in a single delivery. First, as we know, it demolished the facade of a strong opposition built by PTI and JI. Second, it has thrown a hard bouncer to the ill-informed media commentators who neither understand the dynamics of the city, nor can relate to the insecurities of the Urdu-speaking population. And the last, MQM has retaliated against the umpire, the third party, who was supposed to create a conducive environment for all political parties, a fair play in which everyone was offered an equal opportunity to convince the voter. However, lop-siding in favor of the opposition, the umpire involved himself in a witch-hunt against the MQM, and that was a mistake, a blunder that turned the chips in favor of the troubled party.

To understand it better, let us go back in time: when the Karachi operation started a couple of years ago, it was supposed to be directed at all the criminal elements irrespective of their party associationif there existed association. MQM being one of the parties agreed with the objectives of the plan. Tho goal was to reduce the crime rate in the city and jump start the economy which was stagnating.

In the first few months, as the

MQM Wins again

operation yielded positive results and the rate of target killings and street robberies dropped, the proestablishment parties like the PTI celebrated the outcome, while the MQM stood quiet, unsure about the next phase.

Don’t get me wrong, people of the city felt relieved too. The economy began to kickoff and the real estate prices soared, a sign of returning investors. Many critics thought the success of the operation meant a loss of popularity of the MQM, which had some truth, but not all. Imran saw that as an opportunity too and jumped right in with his usual harsh anti-Altaf rhetoric. His idea was simple: the more you demonize MQM and its leadership, the more supporters you

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can pull from the pool of independents, the silent majority, who can lead PTI to electoral victory if energized enough to cast their votes. His message of non-ethnic transparent politics appealed to the masses and clicked as much with the youth of Urdu-speaking people as it did in Lahore or Rawalpindi. They felt confident that the change they were all rooting for was knocking at their doors.

So far so good, till one day the Rangers stormed into the MQM headquarters and detained its workers. “Could they raid the PTI headquarters too, like that?” MQM supporters started questioning.

“Can they even think of entering the residence of Bilawal Bhutto in Clifton to capture few guns?” they

asked. “Is this operation targeted at the criminals or the party? Or even worse: “Do they think it’s the same?” They were legitimate questions that needed to be addressed, but were conveniently ignored as usual.

After that raid, Karachites noticed the operation had transgressed from its original goal and had got more and more pointed towards the MQM. Its workers were getting arrested, tortured and went missing without ever being produced in the courts. A crime was thus being committed to stop another crime which, inconspicuously, pushed the balance the other way. You could sense it after the previous bye-elections in Karachi. The popularity ratings had started to slide down then.

It was not the MQM’s graph this time, rather it was the Rangers’ who were being blamed for their extrajudicial ‘activities.’

Imran did not see the balance swinging on the other side, and kept on urging a stricter operation, even when some of the torture techniques were leaked to the media.

The Urdu-speaking people knew he had a soft corner for Taliban as he always favored negotiations with them, but when it came to the MQM, they noticed his warmth and tenderness evaporated and his heart turned cold. He wanted strong action. That indifference had to cost him in the elections, although he did not realize it then. Now his party advocates are blaming the Karachites for voting them out. They do not understand that no one favors crime and corruption, however people can live with it if the alternative is political persecution.

OPINION

DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P7

n By Holly Yan

D

The Truth about Muslims in America

CNN

onald Trump sparked a firestorm of criticism from liberals, conservatives and those in between when he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

But while such a ban is unlikely to be implemented in a country with freedom of religion, the cheers that followed his announcement at a South Carolina rally are telling.

“I think that we should definitely disallow any Muslims from coming in. Any of them,” supporter Charlie Marzka, 75, told CNN. “The reason is simple: We can’t identify what their attitude is.”

Indeed, the truth about Muslims in America is perhaps surprising -- but not in the way Trump and his supporters might think.

A look at polls and studies conducted in the last few years shows that Muslims have been crucial in helping law enforcement find terror suspects in the United States. Many have served in the military protecting the country against terrorists. And in many ways, they’re a lot like other everyday Americans.

Here’s the reality of Muslims in America -- and how it smashes stereotypes: They are a minuscule portion of the US population It’s difficult to come by hard numbers because the US Census doesn’t collect religious data. But the fear of Muslims taking over and imposing Sharia law is unfounded. By some estimates, Muslims make up less than 1% of the US adult population. By 2050, their numbers will grow -- to 2.1%. Of all the Muslims in America, 63% are exactly the kind Trump wants banned -- immigrants.

They’re better educated than most Americans US Muslims have the second-highest level of education among major religious groups

in the country; Jews have the highest. And a greater proportion of them have college degrees than the general US population.

They have more gender equality While in many parts of the Muslim world, women are confined to second-class status, that’s not the case among American Muslims.

Virtually all of them, 90%, agree that women should be able to work outside the home.

American Muslim women hold more college or postgraduate degrees than Muslim men.

And they are more likely to work in professional fields than women from most other US religious groups.

They’ve been here since the birth of the nation Scholars estimate about a quarter to a third of the Africans brought to the United States as slaves were Muslims. Most were then

forced to convert to Christianity.

They’re not just clustered in big cities American Muslims live in cities big and

A Duke University study found more terrorism suspects and perpetrators were brought to the attention of law enforcement by members of the Muslim-American community than were discovered through US government investigations small all across the United States. The first mosque built in America was in, of all places,

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Ross, North Dakota, back in 1929.

They’re as religious as Christians The general perception of Muslims has one thing right: Most Muslims are very religious. About half say they attend the weekly Friday prayers. But that makes them similar to Christians: About 70% of Christians say religion is important in their lives, and about 45% go to a weekly service.

But they’re not as dogmatic as they are portrayed Much has been made about fundamentalist Muslims and their strict interpretation of the Qur’an. But most American Muslims are different. A Pew religious landscape survey found that 57% of American Muslims say there is more than one way to interpret Islam’s teachings. A similar number say many different religions can lead to eternal life.

There have been Muslims involved in terrorism From September 11, 2001, until the end of 2014, 109 Muslim-Americans plotted against targets in the United States. And terrorism by Muslim-Americans killed 50 in the same time period. Contrast that with the deaths from other mass shootings just last year: 136 -- more than twice as many as all the deaths from 13 years of Muslim-American terrorism.

But they’ve also spoken out against it After every terrorist attack at home and abroad, the refrain rises, “Where is the Muslim condemnation?” American Muslims have spoken out -- and done much more. A Duke University study found more terrorism suspects and perpetrators were brought to the attention of law enforcement by members of the Muslim-American community than were discovered through US government investigations. And a Pew survey found that roughly half of US Muslims say their religious leaders aren’t speaking out enough against Islamic extremism.

OPINION

P8 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

10 Tests to Find out if Paris Climate Change Deal Is a Success n By Dr Adil Najam

M

Paris, France

inisters are back in Paris for the final stretch of COP 21 negotiations.

A draft is in hand, peppered with the brackets that indicate areas of disagreement. France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, is busy constructing coalitions. The process of paring down the brackets has begun in earnest.

It is not clear what the agreement will be, but it is clear that there will be an agreement. That means Paris can be declared a success.

Of course, Paris was condemned to succeed.

The ignominy that was Copenhagen (COP15, 2009) was never to be its destiny. That meant getting to an agreement – any agreement. Now that such an agreement is in sight, there is a palpable sigh of relief.

Now is a good time to ask just how meaningful (or not) any given Paris agreement will be.

Here are 10 questions I will be using as a yardstick. They will be my guide to exactly what we are celebrating, and how much we should celebrate.

Given the science, the experience of a quarter century of climate talks, and all the promises made in the past three years, an ideal agreement should garner 10 “yes” responses. I, however, will be happy with anything that gets at least five. Anything less, I think, will not be worth the carbon cost of everything that has gone into the process.

1. Is there an agreement? Any agreement?

2. Are there binding emission targets for industrialized countries?

The responsibility of industrialized countries is already enshrined in Annex I of the Kyoto protocol. Here, and elsewhere, “binding” would

imply clear legal language that makes implementation a responsibility that states would, and could, be held accountable for.

3. Are there binding emission targets for major emerging economies with large emissions?

This category could be defined, for example, by G20 membership. However, it would, at a minimum, include the two mega-emitters,

change has long been accepted. However, actual commitments tend to be vague and often remain unfunded. A yes on this question would mean all of the following: a) any commitment made is considered binding and implemented transparently, b) the already agreed goal of $100bn by 2020 is met or exceeded, and c) any climate financing is “additional” and does not simply relo-

There are a number of climate change impacts, particularly in the most vulnerable and poorest countries, that will be difficult or impossible to adapt to. We need a clear mechanism – including principles for funding and disbursement of support – to respond to them China and India.

4. Does the agreement include quantifiable financial commitments to assist developing countries in mitigation and adaptation, and are these a) binding, b) sufficient, and c) additional?

The obligation to assist developing countries in mitigation and adaptation to climate

cate existing development assistance allocations.

5. Does it include a clear roadmap for restricting global warming to 2C or less?

The 2C goal is already contained in international agreements. This question, therefore, pertains to whether the Paris agreement will include a clear pathway to reaching this goal through

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intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) or other mechanisms.

6. Does it revise the long-term goal to restrict global warming to 1.5C or less?

The most vulnerable countries, and many scientists, have argued for a downward revision in the long-term goal of climate stabilization on the grounds that several hundreds of millions of people will slip through the crack between a 2C and a 1.5C goal.

7. Is 2020 confirmed as the date for the next major round of commitments and review of progress?

Any slippage will result in delays in action and could have adverse long-term impacts for vulnerable countries and communities.

8. Is there a clear and independent mechanism to measure, report and verify emission reduction claims?

Especially in the possible absence of binding commitments, a robust and independent system for reporting emission reductions (mitigation) is necessary. Any self-reporting mechanism would, by default, result in a “no” answer to this question.

9. Does the agreement include clear language on conditions for adaptation financing for vulnerable developing countries?

The goal of developing “adaptative capacity” in vulnerable developing countries must not be an unfunded mandate. Clear language on the responsibility of industrialized and large emerging economies to fund such activity, and the principles for its use and disbursement, must not be left vague and should be included in any agreement.

10. Is there a clear mechanism for dealing with “loss and damage”?

There are a number of climate change impacts, particularly in the most vulnerable and poorest countries, that will be difficult or impossible to adapt to. We need a clear mechanism – including principles for funding and disbursement of support – to respond to them.

OPINION n By Dr Akbar S. Ahmed Chair of Islamic Studies at American University Washington, DC

DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P9

Countdown to Kristallnacht

I

t was a cold night in November 1938. Hard men with hatred in their hearts and bats in their hands set about smashing shops belonging to Jews. At the end of the night, some 267 synagogues were destroyed, the windows of 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were shattered and several Jewish cemeteries were desecrated.

At least 91 Jews were killed in the mayhem. Up to 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Glass from smashed storefront windows lay strewn across the streets. That night of infamy is notorious in history as Kristallnacht -- the “Night of Broken Glass.”

Kristallnacht was a turning point on the path to the concentration camps and the Holocaust, at the end of which 6 million Jews would be killed, creating what has been acknowledged as one of the most murderous episodes in history.

Today, we appear to be heading that way again -- this time with Muslims instead of Jews.

Kristallnacht was justified by the Nazis as a response to the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Jewish man.

Similarly, much of the current level of Islamophobia appears justified to many Americans because of the terrible and tragic killings by Muslims in San Bernardino and Paris. The San Bernardino killings were particularly horrific because they were likely committed by an Americanborn citizen and his wife. It was a double betrayal -- of their own Islamic faith, a religion of peace, and of their host country, which had accepted them and given them the American dream.

The classic pattern from the fascist playbook has been: first abuse and demonize the minority community, then isolate it, then suggest violence and finally encourage and indulge in violence. We may not have, thankfully, reached the last stage, but we certainly are into the second and perhaps moving to the third stage. Here’s why.

Donald Trump, the leading presidential candidate for the Republican Party, has been focused on projecting Muslims in an extremely negative manner, with each of his statements more extreme than the last. When a man at one of Trump’s speeches said, “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims ... When can we get rid of them?”

Trump merely replied, “We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.” Last month, Trump said he was open to keeping a database of American Muslims or making them carry special ID cards that listed their religion. He talked of shutting down American mosques because “bad things are happening.” He vowed, “We’re going to have to do things we never did before,” things “that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy.” A few days ago, he suddenly said that he would ban all Muslims from entering the United States -- a statement that caused

a furor both in the United States and abroad, with even the British prime minister, who would normally not comment on an American election, objecting to Trump.

Trump was exemplifying and enhancing the already existing Islamophobia in the US, which had been fed by well-known Islamophobic figures like Frank Gaffney.

Yet Trump used Gaffney’s dubious research to justify his policy of banning all Muslims from the US. The poll Trump cited was published by the Center for Security Policy, the think tank created by Gaffney, who is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks US hate groups, as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes.” The SPLC notes that Center for Security Policy reports serve “to reinforce Gaffney’s delusions” about a Muslim takeover of the United States.

The results of widespread American Islamophobia are tragic and apparent in the daily news. The list is long and I will only present some random examples from the past few weeks: Muslims have been physically attacked and abused with frightening frequency, even in schools and universities. A Moroccan taxi driver was asked by his passenger if he was a “Pakistani guy” and then shot. Mosques have been attacked and fired on, as have Muslim homes. Mosques and families have received phone calls promising that Muslims, including children and old people, “will be killed.”

Armed “militias” with masks on their faces have turned up outside an Islamic center. Heads of pigs have been thrown into mosques in defiance of the Muslim ritual prohibition of the animal. A disturbing amount of women and children live in abject fear and are reluctant to leave their homes. Recently, a man walked into a New York store and ferociously beat the Muslim owner, who had to be hospitalized, shouting, “I want to kill Muslims.”

To all this backlash the director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations commented, “The community is turning to us for protection, for safety, for guidance. We haven’t been sleeping.” He went on to draw a direct comparison between Trump and Hitler, adding, “I don’t say this lightly.”

The Obama administration appears ineffective in checking the Islamophobia and the opposition,

which is now embodied by Trump, is fueling the fire. Trump has now raised the stakes so dramatically that all it needs is a match thrown into the powder keg to blow it sky high.

While I am not suggesting that Trump is another Hitler or even has Hitlerian sensibilities, there are some interesting similarities between the two. Trump, according to his former wife, is fascinated with Hitler and reportedly kept a book of his speeches by his bedside. Both Trump and Hitler are master opportunists who respond cunningly and swiftly to their po-

The classic pattern from the fascist playbook has been: first abuse and demonize the minority community, then isolate it, then suggest violence and finally encourage and indulge in violence.

We may not have, thankfully, reached the last stage, but we certainly are into the second and perhaps moving to the third stage litical and social environment. Both identify passionately with the nation, tending to fuse their personality with that of the nation. Both are charismatic figures who appear to mesmerize their followers. The power of both rests on their public speeches and the hysteria generated in the gatherings. Both are vague on facts and on their promises to make the nation “great again.” They have emerged in a time of economic crisis, political uncertainty and widespread fear in society. Both harp on the theme that the nation has been humiliated and that they will restore its honor. Both are political outsiders and mocked by the establishment -- note the critics making

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fun of the hairstyles of both, with Hitler providing additional opportunity with his mustache.

Both Hitler and Trump have found that by keeping the focus of animosity on one unpopular minority as the source of all the ills of society, they can unite people and claim leadership when people are desperately looking for “strong leadership.” Both are capable of cynically exploiting the mood against the minority and dialing it up or down based on what they think the audience would like to hear. Both blame the minority for threatening the equilibrium in society -- Hitler blamed the Jews for betraying Germany after the First World War and often cited the fictitious and anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and Trump blames the Muslims for being terrorist sympathizers who want to harm the United States. Both make up lies to promote their bigotry -Hitler constantly cooked up facts about the Jews and Trump has been challenged on statements like claiming that he watched thousands of Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey.

However much the similarities, there are differences: While Hitler was obsessed with the Jews -“Mein Kampf ” is replete with antiSemitism, as was his last will in the bunker just before he shot himself -- Trump has had good relations with Muslims and often does business with them (only last year he was in Dubai promoting his new investments and praising the local leaders).

But I am arguing that Trump does not seem to understand the dangers in the kind of rhetoric that he is using. While we may be a long way away from Kristallnacht, it is worthwhile to point out the signposts on Germany’s path to that fateful night. If Trump does become president, and there are two big ifs for that to happen -- he has to get the party nomination and then actually win the presidency -- the discussion in this article will no longer be theoretical. Trump has taken the first tiny dangerous steps towards unleashing forces that could trigger large-scale violence against the Muslim community.

Thankfully, many Americans have responded to Trump in the true spirit of their pluralist identity.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders

have unequivocally criticized him.

More significantly, the other Republican candidates who have also been making Islamophobic comments nonetheless felt it was necessary to condemn Trump -- Jeb Bush called his suggestion to ban all Muslims “unhinged” and Lindsey Graham told Trump to “go to hell.”

The United States of 2015 is not the Germany of 1938. It is important to keep in mind that these are two very different societies at different points in their history.

Besides, the United States has a very strong base of pluralist identity coming out of the vision of the Founding Fathers and embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. It is this idea of America that will effectively stop men like Trump from taking their hateful message, which challenges the very pluralism that lies at the heart of American identity, to its logical conclusion. The American pluralist vision must be defended as much from the so-called Islamic State abroad as from the Trumps of the US, and in this battle, in the most profound way possible, Muslims need to be key allies.

As any social scientist worth their salt will confirm, there is the principle of cause and effect in society. It means that if something is done, then it invariably leads to something else. In our case, the demonization and persecution of the Jews in Germany led ultimately to the tragedy of the Holocaust. That is why we need to understand the consequences of demonizing and persecuting the Muslim community today. There are lessons to be learned from Kristallnacht.

(Dr Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University and has just released the film “Journey into Europe” which accompanies the book of the same title (Brookings Institution Press, Forthcoming). He conducted a major film and book project on Islam in America, both called “Journey into America”) ASIANS FROM P4

American youth in colleges throughout continental US. Similarly in all fields of science, technology, industry and military a huge number of highly skilled and educated Muslim immigrants from South Asia have been the major workforce staffing the corporations, industries, research centers, manufacturing centers etc.

Visit the Silicon Valley and northwestern US and see that a huge number of South Asian Muslim Information Technology specialists who moved to the US in the last fifty years, helped the crucial development of major US corporations and start-up companies and their innovative products.

The US has been a beneficiary of their expertise as it spent almost nothing on their education which they completed in their home countries. But for these South Asian Muslims immigrants, US economy would have remained rather small, as the number of those migrating from Europe to the US in the last fifty years has been considerably smaller.

Even Muslim noble laureate scientists have moved to the US from their countries, conducted path-breaking scientific research and taught at prestigious universities to bring laurels to the country.

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P11

Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, & India Launch Strategic Pipeline

“The TAPI gas pipeline project will help promote peace and trade amongst the regional countries,” said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif

Turkmenistan: Leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India broke ground Sunday on a $10 billion gas pipeline expected to help ease energy deficits in South Asia and stem tensions in the divided region.

Presidents Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan attended the ceremony in the Karakum desert outside the southeastern Turkmen city of Mary, marking the beginning of work on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) link.

They were joined by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari.

“Today we were participants and witnesses of a historic event. Today marks the start of a project of great scale - the TAPI pipeline,” said Berdymukhamedov during the ceremony, which took place in a pavil-

ion imitating a traditional Turkmen nomadic dwelling.

Turkmenistan has said it expects the gas link with an annual capacity of 33 billion cubic meters to be completed by the end of 2018.

Afghanistan, India and Pakistan have all repeatedly stated their commitment to the natural gas project.

‘More than a project’: On Sunday, the leaders praised the pipeline as a political project that will help bring about better relations in the volatile region.

“The TAPI gas pipeline project will help promote peace and trade amongst the regional countries,” said Pakistan’s Sharif.

The Indian vice president said TAPI was “more than a project” and described it as “the first step to the unification of the region”, in translated remarks.

Afghanistan’s Ghani, for his part, said the project

demonstrated the countries’ political will.

“We are committed to the stable development of the entire region which will develop in an active and stable manner if we cooperate,” he said in translated remarks.

Energy experts say the project does indeed have the potential to ease relationships in the divided region.

“TAPI is a challenging project, partly because of these bilateral tensions,” said Charles Hendry, Britain’s former energy and climate change minister.

“But I think it is precisely this kind of big multi-state project that can bind countries together geopolitically,” Hendry, chairman of London-based Eurasia Partners consultancy, told AFP at an energy conference in Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat last month.

Berdymukhamedov also said Sunday marked the beginning of the third

phase of development of the Galkynysh gas field which will provide the resource base for the TAPI pipeline.

The next phase of development at Galkynysh the second largest natural gas field in the world - will be overseen by a consortium of Japanese and Turkish companies in addition to Turkmenistan, Berdymukhamedov said.

Security risks: Uncertainty hangs over the costly TAPI project, however, with both security and the lack of a major commercial investor stymieing optimism.

“Initially the questions were about whether Turkmenistan had enough gas and whether the demand was there in India and Pakistan,” Luca Anceschi, a Central Asia expert at the University of Glasgow, told AFP by telephone on Sunday.

“With the assessment of the Galkynysh field and the situation in both those countries, those questions have now been answered positively. But the question of security is one that really hangs over the project and increases its costs.”

Several major Western energy firms have appeared to back away from the project, with only Dubai-based Dragon Oil, which works in Turkmenistan’s petroleum sector, confirming interest.

Nevertheless, a spokeswoman for the company’s Turkmenistan office said in emailed comments last month that “nothing had formally been decided” regarding its participation in the project.

Afghanistan and Pakistan Agree to Reopen Talks with an Absent Taliban n By Mujib Mashal and Rod Nordland Kabul: Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States have agreed, once again, to restart peace talks with the Taliban, but there is still one big piece of the effort missing: the Taliban themselves.

The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, returned home from an icebreaking visit to Pakistan to contend not only with fallout from a skeptical and largely anti-Pakistan public, but also with the resignation of his intelligence chief and a new body count from the latest Taliban rampage: the siege of residential buildings in Kandahar, near the largest United States military base in southern Afghanistan. The attack raised serious questions about whether the insurgents would be interested in talking peace.

The two-day siege, as Mr Ghani held meetings in the Pakistani capital in hopes of restarting peace talks,

reinforced the theory that the insurgents time their attacks for maximum effect and message. Analysts and residents of Kandahar said the timing did not bode well for Taliban participation in a new round of talks.

Naseem Jan, a shopkeeper in Kandahar, predicted more violence, “a blood bath before peace knocks on our doors.”

A new political setback came on Thursday, when Mr Ghani’s intelligence chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, a United States favorite who led Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security for five years, resigned. He lashed out at his boss in a scathing Facebook message just as the plane carrying the Afghan delegation was landing in Kabul on Wednesday.

“When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif once again stated that Afghanistan’s enemy is Pakistan’s enemy,” Mr Nabil wrote, referring to the Pakistani leader, “our compatriots in the residential areas of Kan-

dahar airport, Khanashin district of Helmand and Takhar and Badakhshan were being martyred and slaughtered, and at least 1,000 liters of blood of our innocent people was shed, in the same red color as the carpet that we catwalked on.

“Thank God I am not part of it,” he added.

Mr Ghani’s trip to Pakistan was a bold move, and while he won some concessions and came back optimistic for a new round of peace talks this winter, Pakistani officials were less enthusiastic. One Pakistani foreign ministry official said talk of the efforts’ beginning next week was “premature” and “exaggerated.”

Pakistan has always been seen as crucial to the peace process in Afghanistan, since Taliban leaders are based there — mostly in Quetta, in Baluchistan Province — and fighters depend on cross-border sanctuaries to escape Afghan security forces and their American combat allies.

TALKS, P24

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Imran Raises Plight of Minorities in India with Modi

The two leaders welcomed the recent developments in bilateral ties between India and Pakistan, and hoped that these would lead to closer cooperation

Lahore: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi Friday evening, where he invited Modi to visit Pakistan, the India Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup said on Twitter.

Swarup said that the two leaders welcomed the recent developments in bilateral ties between India and Pakistan, and hoped that these would lead to closer cooperation.

But earlier PTI Central Information Secretary Shireen Mazari had said on Twitter that party chief Imran Khan is in India on the invitation of India Today and ‘a meeting may also take place with Indian PM on latter’s invitation.’

In a statement, advisor Naeem ul Haque had said the Indian pre-

mier and Pakistani politician will discuss “matters of mutual interest”.

Later, Mazari confirmed that Imran Khan will be meeting Indian PM before speaking at the India Today conference.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan said on Sunday that India and Pakistan should work out a plan to ensure talks aren’t derailed after the next terror attack.

The cricketer-turned-politician also said that he had raised the “plight of minorities in India” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit.

The 63-year-old Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief said the impact of the ‘plight’ was also felt in Pakistan, stressing that the Indian leadership give a clear message to end

IMRAN, P24

India only Set to Discuss Pakistancontrolled Kashmir

Islamabad: India’s representative to Pakistan said on Monday his country was only prepared to discuss the part of Kashmir controlled by Islamabad in upcoming peace talks, presenting a potential stumbling block days after the dialogue was announced.

High Commissioner TCA Raghavan made the remarks about the disputed territory during a lecture in the capital, after a breakthrough visit by India’s foreign minister Sushma Swaraj at which the resumption of ministerial talks was announced.

According to a joint statement, the two sides will talk about peace and security as well as territorial disputes including Kashmir. Each country occupies part of the territory but claims it in full.

Asked where the room for negotiation lay over the Himalayan territory, Raghavan said it was India which first petitioned the United Nations to intervene when the-then princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was invaded by Pakistani forces in 1947.

“The first application was moved

by India and it was on the grounds that a part of the state, which had acceded to India, is now under the illegal occupation.

“So when you say what is it that India is going to discuss or what is it discussing, it is really, if you ask most Indians, and what is our position – it is the part of that state which is still under the control of Pakistan.”

The remarks could create a dip-

lomatic wrinkle for the two countries as they seek to go back to the negotiation table to undertake broad-spectrum talks for the first time since the election of prime ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif.

Badar Alam, editor of Herald magazine, said: “I think it is a step back,” adding that Kashmir was viewed internationally as a disputed territory.

He added that given the fragile state of the dialogue, officials on both sides needed to tread “very cautiously and very carefully” to avoid a backlash.

New Delhi suspended all talks after gunmen attacked Mumbai in November 2008, killing 166 people.

The countries agreed to resume the peace process in 2011 but tensions have spiked over the past two years, with cross-border shelling over the disputed border in Kashmir claiming dozens of lives since 2014.

A brief meeting between premier Nawaz and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the UN climate change summit in Paris on November 30, followed by talks between the two countries’ national security advisers in Bangkok, appeared to have broken the ice.

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P13

Center, Sindh in Fiery Rhetoric over Role of Rangers

Islamabad/Karachi: A potentially explosive war of words that broke out between the Sindh and federal governments on Saturday may yet end an impasse regarding the continued deployment of Rangers personnel in Karachi.

In an animated press conference in Islamabad, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had accused the PPP-led Sindh government of jeopardising the Karachi operation “for the sake of one man”, saying that the government had “other options” if the province failed to act suitably. The minister was alluding to the tussle between the provincial government and the Rangers over former minister Dr Asim Hussain’s case.

Maula Bux Chandio soon responded on behalf of the Sindh government in equally confrontational terms, but dispelled a potential standoff when he declared that the government would move a resolution in the Sindh Assembly on Monday to ensure that Rangers were given special policing powers.

The question of extending Rangers’ stay in Karachi became controversial when the Sindh government failed to renew it before the expiry of the previous order on Dec 6. In August, Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah had extended the period of Rangers’ “special powers” in Karachi hours before the previous extension was set to expire.

This time around, despite reminders from the interior minister, the Sindh government chose to wait and put the question before the Sindh Assembly.

PPP spokesperson Farhatullah Babar attributed this change in modus operandi to the controversy regarding Rangers overstepping their mandate.

“The Rangers’ mandate was to curb... terrorism, targeted killings, kidnapping for ransom and extortion. In several ways the Rangers performed this role in a commendable manner. However, issues arose when Rangers overstepped their mandate and began assuming jurisdiction in cases of alleged corruption, beyond the four identified parameters,” he said.

“There had been no controversy

in the past over the overstepping of mandate and therefore no need to take the matter to the assembly. But now that a controversy has arisen, it should not surprise anyone [that it was] decided to take the matter to the provincial assembly for broad-based consultations.”

Center’s options: In his presser on Saturday, the interior minister went so far as to hint at the possibility of imposing Governor’s Rule in Sindh to continue the Karachi operation.

He said that the delay was a message to embolden terrorists and extremists, adding that in case Sindh did not comply, the government had four to five different options within the “constitutional, legal and democratic framework”.

In the same breath, however, the minister hoped that sanity would prevail. “If the MQM and PPP have some reservations, we are ready to sit with them to address those issues with maturity and seriousness,” he remarked.

He criticised the negative statements about the government, interior ministry and Rangers that were coming from the PPP. “I cannot understand how some party or a government can go so far for the sake of one man,” he said, without naming PPP leader Dr Asim Hussain, who is currently facing charges of corruption after initially being accused of helping terror suspects.

“I do not know how important that person is and what is the nature of his relationship with you, but I would ask you not to make the Karachi Oper-

ation controversial,” he said in a direct message to the Sindh government.

The minister said that he had been very restrained over the past two and a half years when the PPP made statements against him, his ministry and the government. He warned that if this continued, he would make public incriminating material that was on the record, including an alleged video of Dr Asim Hussain and the report of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in his case.

Legal opinion: Legal expert Salman Akram Raja told Dawn that the invocation of Article 234, which related to emergency powers under Governor’s Rule, was the center’s only option in case Sindh refused to extend the Rangers’ term.

He said that invoking Article 234 required a breakdown of the constitutional machinery in a province, before Governor Rule could be imposed.

“There currently appears to be a difference of opinion over the desirability of using Rangers to maintain law and order in Karachi. It is debatable whether such a difference of opinion furnishes a ground for invoking of Article 234,” he remarked.

Veteran lawyer S.M. Zafar said that imposing a state of emergency in Karachi or the entire province would be a setback for political parties, particularly the PPP and the situation may be exploited by extremists including Taliban and other banned outfits and even hostile neighbours.

Reham Khan Co-opts PTI’s ‘Tabdeeli’ Slogan for New Show Islamabad: Reham Khan is back and she isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to the promotion of her new show. Believe it or not, the PTI chairman’s former wife has co-opted the party’s famous slogan: Tabdeeli aa nahi rahi, tabdeeli agayi hai.

You got that right. We have heard cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan scream ‘tabdeeli agayi hai’ from atop containers and stages numerous times over the past two years, but Reham’s new show promises to bring ‘real change’. How exactly she aims to bring this change is anyone’s guess.

Reham has been using the hashtag #tabdeeli on Twitter to promote her upcoming show, and let’s just say not everyone is happy about her hijacking their beloved leader’s slogan.

When a fan tweeted, “I hope that the programme ‘tabdeeli’ will bring a positive tabdeeli in our society,” Reham replied with, “That’s my intention.”

Rhyming away, Reham says in

the show’s trailer, “Jo jeeni thi woh jee li hai, Ab mission mera tabdeeli hai!”.

“Everyone wants things to change,” says Khan in the promo as she strolls around Pakistan Monument in Islamabad. “But very few people want to change themselves.”

“People change their outfits and their faces, but almost never change their mindset,” continues former Mrs Imran Khan. “My mission is tabdeeli and I am Reham Khan.”

The TV show is set to run Mon-

day through Thursday, and comes nearly two months after Imran Khan and Reham Khan created waves by announcing their decision to divorce after being married for less than a year.

Rumours and controversy followed the revelation, with some accusing Reham of attempting to hit the PTI leader and others claiming she had asked for a large payout. During this time Reham stayed away from Pakistan, preferring to spend time in England, where she spoke out via British papersSunday Times and The Guardian. “I was told specifically by a senior adviser: they basically wanted me to be in the kitchen, to be cooking chapatis and not to be seen ever again,” Reham told the Sunday Times.

A few hours ago, Reham tweeted that she was hosting Tabdeeli to bring ‘honest journalism’ to Pakistan. Reham has been open about her criticism of the media, especially media coverage surrounding her divorce from Imran Khan.

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Militant Group Says It’s Behind Deadly Bus Stop Blast in Parachinar

n By Sophia Saifi Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN): A blast at a bus stop killed 23 people and injured dozens more in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, authorities said.

A Sunni militant group has claimed responsibility.

The explosion hit the bus stop at a busy market in Parachinar, the capital of Kurram Agency, said Amjad Ali, a local official. At least 50 others were injured.

He said the number of casualties could go up as security forces, who have cordoned off the area, investigate the blast.

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif condemned the blast and expressed sorrow over the loss of life and property: “Our resolve to eradicate the menace of terrorism is getting stronger and stronger with the loss of innocent lives and sacrifices of army and law enforcement officials,” he said in a statement. “This fight is an irreversible process until this terrorism is rooted out from the country.”

A spokesman for Lashkar-eJhangvi, a Pakistan-based Sunni militant group that the US State Department classified as a terrorist group in 2003, claimed responsibility for the blast. The State Department also listed the group’s cofounder, Malik Ishaq, as a specially designated global terroristlast year.

The attack was billed as revenge

SC Rejects Mumtaz Qadri’s Review Petition against Death Sentence Islamabad: The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday rejected a review petition against the death sentence of former elite force guard Mumtaz Qadri for killing former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer.

A three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa took up Qadri’s review petition against the court’s October 6 order for maintaining his death penalty.

During the hearing, which continued for almost 45 minutes, former Lahore High Court (LHC) judge Mian Nazir Akhtar failed to point out any error in the court’s judgement, resulting in dismissal of the review petition over non-maintainability.

Further, Justice Khosa remarked that it was not proved that Salman Taseer had committed blasphemy.

for acts against Syrian Muslims that were conducted on behalf of Iran and Syrian President Bashar alAssad, Ali Bin Sufyan said.

ECP Hits out at Speaker’s Remarks

Islamabad: In a rare reaction to

remarks made by a holder of a public office, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) “strongly condemned” on Sunday a statement by National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq.

In recent statements, the twiceelected speaker had expressed his annoyance with the ECP which, he said was ‘incompetent’ to hold elections. “Is it the ECP’s incompetence or mal intent [that they decided to] send the case to an election tribunal without seeking my point of view,” he had asked, speaking to reporters in Lahore.

The speaker has issued a couple of statements to this effect earlier as well. In response, ECP issued a statement on Sunday, saying, “The ECP strongly condemns and rebuts the statement and assertion made by Mr Ayaz Sadiq as the commission is fully aware of its all constitutional obligations that are performed according to the established laws and rules.”

Mr Sadiq was previously unseated from his NA-122 seat after a tribunal declared his election void on an election petition moved by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).

In his remarks, he was reacting to the ECP decision to forward yet another election petition regarding the NA-122 elections, to an election tribunal.

He argues that as far as the act of transfer of votes was concerned, he was being incorrectly involved in the case. “Transferring votes is the job of the Election Commission and not Ayaz Sadiq. It was you [ECP] who transferred the votes -- whether after accepting a bribe or else and it should be you to stand trial (for any wrong done in the process) and not me.”

The NA speaker also chided the ECP for poor drafting of the summons and offered to hire a lawyer to train it (on legal matters).

“The commission secretariat is drawing salaries worth crores [tens of millions] of rupees but cannot do its job (perfectly). If you cannot do the job, then I may hire you a lawyer so that you may learn (how to) do your job.”

By being elected again, he became the first person in the country’s history to have been elected

ECP, P28

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Pakistan Test-Fires its Most Advanced Nuclear-Capable Ballistic Missile

Islamabad: Pakistan test-fired a

Shaheen-III intermediate-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Friday, the country’s military reported. The missile had been first officially revealed earlier this year.

The missile was fired at the Arabian Sea and traveled 2,750km, its reported maximum range, said the Pakistani Army’s press service

ISPR. “The successful flight test with its impact point in the Arabian Sea, validating all the desired parameters, was witnessed by senior officers from Strategic Plans Division, Strategic Forces, scientists and engineers of Strategic Organizations,” the ISPR said in a statement.

Top Pakistani military and civilian officials, including President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, congratulated scientists and engineers on the successful test, it added.

The Shaheen-III is the latest version of the solid-propellant missile that Pakistan developed as a counterpart to India’s Agni-III missile. Its range allows Pakistan to hit targets anywhere in India. Islamabad conducted the first public test of the system in March.

India and Pakistan are longtime foes engaged in a regional arms race, stemming from a conflict dating back to Britain’s partitioning of its Indian protectorate into what now are India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The two nations have fought four wars since then and still see occasional border skirmishes.

Both have nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them.

Ayaz Sadiq Turns Guns on ECP after Notice from NA-122 Tribunal Lahore: Speaker National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq on Sunday blasted the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) terming the constitutional body ‘incompetent’ to hold elections.

The criticism comes after an election tribunal on Friday had issued a notice to the NA Speaker on a petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI)candidate Abdul Aleem Khan alleging irregularities and pre-poll rigging in the NA-122 (Lahore) by-election.

The PTI petition maintains that at least 30,000 votes had been

cancelled and shifted from the NA-122 constituency before the by-poll while the ECP had the record of shifting of only 7,000 votes,

adding that this act of the commission amounted to pre-poll rigging.

Sadiq, while speaking to journalists on Sunday said that the body responsible to hold free and fair polls had failed in its duty and was instead holding him ‘accountable’ for their own sins.

“Is it the ECP’s incompetence or malintention on their part to send the case to election tribunal without seeking my point of view?” Ayaz Sadiq questioned.

Sadiq, who defeated PTI’s Aleem Khan in the NA-122 by SADIQ, P28

Spurred by APS Attack, Father Develops Device to Save People in Emergencies

Islamabad: After the attack on

Army Public School (APS) in December last year, Fahd Mahmood Khan took his seven-year-old son out of school.

“I was shocked that someone could do that to little children,” he said, adding that he was too scared to let his child go to school, now that there were not safe anymore.

After tutoring his son at home for three months, Fahd realised that he was denying his son the chance to socialise and have fun with other children his age. His son could not always be kept home, he thought; there had to be another solution.

Thinking about making the world safer for his child and others, Fahd Khan first gave up his weapons dealership that he had run for five years.

Then, inspired by the tragedy of December 16, 2014, he came up with the idea for a phone application that could help in saving lives. After all, he though, the one thing people always have on them is a phone. Soon after, he started working on a phone app called ‘Mohafiz’ or guardian. The 5.5MB app is now completed and can be downloaded free from app stores.

Compatible with both Android and iOS, the application requires the user to fill in some additional information like their blood group. Hospitals can also contact nearby users willing to donate blood in emergencies through this function.

It requires users to nominate family members and friends as emergency contacts and has a button that sends out a distress signal to all the people nominated on the list.

Pressing the button opens a new window with icons for fire, accident, flood, earthquake and theft to specify the nature of the accident. A mask and gun icon has been added to signify a terrorist attack.

Fahd Khan explained: “The icons make it easier for the nominated emergency contacts to respond accordingly. When I was developing the app, I kept in mind both tech savvy people and those not comfortable with using technology, which is why the Mohafiz has been developed using colours and icons that are easy to recognise.”

Once the distress signal is sent, it takes 30 seconds to send the receiver the exact location of the user.

FATHER, P24

No Answers for Revenge-Seeking Pakistan School Massacre Parents Peshawar: Peshawar’s parents are seeking retribution: not only from the Taliban gunmen who slaughtered their children one year ago, but from a state they say has not yet answered for the nightmare they are still living.

The massacre saw nine extremists scale the walls of an army-run school in the northwestern Pakistani city, lobbing grenades and opening fire on terrified children and teachers, murdering them one by one before being killed by security services.

Many of the mothers and fathers of more than 130 children murdered in the December 16 attack are ethnic Pashtun, their lives infused with the tribal code of ethics of which badal -- or revenge -- is a cornerstone.

As such they take grim satisfaction in knowing that the military has wreaked its vengeance on the insurgents with hangings, arrests, and an offensive in the tribal areas where militants had previously operated with impunity.

But the same parents are railing against a deafening silence from authorities over how a security apparatus put in place to protect them could have failed their children so completely.

“At least someone at some level

was responsible... Why don’t they talk about it?” asks Abid Raza Bangash, whose 15-year-old son Rafiq was among those slaughtered.

The assault -- in which 134 children and 15 adults died -- shocked and outraged Pakistanis, already scarred by nearly a decade of attacks, and prompted a crackdown on extremism in civil society.

But no government, security or military official has yet been held to public account.

Bangash left his job as an engineer to become head of the Shuhada (Martyrs) Forum, a lobbying group of parents of the victims who gather The parents have already met with officials at all levels and military chief General on the 16th of every month in the Raheel Sharif three times ing parents who wanted to witness United Nations or the International city’s cultural center, Nishtar Hall.

“We want a fact-finding inqui- their deaths.

Court of Justice if their demands are ry commission headed by a senior “All the nation wanted to see not met, he said. judge to probe this incident. The these animals hanged publicly so The parents have already met findings of that commission should others would not dare follow their with officials at all levels and powexample,” Bangash told AFP angrily erful military chief General Raheel be made public,” he told AFP. Sharif three times, but Bangash says “Still my heart is crying,” he after the executions.

“Being a Pashtun, I think public they have not been given the ansays, remembering his bright son. hanging would be a remedy for the swers they seek, or reassurances that “How can I forget him?”

In August, after a military trial parents -- a sort of relief to them,” other people’s children will be kept that took place behind closed doors, said Ajun Khan, whose only son As- safe in the future. the army announced that six mili- fand, a 10th grader, was among the Not all the parents agree. Tufail tants linked to the Peshawar assault children killed.

Khattak, father of victim Shersha, would be executed, while a seventh But Khan said even public ex- 15, lauded both the civil and miliecutions would not deter the par- tary authorities for their efforts. was given a life sentence.

“We have been acknowledged,” On December 2, four were ents from their quest for a judicial hanged at dawn in a prison in the inquiry. he said, noting that the victims have northwestern city of Kohat, enragThey will seek remedy with the already been honoured with awards

www.PakistanLink.com

and families been paid compensation, while more than 100 government schools have been named after the children.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s information minister Mushtaq Ghani said he understands the parents’ feelings, but dismissed the need for a judicial inquiry, saying the facts of the assault were clear.

On Friday he told reporters that the investigation into the attack had been expanded, and that parents would soon be told of the findings.

A senior security official also defended steps taken since the attack to AFP, saying the army would go to “any extent” to satisfy the parents “provided their demands are fair”.

Some have argued that if the government and army would reveal what went wrong, it might make still-traumatised survivors less afraid.

But for others nothing -- not badal, security or a judicial inquiry -- will ever be enough.

Andalib Aftab, a chemistry teacher at the school who lost many of her students as well as her 16-year-old son Huzaifa in the attack, described the parents as fish without water.

“We just want to see our kids,” she said tearfully.

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P16 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P17

Community Link Friday, December 18, 2015

VOL. 25/51 PAGE 18

Muslims Raise over $100,000 for Victims’ Families n By Dr Amineh Hoti Executive Director Markaz-e-Ilm Center for Dialogue and Action Islamabad, Pakistan

6 Rabi ‘ul-awwal 1437 H

PAGE PAGE19 17

PAGE 19 egum PAGE

First Presidential Candidate to Stand with Muslims

US Consulate Employees Wed Pakistani Style

Interfaith at the White House

A

s I entered the White House what struck me for being perhaps one of the most important residences in the world is its modest scale despite the wealth of America as a country. Rulers of poorer countries like ours would do better when they spend on the development of the country and education of its people and not on themselves remembering the famous words, “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”.

As an educationist, I was one of four people invited from Pakistan to the American President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge about a month ago; in total 500 other people were invited. This was an exciting time to be in Washington DC as two more exemplary world leaders were also scheduled to visit Scholars and heads of universities invited from around the world are pictured in front of the White House the White House and meet with President Obama - the dynamic Chinese President Xi a more peaceful world. After a long journey the International Shinto Foundation, and and the popular Pope Francis. Both leaders from Pakistan, I joined an impressive num- Howard University — the oldest Africancame with important but different messages ber of religious scholars from various faiths, American University.

At Georgetown University in the hiswhich would determine peace between civi- leaders and university heads from around lizations. the world. The three-day event in Septem- toric Riggs library with Father Frazer from Against this background there was ber 2015 was mainly organized with leader- India and Professor Akinade from Georgealso the big challenge of what was happen- ship from an excellent team of government town University in Doha, Ken Bedell of the ing to the Muslim world – clandestine for- and university partners, including Melody Department of Education asked me to start eign interference, wars and violence forced even well-off people to become homeless immigrants — with their own countries in turmoil — breaking into Europe – some accepted empathetically, others rejected violently. The scenes of mothers and fathers on TV with little children being torn apart by inhuman laws was heart breaking. One European camera-woman was shockingly caught on video kicking a child from Syria as she entered the borders of Hungry with her father. On American television, shallow candidates such as Donald Trump (with a lot of money but little intellect) stood for the next presidency and openly talked ignorantly about “the enemy” as Islam.

Muslims were the subject of an unsavory variety of Islamophobic attacks. The media — loving the sensationalism — inflamed the problem. As a result, there were also many reports of mosques and women in hijab being increasingly attacked and as- Dr Amineh Hoti speaks at the Georgetown University library at the concluding dinner of the event saulted. I thought to myself, there will be a lot of challenges ahead of us and we will Fox Ahmed (an American married to a the panel discussion. I began by emphasizneed to find answers within our own tra- Pakistani Muslim) who works as Assistant ing that the world is in flames, the problem ditions; and as a global citizen who cared Director at the Berkley Center for Religion, is global, and we need to work hard to put about her world, I thought that it is vital for Peace and World Affairs, at Georgetown out the flames through sustained, effortful us as a world civilization to find solutions to University – one of the top universities of and united work in inter- and intra-faith America. The other key organizers and education by learning about our own rich the conflicts in the world today.

The conference I was attending at the partners were President Obama’s team at the history of coexistence and emphasizing this White House also reflected a desire to create White House, the Department of Education, as opposed to difference.

www.PakistanLink.com

For news, updated round the clock, visit

www.PakistanLink.com Two other functions were held at the White House. The excitement for us participants of entering the White House was dulled down by its high level of security: the long line of participants from different countries with their various national clothes looked like, as one observer pointed out, “a rainbow of diversity”. People were mingling together: some in Pakistani shalwar kameez, others in orange Buddhist and Hindu holy dresses, yet others in formal Western clothes. Each participant had to show their identity twice, move from iron doors to entrance points where, alone, each one of us was made to stand still while from behind low shutters a few inches away was a fiercelooking Alsatian dog to clear us. In front of me, a very large security guard with his gaze fixed. It was a tense moment. Disgruntled participants were charmed by small smart packets on their seats of welcoming Hershey’s kiss chocolates that had the seal and signature of the President of the United States of America. At night a lavish sumptuous dinner for the conference participants at the Turkish embassy in Washington DC reflected Eastern warmth and hospitality.

Senior Turkish ladies at the embassy were articulate and smart.

Some of the key ideas that were conveyed during the three days were that interfaith is a concept in which people of each faith or community begin to learn to respect “the Other” – the religious other, the ethnic other and the gendered other. We accept difference and see diversity as a strength and not adversity. We respectfully allow for faith expressions, see the ethnic other as a brother (or sister), and understand that women are complete individuals in their own right with intellectual capabilities and full rights.

Speakers at the conference mentioned how important not just interfaith is (i.e. dialogue between people of different faiths and cultures) but also intra-faith (dialogue with people amongst our own faith community who hold different perspectives).

Although we all outwardly agreed that interfaith dialogue is an ideal and a norm we should all hold to, even some “experts” who were present displayed biases and prejudices. One panelist on a diverse interfaith panel argued that his persecuted minority community shoulders all the responsibility for dialogue and improving relations with the majority faith community – an opinion others disagreed with. There are many in all communities who work hard to build peace and also those who destroy it within seconds. In another incident I heard that one male attendee seemed to be only focused on enforcing his version of female modesty among his co-religionists. Even those who agree to participate in dialogue INTERFAITH, P28

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P18 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

Dr Yasir Qadhi Gives a Recipe for Happy Muslim Marriages

n By Tahir Ali Worcester: The Worcester Islam-

ic Center (WIC) located on East Mountain Street was packed to capacity on a Saturday night. It was not an Eid party, nor a wedding ceremony or a celebration of any kind. An estimated turnout of over a thousand was due to the presence of Dr Yasir Qadhi (Qazi), an American Muslim scholar born in Texas, Yale graduate and a writer of Pakistani descent.

Abu Aamar Yasir Qadhi was invited to talk on how to build strong and successful Muslim marriages as the foundation of our society. The project management team was led

by Stephen Ives and his wife Mona Salem along with Fayrous Hassan the VP of Events and Programming at WIC. Mona Ives expressed her thanks to a large team of volunteers.

“The lecture and Q&A were very well received. The team of volunteers contributed funds and sweat equity who worked tirelessly for the last 3-4 months to bring this large-

scale event to fruition.”

Dr Qadhi touched on such previously-considered taboo subjects as “the language of love,” and sex and intimacy in marriage. He discussed in great length and explained to an attentive audience the five languages of love. The first one he labeled as ‘words, words, words;’ the second as ‘time’, the third ‘gifts’, the fourth ‘language‘, and the fifth ‘physical touch.’

“90% of the time you [men and women] are not speaking the language of love,” Dr Qadhi claimed. “It is essential to express your love for one another - women always need affirmation over and over again.”

He mentioned a Hadith - albeit weak - that Hazrat Ayesha asked the Prophet how much he loved her.

The Prophet responded in poetic metaphor - like a tight knot. Dr Qadhi said that it was Sunnah to announce your love to your wife “but nowadays men feel awkward to say it in private, so forget it in public,” he said laughingly. But, on a serious note, he said it is necessary to make her feel that she is the best thing in

life. He also emphasized that the wife needs to be supportive of her husband. He gave the example of Hazrat Khadija: how she gave comfort to Prophet Mohammad (WAS) when he was trembling after he received the first wahi. “The wife needs to be the number one fan, not the number one critic,” Qadhi said.

“When your wife says, ‘You don’t spend too much time with me,’ she is not talking about clock time, she is asking for quality time.” On the other hand, he told the ladies that they need to understand that men also need precious moments of solitude to unwind; he called it “man-cave where he goes to hibernate.” He further added, “Ladies, he

also needs to spend time with his friends.”

Another language of love is by way of giving gifts to one another.

He recalled the painstaking search of Hazrat Ayesha for the necklace the Prophet (SAW) gave to her.

“Guys you need to give her gifts,” the Sheikh said, “of course, she may come back with a response like, ‘why did you spend so much money?’ Men are simpletons, they don’t read in. They will think that she did not like the gift, but she really did.

Women say one thing but have 7 facets of meaning.”

Another win-win situation is doing what the other person usually does. Doing the dishes, clean-

ing the kitchen, taking out the garbage. Hazrat Ayesha narrated of the Prophet that he would milk the she-goats and mend his own shoes.

“What percentage of men do that today?” he asked.

The fifth category he touched upon was Physical Touch. Here he steered himself into rather sensitive territory. He openly discussed sex and intimacy in marriage. He mentioned the two kinds of touching, one being nonsexual, the other being the actual act. He explained that men go directly into the sexual part.

“Don’t go to her like an animal - that leaves her feeling objectified” Dr Yasir Qadhi completely mesmerized his listeners. They came from all over New England and some even traveled from New York and New Jersey.

The question-and-answer session was very interactive and fulfilling. The sheikh summed the recipe of a happy marriage in two short sentences: “She wants to be adored and loved. He wants admiration and respect, if he gets that he will take care of her.”

American Muslims Raise More than $100,000 for Families of San Bernardino Shooting Victims

F

n By Teresa Watanabe

aisal Qazi had no idea the shooters who massacred 14 people in San Bernardino last week were Muslims, like himself. The Pomona-based neurologist only knew that the victims and their families were his Inland Empire neighbors, and his faith obligated him to help.

Qazi started small, hoping to raise $20,000 through his health nonprofit. But Islamic scholars and leaders urged him to broaden the effort – especially after it was revealed that the assailants were Muslims -and the campaign quickly became the most successful crowd-funding venture Muslim Americans have ever launched for the broader community.

In just four days, the Muslims United for San Bernardino campaign has raised more than $100,000 from more than 1,000 donors across the country, including in Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The money will be disbursed through San Bernardino County and the United Way to assist victims’ families with funeral expenses and other needs, Qazi said.

“The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society,” said Qazi, 41. “What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in what-

ever transpires in society.”

The crowd-funding website itself is a case in point. LaunchGood was started two years ago by Chris Blauvelt, a Detroit resident who converted to Islam three months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“After 9/11, we had a rude awakening,” Blauvelt said. “We realized we had to do more than get good jobs as doctors and engineers and buy houses in the suburbs. We have to give back to the communities we live in, the American community.”

So far, LaunchGood has raised $5 million for 473 projects in 39 countries, with Muslim Americans accounting for 80% of the donations.

The campaigns include raising money to help rebuild African American churches burned in Charleston this year and to support students interested in science and technology after the arrest of a Muslim teen in Texas for bringing a clock to school.

But the San Bernardino campaign has far outstripped those efforts, Blauvelt said. Donations are coming in at a rate of $1,000 an hour – 100 times faster than LaunchGood’s typical crowd-funding campaign.

The biggest boost came when the campaign was endorsed by the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, which represents 78 mosques and Muslim organizations.

Shakeel Syed, the council’s executive director, said donors hope to raise $250,000 in what will dwarf previ-

Muslim neurologist Faisal Qazi has launched a nationwide campaign to raise money for the families of the victims in the San Bernardino shooting rampage. The campaign raised more than $100,000 in four days (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

ous fundraising efforts, including $10,000 for the Orange County Fire

also pitched the campaign in their Friday sermons last week.

“The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society,” said Qazi, 41. “What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society.”

Department nearly a decade ago after wildfires in the Carlsbad area.

Several leading Islamic scholars

www.PakistanLink.com

“Since 9/11, we’ve felt we need to come out of our cocoons,” said Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the

Islamic Institute of Orange County.

“We’re as American as anyone else … but if society is not feeling it, it means I’m not doing enough.”

Donors include Marya Ayloush, a 20-year-old student at Santa Monica Community College who gave $50 after seeing the campaign posted on Facebook. “This is an actual, tangible action we can do to show non-Muslims that we have your back,” she said. “In every situation where the terrorist happens to be a Muslim, every person, whether they admit it or not, is afraid they’ll be lumped in with these guys.”

Her parents and her faith taught her that donating to others helps purify yourself, she said, and growing up in Corona near San Bernardino gave her a special feeling of closeness to the families. “Those families almost feel like neighbors, and they cannot go unassisted,” she said.

Across the country, Qudsia Raja, a Washington, DC, domestic violence counselor for the YWCA USA, said she gave not so much because she’s a Muslim. She said she has a special passion for helping victims of violence – she also donated following the murder of three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

“This really hit me hard,” Raja said. “It didn’t happen in my backyard, and I didn’t know how to engage being so far away. But I felt I had to do something…. it was so horrific.” – Courtesy Los Angeles Times

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P19

American Muslim Doctors Feel Greater Scrutiny, Even Patients’ Suspicions

E

n By Lena H. Sun

First Presidential Candidate to Stand with Muslims

n By Anwar Iqbal

mergency medicine doctor Aasim Padela studied religious identity and workplace discrimination with American Muslim physicians. (Photo courtesy of University of Chicago Medicine )

The first study to examine religious identity and workplace discrimination against American Muslim doctors found that nearly half felt more scrutiny at work compared to their peers, and nearly one in four said they experienced religious discrimination during their careers.

Almost 10 percent of the physicians said patients had refused their care because they are Muslim, according to the new study.

These experiences predate the anti-Muslim rhetoric that is now being voiced most loudly by GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump -which makes the physicians’ accounts all the more concerning, the study’s lead author said Thursday.

“This is significant, and that is before Trump,” noted Aasim Padela, an emergency medicine doctor at the University of Chicago.

Hundreds of physicians nationwide were surveyed as part of the research, which was conducted between 2013 and 2014, well before the mass killings that individuals either inspired by or connected to the Islamic State terrorist group carried out recently in Paris and California. In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, with 14 people dead at the hands of a radicalized husband and wife, several Republican presidential candidates have intensified their criticism of Muslims or Islam.

This week, Trump called for a “total ban” on Muslims entering the United States.

The 35-year-old Padela, a New York native whose parents are Pakistani, undertook the study because of his personal experiences and similar ones shared by other American Muslim doctors. As long as a decade ago, while he was a resident working in the emergency department at the University of Rochester Medical Center, some patients complained to his supervisors that they “don’t want to be taken care

Protesters Foil Hate-Mongers’ Plan

of by a terrorist,” Padela recalled in an interview. “I had this happen a couple of times,” he said.

Despite the latest wave of animosity, his own circle of American Muslim doctors has faced muted reaction; most may be more sheltered from the harsh rhetoric because they are in academia, he said. But he worries that if it continues, some physicians will face greater scrutiny at work and feel forced to leave medicine, depriving patients of culturally sensitive care.

The survey found that 14 percent of doctors said they were experiencing religious discrimination at their current workplace.

“If Muslim physicians feel uncomfortable in the profession because their identity attracts negative experience, then the profession no longer offers a means to live out their faith in service to the profession,” he said via email.

Some doctors in private practice say they are shocked by the level of support within the medical community for Trump’s proposed ban.

California neurologist Faisal Qazi, 41, started a national campaign to raise money for the victims and families of the San Bernardino massacre after he discovered some were his neighbors.

A colleague heard about the fund and became very angry, Qazi said. The surgeon, face flushed, confronted Qazi and told him Trump was right, that ‘”we should get rid of all the Muslims.”

A similar incident took place recently with an older American Muslim

physician who has been practicing for 25 years. As he recounted to Qazi, another doctor told him that he shared Trump’s views but that the naturalized US citizen was “one of the good ones.”

“I have never seen him more worried,” Qazi said of the older physician.

As for that interaction, he added, “If that’s the kind of mentality we’re dealing with, it’s more dangerous.”

The study of American Muslim doctors and workplace discrimination was published this week in AJOB Empirical Bioethics, which is affiliated with the American Journal of Bioethics. It involved a random sampling of members of the Islamic Medical Association of North America. A questionnaire was mailed to 626 doctors, and more than 40 percent completed the survey.

Most respondents were men from South Asia, who immigrated to the United States as adults. Nearly all (89 percent) considered Islam either a very important part of their life or the most important part. Most of the physicians said they prayed five times a day.

Padela, who works on his hospital’s Initiative on Islam and Medicine, pointed out that this year is not the first time Republican presidential candidates have used anti-Muslim rhetoric. During the 2012 campaign, Herman Cain talked about initially feeling anxious during his treatment for cancer because one of his surgeons had an Arab name. He was relieved to learn the doctor was a Christian Arab.

- Courtesy The Washington Post

US Consulate Employees Wed Pakistani Style in Fun-Filled ‘Dholki’ in Karachi

Traditional, energetic and colorful — who doesn’t love a Pakistani wedding? Employees of the US consulate were thrown a ‘dholki’ by their Pakistani colleagues.

In a colorful post on Facebook, US Consulate Karachi shared fun-filled images of the dholki. The images showed the staff and friends enjoying local traditions of a Pakistani ‘mehndi’ complete with bangles, singing and dancing at a site decorated in traditional Pakistani style canopies, carpets and flowers specifically marigolds.

Earlier, the US Consulate celebrated Thanksgiving dinner with the family of a Pakistani camel cart driver who was invited in 1961 by then US vice president Lyndon Johnson to America. Ahmad Sarban’s family were invited by the US Consulate to a traditional American dinner hosted by Consul General Heath, during which they shared many Thanksgiving traditions. - The Express Tribune

www.PakistanLink.com

Washington, DC: A bold gesture of love outside the White House on Saturday afternoon prevented a burning that could have triggered a chain of hateful actions and reactions around the globe.

It was nice and warm — felt more like a spring day than a chilly December afternoon — when a group of hate-mongers gathered outside the White House with the intention to burn the Holy Qur’an.

Nervous security personnel, some of them in uniform, surrounded the group hoping to use a law that forbids making a fire outside the White House to prevent the burning. There is, however, no law in the US that prevents the burning of a religious book, Islamic, Christian or Jewish.

As security personnel were still pondering what to do, a group of counter-protesters appeared on the scene and confronted the hate-mongers.

A young woman with a bold, smiling face held up a placard, declaring: “I’m a Christian and I love the Qur’an.”

Another displayed a poster, saying: “Tell me, whom do you burn when white males go on shooting rampage? Don’t you get it? You are causing terror.”

John Zangas, a Marine who was one of the counter-protesters, told WTOP news channel they had come to “block the spread of bigotry and lies”. And they literally tried to block the message of hate, holding up large sheets to obscure the first group from view.

They also yelled to drown out hate chants.

Ed Spiker, who was with the group that planned to burn holy books, told WTOP that they were a bunch of frustrated Americans.

“We’re just people who are a little fed up with the lack of effort from our government to fight radical Islam,” he said.

While this loud confrontation continued, a bicyclist stopped near the man who was holding copies of the holy book, snatched them from him and rode away.

Some said he was a security man who took advantage of the confusion to defuse a potentially dangerous act. Others speculated that he was one of the counterprotesters.

Jordan Denari, a Catholic counter-protester, said she came because she wanted “to educate the public about Islamophobia”.

The anti-Islam protesters also criticised US President Barack Obama for defending Muslims.

Since last week’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14 people and caused a wave of anti-Muslim protests across America, President Obama has issued several statements urging Americans not to confuse Islam with terrorism.

He insisted that acts of terror were committed by a handful of Muslims while the overwhelming majority was peaceful.

The anti-Islam protesters called President Obama a “closet Muslim” and accused him of defending extremists. - Dawn

Sterling, Virginia: Former Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley has become the first 2016 presidential candidate to stand in solidarity with Muslims.

Amid increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric and firm stances against the religion by Republican White House hopefuls, O’Malley visited a mosque and a community center in Sterling, Virginia on Friday.

“I wanted to be here to be present with you, in solidarity in these challenging times,” O’Malley told the congregation after Friday prayers.

O’Malley’s campaign says he’s the first candidate to make such a visit since the start of the campaign season last spring. The communications director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper, said he believes O’Malley is the only candidate to have visited a mosque during this campaign.

The Democrat’s visit comes days after Donald Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States which has been largely censured by politicians as inhumane and impractical. Though some of his rival Republicans criticised Trump’s position, none have discounted him as a potential nominee in their party.

Further, while the leading Democratic candidates, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton and senator Bernie Sanders, condemned Trump’s proposal, neither has held an event with the Muslim community since violence in San Bernadino.

Speaking at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, the Democratic presidential candidate said, “In these times where fear and division is in the air, it is easy for unscrupulous politicians or hate preachers—no nation is immune from the scourge of hate preachers—to turn us upon ourselves.”

“That sort of lan- guage that you hear from Donald Trump is not the language of America’s future… my Muslim neighbors make America strong,” he added.

He continued, “I know that there have been many acts of violence. I know there are acts of ignorance that have been encouraged by some in our political discourse, but the larger arc of our history … is the larger arc of love and generosity and respect for one another.”

Regarding the recent shootings in San Bernardino which killed 14 people and Charleston which killed 9 people, O’Malley said: “And so I know, and I know that our young people understand that the tragic murders that took place in San Bernardino does not define Islam any more than that horrible murder that took place in Charleston CANDIDATE, P28

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P20 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

Twelfth International Kashmir Conference Concludes in New York New York. December 11, 2015. The

Twelfth International Kashmir Peace Conference entitled “Beyond the Blame Game: Finding Common Grounds for Peace and Justice in Kashmir,” organized by International Educational Development (IED) at the Church Center of the United Nations, New York, was attended among others by academics, researchers, delegates from various United Nations Missions, representatives of the United Nations NGO’s, social and civil rights activists, political analysts and prominent Americans of South Asian origin. It began with the key-note speech of Hon. Ramsey Clark, 66th Attorney General of the United States.

‘I am hopeful’ stated Dr. Karen Parker, International Educational Development (IED) Delegate to the United Nations, in her introductory remarks ‘that this conference will provide some guidance for resolving the roadblock between where we are now and where we can go to resolve the conflict.

We need to get all sides talking to each other with full respect.’

Spotlighting ‘Kashmir: Human Rights Dimension’, Ramsey Clark began by describing the state of Jammu and Kashmir as ‘a place of beauty caught in geography and history that makes the possibility of general peace and prosperity a challenge, not only for its people but also for its neighbors.’

If peace could be achieved, Kashmir could be a symbol for the world, demonstrating the possibility of peace existing in the midst of beauty.’ But, he cautioned, how does a world ‘full of ambition and too many hands possessing the capacity for total destruction’ achieve such a goal? ‘We don’t like to think about it but we still spend billions of dollars on how to kill millions of people where hunger and sickness could be eradicated. We know better but we obscure our knowledge, because the truth hurts, it hurts to know the existence of poverty and suffering.’

Mr. Clark conceded that the average American’s knowledge about Kashmir was ‘less than negligible’ and that, when hearing the name ‘Kashmir’, they were more likely to think of a bouquet of soap rather than the disputed state.

‘We’re busy and it’s a big world and everybody has their own problems and needs and wants.’ But knowing about the suffering and needs of others ‘is essential to peace on earth. Kashmir remains in the mind as a lovely sounding place that few have ever visited, which means that we have a real challenge in terms of education.’ He concluded, ‘We are a long way from justice as a dominant condition in the world.’ When questioned on the role of the United Nations, he described how the ability to focus on the real needs of the population was overshadowed by the special interests ‘of those who control the representation of power that guides the United Nations’.

Human rights activist, Khurram Parvez, convener of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, focused on the context in which human rights abuses in the state of Jammu and Kashmir were perceived. ‘You cannot understand human rights if you don’t understand the context. Human rights abuses are taking place all around the world, in many places, including in India,’ he stated. ‘But the difference is these are happening because of aberrations, deficiencies in governance, and because people transgress the law. What is happening in Kashmir is not an aberration, it is part of an institutionalized policy of the Indian government.’ Highlight-

ing the publication in September of the report of the International Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir and the Association of Disappeared Persons, Structures of Violence, The Indian State in Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Parvez described how the report not only involved the documentation of 333 cases of human rights abuses but also described litigating these cases in different courts. ‘Our argument is that if we don’t do it we will never be able to prove that human rights abuses are taking place. We have been able to engage with the Jammu and Kashmir judiciary.’ With information coming from both police and government sources, he emphasized that in the cases under review, including Kunan Poshpura in 1991 and the massacre of Sikhs on the eve of President Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000, there were 972 alleged perpetrators. ‘In all these cases we have gone to the courts and tried our best to find justice within the Indian system.’

Nasreen Sheikh from Azad Jammu and Kashmir, now living in the United States and an educationalist for the past 35 years, emphasized that ‘as human beings, regardless of gender, nationality or sex, we all have the right to life liberty and security.’ In addition to political, economic and cultural rights, she said, ‘we also have collective rights and that is the right to selfdetermination.’

Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir, a disputed territory administered by Indi, she said, are an ongoing issue. The abuses range from mass killings, forced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression and suppression of freedom of speech.

Examining the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir in its ‘Regional and International Dimension’, British author of Kashmir in the Crossfire and Kashmir in Conflict, Victoria Schofield emphasized that there were five important reasons why a resolution of the dispute was imperative: firstly, because the dispute had been going on for 67 years creating longstanding enmity between India and Pakistan in a world that had become more dangerous; secondly because both India and Pakistan were nuclear powers and any flare-up between the two hostile neighbors could lead to a nuclear exchange.

Citing the attack on the Delhi Parliament in December 2001, she reminded listeners that both armies mobilized along the international border, and that newspaper articles appeared in the international media highlighting the locations where potential nuclear strikes could be made. Thirdly, the un-

resolved dispute meant that ‘any nonstate’ actor could perpetrate an act of terrorism in the name of Jammu and Kashmir which could also bring India and Pakistan to the brink of war creating unimaginable suffering for the inhabitants of the region. Fourthly, the humanitarian situation on the ground warranted resolution. Pointing to the effect of the trauma of the ongoing conflict, she highlighted the fact that besides human rights abuses, thousands had been killed or disappeared.

‘Women whose husbands have disappeared cannot re-marry. They are halfwidows, which also brings hardship.’

Fifthly, because of the unresolved dispute, resources which could be spent improving the lives of all people of the subcontinent were spent on maintaining conventional and nuclear arsenals.

Focusing her remarks on the United Nations’ definition of selfdetermination, Dr Karen Parker emphasized that the state of Jammu and Kashmir ‘obviously’ met the criteria: firstly that there should be an identifiable territory; secondly, that there should be a history of self-governance; thirdly, that the people should be distinct from those around them; fourthly - and Dr Parker apologized for the benevolent tone of the requirement – that the people should have the capacity for self-governance; finally, the people ‘have to want it’, which Dr Parker stated they clearly did. ‘Never really since 1947 have the people given up the wish of self-determination.’

Professor Zafar Khan, Spokesperson, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was also unable to be present. His paper was also read by a young student, again stressing the right of the inhabitants of the state to selfdetermination. Professor Khan questioned, ‘Who can begrudge Kashmiris for feeling betrayed, at the indifference and abandonment of their basic human rights – the right to national selfdetermination, a right that India and the major powers recognized.’

In his comments, Dr Zahid Bokhari, Executive Director, Center for Islam and Public Policy (CIPP), presented a five-point agenda for the next level struggle of Kashmir dispute: 1) The word ‘Azadi’ be accepted in the English language as a standard term for Kashmiri resistance movement as ‘Glasnost’ and ‘Intifada’ were recognized for the Soviet Union openness and Palestinian resistance, respectively; 2) The just resolution of Kashmir conflict will bring peace and prosperity to the region of South Asia. The reduction of defense expenditure will make it possible to eradicate poverty among the half billion people of the Indian

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Subcontinent; 3) An extensive use of social media, especially videos, will become instrumental in highlighting the struggle of the people of Kashmir, including the Kashmiri youth; 4) An effective outreach campaign on Kashmir dispute towards the peace-loving sections of the Indian civil society and diaspora is the need of the time; and 5) The increasingly negative image of Modi administration as extremist, sectarian and communal should be used effectively to enhance the cause of Kashmir at the global level.”

In her opening comments in the session, ‘India Pakistan relations: breaking the deadlock for Kashmir’, Barrister Suchitra Vijayan, writer, lawyer and political theorist made it clear that she stood ‘in solidarity with Kashmiris.’ She also cautioned against using ‘the language of the occupier’ – for example by describing ‘freedom fighters’ as militants or separatists. Describing a recent visit to the valley of Kashmir on 15 August 2015, she said that she found it unacceptable, that she, as an Indian from Madras, was able to walk unchallenged on the streets of Srinagar, whereas a Kashmiri would not have the same freedom. ‘I had more rights than the average Kashmiri.’

She observed that many Indians had been ‘brainwashed’ into thinking that Kashmir belonged to India, ‘and that to hold on to Kashmir was fine, and to treat Kashmiris as part of India was fine.’ She also described how the bardic traditions in Kashmir had been transformed. ‘Every Kashmiri is a poet, but instead of the traditional histories of happiness and achievement which they recorded, their poems now reflect pain and suffering.’

Broadening her comments to talk about India, Barrister Vijayan emphasized the regional differences of India, describing how the ‘idea of India’ was the ‘most abused phrase’. ‘What Mohammed Ali Jinnah said of India was correct: “India is a subcontinent of nationalities.”’ Explaining the rise of extremism she said that it existed ‘especially in the areas which became border areas. We talk about partition as though it was surgical, it was a bloody mess, those families still feel the trauma. Delhi changed from being a Mogul city to Punjabi city.’ The second reason why extremism was increasing was because all problems were being considered to be the fault of Muslims. ‘Where does that hate and anger come from?’ she asked. ‘It comes from a sense of not understanding what the history is.’ As an example, she cited how some Indians were upset at making a film about Tipu Sultan of Mysore, because he was a Muslim, without understanding it

was the Muslims who fought to preserve the region against the colonizers.

In his paper, Dr Waleed Rasool of International Riphah University, Islamabad wrote that Kashmir is still longest outstanding dispute pending on the agenda of the UN Security Council.

The United Nations passed the very first resolution on April 21, 1948 which gave the right to self-determination to the people of Jammu & Kashmir.

This resolution was jointly sponsored by the major world powers, including the United States, Great Britain and France.

Rasool said that the self-determination of the people of Kashmir and international peace and security are inter-related. The denial of this right has brought both nuclear countries of India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. It is in the interest of world peace that India and Pakistan need to resolve the Kashmir dispute to the satisfaction of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The final and durable settlement of the Kashmir dispute will undoubtedly guarantee peace and stability in the region of South Asia. It will also have a great impact on international peace and security.

Sardar Sawar Khan, former Advisor to the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir said that the right of selfdetermination of the people of Jammu & Kashmir was agreed to at the United Nations by both India and Pakistan with the endorsement of the world powers. That pledge needs to be fulfilled for the sake of peace and stability in the region of South Asia.

Concluding the conference, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai said that the aims and objectives of the conference were not to speak against one government or another. On the contrary, our main purpose was to facilitate a sincere dialogue in the form of a peace process.

And to do so in the spirit of reconciliation, not confrontation; equality, not discrimination; and hope, not despair.

Fai underscored that despite a significant shift in global politics during the post-9/11, the Kashmir issue remains a major impediment to global peace and security, and its resolution must be a priority for the international community.

The intermittent talks of peace moves between India and Pakistan, like the one between National Security Advisors of India and Pakistan on December 6, 2015 in Bangkok, are very healthy developments that need to be strengthened. However, according to Fai, the people of Kashmir feel that it is being done to defuse the tension between these two nuclear powers KASHMIR, P21

COMMENTARY

DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P21

A Storied Bookstore and Its Late Oracle Leave an Imprint on Islamabad n By Rod Nordland

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Islamabad

fter his father died, Ahmad Saeed took over the office on the ground floor of the family’s storied bookstore here, Saeed Book Bank. Then the elderly men started visiting, seeking to settle old debts. “They all apologized and said they had tried to see my father while he was alive but his office was always too crowded and they were embarrassed,” Mr Saeed said.

Five times such men arrived, hat in hand, not just to pay their respects to the son and family, but also to say they wanted to pay for books they had shoplifted as children. Mr Saeed said his father, Saeed Jan Qureshi, who died of heart failure in September, would have been amused: He had always regarded book theft by children as an investment in a future where people still read, and thus become his customers.

The man himself became an oracle to those looking for advice on books, taking time to establish a personal connection and to urge favorites on visitors. (That is another thing his son has inherited: He asked a visitor if he had read “Fallen Leaves,” the last book by the prolific American historian Will Durant, published in 2014, more than 30 years after his death.) That approach helped Mr Qureshi make an extraordinary future for Saeed Book Bank, particularly in an era when online sales have been driving independent bookstores out of business, and in a region where unfettered book piracy adds to retailers’ travails.

With his passion for books, Mr Qureshi built one of the biggest bookstores in the world — mostly selling books in English, in a country where that is a second language for most people. Saeed Book Bank has 42,000 square feet of usually busy floor space over three stories, displays 200,000 titles, and stocks more than four million books in its five warehouses — all, Ahmad Saeed said, “by the grace of the almighty.” (His visitor had not read “Fallen Leaves,” so Mr Saeed sent one of his 92 employees to fetch a copy. “It is so good, you must read this book.” Another visitor to the office, an aged doctor named S.H. Naqvi, agreed, having himself read it at their insistence: “It will touch your heart,” he said.)

Saeed Jan Qureshi came from a family that worked for a feudal landlord named Mir Banda Ali. His estates in southern Sindh Province were so vast that five railway stops reputedly lay within his property lines. His library was similarly scaled, and as a 9-year-old, Saeed was put to work dusting the shelves. One day Mr Ali found him reading instead of working, and told the boy to get back to work immediately — but added that he could take a book home every night, so long as he returned it in mint condition. Saeed never got past high school but he was exceedingly well-read, and after school he found a job as a book salesman for a company that sent him to its Peshawar branch. Later, in the 1950s, he opened his own bookshop in Peshawar.

During the Cold War years that followed, Pakistan was an outpost in the American rivalry with the Soviet Union, and Peshawar became an important military base, and later a vital CIA base of operations, particularly during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Say what you will about the spooks, they were readers, and Mr Qureshi built his business around catering to their literary tastes. (Speaking of Afghanistan, Mr Saeed said: “Have you read “The Spinner’s Tale,” by Omar Shahid Hamid? No?” He seemed mildly shocked. Moments later a Pan Macmillan paperback copy of the novel materialized. “I am sorry, we’ve sold out of ‘Fallen Leaves’ — it’s so hard to keep in stock — but read this,” Ahmad said. “A lot of it is set in Afghanistan.”)

Later the rise of terrorism and fundamentalist Islam made Peshawar, capital of the wild frontier lands of Pakistan, a dangerous place for a bookseller — especially one who insisted on carrying magazines like Cosmopolitan and Heavy Metal, books by Karen Armstrong on Islam, and even the scientist Richard Dawkins’s

Saeed Book Bank is an institution in Islamabad, displaying 200,000 titles, mostly in English, and stocking more than four million books in its five warehouses

atheist treatise, “The God Delusion.” (“You just wouldn’t believe how that sells,” Mr Saeed said.

“We buy a thousand copies from Random House every year, year after year.”)

On the other hand, he said, another best-seller is “The Message of the Qur’an,” an English translation of the holy book by Muhammad Asad, a European Jewish scholar and diplomat who converted to Islam. Forced to close shop in Peshawar, Mr Qureshi focused

hundred miniature books as well. A few rows away, an entire shelf is given over to Noam Chomsky, 26 titles in all, which may well be more than any bookstore in the world displays for the radical linguist and philosopher. “Honestly, Chomsky sells here,” Mr Saeed said.

As the eldest son, Mr Saeed was always destined to take over the business when his father passed away, and to learn the trade he traveled with his father to international book

Ahmad Saeed, left, oversees the cataloging of new arrivals before they are put on the store’s shelves. He inherited the business from his father, the founder, Saeed Jan Qureshi

his efforts in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, a place heavily insulated from the country’s more extremist elements. Hard times followed as even Islamabad became a “no families” posting for diplomats and aid workers, but by then the bookstore was so big that its sheer breadth kept it viable, as plenty of Pakistanis read books in English.

“Other Pakistani booksellers laughed at

fairs; annually to Frankfurt, thrice yearly to London, twice yearly to Delhi. But not to the United States, the Saeed Book Bank’s biggest source of books.

“We spend $500,000 annually in America, and I can’t get a visa,” Mr. Saeed said. “The consular officer said, ‘Why can’t you just order by email and fax?’ They just don’t understand about books. You have to go to the warehous-

One of the penitent former book thieves who dropped in was Suleman Khan, the vice chancellor of Iqra University, in Islamabad. “He came to say that when he was a child, 6 years old or so, he stole an Archie comic book and my father saw him,” Mr Saeed said. “He said he was afraid he was going to get slapped, but my father said, ‘This is good that you like books. So every day you can take a book but keep it in mint condition and return it when you’re done so I can still sell it.’” And then the vice chancellor said, “Everything that I am now, I owe to your father.” us that we never carried pirated books,” Mr Saeed said. “But only best-sellers get pirated, and we carry everything.” The result is a bookstore of impressive scope, quirky and catholic.

“Islamic Fashion,” a glossy coffee table book and a best-seller, vies for shelf space with “Queer Studies.” A thick condolence book for Mr Qureshi, the third so far, sits on a counter, which sags under the weight of a couple

es, and see them and feel them — that’s how you buy books.” (“Fallen Leaves” again: “When my father was sick, he said, ‘Read this book, and you will calm down,’” Mr Saeed said. “He was right.”

Dr Naqvi could quote lines from it. “What if it is for life’s sake that we must die?” Otherwise, “youth would find no room on the earth.”)

Mr Qureshi made sure his children had

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the education he did not. Ahmad has a master’s degree in business administration, with ambitious plans to computerize the store’s inventory and build up what is now a clunky and unsophisticated online business. Nonetheless, it sells $1,000 worth of books a day online in a place where credit cards are still a novelty.

For his father, books were more than just a business, Mr Saeed said. One of the penitent former book thieves who dropped in was Suleman Khan, the vice chancellor of Iqra University, in Islamabad.

“He came to say that when he was a child, 6 years old or so, he stole an Archie comic book and my father saw him,” Mr Saeed said.

“He said he was afraid he was going to get slapped, but my father said, ‘This is good that you like books. So every day you can take a book but keep it in mint condition and return it when you’re done so I can still sell it.’” And then the vice chancellor said, “Everything that I am now, I owe to your father.”

Dr Naqvi, who is getting on in years, had seemed to doze off for a moment but awoke when he heard that story. “‘Fallen Leaves,’” he sighed. “You have to read that book. Everything is in there.”

KASHMIR FROM P20

and not enough is being said or done to set a stage for the final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The Kashmiris believe that trilateral dialogue between the Governments of India and Pakistan and the Kashmiri leadership with the understanding and engagement of the United States holds the key to any meaningful progress on the Kashmir dispute.

Fai concluded by describing two principles which had to be the guiding force of a resolution of the Kashmir dispute: firstly, it was the inherent right of the inhabitants of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to decide their future; secondly, it was almost impossible to ascertain the wishes and will of the people of the State except in an atmosphere that is free from intimidation and external compulsion.

Others who spoke included: Dr Imtiaz Khan, Senior Vice President, Kashmiri American Council; Dr Khalid J. Qazi, Clinical Professor; Dr Ghulam N. Mir, President, World Kashmir Awareness; Mr Saleem Akhtar, National Director, American Muslim Alliance; Sardar Zarif Khan, Washington, DC and Mohammad Imtiaz Khan, New Jersey.

The conference ended with a declaration resolving that: 1. The inalienable right to self-determination of peoples of Jammu and Kashmir as it stood on 14 August 1947, be recognized and instituted; 2. The people of Jammu and Kashmir must be an integral component of the ongoing peace process; 3. The pace of India-Pakistani dialogue in relation to Jammu and Kashmir should be accelerated; 4. All extra-judicial laws, like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and the Public Safety Act (PSA) should be repealed, ensuring that peoples’ fundamental freedoms and basic rights are restored; 5. All political prisoners should be released and interrogation and torture centers closed; 6. Kashmir-specific confidence building measures must be adopted like facilitating intraKashmiri dialogue; 7. Both sides of the ceasefire line must be demilitarized; 8. The rights of all members of minorities in Jammu and Kashmir must be protected. All those persons who have been displaced from Jammu and Kashmir since 1947 should be encouraged to return. The members of the Pandit community displaced in the recent past should be facilitated to return and their rehabilitation guaranteed.

9. The international community should be urged to facilitate dialogue among all stakeholders as well as highlighting human rights abuses wherever they occur throughout the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

(Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai is the Secretary General of World Kashmir Awareness and can be reached at: 1-202-607-6435, gnfai2003@yahoo. com)

COMMENTARY

P22 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

Muhammad Ali Defends Islam after Trump’s Proposal to Bar Foreign Muslims n By Katie Rogers and Victor Mather Muhammad Ali, one of the most famous athletes in American history and a convert to Islam in the 1960s, returned to the public spotlight Wednesday night to say that political leaders had a responsibility to foster understanding about his religion.

His comments came after Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, stoked anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States by, among other things, suggesting that foreign Muslims be barred from traveling to the country. Trump has also questioned President Obama’s affirmation that Muslim Americans are some of the nation’s sports heroes.

In a statement delivered to NBC, Ali did not speak about Trump directly but addressed his message to “Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States.”

“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” Ali said in the statement.“They have alienated many from learning about Islam.”

In February 1964, shortly after winning the heavyweight title — and before fully converting and changing his name from Cassius Clay — Ali, speaking to reporters, defended his choice to participate in the Nation of Islam move-

Donald J. Trump, left, accepted an award in 2007 at a celebrity fight put on by Muhammad Ali in Phoenix. CreditJeff Chiu/Associated Press

ment.

“I go to a black Muslim meeting and what do I see? I see that there’s no smoking and no drinking and their women wear dresses down to the floor,” Ali said at the time. “And then I come out on the street and you tell me I shouldn’t go in there. Well, there must be something in there if you don’t want me to go in there.”

American Muslims have often faced bumpy paths in sports. Ali stoked enormous controversy in 1967 when he said he would refuse to serve in the Army because of his Muslim beliefs. One of his remarks — “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” — became famous in the 1960s.

After his refusal to join the military, he was stripped of the world heavyweight

title and lost his boxing license in New York. He was sentenced to five years in jail and was vilified by many fans.

“He became a Muslim in 1964 after defeating Sonny Liston for the title,” Morton Susman, a United States attorney, said at the time.

“In my opinion, his trouble started with that — this tragedy and the loss of his title can be traced to that.”

Ali’s case went to the Supreme Court, which in 1971 reversed his conviction and agreed that he was deserving of conscientious objector status. After three years out of the ring, he returned to fighting and eventually regained his title.

The basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf became a flash point for controversy in 1996 when, playing for the Denver Nug-

gets, he declined to stand for the national anthem, citing American military aggression around the world.

“You can’t be for God and for oppression,” he said.

“It’s clear in the Quran: Islam is the only way. I don’t criticize those who stand, so don’t criticize me for sitting.

I won’t waver from my decision.”

After a brief suspension, he worked out a compromise that he would stand during the anthem but look downward and recite a Muslim prayer.

But Ali has long been the most visible Muslim athlete in the United States, even more so since Islam has become a political issue.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Ali appeared on a celebrity telethon to defend his religion. He pleaded for acceptance and addressed

the threat of terrorism, saying that terrorists killing in the name of Islam were wrong.

“People recognize me for being a boxer and a man of truth,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here to represent Islam if it was really like the terrorists make us look.”

Fourteen years later, Ali’s statement echoed his original comments.

“Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is,” he said in his statement.

In the days since Trump questioned Obama’s statement that Muslims were among America’s sporting heroes, people responded on the Internet by compiling lists of Muslim athletes. The list included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a sixtime N.B.A. champion who on Wednesday suggested on Time.comthat Trump’s comments were more in line with Islamic State rhetoric than with a leading presidential candidate.

“Thus,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote, “Trump is ISIS’s greatest triumph: the perfect Manchurian Candidate who, instead of offering specific and realistic policies, preys on the fears of the public, doing ISIS’s job for them.” - Courtesy New York Times

Trump’s Words Have Added Sting for 2 Muslims in Congress n By Emmarie Huetteman

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ashington: When Representative André Carson was first introduced to Islam, he was a young man watching as his Muslim neighbors escorted older women to the grocery store and scared drug dealers off their streets in Indianapolis.

“I saw that work that Muslims were doing in my community in terms of keeping our community safe,” Mr Carson, an Indiana Democrat, said in an interview Thursday.

“They were doing the work that law enforcement failed to do or really didn’t have a deep interest in doing.”

Now, Mr Carson, 41, is hearing his religion painted as extremist by Republican presidential candidates.

He said he even received a death threat after Donald J. Trump issued his call to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States.

While many lawmakers have rushed last week to reject Mr Trump’s proposal, Mr Carson and Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and the only other Muslim in Congress, have offered condemnation from a strikingly personal perspective.

Since the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris, both con-

gressmen have been pressed to come to terms with being a Muslim and an American politician in the age of the Islamic State.

Many Republicans on Capitol Hill have joined them in speaking out against Mr Trump. On Tuesday, Speaker Paul D. Ryan reproached Mr Trump, who leads most polls of the Republican presidential field.

“Not only are there many Muslims serving in our armed forces dying for this country,” Mr Ryan said, “there are Muslims serving right here in the House, working every day to uphold and defend the Constitution.”

Mr Carson, who won the seat held by his grandmother, Represen-

tative Julia Carson, after she died, grew up in a Baptist family and attended a Catholic school, even toying with the idea of becoming a priest. But it was the poetic, socially conscious lyrics of hip-hop artists — especially Rakim, a pioneer in rap and a Muslim — that moved him to convert as a teenager.

For his part, Mr Ellison, 52, said in his 2014 memoir, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee: My Faith, My Family, Our Future,” that he has never been one to overtly display his faith in public.

“I practice my faith the way that millions of other Americans practice their faith: personally,” he wrote. “I never wanted to be put in

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a position of being seen as some sort of Islamic leader.”

But their religion has set them apart in a Congress that is 57 percent Protestant and 31 percent Catholic. When he became the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2006, Mr Ellison rankled some members by choosing to be sworn in on the Qur’an.

It was Mr Ellison’s testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in 2011 that provided perhaps the most indelible image of the intersection between his job and his faith. Denouncing the purpose of the hearing — “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Community’s Response” — as “scapegoating,” Mr Ellison spoke stirringly about a 23-year-old Muslim emergency medical worker who died at the World Trade Center in 2001, becoming so emotional he struggled to finish.

“His life should not be defined as a member of an ethnic group or a member of a religion,” he said, “but as an American who gave everything for his fellow citizens.”

Like Mr Ellison, Mr Carson is also private about how he CONGRESS, P28

ISLAM FROM P23

of blame is only against those who oppress mankind, and wrongfully rebel on the Earth.” 42:41-42 “God forbids you not those who did not war against you on account of religion and did not drive you out from your home that you should show them kindness and deal justly with them. God loves the just dealers.” 60:8 “Those of them with whom you make a treaty and then at every opportunity they break their treaty and keep not duty to God, if you come on them in war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, so haply they may remember. And if you fear treachery from any folk, then throw back to them their treaty fairly. God loves not the treacherous…And if they incline to peace, then incline you also to it and trust in God. He is the Hearer and the Knower. And if they would deceive you then behold! God is sufficient for you.” 8:5662. These verses speak to the importance of giving peace a chance, even if you find your adversary untrustworthy and you fear treachery.

Islam is a religion that has spanned 1400 years, and has 1.6 billion adherents.

There is no Pope or institution to impose interpretation. What we are seeing right now is a struggle for what Islam means to actual Muslims. There are plenty of violent extremists seeking to impose a very dark version of the religion, but there are many Muslims both in the US and around the world that subscribe to a liberal interpretation of Islam focused on social justice. It is one of the reasons that American Muslims vote 80% Democrat.

What makes it baffling for non-Muslims is this massive spectrum of religious practice. What does ISIS have in common with my Muslim cardiologist? One of the problems is that extremists are happy to pick up guns but moderates and liberals by their nature choose not to fight. The situation can be seen as if in the Christian world we had an even split between liberal Christians of the present day, and Christians that adhered to a 16th century version of the religion, in which women were burned alive for being witches, all non-Christians were damned, Jews were Christ-killers, and other Christian sects were excommunicated and needed to be destroyed with military force and Inquisitions. But in addition to that, the richest and most powerful Christian nation held these backward views and used its massive wealth to fund seminaries and churches around the world to promote its version of Christianity. This is the reality of Islam right now and the role of Saudi Arabia. What makes the situation even more odd is that many of the Muslim extremists know very little about their own religion. The 9/11 hijackers used to go to Vegas many times and hang out in strip clubs. The Parisian attackers were petty criminals and drug dealers who became radicalized in French prisons.

The good news is that the liberals are winning. Democracy, human rights, gender equality, and social justice are advancing around the Muslim world. Countries like Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all elected women Prime Ministers in the last 20 years. Women are the majority of university students even in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Most Muslims despise ISIS and the refugees are fleeing that sort of life, not attracted to it. While the progress is not as fast or uniform as many would like it, it is definitely occurring.

Headlines are dominated by violence and bloodshed, but the underlying social trends will out. Islam is not to be feared. Muslims are changing, and the example of America’s Muslims, who are by and large liberal, well-educated, prosperous, and integrated is a model of what Islam can become.

COMMENTARY

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n By Nayyer Ali MD

ver since 9/11 there has been a cottage industry among the right wing and particularly the conservative evangelicals seeking to demonstrate that Islam is inherently a violent faith incompatible with Western civilization, democracy, gender equality, human rights, etc., and dedicated to the idea of world conquest, forced conversions, and a desire to literally murder all the non-Muslims they could get their hands on. As such, terrorism was intrinsic to being a Muslim.

While the right wing has been mostly pushing these ideas, there have been some liberal voices (Bill Maher and Sam Harris in particular) who also have made the claim that Islam is inherently problematic, and that it represents a threat to secular values and Western notions of liberal human rights. To bolster these arguments several lines of evidence are offered. First is the behavior of Muslims themselves. As Bill Maher noted after the Paris attacks, he didn’t think it was the Amish that did it. Secondly, various aspects of Muslim history are cited to suggest that Muslims are particularly intolerant. And finally, a very concerted effort to cherry-pick verses from the Qur’an, or stories of Muhammad’s life, to demonstrate that Muslims are violent as a requirement of their faith.

With the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, the terror bombing of the Russian plane in Sinai, the attacks in Paris, and the bizarre husband and wife team of shooters in California, there is even more panic and fear about Islam and Muslims. On the campaign trail Donald Trump wants a database of American Muslims and a ban on new immigrants who are Muslims, a view that won him great support among Republican voters in the polls.

So how can outsiders judge this matter? What is the truth, if there is a single truth? And how can we reconcile the attitudes and views of integrated American Muslims with those of ISIS? Is one watered down or is the other a perversion of the real faith? This gets to a very basic question, what defines a religion? Is it the texts it is based on?

And who gets to interpret those texts?

Is it the sum total of the actual beliefs and behaviors of the adherents of that religion? But what if their behaviors are wildly divergent? And what if those beliefs and behaviors have changed radically over time, can we say that the religion itself has changed, or that those in the current day are not as faithful as those in the past? Or perhaps those currently have a better understanding of their religion than those before? These questions can be applied to any religion.

Desmond Tutu and Jerry Falwell probably didn’t agree on much.

To make sense of Islam, one has to at a minimum be familiar with what the sacred sources are. First and foremost is the Qur’an. The Qur’an, for Muslims, is the actual word of God as dictated to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel.

As such it is not a human document, like the Christian Gospels or the letters of Paul, that were then deemed to be “divinely inspired” and elevated to the status of religious text. Muhammad clearly distinguished what was God’s words from his own utterances. So do Muslims have a Qur’an today that is the same as what was developed over Muhammad’s 23 years as a prophet? We have no Qur’anic copies that date to before his death in 623. But there are re-

DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P23

Is Islam a Religion of Peace or Violence? cent finds in Yemen that have Qur’anic text dating from about 650, and it is basically the same as the current document. Most scholars believe that the Qur’an as now read is essentially what the earliest Muslims used. Because for Muslims it is the word of God, its stature is above that of anything else. So what else is there?

Basically there are three other major sources of religious interpretation.

First is a biography of the life of Muhammad. This is a document written by Ibn Ishaq around the year 700, 70 years after Muhammad’s death, and its sources are oral stories passed down and compiled.

To note that the historical accuracy of this is questionable would be a vast understatement. However, many Muslims accept Ibn Ishaq’s biography as true, and use it to interpret Islam. On the other hand, even some of his contemporaries dismissed Ibn Ishaq’s work as worthless fabrication.

The second source are another oral collection of stories about the statements and deeds of Muhammad. These stories collectively are called Hadith, and the Hadiths are very important to Muslims. For example, while the Qur’an tells Muslims to pray regularly, it is the Hadith that delineates the 5 daily prayers and how to perform them. The problem with Hadith is that they too were collected much later, about 150200 years after Muhammad died, and various scholars developed their own idiosyncratic collections. In addition Sunni and Shia scholars differed about which were authentic or valid. Finally, everyone realized that 90% or more of the stories were fabrications. Statements like Muhammad said the best Muslims were from Baghdad was falsifiable as Baghdad did not exist in 630.

Muslims vary in how much reliance they put on Hadiths. Some take all of them literally and binding, and there are others who reject them all as impossible to verify. Most Muslims are in between.

Most of the bizarre and noxious ideas that are “Islamic” are rooted in Hadiths, not the Qur’an. Ideas like stoning apostates, or requiring that women wear headscarves, that a girl as young as nine can marry, or that when a person dies as a martyr he goes directly to heaven and can have sex with 72 virgins. Needless to say liberal Muslims dismiss all the Hadiths that support these claims as being certainly false and incompatible with the Qur’an, which should have precedence. It would be like deciding constitutional questions by using the actual US Constitution and an oral history of stories about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson collected in 1925.

The final source of Muslim religious knowledge is the body of common law developed in the middle ages, between roughly 650 and 1300. This was slowly put together through a process of case law and the creation of four distinct Sunni legal schools that held sway in differing regions, and a Shia legal school. These different bodies of law are what is commonly referred to as “Sharia law”. During the colonial era, Sharia law was replaced with European legal codes, and in the post-colonial era, a central struggle in the Muslim world is whether this old legal system has any place whatsoever in the modern day, or should be left to history. Conservative and liberal Muslims sharply divide on this question.

So let’s now try to answer the critical first question, what sort of religion is Islam? If we look at the sources of Islamic religious knowledge, it becomes apparent that the Qur’an should be the key document to work from. What does it actually say about God, religious

freedom, war and peace, and who gets salvation? To read and interpret the Qur’an is not easy. It is not a chronological story of the world and the Jews like the Hebrew Bible, or the life of Jesus as the Gospels are. Instead, it is an extended sermon by God toward man. It does go over many of the same stories that are in the Hebrew bible, but they are scattered in the text and used as ex-

The good news is that the liberals are winning.

Democracy, human rights, gender equality, and social justice are advancing around the Muslim world. Countries like Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all elected women Prime Ministers in the last 20 years. Women are the majority of university students even in Iran and Saudi Arabia amples where needed, rather than as a coherent history. In some sections it is speaking to all Muslims past and future, in others it is speaking directly to Muhammad, and in others it is speaking to a group of Muslims that are with Muhammad at the time. With a modicum of effort these frames can usually be understood with a common sense reading of the text.

The Qur’an is actually rather ecumenical, explicitly stating that salvation is due all those who worship God and do good works.

“Behold those who believe in that which is revealed unto you Muhammad, and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans (presumably a monotheistic people of that time), whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does right, surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve. (Qur’an 2:62).

“And as for those who believe and do good works, He will pay them their wages in full, and God loves not wrong-

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doers.” 3:57 “Those who believe and do good works, for them is pardon and a rich provision.” 22:50 There are many other verses along the same lines, salvation is to those who believe in one God and do good works, but there is no explicit requirement to be a Muslim or a believer in Muhammad. Don’t tell the Saudis that though.

What is the highest principle of the Qur’an? For the Hebrew Bible it is fidelity to God’s law. For the New Testament it is love of all mankind. For the Qur’an, it is not peace, for the Qur’an does not in any way espouse pacifism. It is instead justice.

“O you who believe! Be strong in justice, witnesses for God, even though it be against yourselves or your parents or family, whether the case be of a rich man or a poor man, for God is closer to both than you are. So follow not passion lest you lapse from truth and if you lapse or fall away, then God is ever informed of what you do.” 4:135 “O you who believe! Be strong witnesses for God in fairness, and let not hatred of any people seduce you that you deal not justly. Deal justly, that is nearer to your duty. Observe your duty to God. Behold, God is informed of what you do.” 5:8 “God commands justice and kindness, and giving to family, and forbids lewdness and abomination and wickedness. He exhorts you that you may take heed. Fulfill the promise of God when you have promised, and break not your oaths after the stating of them, and after you have made God surety over you.

God knows what you do.” 16:90-91 “And slay not the life which God has forbidden save with justice. Whoso is slain wrongfully, We have given power unto his heir, but let him not commit excess in slaying. Behold he will be helped. Come not near the wealth of the orphan except with that which is better till he come to adulthood, and keep the covenant. Of the covenant it will be asked! Fill the measure when you measure in trade, and weigh with an honest balance, that is right and better in the end.” 17:32-35 What does the Qur’an say about freedom of religion? It is actually rather explicit on that point. Islamic theology posits that life is a test of obedience to God, and that humans are all free to choose whether to obey his desires or not, but it is not for any man to enforce belief. In addition, Muslim men are given direct permission to marry Jewish or Christian women by the Qur’an, without them having to convert.

“There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And who rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped a firm handhold which will

never break. God is Hearer and Knower.” 2:256.

“We send not the messengers (God’s prophets) save as bearers of good news and warners. Those who disbelieve contend with falsehood in order to refute the truth thereby. And they take our revelations and that with which they are threatened (in the next life) as a joke.” 18:56 “This day are all good things made lawful for you. The food of those who have received the scripture (Jews and Christians) is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for them. And so are the virtuous women of the believers and the virtuous women of those who received the scripture before you lawful for you when you give them their marriage dowry and live with them in honor and not in sin, nor take them as secret concubines.” 6:5 “Argue not with the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) unless it be in a way that is better, save with such of them as do wrong: and say “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, our God and your God is One, and unto him we surrender.” 29:46 “O Mankind! Behold! We have created you male and female, and made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another, not that you may despise each other. Behold! The best of you in the sight of God is the best in conduct. God is Knower, Aware.”

49:12-13 “We are best aware of what they say, and you (Muhammad) are in no way a compeller over them. But warn by the Qur’an who fears My threat.”

50:45 “Say to those who do not believe: O disbelievers! I worship not that which you worship. Nor worship you that which I worship. And I shall not worship that which you worship. Nor will you worship that which I worship.

Unto you your religion and unto me my religion.” 109:1-6 So what does the Qur’an say about war and peace? It is not a pacifist religion. Muslims are allowed to fight in war. But to properly understand what the Qur’an says, it is important to pull together all the verses on war and read them as a coherent whole. Anti-Muslim bigots love to cherry pick not just verses but even fragments of verses, creating a deeply false impression of what the Qur’an really says. One of those is a verse that is addressed to a small band of Muslims who went with Muhammad to confront a Meccan army bent on obliterating the Muslims, and in that verse God commands the soldiers to fight hard and use every strategy of war to win. Intelligent Muslims know that this verse is directed to a particular place and time, and not some sort of universal command, as it is commonly portrayed

by Islamophobes. Here are some of the key verses on war and peace.

“Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but do not start wars. God does not love aggressors. And slay them wherever you find them, and drive them out of the places where they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter…and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for God. But if they stop, then let there be no hostility except against wrongdoers.” 2:190-193 “Permission is given unto those who fight because they have been wronged, and God is indeed able to give them victory. Those who have been driven from their homes unjustly only because they said Our Lord is God.” 22:39 “And whoso defends himself after he has suffered wrong, for such there is no blame against them. The way ISLAM, P22

COMMENTARY

P24 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

Estate Planning Is Job Best Tackled with the Help of Pros - 2 n By Saghir Aslam Rawalpindi, Pakistan

(The following information is provided solely to educate the Muslim community about investing and financial planning. It is hoped that the Ummah will benefit from this effort through greater financial empowerment, enabling the community to live in security and dignity and fulfill their religious and moral obligations towards charitable activities) Execute a single copy of your will and use photocopies for any extra copies. Otherwise, probating your will could be held up while the court searches for all the signed originals.

In most states, legal fees for a simple will should not exceed $1,000. Wills can be completed by your family attorney who specializes in estate law.

Trusts. Trusts are effective tools to sort out complex family arrangements or sizable assets.

Trusts, like wills, are meant to address both personal and family needs. But unlike wills, they can continue to carry out your wishes after you are gone.

Trusts are contracts between you and some designated trustee who will carry out your instructions. A trustee can be an individual, a corporation or a bank.

Trusts created during your lifetime are called inter vivos trusts, in simple terms revocable family trusts. Those created at your death, under the terms of your will, are called testamentary trusts.

You can set up trusts within your will instead of leaving the money directly to a beneficiary.

The trustee carries out your wish, say, that your children’s inheritance be held until they reach 20, 30 or FATHER FROM P15

The message can also be sent out if the signals are bad. The user can send out a distress signal even when the application is not active or if the phone is turned off by pressing down on the power button twice. “So, for example, if the user is being held at gun point, they can still reach into their pocket or bag and press the power button twice to send out their location to the respondent,” Fahd Khan said.

He said the app had helped save a colleague from a possible kidnapping when she had sent out a distress signal. “I hope the user never has to use the app, but if they are in such a situation, they now have something that will help,” the app developer said.

In a country where ambulance services and the police cannot be relied on to respond quickly and where the government does not have the capability of responding to individual emergencies, Fahd Khan hopes a service like this will help fill the void and save lives by giving real time data to their nominated emergency contact persons.

“In a world where we are vulnerable to risks from all sides, particularly our part of the world, and where the government departments have limited capabilities, we can’t hold the government responsible for everything. We, the people, have to take some steps for our own safety as well,” Fahd Khan said.

40. A trustee might also by designated to arrange for someone to manage money for a spouse or a handicapped child.

Bypass Trusts. For married couples with assets of more than $650,000 in 1999, a bypass trust allows you and your spouse to shield more assets from Uncle Sam. Under current tax laws, you can pass on up to $1000000.00 taxfree to your heirs. But for amounts over that the federal government collects hefty estate taxes. You should check with your accountant and attorney the latest amount allowed by law. As I have written many times before it is always best to work with your financial advisers.

Many couples with substantial assets fail to do this, lulled by IRA laws that allow you to pass everything on to your spouse. Trouble is, once both of you are gone, the tax man can collect a heavy toll on your estate for anything over $650,000.

With a bypass trust the surviving spouse can live off the income from the assets and even tap the principal in some cases. When he or she is gone, your heirs get up to $1.3 million passed on tax-free to them.

Durable Power of Attorney.

If you are disabled and unable to communicate, your heirs may be blocked from using your assets to pay health-care and nursing-care IMRAN FROM P11

discrimination against minorities.

“I raised the issue of the plight of minorities in India and told Mr Modi that its impact was also felt in Pakistan and stressed that the Indian leadership should give a clear message to end discrimination against minorities,” he said.

Talking to Aaj Tak channel, Khan maintained that they could not catch Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed on the orders of India.

TALKS FROM P11

But the Taliban have also shown a determined independent streak recently, especially when it comes to peace talks. When Pakistan pressured the Taliban to sit down for talks with the Afghan government in July, the militants’ leader, Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, disappeared for days, with his phones turned off, Afghan security officials said at the time.

Mr Mansour is now officially at the helm of the movement, though his succession is contested by many Taliban leaders, and it is not clear yet where he stands on negotiations.

The extent of the carnage from the siege near Kandahar Airfield, which lasted 26 hours and involved hostage taking, only came to the fore on Thursday as residents woke up to collect the bodies for burial. At least 50 people were killed, the Afghan

bills. The situation can be horrific as your children scramble to find the money to care for you.

A durable power of attorney designates someone to act on your behalf when you are incapacitated.

You can name anyone you trust. A lawyer can prepare a durable power of attorney document for $100 or more. You can also purchase forms at stationary stores, though again, be certain they reflect the regulations in your state.

Heath-Care Proxy. With this you can authorize a trusted relative or friend to make medical decisions for you. Say you are gravely injured and unconscious. A proxy knowing of your wish not to be kept alive using artificial means can act on your behalf. Forms are available in stationary stores but it is better to seek professional help.

In more than one instance, I had to help a family create a will with the assistance of an attorney.

One instance was when a brother was informed, after the doctors told his wife, that he was dying. I was assigned the difficult task of getting the will signed by the dying husband. You think that was easy; I had tears in my eyes. Imagine what her husband felt like and what was going through his mind?

(Saghir A. Aslam only explains strategies and formulas that he has been using. He is merely providing information, and NO ADVICE is given. Mr Aslam does not endorse or recommend any broker, brokerage firm, or any investment at all, nor does he suggest that anyone will earn a profit when or if they purchase stocks, bonds or any other investments. All stocks or investment vehicles mentioned are for illustrative purposes only. Mr Aslam is not an attorney, accountant, real estate broker, stockbroker, investment advisor, or certified financial planner. Mr Aslam does not have anything for sale.)

Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Eyewitnesses spoke of indiscriminate shooting by the Taliban assailants, and of the government forces’ firing tear gas into residential buildings.

Many of the bodies recovered had been burned in the fires set off by the fighting. About 100 shops were destroyed, said Nasrullah Khan, whose uncle was killed and brother wounded.

“It was a massacre, a massacre of innocent and powerless people,” Mr Khan said.

Sharifullah — who, like many Afghans, uses only one name — said his brother had died of bullet wounds. “I was watching the shooters and how merciless they were, and thinking that these people might not have hearts in their chests,” he said.

Mr Nabil, the spy chief who resigned, was a critic of Mr Ghani’s overtures to Pakistan from the beginning, and it was only a matter of time before he left his job, officials said.

His objections are shared by former President Hamid Karzai, Mr Nabil’s close ally, who is seen as still wielding influence and as scuttling the new government’s efforts.

When Mr Ghani and his coalition partner, Abdullah Abdullah, took over from Mr Karzai last year, Mr Nabil remained as intelligence chief largely because Mr Ghani TALKS, P28

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RELIGION

DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P25

A Month of Grace and Enlightenment n By Dr Muzammil H. Siddiqi

Gems from the Holy Qur’an

(Khutbah at ISOC – Sha’ban 19, 1434/ June 28, 2013)

I

t was in the month of Ramadan that the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for mankind, clear messages giving guidance and distinguishing between right and wrong. So any one of you who is present that month should fast, and anyone who is ill or on a journey should make up for the lost days by fasting on other days later. Allah wants ease for you, not hardship. He wants you to complete the prescribed period and to glorify Him for having guided you, so that you may be thankful. (Al-Baqarah 2:185)

Within few days Ramadan will be with us. We are going to welcome this guest of Allah after one full year. Ramadan is coming to us again with its gifts of blessings from our Lord who gives us special occasions to increase our worth and value and to bestow upon us His love and kindness. The Prophet – peace be upon him- used to greet his Companions with the good news of the coming of Ramadan.

The Prophet –peace be upon him-said giving the good news of the month to his Companions, “The month of Ramadan has come to you. It is a blessed month. Allah has made obligatory on you to fast during this month. The gates of heaven are opened in this month and the gates of hell are closed and the devils are chained. In this month there is a Night that is better than one thousand months. Whosoever is deprived of its blessings is indeed deprived.”

(Musnad Ahmad 8631) In Islamic spirituality there are certain terms for special moments of inspiration, spiritual touch or enlightenment. These are called ‘nafahat or tajalliyat.’ ‘Nafahah’ literally means ‘a breath of fragrance’ and ‘tajalli’ is ‘unveiling,’ One can have a feeling of receiving a breath of joy and happiness or a moment of sudden inspiration, an enlightenment, a kind of theophany. It is reported in a Hadith: Seek good things always and expose yourselves to the breath

From the translation by Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) About the translator:

of Allah’s mercy. Allah has indeed breaths of His mercy by which He touches whoever He wills from among His servants. Ask Allah to cover your shameful deeds and keep you safe from your anxieties.

(Al-Tabarani 1/250) Ramadan is full of ‘nafahat and tajalliyat of Allah. It is a month when the winds of Allah’s mercy blow all over. It is a month when we can experience special enlightenment of our minds and souls. Ramadan is the month of the Qur’an. It is the month in which Allah sent down His glorious final message for all humanity. Ramadan is the month of fasting. Fasting prepares us physically, spiritually and morally to live by the message of the Qur’an. Fasting gives us physical discipline and strength to overcome our material desires and passions. Fasting gives us spiritual awakening to understand who we are and what is the purpose of our life. Fasting helps us to become more kind and charitable and help those who are in need. Fasting thus brings us closer to our Creator as

well as His creation.

The objective of fasting is not to become hungry and thirsty.

These are only means for a higher training and for a higher goal. Al-

Let us use this time to clean our hearts from all hate, anger and jealousies; clean our minds from all doubts and fears. Let us strive to receive Allah’s grace and mercy lah says that fasting is to help us lean ‘taqwa’: O You who believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may be mindful of Allah. (al-Baqarah 2:183) The Prophet –peace be upon him- said, Whosoever does not give up bad words and bad deeds, Allah does not need that he leaves his food and his drink. (AlBukhari 1770) He also said, Some fasting people shall nothing have from their fasts except hunger.

Some people

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who stand for night prayers shall have nothing except loss of sleep.

(Ibn Majah, Hadith no. 1690) Ramadan is an opportunity to repent from all sins, shortcoming and errors. It is a time to make up for our mistakes and negligence. It is a time to make a decision to go to the path of goodness, to repair our relations with Allah, with our families and other fellow human beings.

Ramadan is a time to connect with Allah by more prayers, dhikr and du’a. It is a time to connect with the Qur’an by more recitation and understanding. It is time to seek Allah’s forgiveness. It is time to give more charity, help those who are in need and help good causes.

Let us start preparing ourselves mentally and physically to take full advantage of this time. Let us make a decision and also pray to Allah that we shall do our best to benefit from this Ramadan and make ourselves better than what we have been in the past. We pray that Allah give us more such opportunities, but who knows whether we shall get another Ramadan or not.

Allah says in the Qur’an, Is it not time for believers to humble their hearts to the remembrance of Allah and to the Truth that has been revealed, and not to be like those who received the Scripture before them, whose time was extended but whose hearts hardened and many of whom were transgressors? Remember that Allah revives the earth after it dies; We have made Our revelation clear to you so that you may use your reason. (Al-Hadid 57:16-17) Let us rejoice that the Ramadan is coming and welcome these days of grace and blessings with full care and devotion. Let us use this time to clean our hearts from all hate, anger and jealousies; clean our minds from all doubts and fears. Let us strive to receive Allah’s grace and mercy. I pray to Allah to bless us all with good health and strong Iman to take full benefit of this valuable time. Ameen.

Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born of Jewish parents in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his first visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurter Zeitung, and after years of devoted study became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. His translation of the Holy Qur’an is one of the most lucid and well-referenced works in this category, dedicated to “li-qawmin yatafakkaroon” (people who think).

Chapter 102, At-Takaathur (Greed for More and More), Verses 1-8 (Complete Surah) [ 1 ] You are obsessed by greed for more and more and more until you go down to your graves.

Nay, in time you will come to understand!

And once again: Nay, in time you will come to understand!

Nay, if you could but understand [it] with an understanding [born] of certainty, you would indeed, most surely, behold the blazing fire [of hell]! [ 2 ] In the end you will indeed, most surely, behold it with the eye of certainty: [ 3 ] And on that Day you will most surely be called to account for [what you did with] the boon of life! ______________________ Translator’s Notes [ 1 ] The term “takaathur” bears the connotation of “greedily striving for an increase”, i.e., in benefits, be they tangible or intangible, real or illusory. In the above context it denotes man’s obsessive striving for more and more comforts, more material goods, greater power over his fellow-men or over nature, and unceasing technical progress. A passionate pursuit of such endeavours, to the exclusion of everything else, bars man from all spiritual insight and, hence, from the acceptance of any restrictions and inhibitions based on purely moral values – with the result that not only individuals but whole societies gradually lose all inner stability and, thus, all chance of happiness. [ 2 ] Sc., “in which you find yourselves now” – i.e., “the hell on earth” brought about by a fundamentally wrong mode of life: an allusion to the gradual destruction of man’s natural environment, as well as to the frustration, unhappiness and confusion which an overriding, unrestrained pursuit of “economic growth” is bound to bring – and has, indeed, brought in our time – upon mankind that is about to lose the remnants of all spiritual, religious orientation. [ 3 ] I.e., in the hereafter, through a direct, unequivocal GEMS, P28

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P26 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

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DECEMBER PAKISTAN DECEMBER18, 18, 2015 2015 –-PAKISTAN LINKLINK – P27

Another Blow to Shaharyar's Expectations Waqar Should Have Been Happy with My Retirement: Younus on Pakistan - India Cricket Series

NEW DELHI: Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Shaharyar Khan suffered another blow after the news surfaced in Indian media quoted chairman Board of Control for Cricket in India Shashank Manohar as saying that he was not aware of any letter sent by PCB over confirmation of Pak-India series.

According to media, BCCI chief claimed during an interview that he had no idea whatsoever about the letter sent by the PCB. "I am not aware of any such letter," said BCCI chief.

The recent claim of the BCCI chief left no choice for PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan but to mourn his

expectations of holding the much talked cricket series between the two countries.

PCB chairman earlier stated that he was awaiting a reply from the Indian board regarding a decision on the India-Pakistan series.

"We haven't received a reply from the BCCI till Saturday evening.

Therefore, we are closing this chapter now. We will, however, make an announcement in this regard on Monday," he said.

As per PCB, it had sent the letter to BCCI on December 10.

PCB chairman Shahryar Khan said yesterday that they were giving up the series matter but the Indian response had disappointed cricket lovers. He said that the issue would be raised at International Cricket Council (ICC) forum. "Yes, we haven't received a reply from the BCCI till Saturday evening, therefore, we are closing this chapter now. We will, however, make an announcement in this regard by Monday," Shaharyar said.

Shaharyar said the PCB had given maximum time to the BCCI for taking a decision but no positive intentions were received by the Indian authorities. J

Pakistan Super League: Draft Pick Order Decided, Logo Launched ISLAMABAD: Islamabad won the first pick on Tuesday in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) players' draft

the second day of the workshop to be briefed about the details of the lucrative league which will be

from these taxes if they register a company in the UAE, the respective companies have asked the PSL governing council and the PCB to take up the issue on their behalf and see if any exemption can be received.

"PSL officials contacted Finance Minister Ishaq Dar regarding an exemption for the first five years due to the project being in its infancy but the proposal was turned down," a PSL official told. "We hope they revisit the decision because it could have serious consequences on the PSL."

followed by Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Lahore.

The five team owners gathered for

played in the UAE from February 4 till 23.

Meanwhile, PSL's logo launch

coach of the Pakistan team who can keep the players united," said Younus, adding that one reason for Pakistan's recent failures was the induction of too many young players and not allowing a combination to settle down. The right-hand batsman further said that the cricketing world has started to take T20 cricket seriously and Pakistan doesn't have an upper hand in the format anymore.

"There are several teams now capable of beating us in this format," he said. He also seconded former captain Muhammad Yousuf's statement that Pakistan needs a foreign coach to replace Waqar. He added that irrespective of his nationality, the new coach should be someone like Bob Woolmer. Woolmer was the coach of the Pakistan team from 2004 to 2007 before he passed away during the World Cup in Jamaica. J

Pakistan Can ‘Survive’ Without Playing India: Wasim Akram

PSL Franchises Unhappy with Govt's Tax-Tics PSL franchise owners expressed their unhappiness at the 26% tax levied on their final bids, conveying their reservations to the PSL governing council.

All franchises who have accounts in Pakistan will have to pay 10% income tax along with a 16% goods and services tax to the Punjab government due to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) headquarters being in Lahore; inflating expenses further for these new clubs.

While a loophole allows the franchise owners to receive exemption

KARACHI: Pakistan's highest rungetter in Tests, Younus Khan, believes head coach Waqar Younis should have been happy with his abrupt retirement from the ODIs. "If I was the coach and Waqar retired like me, I would be happy that someone at least had the guts to take the decision to retire, when we don't have this culture in Pakistan," said Younus. "So, I would think such a decision would make Waqar happy and I have no regrets over it." The 38-year-old also criticised Waqar's policies as a coach and said that the players should be given confidence.

"There shouldn't be an atmosphere of fear in the dressing room," said Younus. "When the players are not made to feel secure about their position in the team, how can they perform for the country?"

"I think that person should be

ceremony also took place on Tuesday. The logo has now incorporated the title sponsor Habib Bank Limited (HBL) insignia in it.

Speaking on the occasion, HBL Chief Marketing Officer Naveed Asghar said that this is the opportunity to make a mark in the world and as a country we ought to benefit from this league.

PSL chief Najam Sethi said it was an honour to partner with HBL as sponsors for the league.

PSL brand ambassador Ramiz Raja was also present in the ceremony. He said that the league provides the country with an opportunity to showcase sporting and management talent.

Warming Bench in BPL Was Not Easy: Misbah LAHORE: Pakistan Test captain Misbahul Haq, signed by Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) side Rangpur Riders, was at a loss as to why he spent most of the tournament on the bench; despite a man-of-the-match display in the first match where he scored a match-winning half-century.

The 41-year-old, who has retired from international limited overs cricket, said it was not easy watching on from the sidelines. "It is not easy sitting on the bench for so long," said Misbah. "I can't say much on this, but I guess the team owners and the coaches know what is required."

Left-arm fast bowler Wahab Riaz, who returned to Lahore midway through the tournament, said Misbah handled himself really well despite the snub.

"Obviously it is not easy to be ignored like this for the majority of the matches," said Wahab. "It has been tough on Misbah but he has handled himself well."

Other Pakistani players were also clueless as to why they were left on the bench. "I didn't go there only for the money," said discarded wicketkeeper-batsman Kamran Akmal, who was afforded only two starts. "I went there as I thought the BPL would allow me to further remind the selectors that I am doing well." A total of 17 players from Pakistan were included in this year's BPL, but only pacemen Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Sami were regular fixtures for their respective sides.J

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KARACHI: Veteran left-arm fastbowler Wasim Akram said Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) should not even think about boycotting World T20, which is taking place in India next year, as that is an ICC event, and the repercussions of such an act will harm Pakistan cricket in the long run.

"The World T20 is an ICC event and we should participate in it at all costs. If we don't it will harm us in the long run," said Akram while talking at a function in Karachi .

"Not playing in the World T20 will only affect our players and our cricket."

The former Pakistan captain also went on to say that Pakistan cricket can survive without playing against India.

"If India doesn't want to play us then that's fine, we can also survive without playing them," said Akram.

The left-arm great, who is the second highest wicket taker in the ODI format, blamed the Indians for taking too long to decide about the series, and also urged their authorities to understand that playing or not playing cricket will not solve the problem of terrorism. "I realise that the Indians have taken too long to decide on the bilateral series with Pakistan," said Akram.

"The problem of terrorism will not be affected whether we play or not."

However, the 49-year-old remains hopeful of the chances of the series in the near future. "Even if it does not happen now, it will happen soon," concluded Akram. J

Dhoni, McCullum Fetch million Dollar Deals in IPL Draft NEW DEHLI: Indian and New Zealand skippers Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Brendon McCullum were drafted for more than one million dollars into new cricket teams recently for the Indian Premier League following a graft scandal.

A new team from the western city of Pune paid 125 million rupees (US $ 1.8 million) for limited overs captain Dhoni for the next edition of the lucrative Twenty20 tournament. Dhoni joins Australian captain Steven Smith who was sold for 55 million rupees ($820,000) and South African Twenty20 captain Faf du Plessis who went for 40 million rupees ($597,000) on the same team. The other franchise from the western city of Rajkot chose McCullum for 75 million rupees ($1.1 million), James Faulkner for 55 million rupees ($820,000) and West Indian Dwayne Bravo for 40 million rupees ($597,000). J

PAKISTAN

P28 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015 TALKS FROM P24

and Mr Abdullah could not agree on a successor and because the Americans wanted continuity amid increasing Taliban attacks. But it was clear that Mr Nabil did not get along with his new boss and disagreed with his policies.

Officials said he had felt increasingly marginalized, even embarrassed, by Mr Ghani, and that he had often been excluded from meetings with visiting Pakistani military officials, including his Pakistani counterpart.

On Thursday, Mr Ghani appointed Massoud Andarabi, a lowprofile young officer who rose to become the intelligence agency’s operational deputy, as his acting spy chief.

While many in Kandahar criticized Mr Ghani for reaching out to Pakistan, others were sympathetic, saying he had no choice but to keep pushing for talks.

“This is a scattered, spread war in Afghanistan which also involves several countries,” said Abdul Jabar Qahraman, a member of Parliament.

“The Afghan government has no other way but to engage them. The Taliban are also a fractured movement. One of them launched an attack on Kandahar, but it is possible that another faction wants to talk.”

SADIQ FROM P15

-polls, was of the view that it was the ECP, which should stand trial in the case and respond to PTI’s allegations of pre-poll rigging.

“If you need a lawyer, I will provide you but it is your duty and responsibility to transfer votes, not mine,” said the PML-N leader.

The PTI petition requested the tribunal to set aside the result of the by-election on the grounds of alleged rigging. Rasheed Qamar, a member of the tribunal, directed Ayaz Sadiq to appear in person or through a lawyer to answer the questions raised in the petition.

ECP FROM P13

NA speaker twice in the same term.

An ECP spokesperson, however, was adamant that the commission could not change its rules to benefit anyone. “The ECP cannot bend itself or the law to please one or the other interested party,” he said.

The commission also warned all public office holders against criticising it or other institutions for personal gains.

“It is unfortunate that institutions are criticised for personal interests that should be avoided in the best interest of democratic polity and all responsible public office holders should show respect [for] institutions.”

CANDIDATE FROM P19

defines Christianity.”

O’Malley concluded, “We shall overcome these challenges.”

Earlier, responding to Trump’s proposal to register all Muslims the presidential candidate tweeted, “Mr Trump — when you start your registry of people who oppose your backward, un-American ideas. You can START WITH ME!” Many responded to the presidential candidate’s comments with relief and praise. - The Express Tribune CONGRESS FROM P22

practices his faith. Mr Carson declined to elaborate on how often he prays or whether he abstains from consuming alcohol.

“You won’t see me praying on

the House floor on C-Span, but I do pray,” Mr. Carson said.

Still, their beliefs have been called into question by some members of Congress. Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, said Wednesday on MSNBC that Mr Ellison should be asked when taking an oath to support and defend the Constitution: “Which is superior: the Constitution or Shariah law?”

Congressional staff members who are Muslim have prayed together on Fridays since the days of Speaker Newt Gingrich, gathering in the largest room in the Capitol along with occasional foreign visitors — some of whom marveled that they could do so on government property, said Assad Akhter, deputy chief of staff to Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey.

But the rise of extremist terrorist groups has left some feeling “trapped,” said Mr Akhter, a former president of the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association.

“On the one side, we have religious extremists who are trying to tell us what Islam is, though we believe that’s a perversion of our faith,” he said. “And on the other side, we have political people telling us that our faith is something to fear.” Courtesy New York Times GEMS FROM P25

insight into the real nature of one’s past doings, and into the inescapability of the suffering which man brings upon himself by a wrong, wasteful use of the boon of life. ___________________ Note: In one of his books, Muhammad Asad has described how, while he was travelling in a Berlin underground train in the 1920s, reflection upon this Surah convinced him of the truth of the message of the Qur’an. All around him, the faces of the evening commuters showed signs of deep stress. He saw that the Qur’an was referring to this stress, arising from the rat-race and the desire to keeping up with the Joneses, which is a phenomenon of modern times - unknown in the Arabian society of more than thirteen hundred years ago. These verses convinced him that the Quran’s message from God is for all people and for all times.

US FROM P1

reminded on a daily basis of the challenges of violent extremism, but we aspire to uphold justice for all. America is above all else the land of the free and all forms of terrorism are a danger to our freedom. Terrorism has no faith. Terrorists do not care who they kill, but they care about one thing -to create fear and division between us.

We must stand in solidarity, so the terrorists do not divide us.

INTERFAITH FROM P17

conferences have much to learn about how to see and interact with “the Other”.

After the conference I was invited to teach two university classes at the American University in DC - one on women in Islam at Professor Akbar Ahmed’s World of Islam class with the Pakistan Ambassador’s wife, Begum Shaista Jilani, and another class, Professor Brams’, on Eid day on inter-cultural communication in which we showed our film, Journey into Europe. The film ends with a message from the Pope of reaching out to Muslims in an embrace, as Muslims do during Eid. Articulating one’s own perspective

while embracing “the Other” is the message of hope in desperation, despite the challenges that lie ahead, the lesson is of showing courage to understand, reach out, and help the other in order to build the blocks of a more cohesive world.

ALLIANCE FROM P1

more to aid the military campaign against the militant Islamic State (IS) militant group based in Iraq and Syria.

In a rare press conference, 30-year-old deputy crown prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman told reporters on Tuesday that the campaign would “coordinate” efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan, but offered few concrete indications of how military efforts might proceed.

“There will be international coordination with major powers and international organizations ... in terms of operations in Syria and Iraq.

We can’t undertake these operations without coordinating with legitimacy in this place and the international community,” bin Salman said without elaborating.

Asked if the new alliance would focus just on IS, bin Salman said it would confront not only that group but “any terrorist organization that appears in front of us.”

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab neighbors have been locked in nine months of warfare with Iran-allied rebels in neighboring Yemen, launching hundreds of air strikes there.

INNOCENTS FROM P1

Nawaz said: “We will avenge every drop of your blood.”

“I desire that whenever we recall the sacrifices of these children and their teachers, we also remember that we have to eliminate the darkness of illiteracy from Pakistan.”

Military chief Raheel Sharif and opposition leader Imran Khan also attended the ceremony. A military official told AFP there were some 2,500 guests including celebrities and sports stars.

“We think a lot about the students who lost their lives,” Abu Bakar, a teacher who was shot three times as he threw himself in front of fleeing children during the siege, told AFP, saying the loss was “something that cannot be described”.

“This should not have happened to them. They were innocent students,” he said.

Groups in other major cities organized their own vigils, while on social media, many Pakistanis changed their profile pictures to an image depicting an APS uniform with a bloody bullet hole and a caption reading: “Some stains don’t wash out”.

In the wake of the attack, Pakistan stepped up its campaign against militants, lifting a moratorium on the death penalty and trying militant extremists in military courts.

The Pakistani army killed 3,400 militants in a major military push in the North Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border, which has long served as a safe haven for local and Al Qaed-linked foreign militants.

The operation was launched in June 2014, six months before a team of six or seven Taliban militants stormed the army-run school in Peshawar; the attackers all either blew themselves up or were shot and killed by the army.

Various public and private organizations held rallies across Pakistan to commemorate the tragedy and

www.PakistanLink.com

show solidarity in the fight against militants.

For several days, mourners placed flowers and floral wreaths, lighting candles and pasting the victims’ photos in various cities.

One of the people attending the Peshawar ceremony was Andleeb Aftab, a teacher at the school who was wounded in the attack and whose 14-year-old son Huzaifa was killed.

“My son is a martyr. Martyrs never die. I still feel that my son is around,” she told The Associated Press. “I see him playing on the school grounds. Every child of this school is my son.”

ICT FROM P1

the southeastern city of Wuzhen in Zhejiang province, where Chinese President Xi Jinping once was provincial party secretary. It was organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Cabinet agency that enforces internet controls.

Organizers said some 2,000 people were due to attend, including representatives of Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Lenovo Group and Baidu Inc and officials from Russia and Kazakhstan.

‘Cyberspace shouldn’t be a battlefield’: Chinese President Xi Jinping, addressing the conference, called for governments to cooperate in regulating Internet use and fighting crime and terrorism online, stepping up efforts to promote controls that activists complain stifle free expression.

Xi’s government operates extensive Internet monitoring and censorship and has tightened controls since he came to power in 2013.

The Chinese president called for creating a global “governance system” to reflect the “wishes and interests of all countries”.

He said that would help fight online crime and terrorism and promote “healthy development” of the Internet.

Xi’s comments reflect the growing assertiveness of China’s ruling Communist Party in promoting its own vision for how to regulate global finance, technology, news media and other matters.

“Cyberspace shouldn’t be a battlefield,” Xi said. “There should be no double standards in safeguarding network security.”

On Wednesday, Xi also called on other governments to respect “network sovereignty”, a reference to efforts by leaders of China, Russia, Iran and some other nations to enforce controls over once-borderless cyberspace.

At last year’s Wuzhen conference, organizers tried unsuccessfully to persuade global Internet companies to endorse a call for the world community to “respect Internet sovereignty” and “spread positive energy”.

RESOLUTION FROM P1

facilitating terrorists shall not be placed under preventive detention under any law without prior written approval of the Government of Sindh, i.e Chief Minister. It is clarified that in case a person is suspected of the above, cogent reasons with complete evidence justifying such preventive detention shall be provided to Government of Sindh, which will, based on the available evidence, approve or reject such proposal of preventive detention.”

“The Pakistan Rangers Sindh shall not raid any office of Government of Sindh or any other Government Authority without prior written approval of the Chief Secretary, Government of Sindh.”

Opposition members, including those from the Mutahidda Qaumi Movement, Pakistan Tehreek-iInsaf (PTI), PML-F and the PML-Q, tore apart their copies of the resolution and staged a walkout from the assembly to register their protest against the PPP-led provincial government.

PTI MPA Khurram Sher Zaman completely rejected the resolution saying the provincial government was in fact threatening the Karachi operation.

Sindh, center at odds: In a presser on Saturday, Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali went so far as to hint at the possibility of imposing Governor’s Rule in Sindh to continue the Karachi operation.

Nisar alleged the provincial government’s tactics were aimed to save just one man – an implicit reference to Dr Asim Hussain – and were endangering the Karachi operation.

He said that the delay in extending Rangers’ powers was a message to embolden terrorists and extremists, adding that in case Sindh did not comply, the government had four to five different options within the “constitutional, legal and democratic framework”.

Maula Bux Chandio soon responded on behalf of the Sindh government in equally confrontational terms, but dispelled a potential standoff when he declared that the government would move a resolution in the Sindh Assembly on Monday to ensure that Rangers were given special policing powers.

PLANT FROM P1

of the priority list of CPEC projects.

In a letter to the Secretary Ministry of Water and Power Muhammad Younus Dagha, the Chinese side confirmed the approval of financing of the mega project by China’s State Council.

According to the ministry, reaching this stage of collaboration is a major achievement in shortest time.

Arrangement of finances and completion of lending documents is the most critical part in any project which signnals the beginning of work.

‘No Evidence Farook, Tashfeen Were part of Terrorist Cell’ New York: There is no evidence the

married couple who killed 14 people in California this month were part of a terrorist cell, the head of the FBI said on Wednesday, echoing investigators’ views that the pair were inspired by, rather than organized by, Islamic State.

The militant group has “revolutionized” terrorism by seeking to inspire such small-scale attacks, FBI Director James Comey said, noting the group uses social media, encrypted communications and slickly produced propaganda to recruit followers around the world.

“Your parents’ al Qaeda was a very different model than the threat we face today,” Comey told a counterterrorism conference in New York.

However, he said that while the perpetrators of the December 2 shootings in San Bernardino, California — Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29 — had expressed support for “jihad and martyrdom” in private communications, they never did so on social media.

Comey said the Federal Bureau of Investigation currently has “hundreds” of investigations in all 50 US states involving potential Islamic State-inspired plots.

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DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P29

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ENTERTAINMENT

DECEMBER 18, 2015 - PAKISTAN LINK

ENTERTAINMENT P30 – PAKISTAN LINK&–LIFESTYLE DECEMBER 18, 2015

elevision dramas make up that hallowed dreamscape where most folks go for their daily dose of entertainment.

In them, the domestic terrain is a minefield of manipulation, emotional blackmail and if we are lucky, some loving relationships. While there are saas and saazishes galore, there are also those few and far in between productions that try to tackle serious issues, some with more success than others. And then there are those that aim for entertainment with the timehonored formula of domestic drama plus high dose of romance multiplied with a cartful of eye candy. Tum Mere Kiya Ho (TMKH) is one of those productions.

Perhaps the small screen is catching up on the idea of equal representation because TMKH's eye candy quotient is mostly geared towards the female audience's benefit. Fortunately, Mikaal Zulfikar

T

loves the camera and it loves him right back - every shot of his is a beautifully lit, carefully curated image. It almost feels like he is shooting one very long commercial, on umm, himself, not that I am complaining.

This being his first venture as a producer has its advantages.

Knight. Armour. Shine Mikaal plays Ahmer, a wealthy widower who loses his wife Sadia (Mehreen Raheel in a short-lived performance) to an accident and pivotal plot point. He is coming to terms with his loss and bringing up his young daughter, Hira (Eshal), on his own.

Ahmer's sister is hoping to get their lives on track by having him remarry. However, when she utters the line "apni halat dekhi hai tumne (have you looked at yourself recently?)?", I wanted to her tell her to please clear the fog from her glasses since clearly Mikaal hasn't looked

this good in a while!

When every shot features him walking, talking, driving and ruminating in soft, often (way too often) candle-lit lighting, dressed in sharp three-piece suits (yes, with waistcoats!) with his hair not shifting a micro-millimeter, it is hard to remember that he is in mourning.

Mikaal plays Ahmer, a wealthy widower who loses his wife Sadia.

When every shot features him walking, talking, driving and ruminating in soft candle-lit lighting, dressed in sharp three-piece suits, it is hard to remember that he is in mourning.

While he slips into the role with ease, Mikaal Zulfikar is a director's actor. That he has boatloads of charm, can romance a stone and even rock a grey mustache is a given. In his best work, we have seen him balance his rakish allure with humour and not-so-holy intensions as Shamraiz in Kuch Pyar Ka

Pagalpaan and give a very restrained performance as Mansoor in Durr-eShehwar and a total laugh riot in Abhi Toh Main Jawan Hoon. The tension between him and his co-stars was deliciously palpable. It shaped his characters and showcased his ability as a good actor.

Of late, he is falling into savior roles where all he has to do is have to show up as the knight in shining armour (or a three-piece suit) who saves the day. And the dame. It might be too early to judge, but in all this perfect posturing and setting, it seems he has little to do.

Let's hope director Siraj-ul-Haq manages to bring out more substance than just the shine.

Bringing up baby Meanwhile, Hira is struggling to come to terms with this sudden gap-

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ing void in her life and this manifests itself in unresolved anger, pain and mortification at the idea that her father will marry another woman whom she will have to accept as her mother.

Mikaal as Ahmer looks so dapper it's hard to remember he's in mourning. So far, we have been thrown right into the thick of things and rather than just showing us a sad child, this etching of the child's character feels like a well-thought-out detail. The child actor Eshal is good, although the poor girl has to cry a lot.

There is also a loving relationship between father and daughter.

Ahmer fixes her (burnt) breakfast, tucks her in at night and offers a hand of friendship to his daughter so that he can win back her trust and steer her through troubled waters.

WOMENS WORLD WOMEN

DECEMBER 18, 2015 - PAKISTAN LINK

DECEMBER 18, 2015 – PAKISTAN LINK – P31

By: Samina Shaheen

inter is back girls! And now is the time that you must revamp your look. Why, you ask? It is because the colours you wear, the styles and the trends all change according to the season. You just can't go around wearing light clothes and summer make-up or you will completely stand out (in a bad way). That's right, it's time to say goodbye to your lawn suits and their bright prints for now and welcome winter appropriate wear like

The trend Colours: The first and most important aspect that people tend to ignore of winter trends is the colour of the attire.

Since we see less of sunny days, the eye automatically finds dark and dull shades more appealing. Want to wear something orange and yellow? Please save this bright shade for summer. To look appealing during the winter, go for colours such as dark blue, magenta, black, emerald green, maroon, berry, cobalt blue and fuschia. Keep in mind that these colours are not boring or

cambric, linen and khaddar. And with such a huge array of designers around, we are sure you will find numerous outstanding prints with fresh and exciting colours, unique combinations and pure quality of fabrics. As far as make-up is concerned, several additions must be made to turn you into a winter goddess.

Read on to find out more about the eastern trends.

Makeup The way you do your makeup is very important in winters as the skin becomes dry. The first and most important step is to either change your foundation or add in primers and moisturisers to your makeup regime. This is because these products will make your skin appear soft and supple and will protect your makeup from looking cakey.

To add a glow to your face go for a highlighter on the cheeks. Make sure you don't highlight too much though as the oily look does not look good in winters. In the chilly season a natural glow is what you should be aiming for.

As far as the eye makeup is concerned, you can go crazy opting for new looks as the makeup will not melt and will stay on for hours. However, always pair up heavy eyes with a light lipstick.

Last but not least, avoid bright lipstick hues in the morning and keep colours like red for the night time only. Trust us, you don't want your face to be an eye sore for others.

drab at all, they just have a dark ting e to them and are still very eye catching.

If you prefer something light then go for shades like beige, light blue, mauve, baby pink, turquoise, or light green.

Keep warm and look hot: As far as the Eastern attire is concerned, go for fabrics like khaddar, linen and cambric as they will keep you warm. Also try to avoid wearing a sweater on top of the shalwaar kameez and instead opt for shawls. Trust us, a sweater on top of shalwaar kameez looks horrid and is not fashionably acceptable. It will not only kill the look of your outfit but will also hide the print that you paid so much money for. Many shawls of different colours, styles and lengths are available in the market and you will surely find a few that catch your fancy.

Also many brands offer shawl collections in which the dupatta is actually a shawl. Problem solved!

The cut: When we talk about trends how can we forget the cut and style of the clothes. Keep in mind that it is winter season and you will end up looking weird if you opt for a sleeveless kurta. Hence, go for full sleeves or three quarters. The length that is in is short till the knees or above. You can easily pair these up with tights, cigarette pants and straight trousers.

Follow all the tips above and you are all set to be a trendy diva.

M

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P32 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 18, 2015

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