Friends of Pakistan

A new website for Politicians, where they can get a lot for their career

A politician, political leader, or political figure (from Greek “polis”) is someone who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d’état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest, divine right, or other means. Politics is not limited to governance through public office. Political offices may also be held in corporations, and other entities that are governed by self-defined political processes. (Wikepedia)Mostly people think about politicians that “One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence thereafter” is a politician but Nikita Khrushchev says “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.”BUT we say “A politician is a person who campaigns for or holds a position in government. A politician may start a career by running for a local office, like mayor, but could eventually serve nationally — in Congress or even as President.“The role of a modern politician is to persuade people that everything will just go on getting better, without disruption to their lives and with no effort on their part. As a general rule politicians do not lie. They just say what the majority of the population want to hear. All politicians know that they will never get elected if they tell the electorate that things will get worse. No opposition politician will make strong statements pointing out structural difficulties or impending disaster because one day they hope to be in power and so they will do nothing that might frighten the electorate. Opposition politicians are also frightened that if they question the policies of the Government that they will be asked what they would do that is different and usually they are devoid of ideas. If there was an obvious solution to a problem is it likely that it would not already have been thought of and implemented?If the Government announces a new policy to address a particular concern and providing that it sounds like it might just work then people are reassured. That is why politicians always talk about compromise. What they mean is that they have found a form of words that will make as many people as possible feel reassured about the future, and which will not threaten anyone’s interests. This often means that policies are totally ambiguous. In all the areas where the public have concerns policies are churned out ad nauseam.” (http://www.howitends.co.uk/)Association of Politicians (AOP), a professional body and training institute for politicians, has been setup to negate the common feelings of people about politicians and to promote their workings and ideology, worldwide by holding seminars, conferences, awards and training courses at national and International levels. Memership is open for politicians to join and promote the objectives of the instituteIf you are a politician or becoming a politician, then contact us for membership and help us in promoting the image of politicians by sending suggestions.

www.institutionofpoliticians.org

The law defines the defiance and disobedience of court rulings or directives as contempt of court and provides a well charted course of action against the offenders. But what does one call an attempt to stifle and obstruct the natural, unavoidable and obvious consequences that must inevitably flow from a contempt of court verdict to escape the full extent of the penalty?

Should we call it ‘contempt of contempt of court’? By his shameful refusal to acknowledge that the gig is up, Gilani has pushed things well beyond a comedy of errors. It is no longer simply a question of bumbling fools knowing no better than to make a mess. The malaise that Pakistan is suffering is a national tragedy, induced by malicious and malevolent intent.

It is a product solely of the narrow self-serving machinations of a tainted few at the cost of rule of law and the common good. It is, to borrow the words of William Faulkner, ‘a monstrous burlesque of all bereavement.’ The incumbent rulers continue their headlong plunge into new depths of legal and political fires. But unlike Dante’s Divine Comedy, no salvation awaits them on the other side of this ordeal. Nobody would care, save for the fact that they are jeopardising national interests by bringing parliament into conflict with the Supreme Court to save their own skins.

As brilliant as the Supreme Court’s verdict in Gilani’s contempt of court case is, Justice Asif Khosa deserves an award of some sort for his additional note in which he has explicitly spelled out the prevailing state of affairs in this country with striking poignancy. He quoted Khalil Gibran, and very rightly so. There are few corners of the human heart that are impervious to the magic Gibran weaves with his words. In The Frontier, he wrote ‘Are you a politician who says to himself: “I will use my country for my own benefit?” … Or are you a devoted patriot, who whispers in the ear of his inner self: “I love to serve my country as a faithful servant”.’

No extraordinary legal expertise is required to understand the self-evident fact that there are some court verdicts that produce a direct consequence, whereas others unleash a chain of events in accordance with well established precedents, invoking provisions of various bodies of law, which must culminate in a specified outcome. The indirect nature of the later category of rulings does not in any shape or manner diminish their legal force, validity or legitimacy. For instance, in Gilani’s contempt of court case, the court, in its short order, sentenced Gilani to be detained in the court room till the rising of the court. This part of the ruling was a direct order. If Gilani had tried to leave the court room before the rising of the court, the concerned security personnel would have been under obligation to stop him and they would require no further orders or sanction from any superior officers or other authority.

But the short order went beyond this. It proclaimed that Gilani’s defiant refusal to fully implement the NRO verdict was ‘substantially detrimental to the administration of justice’ and that it had brought ‘this court and the judiciary of this country into ridicule.’ The detailed judgment further explicates and elucidates this view so as to leave no ambiguity. This part of the ruling produces indirect consequences since it inescapably invokes Article 63(1)g of the Constitution. If there was any doubt whether Article 63(1)g is invoked or not, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the only mitigating factor in passing a lenient sentence against Gilani is that he is likely to suffer further punishment under this article of the Constitution.

Article 63(1)g stipulates that a person shall be disqualified from being a member of parliament if ‘… he is propagating any opinion, or acting in any manner, prejudicial to … the integrity or independence of the judiciary of Pakistan, or which defames or brings into ridicule the judiciary …’ Since the court order specifies that Gilani has ridiculed the judiciary, little is left to the imagination regarding the consequences that must now flow under Article 63(1)g, the jiyalas’ customary hue and cry notwithstanding.

Therefore, in this case, Article 63(2) makes it incumbent upon the speaker of the National Assembly to move a reference before the chief election commissioner regarding Gilani’s disqualification from being a member of parliament. No law in this land gives the speaker or the CEC the authority to exercise any discretion in this matter and any attempt on their part to do so would evidently amount to a subversion of the Constitution, possibly punishable under Article 6 of the Constitution.

It is bound to put parliament on a collision course with the judiciary, which would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. It will generate a new constitutional crisis. And all this for what? If the government’s stand was based on high moral principles in the service of the nation or to defend national pride and sovereignty, every man, woman and child would stand firmly behind them. But such is far from the case. They are set to defy the courts and the constitution and gamble with the country’s future only to help a notorious man of global ill-repute keep his ill-gotten loot.

We are confronted with a very sorry state of affairs indeed: A handful of judges are fighting for the supremacy and writ of law along with the welfare, rights and interests of the people, but those elected by the people and vested with a great deal of hope and expectations, who are under oath to serve the people, protect national interests and uphold the law, are in the vanguard of a surreptitious thrust of underhanded intrigues to undermine the law, callously barter away national interests and sovereignty for narrow self-interests and abandon the people to their own devices, defenceless under the storm clouds of poverty and lawlessness, without a trace of hope for a better tomorrow.

How can a convicted man represent Pakistan on foreign visits to meet foreign heads of state? Having effectively lost the right to continue in office, how can he speak on our behalf, let alone sign accords or enter into treaties? It is a national disgrace, but the thick-skinned feel no twinge of shame. Not only did Gilani deem it proper to undertake his visit to Britain with a constitutional storm hovering over his head, but he also saw it fit to take with him a massive delegation of more than 70 sycophants for a state subsidised vacation.

Even though Gilani stands as thoroughly disgraced under legal and constitutional authority as possible, what about the requirements of honour and morality? Do they count for nothing? Aristophanes wrote “Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives.” But we are not talking about wise men, are we? We are talking about men who reportedly declared that they can only be removed from the corridors of power in ambulances. They treat the country like their personal domain and trample over laws and all norms of decent democratic conduct with reckless abandon.

Politicians have been known to resign on lesser grounds around the world, even on unsubstantiated allegation, let alone convictions. In April 2007, Polish Construction Minister, Barbara Blinda, committed suicide in her bathroom as Poland’s Internal Security Agency searched her home in connection with a corruption probe. In May 2009, former South Korean President, Roh Moo-Hyun, committed suicide by throwing himself off a mountain rather than facing corruption allegations, even though no formal charges had been filed at that time. It is no surprise that our lot are unfamiliar with such honour and self-respect.

The writer is vice-chairman of the Sindh National Front and a former MPA from Ratodero. He has degrees from the University of Buckingham and Cambridge University.

Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-108359-The-case-of-Gilani

Mystery has long surrounded the Jews of Pakistan, and this blog has attracted dozens in search of information about them. Finally, Shalva Weil has written a comprehensive history of this community in the Pakistan Press – Canada. The last Jew, Rachel Joseph, died in 2006. (With thanks to an Anonymous reader)
Pakistan was never traditionally antisemitic. In fact, it may come as a surprise that Pakistan hosted small, yet thriving, Jewish communities from the 19th century until the end of the 1960s. Recently, Yoel Reuben, a Pakistani Jew living in the Israeli town of Lod whose family originated in Lahore, documented some of the history of the Jewish communities with photographs of
original documents.
When India and Pakistan were one country, before the partition in 1947, the Jews were treated with tolerance and equality. In the first half of the 20th century, there were nearly 1,000 Jewish residents in Pakistan living in different cities: Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, and Lahore. The largest Jewish community lived in Karachi, where there was a large synagogue and a smaller prayer hall. There were two synagogues in Peshawar, one small prayer hall in Lahore belonging to the Afghan Jewish community, and one prayer hall in Quetta. Even today, according to unofficial sources, there are rumors that some Jews remain in Pakistan, including doctors and members of the free professions, who converted or passed themselves off as members of other religions.
The Jews of Pakistan were of various origins, but most were from the Bene Israel community of India, and came to Pakistan in the employ of the British. Yifah, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, relates that her great-great-grandfather Samuel Reuben Bhonkar, who was a Bene Israel, came to Karachi in British India to work as a jailer, and died there in 1928. The Bene Israel originated in the Konkan villages, but many moved to Bombay from the end of the 18th century on. In Pakistan, they spoke Marathi, their mother tongue from Maharashtra; Urdu, the local language; and most spoke English. Prayers were conducted in Hebrew. In 1893, a Bene Israel from Bombay, Solomon David Umerdekar, inaugurated the Karachi Magen Shalom Synagogue on the corner of Jamila Street and Nishtar Road, which officially opened in 1912.
During these years, the Jewish community thrived. In 1903, the community set up the Young Man’s Jewish Association, and the Karachi Bene Israel Relief Fund was established to support poor Jews. In 1918, the Karachi Jewish Syndicate was formed to provide housing at reasonable rents, and the All India Israelite League, which represented 650 Bene Israel living in the province of Sind (including Hyderabad, Larkuna, Mirpur-Khas, and Sukkur, as well as Karachi), was first convened—founded by two prominent Bene Israel, Jacob Bapuji Israel and David S. Erulkar.
Karachi became a fulcrum for the Bene Israel in India, the place where they congregated for High Holiday prayers. There was also a prayer hall, which served the Afghan Jews residing in the city. A 1941 government census recorded 1,199 Pakistani Jews: 513 men and 538 women. So accepted were the Jews of Karachi in these years that Abraham Reuben, a leader in the Jewish community, became the first Jewish councilor on the Karachi Municipal Corporation.
Anti-Zionism begins: On August 15, 1947, India was partitioned and the Dominion of Pakistan was declared. Partition effectively signaled the end of the British Empire. Fearful of their future in the new Islamic state, Jews began to flee. Some fled from Afghanistan; the Bene Israel community in Lahore fled to Karachi and from there moved to Bombay. Muslim refugees from India, called Mohajir, streamed into Pakistan and attacked Jewish sites. The situation was exacerbated by the declaration of independence for the state of Israel in May 1948. Many of the Karachi Jews left the city in 1948, after rioters attacked the Karachi synagogue during a demonstration in May of that year against President Truman’s recognition of Israel. Some members of the community emigrated to Israel via India, while others settled in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Pogroms against the Jews recurred during the Suez War in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967. Most of the remaining Jews emigrated and, in 1968, the Pakistani Jewish community numbered only 350 in Karachi, with one synagogue, a welfare organization, and a recreational organization. After 1968, there is no record of any Pakistani Jews outside Karachi.
Today, anti-Israel discourse manifests itself in the notion that Israel and Pakistan are ultimately in competition and thus only one can flourish. In April 2008, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, proclaimed that “two states came into existence in 1947 and 1948: one, Pakistan; two, Israel. The two are threats to each other. Ultimately, only one of them will survive.” Pakistan aligns itself with the Palestinian Muslim cause and rejects the United States insofar as it is allied with Israel.
The Karachi Jewish community ends: The Magen Shalom synagogue in Karachi was destroyed on July 17, 1988, by order of Pakistan president Zia-Ul-Hak to make way for a shopping mall in the Ranchore Lines neighborhood of Karachi. In 1989, the original ark and podium were stored in Karachi; a Torah scroll case was taken by an American to the United States.
As late as 2006, the sole survivor of the Karachi Jewish community, Rachel Joseph, a former teacher, then 88 years old, was battling for compensation for the broken promise from the property developers that had demolished the old synagogue; in exchange, she would receive an apartment, and a new small synagogue would be constructed on the old site. While the litigation wore on, she languished in a tiny room.

Source: http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/whatever-happened-to-jews-of-pakistan.html

The focus of Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar at local and international conferences these days is exhaustively toward the “new foreign policy” for the new Pakistan. Weeks ago she had been emphasizing military’s receding interference in the foreign policy of the country. The biggest shift in the focus of the policy that I found recently is in seeking a prosperous “Kabul,” which she elaborated upon recently talking to students of LUMS — a top university in Pakistan.

The new world capital for Pakistan is Kabul and that is because, as the foreign office puts it, stability and peace in Pakistan is partially dependent on the events outside of Pakistan. That makes the government of Afghanistan our most important partner, and civil society of Afghanistan our most important audience.

To me, the latest developments and the exposition of “things changing in Pakistan” seems a bit dramatic. It is intriguing how many of these new foreign strategies are applicable in the context of the present Pakistan and must be analyzed. To begin with, the emphasis of foreign policy being the instrument of change for the internal stability of Pakistan seems miscalculated. We have seen how the foreign policy of Pakistan influences or decides its internal conditions; whereas, in fact, it should be the other way around. It has been the dilapidation of conditions inside of Pakistan that have long set the frames of its foreign policy. From economic reliance to security concerns, to the greater events such as Pakistan taking up its role in the war on terror, to this day and whatever else Pakistan have been through since. There could be no better time to see through this than today, when we find Pakistan seeking a “new foreign policy for a new Pakistan” that sets aside its long withholdings with India and hopes to move forward, while demanding respect and equal treatment from a ceaselessly dominating Uncle Sam.

Earlier this month Khar emphasized on many occasions about the exclusion of military influence the foreign policy. The fact that she speaks with such cheerful confidence is overbearing, yet undoubtedly such a change would levy great attention both internally and externally.

Looking at the reason of this great emphasis on Kabul being the most important capital for Pakistan and Afghanistan, the most important country, as our foreign minister has been saying on several occasions; is in order to achieve the diplomatic goals in the region. There have been statements in length about standing by the Afghan people and cooperation with the civilian leadership. Does this expansion obfuscate Pakistan’s terms with the U.S.? As it seems, with the active talk on drones and discussion on the Parliamentary review, Pakistan’s new foreign policy appears to be hit by the tough questions U.S. has been asking its ally, the cut of funds and most recently the cut of 100 U.S. AID projects.

The foreign office is now vertically seen proportionately engaged with all the neighbors, including India, Iran, Russia and China. MFN for India and Pipeline with Iran on the way, the foreign office is buckling up with alternatives for the much-denied U.S.-Pak breakup. As Hina Rabbani Khar puts it, “Foreign policy has been discussed in the parliament many, many times, but never before has the U.S. put on hold, during such proceedings.”

As far as India is concerned, the developments are notable. I believe the problem with India and Pakistan has more to do with emotion than strategy or insecurity. In terms of Kashmir, it’s not that we feel attacked and they feel robbed. It’s moreover a wound from the separation that we both retrieved from the departure of millions of families and so much blood. The two countries need to seek as much friendship, that at one point the grievances are met, no issue remains as big as Kashmir or Siachen, be it Kashmir or Siachen.

We see examples of love in the form of exchange of letters that achieved forgiveness and friendship, from a Pakistani pilot to his Indian target’s daughter. We see the Indian court granting release to Dr. Chisti, a Pakistani scientist. These civil efforts can’t be disregarding in the line of doubtful militarily driven perceptions, and trust should be built based on the efforts that our political governments have been trying to make for the past few years. If we set our hearts straight, there is clear conjoint inclination that these countries share, and that goes far and beyond MFNs and Shrine visits.

For now, the new foreign policy is liberating Pakistan from a long hold of U.S., unnecessary constraints with its neighbors. The gas pipeline, cross border trade and socializing within the regional east and west, are obviously good things to look forward to.

Clerics have taken heaven away from ordinary people, and successive governments in Pakistan have also snatched the earth from them. The application of laws that do not protect but persecute citizens can never generate justice, but when such laws are presented as divinely ordained they become immoral. This was the consensus that emerged from a colloquium on Ziaul Haq’s Hudood Ordinances held earlier in the week by Islamabad’s Kuch Khas centre.

Islamic law is founded on the rights of people but it was this fundamental principle that was violated in the Hudood Ordinances. Till then Pakistan’s criminal and legal system was based on Anglo-Saxon law and this included the colonial era’s Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Evidence Act which were applied countrywide, minus the tribal areas where customary law prevailed.

Though this system continued, the procedures and punishments for some of the offences were changed with the introduction of the Hudood Ordinances on the pretext that these were in conformity with Islamic tenets. What resulted was a distortion of Quranic injunctions because some of the laws were completely at variance with its legal principles. These were justified on the basis of spurious Traditions of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), especially in the hudood laws relating to adultery, or zina.

The Quranic punishment for this crime is a hundred stripes. It does not differentiate illicit sexual relations between married and unmarried adults and, as such, the punishment is the same whether the offender is married or single. But the Hudood Ordinance prescribes stoning to death if the crime is committed by married adults and a hundred lashes for non-Muslims or single Muslims. This distortion is based on inauthentic traditions and hadith.

In several well-authenticated traditions, the Holy Prophet is reported to have said: “My words do not abrogate the word of God but the word of God can abrogate my sayings.” Thus, any of the reported traditions that deviate from Quranic injunctions are ipso facto inauthentic. Stoning to death for adultery is a Jewish punishment and, according to scholars, was awarded by the Prophet to “a Jew and a Jewess in one case and others apparently occurred before the revelation of” the law relating to zina.

The Quran is free from contradictions and its injunctions on a particular issue, which are often repeated in its various chapters, reinforce and explain each other. If, as some Muslim jurists believe, stoning to death is mandatory, then this cannot be reconciled with the ordinance that the penalty is halved for a person in bondage. (The Quran, 4:25)

Commenting on this injunction, an authoritative commentator has observed: “This shows that the Holy Quran never contemplated stoning as the punishment for adultery because it could not be halved, as a matter of fact the Holy Book nowhere speaks of stoning; the only punishment it speaks of is a hundred stripes.”

The death penalty for this crime was challenged as un-Islamic in the Federal Shariat Court in 1981. Of the five judges who heard the case, only one upheld stoning to death, three were of the opinion that it was not Islamic and one believed that it was permissible as a tazir sentence which, according to the former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Asma Jehangir, is “a fallback position from hadd.”

This triggered vehement protests from the clergy and Ziaul Haq succumbed to the pressure. He replaced all but one of the judges of the Federal Shariat Court and the government filed a review petition with indecent haste. The reconstituted court announced its decision on June 20, 1982. Five of the six judges upheld stoning to death as a hadd punishment while one was of the view that it was an Islamic punishment, but under tazir. Thus it was political expediency, and not any selfless commitment to Islam that prompted the revision of the earlier judgement.

One of the judges explained that he had supported the harsh punishment because it was “a matter of pure belief and faith…which requires no reasoning or arguments.” His “faith” was obviously not anchored in the teachings of the Quran which consistently emphasises the supremacy of reason, for instance, “Verily, the vilest of creatures in the sight of God are those deaf, those dumb ones who do not use their reason.”

The Quran requires the evidence of four firsthand witnesses, as against two for all other criminal and civil suits, to prove adultery. This implies that the mandatory punishment of a hundred stripes can hardly ever be imposed. Professor M Cherif Bassiouni of the DePaul University, Chicago, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, writes: “The requirement of proof and its exigencies lead to the conclusion that the policy of the harsh penalty is to deter public aspects of this form of sexual practice.” Adultery, therefore, is punishable by the state only if conclusively proved.

From this it follows that unproven accusations of adultery cannot be punished under tazir, as in other hadd offences. Circumstantial evidence, which is the basis of the tazir punishments in Pakistan for adultery, is not in accord with Islamic jurisprudence. In 1981 tazir was challenged in the Federal Shariat Court on the ground that the only form of punishment recognised by the Quran was hadd. However, the petition was dismissed on technical grounds. Legal experts have described the tazir punishment of zina as “the most insidious element” of the hudood laws.

The preamble of the Zina Ordinance claims that its purpose is “to modify the existing law relating to zina so as to bring it in conformity with the Holy Quran and Sunnah.” But by including rape within its ambit, it violates the Quranic law on adultery. The textual formulation of the Holy Book on the subject pertains to consensual extramarital intercourse and not rape, which is a crime of violence.

In Islamic jurisprudence rape in not categorised a criminal offence under zina but under the hadd crime of hiraba. In the Fiqh-us-Sunnah which summarises the main traditional schools of Islamic law, hiraba is defined as “a single person or group of people causing public disruption, killing, forcibly taking property or money, attacking or raping women (hatk al’arad), killing cattle or disrupting agriculture.”

In a hiraba prosecution the rapist, and not the victim, is the focus. The almost impossible condition of four witnesses is dispensed with and circumstantial evidence including those of forensic experts is admissible. The inclusion of rape as a sub-category of the Zina Ordinance was a travesty and women suffered the most. It was only with the adoption of the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, 2006, that rape was taken out of the Hudood Ordinances and included in the Penal Code. That year there were 6,500 imprisoned females in Pakistan and 80 percent had been convicted for alleged adultery after they had failed to prove allegations of rape.

There has been no dearth of commissions and committees including those headed by Zari Sarfraz (1983), Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid (1997), Justice Majida Rizvi (2003) and others that have recommended the repeal of the Hudood Ordinances. But these have fallen on deaf ears because of the fear of a violent backlash from the extremist fringe of Pakistani society. Though hadd penalties such as stoning to death have not been implemented, so long as they remain in the statute books ordinary citizens will continue to live in fear. The commands of Islamic law are rooted in people’s rights. But these exist in vain, as Macaulay says, for those who do not have the courage to fight for them.

The writer is the publisher of Criterion quarterly. Email: iftimurshed@ gmail.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-108047-Faith-and-punishment