Dr Babar Awan - What's not to like?

The twittervesre is outraged at Dr Babar Awan, not because he had one of his usual bouts of tweeting with caps lock on, but because he was awarded the post of Vice President of Pakistan People’s Party. I can’t understand the animosity his appointment has garnered. Not only is he an educated man, he is also an astute lawyer, a good orator, a TV presenter par excellence, a  writer and man who speaks the language of our masters (no silly, everyone speaks English, he is fluent in Arabic). Seriously; what’s not to like? 

One can be a little perturbed at this development because how can a political party have a vice president when it does not have a president – Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Daddy Zardari share the chairmanship of the party – but this much anger on an appointment is a little misplaced. 

The appointment of the good doctor is quite befitting; after all, who else could have matched his towering personality and his innumerable accomplishments. The cynics think that party has other stalwarts who could have been better suited for the job, but no one comes even close. Named after the Mughal king, Zaheer-ud-din Babar, the new Vice President is a man amongst men. Aitezaz Ahsan and Sherry Rehman may have written an odd book or two about Indus River and Kashmiri shawls, but the esteemed barrister has authored several books. It is besides the point that no one seems to know the titles of the books and what those books are about. Unfortunately, a hurried Google search about his penmanship yielded no conclusive results. 

Rehman Malik may have been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Karachi University, but Dr Babar Awan is heads and shoulders above his fellow party man. He does not wait for local universities to confer doctorates upon him; he invents a university as delicately named as Monticello – which perhaps reminds one of a high end spaghetti sauce or Thomas Jefferson – and bestow a doctorate upon himself.

Dr Babar Awan is also not a serial party hopper like some other dudes whose final destination seems to be PTI these days. He only jumped the ship once and has been with Pakistan People’s Party since 1990s. Wikipedia reports that his brother is part of a Mutahidda Qaumi Movement in Punjab but that is only to spread brotherhood and good cheer. I don’t see him joining Altaf Bhai any time soon.

Not just politicians, Dr Babar Awan can give TV personalities like Amir Liaquat and Sahir Lodhi a run for money. Unlike Amir Liaquat who carries the show on the basis of sheer verbosity and Sahir Lodhi who only moonlights as a religious presenter in Ramazan and is known more for his dance moves and questionable wardrobe, Dr Awan is a genuine bona fide religious scholar who used to present a show on religious laws on a local tv channel. The ratings of his show were however not available to be compared with the other two gentlemen.

What the naysayers do not get is that vice president ship of a party is a very significant post and cannot be given to just anyone. The reason this important post was given to Dr Babar Awan is that if there ever was a declamation or an oration  contest between vice chairmen and presidents of Pakistani political parties, Pakistan people’s party would not want to lose it to its erstwhile member and the new, asli tay vada and very senior vice chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf. 

A slightly edited version was first published in The Express Tribune 

Pedaling obscurantism

In  Shahzeb Khanzada’s program on Express News Imran Khan, in response to a question raised by a young woman, said that if his party forms the government, they will not dictate how women should dress up. When I saw that I was quite pleasantly surprised because back in 1990s when Imran Khan discovered religion, his first op-ed for The News/Jang was on the importance of “Chador and Chardeewari.” He was all about how important pardah and the four walls of the house are for a woman and praised women who chose to stay at home to raise their children, away from the eyes of others.  Now that Imran Khan refused to concern himself with women’s clothing options, I thought he is finally maturing into a politician who cannot be bothered with the non issues. 

But somebody was not happy with this development and that somebody was Ansar Abbasi. In his column today, he questioned Imran’s pronouncement asking how a follower of Allama Iqbal and God fearing believer of faith can say something as outrageous as that: giving women option to choose what they want to wear!  If God and his prophet have restricted women’s clothing to a certain standard then how a mard-e-momin like Imran Khan can question that restriction. If Ansar Abbasi is to be believed that the code of an Islamic welfare state is hidden in a woman's blouse.

Ansar Abbasi questions if the change Imran Khan talks about is Ata Turk and Musharraf inspired or a true Islamic change and wants Imran Khan to explain his stance on women’s clothing. In a country where half the population is malnourished and 70% do not have access to clean drinking water and sanitation where law and order is in a shambles, our very senior reporter/defender of faith is worried about the length and breadth of the dupatta of our ladies. 

Ansar Abbasi was so perturbed by this new aspect of Imran Khan’s personality that he went up to him on Sunday and said that enlightened people like Veena Malik would be very happy with this new Imran Khan. According to Ansar Abbasi, Imran Khan responded that people like Veena cannot do much in Pakistan and the country will never have any law against Quran and Sunnah. 

When I read this piece, I wanted to die – literally die. Forget the obscurantist rant, I cannot get over the fact that the chief investigative reporter of an English daily does not know what the word enlightened means and uses it in context with actresses known for their risqué wardrobe! People like Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Spinoza must be turning in their graves with such liberal use of the term “enlightened.” If I am not wrong, Pakistan perhaps is the only country in the world where being enlightened is considered a stigma and a matter of disgrace. Not that I expect much from Imran Khan, but if people like Ansar Abbasi keep peddling the pedantic agenda, we cannot even hope for gradual maturity that comes with being part of the mainstream politics. 

Here is to staying in the darkness. 

Those who can read Urdu should check out this gem 

PS: Some of my readers have pointed out that I should've have used the word peddling in the headline rather than pedaling. The use is intentional, people like Ansar Abbasi do not peddle and try to sell their ideas, they want brute force to be used to spread their version of correctness, hence the word pedaling. Thanks a lot for reading it and pondering over it. I am humbled (which is not really an easy).

Making fun of North Korea

With Kim Jong-il’s death, it was but expected that the western media and its consumers would jump into mocking everything about North Korea and its dead president. Twitterverse (with its fake twitter profile of Kim Jong-un), Tumblrs and Facebook pages are inundated with links poking fun at the backwardness, insularity and stupidity of North Koreans. Media savvy, English-speaking, hip Pakistanis are taking part in this mock-fest wholeheartedly. This is most fascinating because Pakistan, perhaps, is more like North Korea than most other countries.

North Korea is usually dubbed as one of the poorest countries in the world. Pakistan may not be one of the poorest countries — yet — but it sure is on its way to becoming one with a paltry two per cent growth rate (which in any case is undermined by the high population growth rate), soaring inflation, unprecedented unemployment and never-ending energy crisis.

North Korea is dubbed by mainstream western media as an anachronistic nuclear country whose population lives in abject poverty and where political dissenters are sent to die in concentration camps. We, too, are a country where women are buried alive in the name of tradition; millions do not have access to either clean drinking water or sanitation; and the lesser is said about the bonded labour tilling the land, the better.

If North Korea is the most isolated nation in the world, we, too, are pariahs of sorts. Getting anywhere with our green passport is an ordeal. We have had sanctions levied on us on counts of aiding and abetting terrorism to child labour and what not. If the US has used trade sanctions as leverage to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, we have been meted out the same treatment back in 1998 after conducting the nuclear tests.

We mocked the outpouring of grief — which may have been staged and must have appeared contrived to western eyes — but how can we forget how we behaved when one of our own leaders, Benazir Bhutto, died four years ago — with fist-thumping grief, tears, chaos, mayhem and bloodshed.

We scoffed at the leadership succession plan of North Korea, mocking a four-star general in his 20’s. But have we ever stopped to think that we have done something quite similar — made a barely adult teenager, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who was not even a resident of the country, the chairman of the biggest political party of Pakistan.

The malaise of dynasty is not limited to the PPP alone. If Asfandyar Wali is a third generation ANP leader, then Mian Nawaz Sharif is preparing ground to bring in his daughter, Maryam Nawaz , to counter the threat of the PTI and help his party shed the old fuddy-duddy image. And Imran Khan is probably planning to challenge the Election Commission on the issue of the enforcement of the law barring dual nationality holders from contesting elections, to ensure that his progeny be able to do the requisite politicking when their time comes.

Heaping scorn on a malicious dead dictator is fine, but ridiculing an entire nation for their collective bad fortune is just in bad taste. I wish Pakistanis had shown a bigger heart and extended compassion to the North Koreans. After all, who else should have been able to empathise with them like us?

Originally published in The Express Tribune.

Social Seating! Somebody kill me already

Anyone who has had to travel with KLM repeatedly would agree with me on three counts. Firstly, their seats in the economy section are a little too close for comfort. Secondly, their crew wears a hideous blue uniform – your eyes actually hurt if you look at that colour for more than 1 minute and 34 seconds. Lastly, the crew is geriatric enough to make you feel guilty if you ask for a glass of water twice. 

At one point on time, I used to travel to Netherlands pretty frequently, after traveling with them a few times, I decided to change airlines. It’s not like I get a direct flight (No western Airlines want to come to Pakistan) and if I have to change a plane at Doha or Dubai, I might as well fly an airline with better seats and in-flight entertainment program. I am sure there must have been so many other passengers who decided not to travel with KLM for the very same reasons – unless they are masochist who like cramped leg space or midgets – or both.

According to rumors, in order to win those and some other new – read desperate – passengers; KLM is introducing a new service called “Social Seating.” The Dutch airline is developing a service that will allow the travelers to find the most compatible person in the flight to share their journey with, based on their social media profile. What the fuck! I will now have to share my facebook and LinkedIn profile on the counter before I get my boarding pass!!!

Forget catching up on the movies that you have missed in your local cinema and are too lazy to download, forget reading that trashy novel that you wanted to get hold of but did not do so at home because you were too afraid of being judged by your sibling, husband or cook. Forget catching up on the lost sleep on that 7 hour long flight, you will be sitting next to the most compatible person on the plane who probably would want to chat with you about the existentialist angst in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road that you have listed as your favourite book on facebook. Never mind the fact that you probably clicked ‘like’ on it 4 years ago to impress a chick in grad school; social seating would not care for your intellectual pretense, it will punish you for it.

Being an anti social being, I couldn’t care less about social seating. Any airline that wants to win my business needs to provide me with two services and I would be their most loyal customer; more leg space (yes, tall people are obsessed with more leg space) and an assurance that I will never get to sit with parents who travel with crying babies and nosey toddlers they can’t control.

PS: Before anyone goes on to judge me for keeping my distance from messy toddlers, they must read this horror story from hell. 

Quote of the day

There was an impromptu get together last night for some live music and drinks. A few Europeans were also invited. One Nordic man was lost in contemplation after attending the event, when asked why so serious, he said:

I have been coming to Pakistan for quite some time now, I see all these men get together, drink and sing longingly about women and love; why don't they invite any women to such events?

PS: In case anyone is wondering, I was NOT there. 

Wither professionalism?

I never really wanted to get into the whole Veena Malik debate on my blog, but something happened which made me realize that the issue is far greater than just one person and misogynist pricks are found everywhere; not just in Pakistan. 

I was invited by BBC Asian Network to be part of a radio talk show on the why Veena Malik’s father has disinherited her on December 8^th. I agreed to be on the show because it gave me opportunity to be on air with Veena Malik, who I find fascinating at so many levels.

The program started with the host Nihal (he is this really slow presenter who puts his listeners to sleep, I wonder why BBC hired him in the first place but I digress)asking Veena Malik how does she feel about being disinherited. She gave an appropriate response about getting her father to see her point of view eventually. He then took a caller, an army officer called Malik from Islamabad, who first refused to say salam (Muslim greetings) to Veena Malik because he thought of her as a vile disgusting creature who has insulted the her country (Pakistan) and her religion (Islam). He then went on to threaten Veena Malik (well indirectly of course) of dire consequences when she comes back. He also said that if his own daughter would have done something like this, he would have given it to her. This guy was given ample opportunity to engage with Veena Malik and they argued back and forth. As if that was not enough, he was allowed by the presenter to repeatedly insult the guest of the show, something I never expected on a BBC show.

Another female guest was allowed to ask Ms. Malik if she was a Muslim. When she said that yes, she is a Muslim and her religiosity is a private matter between her and her Allah, the caller was also allowed to mock Veena Malik.  

In response to Veena Malik’s argument that she is part of entertainment industry and she will continue to do bold shoots to stay in the business, Presenter Nihal asked her a very pointed and leading question. He asked if Veena Malik is a Muslim and if she is asked to select between her religion and entertainment industry, what will she choose?

Now it was a very inappropriate question to ask in normal circumstances, but considering what has happened earlier this year –Salmaan Taseer’s murder – this kind of insensitivity was mind boggling and unprofessional. When the presenter turned to me to seek my opinion on Veena; I decided to point out his super unprofessional attitude and how his leading question can jeopardize his guest’s life. It was against journalism ethics 101 to put someone on spot and ask them to testify about their religiosity in hypothetical situations. Instead of responding to my objection in an adult and rational manner, Presenter Nihal took it as a personal offence and said something to the effect that he was right in raising that question as her Veena’s dad has already disinherited her. Before I could’ve responded to it, he cut me off and went to another person.

For starters,Veena’s dad disinheriting her does not give the present any right to mock and insult his guest in a manner that can put her life in danger. Secondly, his tone was accusatory when he was speaking with his guest and it was all good, but when a caller presented him with a genuine grievance, he cuts her off. That was real mature of him. Lastly, if he had allowed me to speak, I would have said that there should be some difference between him – a BBC presenter with a first world education – and Veena’s dad who, if I recall correctly, is a retired non commissioned officer in Pakistan army. Veena’s dad’s comments could be waived as something which is said in the heat of moment, but the comments of a supposedly responsible journalist who makes his living by talking to people and about people cannot be ignored that lightly.

Dear BBC, 

I know it was a programme targeted towards the Asian Diaspora in UK and is not for your mainstream audience, but please, make an effort, and hire someone who is at least professional and courteous if not more. 

Sincerely,

Tazeen 


PS: If you want to listen to it, you can do so for five more days here 

So this is how they are spending the Kerry-Lugar Money

Every pole on the Constitution Avenue is sporting this banner announcing a conference by Competition Commission of Pakistan (weirdest government body name ever ). I have a message for whosoever is at the helm of affairs at this competition commission: If you had so much money to burn, you should have done something else, like take a ride in a hot air balloon. You do not announce a conference on every nook and cranny of the city as if it is a fair with clowns and a big fat Ferris wheel, it is in extremely bad taste. 

PS: The USAID should take the tagline “From the American People” off as soon as they can; I have a feeling that American people will not to be too happy donating money for useless banners in a country where most people can’t read.