Killing the Innocent

The sagacious thoughts of my mother continue to reverberate even after sixteen years of her death. She would say, “The red storm used to be the cause of alarm and we would know some murder took place in town.” Today, people are being killed like gnats and no one bothers for the human loss. This causes me enormous pain as a human being, and as a father. I still believe in the value of life without discrimination—Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew. I daily continue to witness red clouds hovering above my head signaling a sequence of murders.

I saw such clouds on May 31. A mob of hate criminals put a match to a KFC outlet in Karachi and thus incinerated six innocent Muslim workers. I was genuinely troubled for heavy police force and rangers deployed in Karachi, failed to protect life and property of the innocent. When the police will be engaged in knocking the socks off of the political opponents, anarchic situation is bound to dominate. My wretchedness grew larger when I learnt about the paltry details I could gather about the harmless victims.

Three of them got the job only three days ago. Two were students and working part time to bear the high cost of education. All victims were in their bloom of youth—twenties. Even if they were Americans, Britishers or Israelis, they were weaponless and not engaged in war. Killing such harmless human beings should be deplored and must be disapproved forcefully.

How would the fanatics who killed the innocent differentiate themselves from the killings occurring in Gujrat, Ghaza Strip or Kashmir? Indeed there’s a difference. There the non-Muslims are killers. Here Muslims are killing the Muslims.

Such acts of violence signify the deficient knowledge and hence the misinterpretation of Islam. The hate criminals fail to have a nodding acquaintance with the true spirit of Islam.

Anyone who studies Islam from its direct sources will be influenced by the truth that Islam is a religion of peace. When you open the Qur’an, the very first verse reads: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim meaning “In the name of God, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate.” The crystallization of the concept and precept is that Allah is God of Mercy and Compassion, and the Holy Qur’an is the book of mercy. If you go through the Qur’an, you will find that most verses, directly or indirectly, express the spirit of peace. For instance, there is a verse in the Qur’an: ‘And God calls to the home of peace’ (10:25). This signifies the eventual purpose of Islam is peace. Implicitly and explicitly Islam insists Muslims to be merciful and compassionate to their fellow citizens.

The principal to my dissertation is the idea based on pluralism in Islam. The Holy Qur’an says: "To each among you, have We prescribed a Law and an Open Way. And if God had enforced His Will, He would have made of you all one people" (5:48). This implies that hostile and biased attitude with other citizens is totally against Islamic behavior.

Once a man came to the Prophet (pbuh) and said, ‘O Prophet, give me a masterly piece of advice enabling me to manage all the affairs of my life.’ The Prophet replied: ‘Don’t be angry.’ According to another tradition, the Prophet (pbuh) once observed: ‘Don’t wish for confrontation with your enemy, instead always ask for peace from God.’ This indicates that peace is central to Islam.

In Islam, peaceful coexistence among citizens of the state is simply by dealing with them as citizens with no discrimination in any form. In the early days of the Islamic state, the Jews were recognized for their extreme hate and machinations against Islam. The Prophet (pbuh) nevertheless sustained immense compassion for them. Once a funeral passed by the Prophet (pbuh) and his companions. Muhammad (pbuh) immediately stood up in respect. The companions of the Prophet (pbuh) said, "It is a bier of a Jew." Muhammad (pbuh) replied, "Is it not a soul?" This illustrates that respect even your enemies. This is the fundamental norm in Islam.

Islam does not in anyway allow for the killing of any innocent soul. Verse 45:14 says: "Tell those who believe, to forgive those who do not look forward to the days of Allah: It is for Him to recompense (for good or ill) each people according to what they have earned."

Muslims are even encouraged to be kind to animals and are forbidden to hurt them. Once the Muhammad (pbuh) said: A woman was punished because she imprisoned a cat until it died. On account of this, she was doomed to Hell. While she imprisoned it, she did not give the cat food or drink, nor did she free it to eat the insects of the earth (Muslim and Bukhari).

In light of these and other Islamic texts, the act of inciting terror in the hearts of defenseless civilians, the wholesale destruction of buildings and properties, the bombing and maiming of innocent men, women, and children are all forbidden and detestable acts in Islam. Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness, and the vast majority has nothing to do with the violent events some have associated with Muslims. If an individual Muslim were to commit an act of terrorism, this person would be guilty of violating the laws of Islam.

Those with malevolent intentions, have internal problem. Instead of chastising others, they should have a gaze into their own self-conscious and kill the enemy of mankind deep in.

And finally a word about franchise. It is defined by three factors: the grant of trademark or rights, a prescribed marketing plan and payment of a franchise fee for the rights. Although franchise outlets signify US brands, they are developed with national investment. The brand owners only get their share for giving the right to use brands. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

The Wars of Future

From the strategic use of deceleration against a military apparatus, which relies on stepping up hostilities to the rediscovery of suicide as a threat to inter-change-based societies, the latest changes in the conduct of war are nearly always characterized by asymmetric strategies. It is therefore predictable that future wars will be predominantly asymmetric.

Asymmetrical warfare, the salient feature of the new wars, is based to a large extent on the different velocities at which the parties wage war on each other. Asymmetries of strength are based on a capacity for acceleration, which outstrips that of the enemy, whereas asymmetries of weakness are based on a readiness and ability to slow down the pace of the war. This strategy generally involves a considerable increase in the casualties suffered by one’s own side.

The dramatic superiority the US military apparatus has achieved over all potential enemies in the last two decades is largely due to its capacity to exploit the various opportunities for accelerating the pace at the different combat levels.

The future wars will hardly be a linear extension of the trends of the twentieth century. Greater material resources and a more advanced technological development alone will not automatically tip the scales between victory and defeat. The enormous superiority of the United States in military technology is no guarantee that the USA will emerge victorious from all the wars it seems ever more ready to wage.

It will be an asymmetrical competition between high-tech and low-tech weapons. Since 9/11 we are aware that mere box cutter’s knives, if used to hijack airliners so as to crash them into buildings and cities, can serve to shake a superpower to its foundations. In that case, however, it was not deceleration alone, which enabled the terrorist operatives to attack the USA but a combination of speed and slowness. The infrastructures of the side attacked were exploited by a clandestine group, which was able to go about preparing the attacks quietly and calmly, and then turned aircraft into rockets and jet fuel into explosive.

Current trends suggest that in future large sections of the population may well see their sole chance in waging wars and emerging successful. Growing environmental risks, such as water shortages, increasing desertification and rising sea levels; a greater global inequality in the distribution of consumer goods, in educational opportunities and in living conditions; the imbalance in demographic rates and the related waves of migration; the instability of the international financial markets and the dwindling ability of States to control their own currency and economy; and, finally, in some parts of the world, the rapid disintegration of States — all these are sufficient grounds for assuming that many people will see violent change rather than peaceful development as a better chance to assure their future. Thus the use of force for a better future will become the key element of their political reasoning and they will be ready not only to fight for vital resources but also to begin asymmetrical wars with superior adversaries.

Precisely because of their advanced socio-economic development, these superior adversaries are themselves highly vulnerable and, however great their military superiority, they cannot eliminate this vulnerability. The aim of the US in its various projects to establish a missile defense system is to make itself invulnerable. Such missile defense systems are of course no longer directed against the Soviet Union but against enemies who, though small and relatively weak, pose a serious threat through their possession of nuclear warheads and a few delivery systems. In principle, war has become not only politically but also economically unattractive for the developed countries. The costs outweigh the returns.

Most of the wars with warlords are not fought by well-equipped armies but by the hastily recruited militias of tribal chiefs or heads of clans, plus the armed followers of warlords and the like. Above all, the weapons used in the new wars are cheap — small arms, automatic rifles, anti-personnel mines and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks.

Two factors play a crucial part in the emergence of the new wars: the ability to finance them from the flows of goods and capital generated by globalization and, more important still, the fact that they have become cheap to wage.

The future wars will be fought only partly by soldiers and, for the most part, will no longer be directed against military objectives. Civilian targets are now taking the place of military objectives in many areas, starting with towns and villages overrun and despoiled by militia leaders and warlords and extending to the symbols of political and economic might that were targeted by terrorist commandos on 9/11. Even the means used to carry out these attacks are less and less of a genuinely military nature.

The term civil war is the symmetrical opposite of the term international war; the asymmetrical antonym is transnational war, i.e. one in which the boundaries drawn by the States no longer play a role. This type of war crosses national borders without being waged as a war between States. It is characterized by a constant switching of friends and foes and by a breakdown of the institutional authorities (such as the military and the police) responsible for ordering and having recourse to the use of force. In this context, acts of war and criminality become indistinguishable and the war drags on with no prospect of a peace accord to end it.

The future wars to a large extent will not be waged with massive firepower and tremendous military capabilities. They will tend to go on smoldering with no clear beginning or end, while the dividing line between the warring parties on the one hand and international organized crime on the other will become more and more blurred. For this reason, some people are already disputing the fact that such situations do indeed constitute war. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Perishing from Earth

As in the experience of all other civilizations it can be with us if we do not recognize the principles for survival. If we failed to learn from history and recognize the future trends we will eventually go back into darkness from whence we came, and we the people will perish from the earth.

If you retrace your thoughts back to where there were those old civilizations, some five or six thousand years ago, the Egyptians, you will find that they were very intelligent, highly advanced but through corruption, selfishness, prejudice and moral degradation went into the debris of ancient history. We, in this advanced civilization, are representing similar predilections, can also follow the same destiny and go back into the dark-age from whence we came.

Egyptian civilization has been forgotten. It went down, not just mentally, scientifically, intellectually, but also physically, to let us see and know that those who go down mentally and do not alter their ways also go down physically.

After the Independence, we lost our vision, transformed into one of the corrupt nations worldwide, all the nasty crimes once akin to the West are now dominating our national life, and last but not the least each individual of Pakistan seems to be on the looting binge. Instead of contributing our role in nation building, we started pillaging our own land. When we are nurturing the same traits that caused extinction of Egyptian Civilization, why then our destiny would be any different?

The societies that sustain physically, mentally, and otherwise are those which undergo a series of divergences in development, much like the branching of a tree. The dynamic people are those who are responsive to issues, essentially open, fast paced, balanced, and tend to survive and prosper on a fairly reliable basis. Problems come to them, but they usually manage to work them out.

The struggling society of Pakistan, contrarily, outdoes the people in narrow areas of endeavor from time to time, and becoming more retarded in overall development as time goes by.

Outwardly, we are a developing society. But like a muscular athlete with a terminal cancer, a disease is eating away at us from the inside. A well-balanced nation cannot be destroyed from the outside until it falls first from the inside.

No matter how well we might arm ourselves against enemies outside our borders, we need to primarily identify the more detrimental enemy. And this greatest enemy is none else but us, who place destructive devices inside our destructive minds, causing us to morally implode, like an imploding building.

Ever since independence in 1947, we have experienced a complete abandonment of our sense of good and evil. The true crisis of our time has nothing to do with monetary troubles, unemployment, or terrorism. The true crisis has to do with the fact that we have lost our way.

If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out. But if you place the frog in a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, the relaxed frog will just swim around, growing accustomed to the increasing warmth until it eventually boils to death. This is what is happening to us and our cultural decay. It is a gradual process that slowly dulls our senses until what was once seen as unacceptable somehow becomes acceptable.

After the death of Quaid-e-Azam, we have allowed corruption to creep into our society as a way of life. Thus, we have become desensitized to corruption and our moral judgment is impaired. Even worse, at each step along the way, we eliminated Islamic injunctions from our lives and culture.

What will remain of civilization and history if the accumulated influence of Islam, both direct and indirect, is eradicated from literature, art, practical dealings, moral standards, and creativeness in the different activities of mind and spirit?

Consequently, a flood of immorality, corruption and violence has entered into our national life, and we have unfortunately been recognized as a culture of death from the womb to the streets. Many of our young people have no concept of the true spirit of Islam and are connoting falsely to satisfy their political agendas. Hence, many are tragically engaged in dying or killing the innocents. A sense of hopelessness prevails, a feeling of fear surrounds.

We have forgotten our true nature, divinity, because scientifically it cannot be proved! We are ignorant of true purpose of life. Values like solidarity, natural love, forbearance, compassion, generosity, and altruism do not find any place independent of an 'individual'.

The culture shows signs of degeneration into lawlessness, disease, and want on one hand, and affluence and sense gratification of wanton degree on the other. With this decline in cultural values, ethical values are also eroded. Not one particular field is afflicted with this 'virus of corruption'; all departments of human interaction show the same trend. It is difficult to find an isolated island of purity in the sea of corruption all around.

Ethics is the reflection of cultural health of the society. In course of evolution of human societies, man creates progressive cultural and moral ethos. But then a stage comes when cultural growth slows down for want of fresh ideas. Consequently ethics also remain a mere shadow of its own previous glory. However, when matter is worshiped as supreme and privileges are sought after, ethical decline is not a surprise. The remedy lies in adding spiritual dimension to existing culture and in course evolving a new moral and ethical code for coming generations. Time is still not gone. We can learn lessons from Egyptian civilization or else face extinction. Choice is only ours. (www.asifjmir.com)