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5 REASONS KIDNAPPING OF PAKISTANI ACTIVISTS MATTERS TO YOU

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An article shared by Dr.Ehtesham

From The clarion project

5 Reasons Kidnapping of Pakistani Activists Matters to You

Up to nine secular activists have disappeared in Pakistan as families scramble for news. Here’s why their disappearances matters.
BY ELLIOT FRIEDLANDPrintEmail

Demonstrators demanding the recovery of missing activist Salman Haider outside the Karachi Press Club.

Over the weekend, several prominent Pakistani activists disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Activists from Pakistan are speculating that the government is behind the spate of disappearances in which at least four but possibly up to nine activists were kidnapped. Supporters of the missing activists have taken to the streets to demand they are recovered. They are sharing messages of support on social media using #RecoverSalmanHaider and #RecoverAllActivists.

Here are five reasons we should all care about what’s happening in Pakistan:

 These are the people fighting against the ideology of extremism

Pakistan is a large country which in the past has sheltered radical Islamist groups such as the Taliban. It’s where Osama bin Laden was able to hide out for years before he was finally brought to justice. One of the two founding fathers of modern extremist Islam, Abu A’la Maududi, was Pakistani.

Yet there is a growing movement of secularists in Pakistan who are struggling against the extremism within their country and who want to make Pakistan a better place. If they succeed, what we will see coming out of Pakistan is more and more educated integrated anti-extremist Muslims and less and less extremists affiliated with groups like the Taliban.

This will have a knock-on impact internationally and will reduce the amount of extremism in the world, including the amount of extremism in the United States. Their success will protect those who value secularism as a way of life around the world

If the activists currently disappearing in Pakistan are wiped out, Pakistan will become more extreme which will lead to the Muslim world in general becoming more extreme.

 Pakistan Has Nuclear Weapons

Pakistan just tested a nuclear-capable missile from a submarine. This development reportedly gives Pakistan second-strike capabilities, meaning that even if the country is wiped out by a nuclear strike, Pakistan would be able to respond by firing nuclear warheads from strategically-placed submarines.

If a country with such capabilities eliminates all its secularly-minded and rational thinkers and becomes completely overcome by theocratic Islamist ideology, then this nuclear arsenal will be in the hands of Islamist extremists.

That would be a serious national security risk to the United States of America.

 Other Countries Will Follow Suit

If the persecution of secularist and anti-extremist activist continues in Pakistan unabated and without significant international opposition, other countries will take note. Pakistan is a U.S. ally and the beneficiary of significant sums of aid money for decades. Last year, President Obama proposed $860 million in aid to Pakistan, which was a significant drop in the aid usually provided by the United States.

If America or other countries which have relations with Pakistan do nothing to stand up for the rights of secularists in Pakistan, countries such as Turkey and Indonesia will take note. The Turkish parliament is currently discussing increased powers for the Islamist President Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Indonesia is currently putting the governor of Jakarta (a non-Muslim) on trial for alleged blasphemy.

These countries may see America’s failure to protect secularism in Pakistan as a green light to persecute activists in their own countries.

 Refugees Will Increase

 A Free Pakistan Will Have A Stronger Economy

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5 Reasons Kidnapping of Pakistani Activists Matters to You

“THE ERASURE OF ISLAM FROM THE POETRY OF RUMI” By Rozina Ali

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This article was shared by Nasik Elahi. A worth reading article about how systematically references to Isalm were excluded from the translations of Rumi’s poetry by Western scholars.f.sheikh

A couple of years ago, when Coldplay’s Chris Martin was going through a divorce from the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and feeling down, a friend gave him a book to lift his spirits. It was a collection of poetry by Jalaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet, translated by Coleman Barks. “It kind of changed my life,” Martin said later, in an interview. A track from Coldplay’s most recent album features Barks reciting one of the poems: “This being human is a guest house / Every morning a new arrival / A joy, a depression, a meanness, / some momentary awareness comes / as an unexpected visitor.”

Rumi has helped the spiritual journeys of other celebrities—Madonna, Tilda Swinton—some of whom similarly incorporated his work into theirs. Aphorisms attributed to Rumi circulate daily on social media, offering motivation. “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever get polished,” one of them goes. Or, “Every moment I shape my destiny with a chisel. I am a carpenter of my own soul.” Barks’s translations, in particular, are shared widely on the Internet; they are also the ones that line American bookstore shelves and are recited at weddings. Rumi is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States. He is typically referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man. Curiously, however, although he was a lifelong scholar of the Koran and Islam, he is less frequently described as a Muslim.

The words that Martin featured on his album come from Rumi’s “Masnavi,” a six-book epic poem that he wrote toward the end of his life. Its fifty thousand lines are mostly in Persian, but they are riddled with Arabic excerpts from Muslim scripture; the book frequently alludes to Koranic anecdotes that offer moral lessons. (The work, which some scholars consider unfinished, has been nicknamed the Persian Koran.) Fatemeh Keshavarz, a professor of Persian studies at the University of Maryland, told me that Rumi probably had the Koran memorized, given how often he drew from it in his poetry. Rumi himself described the “Masnavi” as “the roots of the roots of the roots of religion”—meaning Islam—“and the explainer of the Koran.” And yet little trace of the religion exists in the translations that sell so well in the United States. “The Rumi that people love is very beautiful in English, and the price you pay is to cut the culture and religion,” Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of early Sufism at Rutgers, told me recently.

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Coke Studio

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In a country like Pakistan, where extremism is tearing apart the cultural fabric of society, Coca-Cola is helping to foster the new breed of musicians, from classic to folk music. It is interesting merge of corporate interest and art in the form of Coke Studio. Coca cola is expanding this joint venture worldwide. Worth reading history of Coke Studio below. (f sheikh) 

In 2006, Coca-Cola approached Rohail Hyatt, a Pakistani musician and producer, with an offer he couldn’t refuse: we’ll pay for you to make a live-music show for television. Don’t worry about the money – just do whatever it takes to ensnare the ears and thus the hearts and minds of Pakistanis everywhere.

Hyatt didn’t disappoint. The first season of “Coke Studio”, which aired in 2008, was received with enthusiasm; subsequent seasons with adulation. The show takes viewers inside the recording studio to watch a diverse range of musicians – young and old, rich and poor, Punjabi and Pushtun – perform songs that put Pakistan’s different musical traditions in conversation with each other: devotional Sufi music with pop, traditional monsoon melodies with rock. When “Coke Studio” first aired, the country was in crisis. Benazir Bhutto had recently been assassinated and thousands of people were being killed every year in terrorist attacks and sectarian incidents. The country was tearing itself apart. But for an hour every week, “Coke Studio”, in its own small way, stitched the nation back together again.

“Coke Studio” continues to be a roaring success. According to Coca-Cola, each season since 2010 has been viewed, at least in part, by 90% of Pakistanis who own a TV. Coca-Cola is so confident about “Coke Studio” that it has adapted the format for 24 other countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa (including some of the biggest: India, Indonesia, Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria).

This isn’t beginner’s luck. For almost as long as the company has existed, Coca-Cola has used music to sell its products. In 1899 Hilda Clark, a dance-hall singer, serenaded the drink in an ad and, in the late 1960s, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and many other pop luminaries wrote radio jingles for the company. But over the last decade, Coca-Cola has deepened its commitment to music and is now a major player in the industry. A year after “Coke Studio” first aired, it launched Coca-Cola FM, a music-streaming website in Latin America. In 2012, the company announced a “global strategic partnership” with Spotify. YouTube, Spotify and other streaming services act as gatekeepers to music; now Coca-Cola does too.

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