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While I have no desire to order cheap medicines from Canada that will not only make Casanova burn with envy in his grave but instantly cure the schizophrenia that, unknown to even myself, I have all along been suffering from, one thing I can’t ignore is someone assuring me that not only can I become a millionaire, but I already am a millionaire, thanks to a lottery in which I have never taken part.

Ah! the pleasures of email. Everyday, for the past year or more, I have been bombarded with messages from Africa, and lately from Europe, informing me that I have just won a million dollars and all I have to do is get in touch with a certain gentleman — sometimes a lady — so that necessary formalities can be completed for remitting the money to my bank account. Since I am one of those people who never win at games of chance — even my late friend Nasir Ahmed Farooki failed to change my luck at London’s roulette and black jack tables — I am naturally a bit sceptical about my raking in millions of dollars every day. Or am I really? Should I not immediately repair to the nearest branch of the Citibank and demand to meet their top-dog money manager. Who knows where that connection may lead? One can dream, can’t one?

Most notifications of my extraordinary luck come from Africa which is more in need of luck than any other spot on earth, but I suppose those folks are generous to a fault. Here is one from Rev Bar J Williams, solicitor and personal attorney to Mr Kenneth Giggs, who, I am assured, is a “national of your country” (I have never heard of him but then there are so many others I never heard of and look where they have got to), who worked in the Nigerian oil industry. The Nigerian Reverend informs me that Mr Giggs, he is sad to say, died along with his family in a car accident. Since that tragedy, the Reverend has made several attempts to get in touch with a member of his family and he is relieved to have at last found me. All he wants me to do is to help him transfer Mr Giggs’s money abroad before the government confiscates it in the next 14 days. My deceased kin, I am told, left behind $28.8 million of which I can have 30 per cent if I help.

Writes the Reverend, “For God sake, I have all necessary legal documents that can be used to back up any claim we may make anywhere. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. I am willing to give you a reasonable percentage (30 per cent) of this money at the conclusion of the transaction. Furnish me with your contact telephone and fax numbers as soon as possible. I will be looking forward to doing business with you and I do solicit your confidentiality in this transaction.” I have missed one more chance of making a few cool millions because I know that to net in those millions, I will first have to send a “processing fee” to the Reverend, after which he will fly heavenwards and never be heard of again. And to think that he is a man of the cloth! Tut, tut!

But that is not the only piece of good news I received this week. Here is one from Microsoft Lottery NL in Amsterdam that I am sure will come as something of a surprise to Bill Gates. It seems I have won one million Euros, thanks to a computer lottery, which I do not remember having taken part in. My funds, I am told, are now deposited with the “paying-out bank” and all I have to do is to keep this information secret and respond to this message. I am told that is necessary to “avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants/non-participants of this programme.” The email is signed by Harvey Kurt of Amsterdam. I have also won 1.55 million Euros through Lotteria de Laprimitiva, Madrid, and my money is now lying with a security company. All I am required to do is to get in touch with Dr Jose Ferrari Gonzale (whose other name no doubt is Speedy Gonzale). Clueless that I am, I have done nothing of the kind. On second thought, I think I will go and make that visit to Citibank. Who knows?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Is the Subcontinent destined to or, at least, prone to be ruled by dynasties? Inder Malhotra certainly thinks so and so sure is he of his thesis that he has published a book on just that. He calls it ‘Dynasties of India and Beyond.’ For those who may wonder how the book applies to us should know that we, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, when you are sitting in New Delhi, are seen as “the beyond.”

Inder Malhotra, one of India’s most eminent journalists and editors, is originally one of us – though he seldom takes a kind look at Pakistan when it comes to security and Kashmir – being from Emanabad which lies midway between Lahore and the city of wrestlers and good, non-nonsense food, Gujranwala. It is also one city not founded on the banks of a river, but then that is understandable as its founders were our soul brothers, the Sikhs.

Inder Malhotra, who in all further references will be known as IM (which was how Nadaan Nadira, aka Lady Naipaul, used to refer to her to gentleman farmer husband Iqbal Mustafa in her ‘Letter from Bahawalpur’), believes that while the masses love dynasties, which is why they vote for them, no matter how discredited, again and again, the middle classes, to which I would add, the elite, do not. So much the fool they then. The three ladies of the Subcontinent, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Shaikh Hasina, he names “roaring tigresses.” Unlike in India, I should remind him, tigers and tigeresses are not a protected species in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just look what happened to Benazir and Hasina, both out in the cold, though one day, their millions of ardent followers believe, they would be back. However, once they take office they are more like lambs than tigresses, and we all know what happens to lambs in these carnivorous states. It will warm the cockles of Bibi’s heart though to read, “Benazir is still young, having just turned fifty, and has time on her side. Military rulers are neither immortal nor infallible. Her moment might yet come.”

There is of course the Nehru dynasty in India – when the book was published, it was the BJP that ruled India – and the dynasties in Bangladesh (Sheikh Mujib’s and Gen. Ziaur Rehman’s) and Sri Lanka. IM quotes from Raja Anwar’s book on Al Zulfikar – The Terrorist Prince – which the writer of these lines translated from Urdu into English, to stress that certain similarities exist between the two political dynasties of India and Pakistan, the Gandhis and the Bhuttos. Raja Anwar wrote, lines that IM describes as both “pertinent and instructive” that “republican democracy in the entire subcontinent is still at war with an older, feudal tradition that requires latter-day kings and queens, princes and princesses, who sometimes pay with their lives for the sake and dominance of their political ambition.” IM also credits Raja Anwar with having had the astuteness to write of Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to accept the party’s presidency soon after Rajiv’s death, “But ‘never say never’, Sonia or her progeny could well reappear one day in the power equation of India.” However Raja Anwar’s prescient instincts get short-circuited when he is asked what lies in store for us in Pakistan. He just looks heavenwards and sighs.

Did Jawaharlal Nehru groom Indira to be prime minister of India. There are those like D.P. Mishra, an astute politician from Madhya Pradesh, who claimed that the “strategy evolved by Nehru from 1954-55 was to groom his daughter for prime ministership.” There are others who disagree. The same holds true for Benazir. She has said that her father prepared her for a life in politics and she is the true and intended inheritor of his mantle. I have Yousuf Buch’s word to the contrary. Bush was ZAB’s special assistant for information and the two had known one another from ZAB’s days as Ayub’s foreign minister a the United Nations. Buch told me that one day ZAB, to his surprise, talked to him about Benazir and the hopes he had for her future. ZAB said, “She is young, beautiful and intelligent. Politics is rough in this society. It is a hard life. I want her to get married to a nice young man and have children. I don’t want the rough and tumble of politics for her.” One of the ideas he had was that she should go into foreign service and marry a colleague and surely both of them could be based in the same country when on a foreign posting. ZAB died and fate had other things in store for Benazir. Ironically, much of what ZAB feared came to pass. Her sufferings continue.

IM’s dynasties include the Bandarnaikes of Sri Lanka, the Abdullah dynasty in Kashmir – which is now ended and no tears were shed when it did – and even the Kapoor movie industry dynasty of Bombay which has been a stellar presence in show business for four generations, starting with Prithviraj. IM writes that in Pakistan, the Sharif dynasty “fell by the wayside, abruptly and sadly, even before it had properly taken off.” He places the blame for this “squarely on Nawaz’s own shoulders”. According to him, “Arrogance of power was his undoing as it has been that of many despots in many countries … He proceeded to subvert all institutions that underpin democracy … Nawaz suborned the Supreme Court by means that were scandalous beyond measure.” This is a reference to the storming of the Supreme Court by a bunch of thugs that included Tariq Aziz the TV auctioneer, Akhtar Rasool, the hockey player, and several others, some of whom later said that they were there not to attack the Court but to avert anything seriously untoward from happening. “His police looked the other way when his goons went on a rampage (in the Court premises), IM continues. “Next he (MNS) resorted to the traditional technique of divide and rule.”

I think, IM is somewhat harsh in his portrayal of the Nawaz government. MNS did have a penchant for power but he was essentially a populist, not a cold-blooded dictator as IM makes him out to be. Some unspeakably horrible things happened during his time, such as the siege of the Jang Group of Newspapers, and the brutal and illegal arrest and humiliation of journalists like Najam Sethi and Husain Haqqani. I may be digressing but in my book for a cricket lover Like MNS to hand over Pakistan cricket to that rogue Saifur Rehman’s witless brother Mujib (who, had he stayed, would have changed the national cricket logo) is not easy to forget or forgive.

But to return to Inder Malhotra’s dynasties, how does he see the future of the Nehru dynasty? “In India, there is likely to be an important change in the pattern that has prevailed in the past. While more state-specific dynasties may spring up, no all India dynasty is likely to appear on the scene and the hold of even the once formidable Nehru-Gandhis looks like declining,” he writes.

And what about Pakistan? Hard to say, but if I were a betting man, I would place my money on Army League. That is the dynasty to beat all dynasties.

Travel broadens the mind; it also cuts you to size these days and puts you in your place if you are Muslim or have a Muslim-sounding name or bear what are euphemistically called in America, Middle Eastern looks, which takes care of all Pakistanis, though we are about as Middle Eastern as the Finns are camel drivers.

In the last few months, I have travelled out of Washington thrice, which means I have had to go through the indignity of being subjected to special attention by those who man this country’s entry points. On the first two occasions, I was returning from Europe. Both times, while others in the line were let in without being cross examined or asked to stand aside, I was not accorded the same treatment. Both times, after the usual questions about how long I had stayed away, where I had gone and why, what I did and where I resided, my passport was placed in a red folder (I would have preferred the other folder which was blue since I like that colour better) and asked to follow the official who had questioned me to a separate room where at least four men sat behind glass panels on a raised platform. Those of us who had been brought in sat lower down. It struck me as a psychological ploy to lower the defences of those held back which is natural when you have to physically look up to those who are going to decide if you are fit to be admitted. I noticed that all those in the room, without a single exception, were men and women with “Middle Eastern” looks. I also assumed that they were of the same religion as Mr Osama bin Laden, who is not exactly one of my favourite people.

The wait wasn’t long on either occasion but the questions were all in the same suspicion-laden vein. Both times, I was cleared to go, and both times, the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Some months ago, while checking in for a flight to Los Angeles, I was told that there was a block against my name. Why? “That is all I can say,” came the answer. I was told to stand aside, and I stood aside. Fifteen or so minutes later, a uniformed gentleman appeared, took a good look at me, then got busy on a phone with someone somewhere and apparently was told in the end to “lift the block.” I boarded the flight; the day was nice but I didn’t feel that nice myself.

Last weekend, after having spent four days in Toronto, I had friends drive me to the Lester Pearson airport. After more than an hour in a line that snaked around those roped passageways that have come to be a common feature at all airports, I presented my passport to a US immigration official (immigration processing for those travelling from Canada to the US takes place in Canada). After wanting to know what I was “doing in these parts,” he told me to go straight and turn right. When I pointed out that everyone else was turning left, he replied, “But you turn right,” which I did. I found myself in a large room with a couple of desks, on one of which sat a uniformed US immigration official who asked me questions that are now standard when it comes to “the usual suspects.” Thereafter, he took my passport to another room, while asking me to take a chair, which my aching legs were grateful for. He returned in about ten minutes and asked if I had any other identifying documents. I wondered what they did to those who had none. However, as it was, I had my Virginia driving licence and my State Department press accreditation card. He took both of them from me and returned to wherever he had gone before. Before long, he came back, handed me back my papers and said, “You can go.”

Before doing so, I asked him what I had done to qualify for such special attention. He replied that my name had had to be checked against certain lists. What those lists were, he did not say, nor did I ask because after all haven’t the wise said, “Do not argue with a man in uniform, be it in Pakistan, the United States or Canada.” I will spare the reader the searches I had to undergo, including a thorough going over of my single bag, which was also X-rayed and sealed with a strip. Welcome to the USA.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The star-crossed piece of land once known as the state of Jammu and Kashmir exists no more, divided as it is between India, Pakistan and China. The entities known as Azad Kashmir and the one based in Srinagar I do not list, since they are no more than fig leaves for the two contenders. While the one on the Indian side is as strife-torn as the West Bank, the one on this side, its trappings of a head of state and government and an assembly notwithstanding, is run by the general officer commanding the division based in Murree, and has been for years. Not only that, a general who had been in uniform just a week earlier, was installed and sworn in as president. In Pakistan, those who should be sworn at are sworn in.

Everyone is obsessed with Kashmir, which has come to mean the valley. But how many have actually ever taken a look at a map of the state? When Kargil happened, most Pakistanis, including some in decision-making positions, thought it was just a stone’s throw from Srinagar. No wonder then what happened happened. None of the “Kashmiri leaders” on our side has so much as set foot in the valley. The only one who had, who spoke the language, though it was not his mother tongue, and was admired across the ceasefire line was KH Khurshid, but since he is dead, none of the present “Kashmiri” wheeler dealers need worry. We have gone hoarse calling for the freedom of Kashmir, but what freedom have we offered the Kashmiris? Martial law after martial law after martial law, sometimes declared, sometimes undeclared, but martial law all the same.

All this is known, at least to those who think and care. What is less known if not entirely forgotten today is the decimation of the Muslims of Jammu city and province in 1947. On a certain day in November every year the survivors of Jammu and their children remember their dead, but as time passes and memories dim those who gather on that day get fewer and fewer in number. Some years from now the fate of the Muslims of Jammu will have been entirely erased from the memory of the living.

Being from Jammu myself, it had long been my effort that those who remembered the city and life there before the 1947 holocaust should reduce their memories to writing. I didn’t have much luck. Those who could write, didn’t – or perhaps they did not want to relive the days that lay buried in the past. In the end, I published, with the help of RU Rad, a true son of Jammu and its most eloquent chronicler, a slim volume. It was first published in Urdu and then, at the publisher, Niaz Ahmed’s suggestion, in English, the task of translation having fallen to me.

Here are some glimpses of that vanished city. Writes Rad, “Jammu is only 22 miles from Sialkot, where most Jammu refugees came to settle, and yet it could be a million miles away. On any clear evening, the Jammu city lights can be seen from the ancient Sialkot fort, glimmering in the distance like fireflies. Spread out like Rome on seven low hillocks of the great Shivalick Range, it extended from north to south in an undulating spread. During the summer nights, a cool breeze would rise from the east around 10 pm which we called ‘dhidoo.’” Rad writes, “Khuda Bux’s band was the only one the city had and it served all communities. Among the Hindus, the custom is that when an elderly man dies, he is carried on his last journey with the cortege led by musicians. On such occasions, it was Khuda Bux’s band that did the honours. For the Khuda Bux band, there was little difference between a wedding and a funeral because it played the same music, made up of popular movie hits of the day.”

Jammu’s Urdu Bazaar was also the women’s quarter. That was where Malika Pukhraj lived with her family. Rad reminisces, “When we were college students, three of the girls from the quarter were the toast of the city because of their beauty and talent. They were Iqbal or Bali, Mumtaz or Taji and Zamurrad … After partition, Taji and Zamurrad found refuge in Sialkot and one can only call it an irony of fate that those were always thronged by legions of admirers now found themselves unable to find even one person to provide them with two square meals a day. Taji married a good-for-nothing character from Jammu, while Zamurrad married a butcher by the name of Mohamad Hussain who took her to Jhelum. After a few years, there was a divorce … The great upheaval of 1947 scattered them all like grains of sand in the path of a strong wind.”

My sister Sorayya Khurshid remembers Jammu in the summer. “Summer mornings and evenings were always very beautiful in Jammu. The sun would rise in a blue sky and light up this city of green hills and sharply edged rocks and stones. As the morning would make way for noon, the heat would become intense, but by evening it would be cooler … Glow-worms would appear in droves and twinkle in the dark like stars. Sometimes there would be so many of them that the air would glow with them as far as the eye could see.”

Dr Aziz Kash, who has practised in Lahore’s Samanabad for the last forty years, writes: “What was Jammu’s magic that we feel drawn back to it though so many years have passed? Maybe it was the great fellow feeling that existed among its people. It did not matter what caste, family, tribe or clan one belonged to: we treated one another as if we were members of the same family. We were together when it was time to mourn or celebrate. The people of Jammu were genuinely nice and never said what they did not mean. They were simple and affectionate.”

The last word should remain with the late Justice Mohammad Yusuf Saraf, whose authoritative history of the freedom movement in the State contains a section based on interviews on the massacre of 200,000 Jammu Muslims. Dr Abdul Karim Malik, who died recently in Sialkot, lost 26 members of his family. GK Reddy, a journalist from Madras who edited a newspaper in Srinagar, witnessed the Jammu killings. He wrote, “The mad orgy of Dogra violence against unarmed Muslims should put every self-respecting human being to shame. I saw armed bands of ruffians and soldiers shooting down and hacking to pieces helpless Muslim refugees heading towards Pakistan. My pain and agony were heightened by what I saw at the village of Rajpura where the State officials and military officers were directing a huge armed mob against a Muslim refugee convoy and got it hacked to pieces.” From his hotel room in Jammu, he counted 24 villages burning one night, and heard automatic weapons being fired at those who had taken refuge in makeshift city camps.

All that and more happened 57 years ago, but those who promise a solution of the Kashmir “problem” every other day would do well to remember the hundreds of thousands who died while marching towards freedom, and those who have grown old, tired and disillusioned waiting for that freedom.

If you have ever wondered what keeps America going, it is humour. The 9/11 Commission may have delivered its dire report on what happened, the mayhem in Iraq may be showing no sign of ending, the New York stock exchange may be going up and down like a yo-yo, half the jobs across the country may have been exported to India and bus fares may have gone up, none of that matters to late night TV talk show hosts who dutifully make fun of anything and everything considered sacrosanct.

This being the presidential election year, the late night joke industry is zeroed in on President Bush and John Kerry. The two big late night show hosts are Jay Leno and David Letterman. There are also the somewhat minor luminaries of this circuit, like Conan O’Brien and Craig Kilburn. What they have in common is one thing: they are very funny, in fact, very, very funny.

Here is Jay Leno a day after both Bush and Kerry were seen campaigning in the state of Iowa. “Yesterday in Davenport, Iowa, while President Bush and John Kerry were giving campaign speeches, they had three bank robberies. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that unbelievable. Hey, you let Washington politicians into your town, you will attract the wrong element. Luckily, both Bush and Kerry have been ruled out as suspects. You see, because of his wife, Kerry does not need the money. And come on, nobody believes Bush is smart enough to pull off this kind of job.” The crowd that had gathered in an Iowa cornfield where Kerry had gone, thought for the first 30 minutes that he was a scarecrow, Leno informed his audience.

When it turned out that the intelligence that became the basis of the latest “orange alert” was three to four years old, the talk show hosts had a field day. Here is Leno, “Do you know what happened on this day four years ago? Whatever it was, the Department of Homeland Security just found out about it today.” The next night he said he could not wait until 2008 to find out what was going on now. On Kerry’s appearance, Leno had a winner. “When Kerry is on the reservation, he will go by his Indian name, Long Face.” A toy company came out with Bush and Kerry dolls and, according to Leno, “the John Kerry head is huge, the George Bush head is empty.”

Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose ‘shove it’ remark has made her a byword for shooting one’s mouth off, according to Conan O’Brien, is being approached on the campaign trail and being asked to keep speaking her mind. Not surprisingly, he adds, those doing so all work for the Bush campaign. Craig Kilburn said Kerry had slapped a campaign sticker on his bus, when he should have put one over his wife’s mouth. Leno said one night, “President Bush said today he will invade Iran the minute he has evidence that his approval rating is below 45 per cent.” When Homeland Security announced that terrorists planned to hit major financial institutions, Kerry shipped his wife to an “undisclosed location”, quipped Leno. Here is Letterman on the terror alert: “We are on high terrorist alert here in New York city. You picked a nice time to come here on vacation, didn’t you? Where are you going next? Fallujah?”

Letterman on Kerry’s healthcare plan: “According to his daughter, John Kerry once gave CPR to a drowning hamster. So you see, he does have a healthcare plan.” And Leno on Bush, “President Bush is back in Washington DC. That’s where he goes when he wants to get away from the Texas ranch for a couple of weeks.” Leno on the Republican presidential team: “Bush and Cheney have a new campaign theme, ‘Heart and Soul’. Sounded a lot better than their first choice, ‘Oil and Gas.’” When Kerry told the Democratic convention that he was “reporting for duty”, according to Leno, President Bush ordered, “Great, send him to Iraq”. On Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Boston Convention, here is Kilburn, “It’s the first time he’s ever said ‘I do’ and get no money”. Leno said the new Republican slogan for Bush was “Four more wars, four more wars.”

Kerry criticised Bush for just sitting there for seven minutes reading a story called ‘My Pet Goat’ to third graders after he was told of the first 9/11 attack in New York. He declared that in his place he would have told the children that he had something important to go to and left. Leno’s take was, “If Kerry had been reading, first he would have had to wake ‘em up.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The arrests in Albany, upstate New York, of two Muslims, one a Kurd, the other a Bangladeshi in a sting operation on August 4-5, are typical of the paranoia that has gripped the United States since the 9/11 attacks. The establishment, at breakneck speed, by the Bush administration of the behemoth called the Department of Homeland Security may have made this country safer, but it has not made Americans feel more secure. If all that orange alert in New York and Washington, based on intelligence that in some cases was four years old, was to produce the arrest of two poor Muslims in a small town in New York, then it amounts to digging up a mountain to get at a mouse.

The two arrests marked the culmination of a year-long sting operation that looks more like entrapment than the exposure of some grand conspiracy. According to court papers filed on August 5, the two men were part of a plot to purchase a shoulder-fired missile that was to be used to assassinate the Pakistani ambassador in New York. If that indeed was what the men, one a 34 year-old Kurd with a wife and three small children, and the other a 49 year-old Bangladeshi-American, were planning to do, why would they have needed a stinger missile to kill the Pakistani ambassador? In America, thanks to the powerful gun lobby and the millions who confuse gun ownership with patriotism, buying a gun is as easy as tying up your shoelaces. If the object of the hit was to be Munir Akram, Pakistan’s permanent UN representative, would the two men, one with a flowing beard, have marched down Fifth Avenue carrying a Stinger missile on their shoulder so that the whole world could see them? Would they have been able to walk three steps without having half of the New York City police jump on them?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington was the first Muslim advocacy group to react to the bizarre case. It called the arrests a “deeply troubling” development that must not be used to associate all American Muslims with violence: “The government’s allegations against the two men are deeply troubling to the American Muslim community. All too often, these types of cases are used by those with political or religious agendas to smear Muslims and to demonise Islam. We should stick to the facts of the case and avoid generalisations and stereotypes that only serve to create societal divisions and promote anti-Muslim bigotry.” On the other hand, the arrest of a man with a truckload of fertiliser that he thought was ammonium nitrate with which he wanted blow up the Chicago federal courthouse attracted no media attention at all.

This is one side of the picture. Now let us take the other. Here is Dr Israr Ahmad, chief of the Tanzeem-e-Islami, Pakistan, who said in Peshawar on August 3 that the Jews and the Protestants had jointly started preparing for a “final crusade” against the Muslims whom they considered the biggest threat to their interests in the world. He told the Khyber Union of Journalists (which surely needs to explain its choice of speaker) that “the Jews and the Protestants” (Catholics please note that you are not among Dr Israr Ahmed’s bad guys) wanted to occupy the world’s economic resources and make the rest of the world work for their business cartels. “The Jews have an agenda of establishing a Greater Israel that could include the River Dajla, the fertile lands of Egypt, the holy city of Madina and the Western part of Turkey,” he thundered. The Jews, according to the doctor, also wanted to demolish Al Quds in Jerusalem and build their Third Temple on the site. By the way, Dr Ahmad has a degree in medicine that he never used, which is just as well; – he would no doubt have done to his patients what he is doing to his flock. The Jews, he said, are being helped by the United States in this enterprise. The Jews and Americans (as if there were no Jewish Americans), he added, consider Islam the only threat to their interests and, therefore, they want to “eliminate it from the face of the earth”. His parting kick was at all the Muslim states, none of which, he declared, was Islamic.

Many of the mosques in the United States and in Europe use Friday sermons circulated on a Saudi website. As is to be expected, the message is one that emphasises exclusion and distrust of non-Muslims. In the words of Asra Nomani, the West Virginia woman who refuses to pray in her local mosque’s ‘women only’ section, but joins the main congregation, “At a time when it is critical that Muslim communities embody the highest Islamic principles of tolerance, inclusion and respect of others, including Jews and Christians, expressing contempt and intolerance of Jews and Christians and describing them as being among the ‘cursed’ can only widen the post-9/11 chasm.”

One passage from the Quran that has been used both by intolerant Muslims and certain non-Muslims to emphasise the impossibility of an accord between Islam and other religions is verse 51 of Surah Al-Maidah. According to Muhammad Asad, whose translation and commentary on the Quran deserve to be read by everyone, “This prohibition of a ‘moral alliance’ with non-Muslims does not constitute an injunction against normal, friendly relations with such of them as are well disposed towards Muslims.” In verse 48 of the same surah, “the Quran impresses upon all who believe in God – Muslims and non-Muslims alike – that the differences in their religious practices should make them vie with one another in doing good works, rather than lose themselves in mutual hostility.”

The whole point is that the hostility being shown towards Muslims since 9/11 is in no small measure due to the narrow-minded, illiberal and intolerant attitude some of them and those who lead them exhibit through their words and actions. The brutality that the Iraqi insurgents are displaying towards some of their victims, who have included Muslims, can only strengthen the belief that such violence is integral to Islam. Can the Saudi Arabian government, whose institutions and practices have caused Islam to be seen in a harsh light, begin the process of reform by doing to two things. It should stop public beheadings of those pronounced guilty of capital crimes and it should permit non-Muslims who are living and working in the kingdom to build churches, synagogues and temples where they can worship. Under Saudi law, this is not permitted, which flies in the face of the true spirit of Islam, because no such prohibition existed in the time of the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

Everyone needs to change, but it is Muslims who are suffering the consequences of the misguided actions of their co-religionists and certain Muslim governments who should take the initiative and begin the long-delayed process of reform.

I met Mariane Pearl this week. The first thing that strikes you about her is her courage and her determination to ensure that her husband Daniel Pearl did not die in vain. But above all else, she wants those who killed Danny to be brought to justice, which is where she runs into the granite wall that is the Pakistani establishment. As against the string of questions I put to her as we sat over lunch at the National Press Club, she asked me just one, to which I had no answer. Why has the Sindh High Court failed in the last two years to dispose of the appeals lodged by Omar Saeed Sheikh and his three co-defendants against the sentences handed down to them by an anti-terrorist court in Hyderabad for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl?

When the sentence was announced on 15 July 2002, Omar Sheikh said defiantly, “We shall see who will die first — I or those who arranged the death sentence for me”. The special court found him and his three co-defendants — Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Shaikh Adil — guilty. While Omar Shaikh was sentenced to death by hanging, the others received 25 years each. During the trial, the defendants kept making threatening gestures at the prosecution and the witnesses. In March of that year, a US court had indicted Omar Sheikh for the murder of Pearl but the Pakistan government refused to extradite him, whereas it has handed over more than 500 people to the Americans without much legal formality. Why did it say ‘no’ in this case? Omar had earlier threatened that if he was extradited, America would “suffer the consequences”.

Last month, Reporters Without Borders wrote a letter to President Pervez Musharraf pointing out that since the Hyderabad verdict, there had been developments that needed to be taken into account. On 18 January 2004, Omar Sheikh was transferred by helicopter from Hyderabad prison to Adiala. An Interior Ministry spokesman called it “a security measure” since “dangerous criminals form themselves into groups if they are allowed to stay in the same place for too long”. However, other sources said the transfer was linked to the first attempt on the president’s life. One of the bombers was a former Jaish member, which was Omar Sheikh’s group. Two judges of the Sindh High Court dealing with Omar Sheikh’s appeal asked the government on 17 February 2004 to explain the transfer, which contravened the rules. The government informed the court that the reasons for the transfer could not be revealed because they related to a “sensitive” matter. Since that cryptic answer, the authorities have confined themselves to advancing “security reasons” to justify the decision.

Reporters Without Borders said it would like to be informed about the precise reasons for the transfer since it had blocked the appeal in the Sindh High Court. The group also felt concerned about procedural delays with the High Court granting many adjournments to the appellants on flimsy grounds. The group said it would like to be “informed of any reasons that could explain the government’s unwillingness to see this appeal process go forward”. The letter also asked why Qari Abdul Hai, a leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was not charged in the case despite being suspected of involvement in Pearl’s kidnapping. The government has also not denied a report that it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who slit Pearl’s throat. Another prime figure, the letter to the president pointed out, was that of Amjad Hussain Farooqi who, according to one press report, was already in Pakistani custody, though the arrest had not been acknowledged. Five more men suspected of being involved in the Pearl murder have also been in Pakistani hands for some time.

The letter to the president said, “It seems to us important that, two years after the trial, the Pakistani government should continue to work for justice to be done in the killing of the journalist. In addition, the authorities have never clarified the fate of the three suspects, who led to the body of Daniel Pearl and who apparently in 2003 made new revelations about the murder … Despite serious concern about exposing Daniel Pearl’s relatives and friends to the pain of a new trial, Reporters Without Borders reminds you of the demands of justice in this case. It is your duty, in collaboration with the US authorities, to identify and try all those who had any part in the murder.”

Mariane Pearl told me that she has no lawyer in Pakistan who could pursue the case as it gathers dust in appeal at the Sindh High Court. She wondered if there were any lawyers in Pakistan who would take up her cause without charge so that the ends of justice are met. And that is the challenge — or call it invitation — that I extend on her behalf to the honourable members of the Bar. Who among them is willing to come to the aid of Mariane Pearl?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

No one knows how many Pakistanis are living abroad, but their number runs into millions, and it is increasing. Most of them reside in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. It is not possible to make an accurate estimate but going by the heavy advertising that appears in Pakistani newspapers printed in Britain and the United States – hawking questionable, even hazardous, medicines, most of them claiming to enhance sexual prowess, beautify certain parts of the female anatomy, or cure chronic “hidden” ailments – exposure to Western societies is like water off a duck’s back when it comes to our people.

To this bill of fare should be added the advertised services of soothsayers, palmists, witch doctors, amulet writers, spiritual healers and star-gazers, and you have a more complete picture of the ignorance, superstitiousness and essential illiteracy of our people.

I was struck the other day by a quarter-page advertisement in a New York Urdu newspaper listing four preparations, all aimed at sexual enhancement. While normally I would have turned to the next page, I noticed that while the producers of these magic medicines were based in Lahore, the advertisement listed the phone number of an Illinois-based MD, a Pakistani, who, it said, would fill the orders placed by the needy. Since doctors licensed to practise in the United States are not known to or even supposed to supply such questionable remedies for what can be serious medical conditions, I dialled the number. While the doctor was not in, his wife answered the phone and offered to answer my questions. She said the preparations were “tried and effective”. They were prepared by a close relation of the doctor in Lahore. She was surprised I should be surprised that a practising doctor in the United States should be involved with selling this stuff.

Here is what the doctor is selling in America to his countrymen. 1) Tila Almasi super golden cream (export quality): “This tila is prepared from expensive herbs found in Pakistan and imported from other Eastern countries, plus other rare natural ingredients. One bottle contains three doses in the form of a cream that is to be applied to the exterior of the male member. It increases the circulation of blood in the said member and results in greater male potency and prolongs the duration of copulation. After completing two or three courses, the exterior defects of the male member are reduced. Price per bottle $100.”

The next preparation available from the doctor in Illinois is called Almasozar tablets (export quality): “This course contains 30 tablets, one tablet to be taken with milk every day for one month. This medicine has been prepared from extremely rare and expensive herbs. Ten or twelve days after starting the course, the man begins to feel good both mentally and sexually and male potency receives a major fillip. If Tila Almas and Almasozar are used together, enhanced results are experienced. Price per course 30 tablets per bottle: $100.”

When I asked the doctor’s lady if she knew the uses to which her husband’s stocks were being put, she replied that she did and she found nothing wrong with that. She disagreed that it was quackery aimed at our ignorant countrymen living here. There is also a third preparation that the doctor is selling but this being a family publication, I better remain content with what I have already translated.

I was in London recently and found the city’s widely circulated Urdu daily – the only newspaper in the world to take the antonym for peace as its name – containing some astounding advertisements from a number of “arrived” gentlemen of the cloth, one of whom I introduce to the readers of this column as “The Perfect Master, Syed Hafiz Hasnain Shah, otherwise famous as the Controller of Djinns.” According to the venerable Pir, “Let the true descendant of the Syed line come to your aid. Solution to every problem – for example, domestic discord, disobedient offspring – guaranteed 100 percent. The cure to every major and minor disease is present in the Quran, but you need a Seeing Eye to know that.” The Syed also promises winning prize bond numbers in accordance with the seeker’s star chart. He promises those who come to him that he will treat them through “spiritual rays”. He challenges anyone who doubts his claims to come and face him in a contest. The good news for those who can’t travel to his holy dwelling at Chowk Pindi Bypass, next to CNG Gas Pump, GT Road, Gujranwala, is that they can phone him. For the convenience of callers from overseas both a land line and a mobile phone number is provided.

In case you fly all the way from England and find that Hafiz Hasnain Shah is not all that he is cracked up to be, you don’t have to go far for an alternate fountain of miracles. Right at Alam Chowk Bypass, Gujranwala, you can knock at the door of Syed Zafar Ali Shah. I would suggest to Mushahid Hussain Syed that he will earn merit both here and in the hereafter practising faith healing rather than politics. The Syed’s full-page advertisement invites readers to come and watch him “the Emperor of the Djinns” in action. They are also invited to watch his arrival in the graveyard where he is greeted by a dance party of wandering spirits. There are also said to be angels always at his beck and call. They accompany him everywhere. (He gives a list of 17 rhyming names, such as Raftamayal, Atramayal, and Hamzamayal.) Syed Zafar Ali Shah can supply an amulet called ‘Loh-Naqsh Na’ad Ali’ whose holder, he declares, will never be short of money, food or employment, nor will ghosts, fairies or witches have any effect on him. Black magic and evil spells will not harm him and not only will he gain worldly success but he will have a vision of Panjtan Pak or the Holy Prophet (pbuh), Zainab, Ali, Hassan and Hussain. If the holder keeps the amulet under his pillow at night, he will be informed in a dream of what lies in the future.

Syed Zafar Ali Shah can also obtain through his djinns and angels prize bond winning numbers, lottery tips and other such material rewards. Patients whom their doctors have turned away as incurable are guaranteed complete recovery. Shah Sahib also throws an “international challenge” to all sorcerers practising their black arts in India (there goes the peace process), Hong Kong, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq (will that include the coalition force commanders?), Iran, America, Bengal (who knew it was an independent country), China and Japan to come and face him and bring into play their black and yellow powers and they will be felled to the ground as soon as they appear on the scene. I think this man should be acquired as a living asset by GHQ, Rawalpindi. And since nothing is complete without a love ending, Syed Zafar Ali Shah also promises “marriage after your own heart, reunion with the separated beloved and the return to your bosom of the one who is currently annoyed”.

And if all this was not enough to make my day, a New York Urdu paper informs me that Dr Farhat Hashmi, founder of Al-Huda International Institute of Islamic Education for Women has arrived in the city “in quest for knowledge”. Alas it is not possible for me to sit at the Lady Savant’s feet because it is “ladies only”.

What is it about kings, queens and royal courts that so fascinates Pakistanis! Over the years, I have come to believe that what we want is neither a parliamentary, nor a presidential, nor a military system: we want the return of kingship.

Pir Ali Muhammad Rashdi (I hope I am spelling his first name correctly and not getting into the crosshairs of Ijaz-ul-Haq’s counter-blasphemy hit squads) was a man of much wisdom and though everybody at the time made fun of a suggestion he made to Ayub Khan, in hindsight, it should have been accepted. Had Ayub declared himself King of Pakistan, as the Pir suggested, instead of promoting himself to the utterly ridiculous rank of Field Marshal, today we would have had His Royal Majesty Zill-e-Subhani, Muhafiz-e-Islam, Ghazi Gohar Ayub Khan Hazarvi as our King.

Unless Gen Pervez Musharraf is advised otherwise by income tax wizard Tariq Aziz, I would suggest that he resurrect the Rashdi proposal. Since he is so good at them, why not hold a national referendum on the issue. There should also be another amendment in the constitution — 137th if my count is right — laying down that Pakistan will have only kings, not queens. That would once and forever rule out Ms Benazir Bhutto.

This will only be a recognition of the true Pakistani character. We are always crowning our heroes and heroines. Madam Nur Jehan was given the title of Malika-e-Tarannum and Roshan Ara Begum was dubbed Malika-e-Mauseeqi. Had the Quaid permitted us, we would have put a golden crown on his head. One might as well perhaps admit then that this is the way we are. If Gen. Musharraf decided to abolish the assemblies, tear up all copies of the, in any case, unrecognisable 1973 Constitution and declare himself King, with Mushahid Hussain Syed as Herald-in-Chief, he will have my backing.

But why sitting in distant Washington am I thinking of kings and queens (and, in between, knaves)? Well, that is all I can think of since I read that Gen Musharraf has been invited to be “chief guest” in New York come September at a performance of Anarkali. (In no country except Pakistan, is there such a bird as “chief guest”, since all guests are treated not as Indians but as “chiefs”) The best camouflage for anything that one is in doubt about has always been “charity”, so this performance is also for charity. The money raised, according to a news agency report, will go to the good work and workers of national human development foundation.

While I have nothing against human or animal development or even foundations (except the Foundation University in Islamabad that does not have the guts to call itself the Fauji Foundation University), surely a play representative of contemporary Pakistan, a play of this time and place, a play about issues more serious than princely myth, should have been staged. I know it is heretical to suggest this, but I will go ahead and do so anyway, since I already have scores of black entries against my name in the files of every Pakistani snoop outfit. If a play were to be staged in New York, it should have been Shahid Nadeem and Madeeha Gohar’s Bullah. But then the husband-wife team I have named has nothing but black circles around its name in every sarkari file.

But why Anarkali? What has it got to do with Pakistan or Pakistani history and culture? We are not the descendants of the Mughals and the Mughals were not our kings, nor did they consider themselves Indian kings. The story of Anarkali is a myth and not a very nice one either because she was buried alive on orders from the most enlightened Mughal king, Akbar. Is that what we are going to show in New York, namely that we bury young women alive if they cross the line?

Since this is getting much too serious, let me close with a priceless Madam Nur Jehan story. After she had decided that she was going to make no more films, she was approached by a producer who said that he wanted to cast her as heroine in a movie about Anarkali. “Then you will have to call it Purani Anarkali,” Madam replied.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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