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There are many people in America, as no doubt in other countries, though not as many as in the home of the brave and the land of the free, who believe that we are living in “end times”. The belief in the myth about the imminent end of the world is as old as the world itself. It may be harmless for some but not for the people of Palestine. What makes it sinister from their viewpoint is that millions of orthodox American evangelical Christians have pressed the end-times myth into a religious obligation of preserving and strengthening the state of Israel. Since Christ, they believe, will land in Jerusalem riding on clouds, the runway must be kept clear, as it were, for his landing, and the Jewish state must be protected and kept ready for the saviour’s grand coming.

Only last week, there was a huge convention in Washington to express Christian-Israeli solidarity, as if not being a blind supporter of Israel was inconsistent with being a Christian.

The myth has derived great strength from a series of works of fiction that many take to be the truth. There is also no shortage of Americans who are convinced that the world is going to end in 2012. I often recall a young woman, an American, who worked in Lahore for Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1960s. She assured me that the world was going to end a year from then. I asked her what made her so sure. With the light of faith shining in her eyes, she replied, “Because it is true. It is all written down, it’s all been divinely revealed.” Since she was on her way home, I wished her a pleasant journey and expressed the hope that when she returned next year, I would run into her. “There is no next year,” she replied calmly.

The end-times myth says that after Jesus alights from the clouds at the sound of a trumpet, all true believers will be lifted up off the ground and swished into the sky where they will ascend with him into Heaven. According to one account, “After appearing before the judgment seat and having all of their sins laid bare before God, the angels and everybody, the Christian believers will then don white robes and return to Earth with Jesus to fight the wicked armies ascended for the great Battle of Armageddon, somewhere in the Middle East. The battle will be the worst ever fought, with blood from the dead soldiers and horses rising as high as the axles of the chariots. Jesus and the ‘saints’ are supposed to win this battle, and after this, Jesus will take his throne in Jerusalem and rule over the Earth. There is supposed to be peace for a thousand years. And somewhere in all this, God is supposed to make a new Heaven and new Earth.”

The myth has been promoted in America, among others, by what is known as the “left behind” series of novels authored by the writing duo of Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye who in the last 12 years have churned out 16 novels, which have sold a staggering 65 million copies. Mercifully, the series is now concluded but not without distorting the minds of millions upon millions of Americans and others who now view other religions and their followers as the devil’s very own.

The “Antichrist” in these books — believe it or not — is a Romanian by the name of Nicolae Jetty Carpathia, who also happens to be the Secretary General of the United Nations. What that has done to how the millions of the Left Behind readers view the United Nations requires no elaboration from my side. Whereas the world needs to come together, it is bunkum like this that is fuelling prejudice, hate and confusion.

In the last book called “Kingdom Come”, Jesus Christ has set up his perfect kingdom on Earth and believers (devout Christians only please) around the world enjoy a newly perfected relationship with their Lord, and the Earth itself is transformed. But evil survives among the unbelieving. The unrepentant are making preparations for a new offensive against the Lord himself. It is not difficult to guess who wins.

Last year, Newsweek published an interview with Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series. Asked how he viewed events in the Middle East, he replied that those involved in the conflict had been already identified in the Bible. End times could “break forth right now,” he added. He said that the Bible should be understood “literally”, dismissing the view that the Bible was metaphorically addressing events that were taking place as it was being written. Asked if “living right with God, in a Christian sense, would entail supporting the Israeli state right now,” he replied, “I think those two things are related. Christians who take the Bible literally are generally supportive of Israel because God promises to bless those nations that are a blessing to Israel and curse those nations that are not.”

Newsweek also questioned his equating the state of Israel, a geopolitical entity, with all Jewish people around the world, who far outnumber the people actually in Israel. And what about the Muslims, he was asked? Were they among the saved? LaHaye replied, “Everybody knows that they do not accept Jesus Christ as a means of salvation from sin. That’s the only way you can be saved, is to call on the name of the Lord. They’re not about to do that.” But neither do the Jews, he was told. His answer was that during the period before the arrival of Christ on earth, there’ll be a sea change, and many Jews will accept Christ. Convenient, wouldn’t you say!

It is sobering to note that when you compare the end of the world myths with what some of our clerics scream through their loudspeakers, strategically installed to keep everyone awake at all hours of day and night, our holy fathers emerge as the epitome of rationalism.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

It is a bit of a coincidence, but I have never met Javed Hashmi, though I have known of him since his days as a fiery Punjab University leader of the student wing of the Jamaat e Islami. His subsequent politics remained right wing, although as the years passed, he moved towards the centre while firmly anchored to conservative, counter-progressive ideas. His friendships, however, have followed their own trajectory, considering that one of his best friends is Raja Anwar, the firebrand left-wing student leader who played a key role in organising student uprisings in the last days of Ayub Khan. He was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s volunteer adviser on student and labour affairs right into his last days in office.

I have never been able to find a wholly satisfying explanation for two jailings by the military government: those of Rehmat Shah Afridi, owner and publisher of Frontier Post , and Javed Hashmi. While like everyone else, I am aware of the reasons given for the long and, what looks like, unending imprisonment of these two, I have not found them grounds enough for the punishment meted out to them. When you take away a man’s liberty, there is little that you leave him with.

Afridi is supposed to have been caught with a load of marijuana in his car. Even if for a moment one believes that to be true, why, one must ask, has he alone of the hundreds of drug kings in Pakistan been singled out for such punishment? Others have been set free or released by the courts. My own theory is that Afridi, at some point or for some reason, clashed with one or the other of our powerful intelligence agencies. As for Hashmi, I also know the officially declared grounds for his imprisonment, but I find them less than convincing and not reason enough. One day, we will have an explanation of why these two men have been so treated. So we wait till the next civilian government, assuming there is a next civilian government.

I used to meet Rehmat Shah Afridi in Lahore in 1991, thanks to his and my good friend at the time, Nadaan Nadira, now Lady Naipaul, who has turned her back on all those she once knew. But that is another story for another day. This one is about Javed Hashmi, whose book Takhta-e-Daar ke Sayay Talay, was published in April this year. It was brought to me from Pakistan by that live wire young doctor, Amna Buttar, who introduced Mukhtar Mai in the United States, and who flies out of Minneapolis any time she hears of a demonstration against Army rule in Pakistan. The book consists, for the most part, of letters Hashmi has been writing to his daughter, Maimoona, and people from his old Multan constituency – some living, others dead.

The book contains some heavy doses of proselytising – no surprise given Hashmi’s early political grounding – but it also carries some moving evocations of his childhood and his growing up in a feudal family of sajjada nasheens in Multan. He brings to life the local poor about whom he writes with much respect and affection. He also goes into learned-sounding discussions about political and social systems, but I would let that bit pass. The deeply personal portions of the book are quite poignant. Once he is released, he may perhaps like to consider saying goodbye to politics (which has landed him in jail many, many times) and turn to writing.

Hashmi learns in jail about the death of Chacha Mangtoo, who was from a far-flung village in his old constituency and who said to him the first time Hashmi went there to campaign, “I smell truth in your words. Promise that if you get elected you will build a high school here.” Hashmi got elected and built not only the school he had promised, but more than a hundred of them over the years. At one point he writes, “There is no support in the teachings of Islam for the way women are viewed in our society today. We have to move forward. Little girls in blue on their way to school are a sight that soothes my eyes. When I see them, my heart is filled with joy. When I am taken to court and I see these girls walking to their schools, to me they are like flowers waving gently in the breeze. I see their faces glowing with the resolve to learn and move ahead in life. That sight is like a rainbow springing out of my heart.”

Hashmi writes about a police constable who claimed to cure every ailment by simply blowing into water and transforming it into something that could deliver miracles. His devotees came to include the ailing General Yahya Khan, General Zia ul Haq, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman and countless others. He was known as Pir Sipahi, but then suddenly his reputation crashed, and he was reduced to utter penury. Hashmi writes, “It is four in the morning and had you been in front of me, I would have asked you what magic do people like you possess that those who decide the nation’s fate come to you to decide theirs?” Ayub had his Davel Sharif and Yahya and Zia had the Pir Sipahi, but when it was time for them to go, no divine aid sufficed.

Hashmi’s mind goes back to his village and he writes to potters, barbers, blacksmiths, weavers, tailors and peasants, few of them alive. To Chacha Khair Muhammad, a potter, he writes, “I know you are no longer in this world. I myself have not been in that world either, where we once used to meet. Our lands lay around the houses where you and your family members lived. I would often walk past your house where three trees grew out of your front yard. That was where you also worked under a makeshift awning. Your snow white beard and un-starched turban were a part of your personality. I often saw you without a shirt but never without a turban. Women from your family worked in our homes and they were respected, but their life was hard. They also laboured in the fields. Your children never went to school. I, a member of the assembly five times and a federal minister many times over, am ashamed of myself because I realise that not a single child in your family was able to go to school. And yet, you and your sons and grandchildren and nephews and nieces voted for me so that I could get elected. I ask myself: what have I done for you all?”

Hashmi recalls his father in a letter to blacksmith Chacha Muhammad Hussain. “My father called everyone his age, no matter what their station in life, ‘brother,’ and those who were younger were his sons. That is his inheritance to me and I want to protect it at all costs. When I see that your sons and their children have not been able to rise in life, it is like an arrow through my heart. But this must be cured because it is not incurable. We seek a healer who can treat our sick society and turn this land of pain into a land of joy.”

The last entry in the book is Hashmi’s letter to Maimoona, written on April 3, 2007, inspired by the refusal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to resign. “Today,” Hashmi writes, “one man has found the courage to say no to the man who holds power. The black jacket of the lawyer has become a symbol of honour, and 60 million people are showering this man with their love, loyalty and honour. For the first time, the unwritten constitution of Pakistan has come to birth. I am sure if anyone tries to violate this new constitution, his end will be no different than that of Oliver Cromwell.”

All I can say to Javed Hashmi is to remember Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

Ik zara sabbr ke faryad ke din thoray hain.

(A little patience because the day of injustice is all but done).

The All Parties Conference that ended in London on July 8 may have been Hamlet without the Princess of Dubai, but having been there I can attest that she was present throughout in cyber spirit, for which visitation all nerds should click their mice twice and refrain from pressing the delete button. The Princess of Dubai, once the Daughter of the East who for some time now has been trying to become the Daughter of the West was summoned through cyber space by the Laptop Lady, indisputably the PPP high priestess of the Exalted Order of Electronica.

I refer of course to the fragrant Sherry Rehman, who though sitting eight or so spaces from the genial chairman of the conference, Mian Nawaz Sharif, never once looked in his or any other direction, which was perfectly understandable for her eyes were glued to the screen of her dainty laptop (which weighed no more than half a pound, if that), and her nimble fingers kept dancing on the keyboard.

If the London gathering had been a game of cricket, it would have been in order to say that The Princess of Dubai was being kept regaled with a ball-by-ball commentary of the day’s play. However, politics not being quite cricket, it would suffice to note that the Lady Skipper for Life of the PPP baseball XI was being kept informed of what was going on. Later a computer geek whispered in my ear that the Laptop Lady and the Princess were engaged in something called Live Chat, which is like a phone conversation except that you don’t speak and only the super spooks know what is passing between those so engaged.

Ms Rehman, who once told me that she was known as the best note-taker of her time during her days in journalism, was proving more than equal to the task assigned to her by keeping the Mohtarma informed of the drift of the discussions taking place and obtaining instructions as to what the representatives of the party of the toiling masses should or should not do. I may add for the information of those who do not know that all party faithful are forbidden to refer to Ms B by any name other than Mohtarma. Immediate excommunication is a certainty in case of infringement.

Ms Bhutto was not in London. She was in Paris — Ah! to be in Paris in high summer! — for a far more important event than the one taking place in London. She was attending a wedding. It was clear to me that Ms Bhutto admits of no impediments when it comes to the marriage of true minds. Ms Rehman was assisted by a formidable team, nominated personally by the Chairperson for Life. There was “Ambassador” Wajid Shamsul Hasan, who has perfected the art of saying nothing that may later be quoted against him. Then there was Safdar Abbasi who, whenever I looked, was either walking out of the conference hall or walking in. Having failed to find a satisfactory explanation for this “toing and froing,” I came to the conclusion that he is an exercise fanatic who is unlikely to develop thrombosis in his legs since he never sits still for more than five minutes. Or it could be that he was running in and out on instructions from Mohtarma, though for what purpose, I was unable to guess.

And the leader of the delegation of the struggling peasants’ party, Makhdoom Amin Faheem, had a beatific smile playing on his beatific face all the time. Perhaps he was not feeling well. Who knows! He did not say much, such being his instructions I suppose. The star of the show was Inspector Rehman Malik Cluzot who, I suspect, was “blackberrying” the Mohtarma, something not necessarily in the knowledge of Ms Rehman. I know from experience that the leaders of The Party always keep more than one channel open. Inspector Malik is of course a very special person when it comes to the Great Leaderene, they having been partners in the Iraq oil deal. When I once asked him why the Mohtarma had get into the oil business, he replied, “Does she not have the right to make a living?” I had no answer to that since it is everyone’s right to keep the wolf away from the door, which in her case is astronomical distances away.

Inspector Malik, for whom I have a soft corner since he comes from a village within hailing distance of my beloved city of Sialkot, is a very important person and a man the Mohtarma trusts. After all, the Charter of Democracy was signed at the Malik house off London’s Edgeware Road. The news conference she held after the APC was safely ended, was also held at the Malik residence. I wasn’t there, having escaped London as soon as the APC was over, but those who were said all they remember of the session with the Mohtarma is being jostled by cameramen shooting footage much of which appears to have ended on the cutting room floor or its modern high-tech equivalent. She was not in very good form and had it been a cricket match and had she been sent out to open the innings, the first in-swinger would have got her middle and leg stumps.

During a coffee break at the All Parties Conference, a PPP loyalist drew me aside and asked in a whisper if I knew about the Great Chaudhry Conspiracy. “Yes, indeed,” I replied, “the Shujaat and Pervez conspiracy against the party.” “Not that one,” he said, “you don’t know a thing. The real Chaudhry Conspiracy features Aitzaz and Iftikhar.”

So now we know why Aitzaz Ahsan did not make the PPP delegation to London.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Hamraz Ahsan, who has now lived in London for many years, was one of the young and committed journalists in the Lahore of the late 1960s and the following decade who formed the vanguard of the progressive and leftist politics of the time. He and a bunch of fiery young men worked with labour unions, farmers’ groups and teachers and journalists to fight the onslaught from the reactionary, right-wing movement funded and backed in large part by the establishment, which wanted to block the spread of a brand and style of politics that led, first to the formation of the Pakistan People’s Party, and later to its ascent to power. It has been said that a revolution eats its own children first, a fact of history which also came to pass in Pakistan. Many of these idealistic, brave young men who had no interest in material advancement, found themselves on the wrong side of what they thought was the people’s government. Hamraz Ahsan lost one newspaper job after another and was in and out of jail several times, but his faith in his credo and the dream of a progressive, free and secular Pakistan never wavered.

He struggled on in Pakistan right into the dark days of Zia ul Haq, when he finally decided that the military regime’s torture cells were not going to be his future. His escape from Pakistan merits a separate story and, if written out, could even make a movie. Some years ago, Hamraz began to write an account of his life, of his growing up in the city of Gujrat and moving to Lahore, getting drawn to the left movement and eventually into journalism. That book remains incomplete, but he has now published a collection of his short pieces written from London during his exile years. That old patron of many lost causes, Agha Amir Hussain of Classic, Lahore, has published it under the title Harf-e-Saada . Much of the book is made up of pieces written about London, but Pakistan remains the backdrop, which is what gives the book its special flavour. One piece is based on his meeting with Margaret, the English woman from Newcastle, wife of many years to Chacha Chaudhry Zaman Ali, Tamgah e Khidmat, from Mirpur, who jumped ship before Pakistan’s birth and settled in England.

Chacha Zaman Ali truly was the patriarch of immigrants from our part of the world in England. He helped thousands of them find work and settle down. He never quite learned to speak English and had his own version of it. He came to earn the respect of more than one generation of his new and old countrymen. To the Pakistanis and the Azad Kashmiris, he was Chacha Zaman Ali, though some called him Baba Zamanaan.

In 1979, after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s execution, a huge protest rally was held in Hyde Park, London, where Chacha Zaman Ali brought several busloads from Birmingham. I can see him standing on the roof of a parked vehicle addressing the crowd that included Murtaza and Shahnawaz Bhutto, Ghulam Mustafa Khar and Tariq Ali (it was the first time Tariq Ali had joined a purely Pakistani protest march, and I am happy to say that I had some hand in it). Hamraz recalls a Quran khwani in the central Birmingham mosque where Chacha Zaman Ali, despite his years, was himself serving food to those who had come from far and wide to pay homage to the executed leader. When President Ayub Khan visited Britain, he authorised Chacha Zaman Ali to recommend those to whom Pakistani passports would be issued. Many illegal but law-abiding and hard working Pakistanis were thus legitimised. The least Pakistanis and Kashmiris living in Britain can do is to build a memorial to that fascinating, truly public-spirited stalwart who could not pronounce his wife Margaret’s name (she remained “Magray” to him all his life).

Having been an inmate of several of Pakistan’s jails under different governments, Hamraz writes, “Our jails were designed by the British as was the jail manual, which is the funniest legal document in the world. A prisoner can keep cigarettes but no matches, a comb but no mirror. While no cell can contain an even number of prisoners, odd ones are permitted. Two, four and six disallowed; three, five and seven allowed. Why? No one knows. The welfare provisions in this manual have never been implemented. These provisions quantify even the pieces of meat that a prisoner should get twice a week, plus the exact weight of the bread he is to be served and how much ghee must go into his serving of lentils.” Hamraz also writes that there is one industry that has never failed in Pakistan: the rumour industry. It goes into full production when a political change is in the offing. Since General Pervez Musharraf’s advent, the burden on this industry’s production units has become rather heavy, and it has had to go into a 24-hour cycle.

Hamraz remembers a visit to Lohar Galli in Azad Kashmir, which offers a breathtaking view of the Jehlum and Kishen Ganga rivers coming together. This was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s favourite place whenever he came visiting. Hamraz found the two rivers flowing lazily into one another reminding him of an insincere embrace between two Pakistanis. “Were the rivers like this when Bhutto sahib used to visit?” he asked his escort. “There was so much water in these rivers then. Today, there is dust everywhere.” Hamraz writes, “I wondered where the water that used to flow in these rivers and fall from our eyes has gone. Did it die out in the rivers or in our eyes? Who took this water away from us? Who will be held to account for this?”

Benazir Bhutto once said, Hamraz notes, that she believes in miracles, otherwise who could have predicted that Zia would suddenly cease to be or she would become prime minister twice? And although the lines that follow were written by Hamraz some years ago, their validity today is in the realm of the uncanny.

“Our people are always waiting for miracles because our entire country has been run on that basis. These days many are going from one place to another in search of some miracle. There are those who are desperately trying to perpetuate the miracle of their having come to power in the first place. Some are waiting for a stray miracle to fall into their laps. Others are running off to America because they know that fate has assigned miracle-making responsibilities to that country, at least in the current century. We will just have to wait and see on whose head the bird of good fortune lands. Will he choose a new head or return to a head on which he once had his perch? It is also possible that the bird may become lazy and decide to remain on the same head where it has been nesting for the past several years. In that case, those seeking miracles will have to brace themselves for temporary disappointment.”

In one piece, Hamraz Ahsan wonders why the walls and newspapers of Pakistan are plastered with advertising promising antidotes against black magic but carry no advertising as to the acquisition and practice of black magic. Yes, why indeed?

What Washington needs and what it lacks are wise, knowledgeable and sympathetic people who view the world beyond America with an open mind, people who are willing to recognise their prejudices as prejudices, not God’s immutable laws. And nowhere is this breadth of vision required with greater urgency than when dealing with and understanding Islam and Muslim states and cultures.

Unfortunately, the dice is so loaded that it is difficult for viewpoints others than those so tightly held to even get a hearing. For instance, it is nearly impossible to get something into print or on the air in the mainstream media that is critical of Israel and its policies. I have yet to see Chomsky’s or Fisk’s political writings appear in any mainstream American newspaper.

The lone voice of sanity in this wilderness is that of retired US ambassador Chas Freeman Jr – 30 years under seven administrations – about whose refreshing outlook on the Middle East, no less than major international issues of US foreign policy, I have written before. And yet a man of such sterling intellectual honesty and wide experience, I have yet to see in the pages of the New York Times or on any of the networks. That is regrettable and a reflection of the inflexibility with which the Middle East, Islam or Muslim issues are viewed and dealt with.

Last month, Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf war, spoke to the World Affairs Council here on the Arab world and Islam. He said US involvement in the Arab world is “direct, continuous, expensive, overwhelmingly military, traumatic, politically divisive, highly problematic, and sometimes fatal”. He said America is “stuck in what the Bush Administration briefly named ‘the long war’. This is a war with an enemy we are having trouble identifying and whom we clearly don’t understand. It promises to be long indeed, both because we don’t know how to win it and because we will never admit that we may be losing it”.

He pointed out that the US-Arab relations since 9/11 had boiled down to the two sides blackening each other. The Arabs were not one but 23 politically diverse states that often compete with each other and only rarely unite. Against 850 million who constitute “the West”, there are 1.4 billion who define the realm of Islam. The West needs Arab oil and gas, and the Arabs need Western goods and services.

He told the meeting that there were six things that are, and will remain, at stake in America’s relations with the Arabs. The first was energy. Arab countries hold 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves and the world, US included, is destined to become steadily more, not less, dependent on them for its energy supplies. The second is Israel, which cannot hope to enjoy peaceful co-existence with its Arab and Muslim neighbours through their “endless military intimidation”. The Arabs will not accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state if Israel rules its captive Arab population under the cruelties of martial law while highhandedly expanding its borders at Arab expense. Until it negotiates peace with the Palestinians, Israel will remain under siege and insecure.

Third, Arabs may be one-fifth of the world’s Muslims, but they are “the decisively influential fifth”. It must be remembered that Islam’s holy places are in Arabia and the language of Islam is Arabic. He argued that the United States has many interests in cooperative relations with Muslim countries, not least in preventing them from becoming supporters of terrorist actions against Americans.

Fourth, Arab countries and predominantly Muslim lands like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Iran straddle or abut the world’s major transportation routes. The US has a big stake in sustaining cooperative military ties with the Arabs and other Muslim peoples, plus access to their air and sea space.

Fifth, the US has a major economic interest in encouraging the Arabs to reinvest the money they earn from energy sales in ways that benefit America. Compared with the ‘petrodollar’ era, the US posture towards Arab investment is unwelcoming. Arabs doubt that the money they put here can be secure from politically motivated intervention. Arab investment is now going to destinations such as China. If the Arabs de-link the oil trade from the dollar, the consequences for the US economy would be profound. Oil exporting countries are now accumulating annual surpluses of US$600 billion or more.

And sixth, and last, the US has an interest in preventing and, ultimately, reducing anti-Americanism, especially anti-Americanism that takes the form of terrorist action against Americans.

Freeman told the meeting that America has drifted into what Muslims everywhere see as an assault on Islam and its believers. Fallacious analogies with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia have been made to rebut Al Qaeda’s case against US interventions in the Arab and Islamic worlds, with the invention of such terms as ‘Islamofascism’. He said, “Our ignorance, confusion, and self-indulgence have led us to impose unfounded stereotypes on Muslims and to mistake Arab friends for Arab enemies – and, no doubt, vice versa”.

He added, “If we continue to contend with imaginary demons and to invade countries to vindicate our hallucinations, we will lose every contest. The consequences of American failure against Islamic militants could be very large. The fact that Al Qaeda and its ilk do not much resemble the picture of them painted by our pundits does not make them any less dangerous but just dangerous in different ways. They must be countered by more realistic, appropriate, and effective means than those we are so counterproductively employing at present.”

Al Qaeda, he observed, is inept but it can learn from failure. Over time, therefore, Islamic extremists are likely to become more, not less, formidable as enemies of both the United States and those Arab regimes that remain aligned with the US. Instead of mediation, the US has backed Israeli efforts to pacify the Palestinians. The US colluded with Israel in the effort to isolate and overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government. The punitive expedition against Afghanistan has turned into occupation, which has turned the Islamic world against that intervention and conferred new life and undeserved nationalist resistance credentials on the Taliban. As for the “catastrophic march” into Iraq, where the US remains pinned down, it has turned Iraq into a country militarily occupied by the US but politically occupied by Iran. There are plans to perpetuate the occupation of Iraq through permanent military bases from which the Arab world can be dominated.

But Chas Freeman’s voice is a voice in the wilderness that is Washington.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Munir Niazi was the only egoist whose ego irritated no one because it came through with such charm and humour. After Faiz Ahmed Faiz died, someone asked Munir how the great vacuum created by the poet’s death would ever be filled. “That vacuum I was filling even when Faiz was alive,” he replied. Vintage Munir Niazi.

One of his friends and companions from the old days in Lahore, the Punjabi poet and writer Masood Munawwar, who now lives in Norway, reminisced about their long association in a memoir for the Punjabi quarterly Saanj , published from Washington by the Academy of Punjab in North America. Munir’s journey through life began in the small town of Khanpur in District Hoshiarpur, East Punjab. It took him through Srinagar, Bahawalpur and Sahiwal – when it was still Montgomery (though always called “Mintgumri”) – and ended in Lahore on December 26, 2006. While people waited in a hotel auditorium for him where he was to preside over a literary meeting, no one realised that at that precise hour, he lay dying in a city hospital instead. As Munawwar observes wistfully, Munir always had a fascination for the act of dying. This makes me think of one of the most famous of his Punjabi quatrains: The going was always difficult/And the yoke of grief around my neck was heavy/Cruel were the people of the city, no doubt/But infatuated with death I always was.

Munir spent a brief time in the Navy but never talked about it; water, however, always remained one of the central symbols in his verse. I have yet to run into someone who does not know Munir’s couplet that runs: Another river lay in front of me Munir/That was what I saw after I crossed one river. One of his Punjabi quatrains that Munawwar quotes goes: If you keep walking on this earth, you will come upon water/If you dig up the earth, you will hit upon water/From all four directions we are trapped by water/And when water sees the moon it hisses like one demented.

Munir was also fascinated by snakes. Another of his Punjabi verses, quoted by Munawwar, is: Where there is fragrance, there is snake/Where there is melody, there is snake/Deep under the ground in the dark it lives/Where there is gold there is snake.

Munir loved drink and always referred to it by its Arabic name, ummul khabais – the mother of all evil. Munawwar recounts a pleasant evening on board a ship in Karachi harbour where Munir had been invited by one of his admirers. When the first drink was poured into his glass, he picked it up and threw some over the railing into the sea below, “That is for you to drink, baby,” he said. Munir always addressed younger poets and writers as kaka , baghal bachha or Glaxo baby. Munawwar was one of his Glaxo babies.

Speaking for myself, I first became aware of Munir Niazi when Zamurrad Malik and Mehdi Naqvi came to Murray College from Montgomery and told us about this poet who wrote poetry as nobody had written it before. I still remember some of the Munir verse from those days. We found poetry of such intensity electrifying. We all knew by heart Munir’s lines about wishing the thunder to roar in the sky so that the little heart of that flirtatious girl should begin to beat violently. Then there was the couplet that asked all desolate people to take that quiet, unspeaking road, wherever it led. There was also Munir’s vision of a girl on her rooftop who looked like a stray cloud or a string of pearls. Another verse spoke about a window out of which the blossom of desire sprang no longer. It has long remained unopened.

Outside Pak Tea House, Lahore’s principle haunt of writers, there came to life in the evening an informal watering hole. Glasses, water and ice were obtained from the corner paan and cigarette kiosk. Munir and Munawwar, having suitably “irrigated” themselves one evening, were walking in the direction of Regal, both floating on cloud nine, when they ran into Habib Jalib, who, being dry and sober, was in a foul mood. He was also depressed about the political storm blowing in the country. “Don’t you worry. I have a lot of power and I can take care of all that ails you,” Munir declared grandly, as he often did. “Sure, because you have the Army and the government on your side,” Jalib shot back. That was enough to “turn around” Munir’s “meter,” “Listen, you geriatric bear, you always need a Kalabagh or an Ayub Khan to bash your head against and when you can’t find any of them, you try to ram into your friends.”

Munawwar writes, “Drinking was Munir’s ride to that strange and unique territory peopled by fairies and other worldly beauties from another dimension. There were so many worlds that lived inside Munir. The closed doors of the mansion of his intellect would be thrown open with the key “the red fairy” handed him. Behind those closed doors lived centuries that had passed, and generations that had vanished from the earth. Strange creatures inhabited those unknown spaces: ghosts, witches, banshee spirits with turned-back feet, [a] genie that took possession of men only to let them go, men of God, mendicants, wandering minstrels. It was a universe not visible to the rest of us.” Once someone asked Munir, “Khan sahib, how can you drink? Whenever I try to drink, blotches break out all over my body.” “Son,” Munir replied, “The drink always knows who is drinking her.” When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned drinking in the summer of 1977 to appease the mullahs, Munir was very sad. “Such a harsh measure even Hazrat Umar never ordered.”

Munir’s wit was devastating. He used to call Zaheer Kashmiri “golden scorpion.” He was utterly irreverent. Once he said to Sufi Tabussum, who was surrounded by his fawning students, “Hello Baby Tabussum.” Baby Tabussum was a child star of the Bombay cinema of the 1950s.

But let me end this with a Munir poem that he called Six Coloured Doors. In front of my house/have sprung up flowers in six colours/as if they had risen from a dream/ doors leading to a new peace/More colours behind their colours lie/And much more that can only be imagined/There are many cities that lie behind those flowers/And many other doors.

If Munir Niazi is reading this, I only ask him to forgive my translations, for old time’s sake.

What keeps America going is humour, the ability to laugh and make light of things. In comparison, British humour is packaged in understatements, or it is slapstick. For instance, why the British find men in drag funny, only the British can explain. The only humorous journal left in Britain now is Private Eye but one will have to be living there to get all the insider jokes. Punch is dead and in case it is not dead, it should be dead.

My two favourite American magazines on an off day are the World Weekly News, not a word of what it prints being true, and The Onion, which is very funny, and aimed at a more sophisticated readership. My perennial favourite in the World Weekly News used to be the Ed Anger column, written by its editor, Eddie Clontz, who died in 2001. The Economist in an obituary wrote that the columns were “so vitriolically right-wing that they possibly came from the left”. Anger hated foreigners, yoga, whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza. He liked flogging, electrocutions and beer. He always began his columns with “I’m madder than” which would be followed by phrases such as “a monkey with a rotten banana” or “a one-legged man in an a**-kicking contest”.

One of his columns opened, “I’m madder than a porcupine stuck in a thorn bush over the fact that, these days, you can’t get on a plane without a driver’s licence or passport. Yeah, yeah, I know all about security. But I also know that sometimes I feel like I’m living in Nazi Germany and I don’t like it. Folks, we cannot — must not — allow ‘Let me see your papers’ to become an increasingly bigger part of our lives. To begin with, what if you don’t drive or don’t travel internationally and you want to hop on a plane to see your ailing mom in another state? What do you do if you don’t have those official documents they’re demanding? You’re pretty screwed. And never mind getting on a plane. In many states, you can’t even use your own credit card to buy a ticket (or anything else) without a driver’s licence. Even at my own bank, my social security card’s no longer good enough to prove that I’m me. And guess what: all of these IDs can be easily forged by the bad guys. So what’s the point?”

Another of Anger’s classic rants began, “I’m madder than a groom with a no-show bride at how informal we’ve become with one another. Every day I get asked, by clerks or civil servants, ‘What’s happenin, man?’ or ‘What’re you up to?’ And in every restaurant, the wait-staff greets my wife and me with, ‘How’re you guys doing?’ You guys? Folks, what happened to calling someone who has come to your establishment to spend money ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am?’ When did everything become so casual? It’s bad enough that I go to the office and see flip-flops on editorial assistants — but now this?”

Then there is The Onion, which reported in a recent issue that the reason a bar was doing such brisk business in Watertown, Massachusetts, was because it was serving its heady cocktails from a cement mixer, parked out on the street. Officer Carlton Marx of the Helicopter Aviation Unit reported, “I was on patrol when a rather large, unusual object caught my eye. It was a cement mixer parked in an alley beside the bar, but that’s not what was strange. Flying closer, I saw a giant, red cocktail umbrella sticking from the back!” An unmarked police car was brought in to watch what was going on. The cops found that “people were entering the bar completely sober and leaving dangerously inebriated — sometimes within just thirty minutes.” Fillers, the bartender, was charging just two dollars a glass for unlimited drinks made from the cement mixer. Owner Terry McCabe was arrested, though he denied any wrongdoing. “Making drinks in bulk allowed me to fire my bartenders and lowered the cost-per-unit so I could stay ahead of the competition. I had intended to clean out the lingering flecks of cement, but our pricing made us so busy I never got the chance. I have learned one lesson, though. It doesn’t always pay to ‘mix’ things up.’ “

The Onion also reported the appearance in Baghdad of an “Iraqi Gandhi” who has gained quite a large following because of his message, which is a bit different from that of his better known namesake. Iyad al-Naqib, that being the Iraqi Gandhi’s name, says, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, so extract a pinky for an eye.” A pinkie is the little finger. He has also instructed his followers to bomb discos on weeknights, when they are less crowded, and he wants suicide bombers to equip themselves with hand grenades rather than multiple sticks of TNT.

The Onion reports, “Such views earned al-Naqib this year’s Mideast Peace Prize, an award administered by the Yemeni government and presented to individuals credited with encouraging what its literature characterises as ‘anything remotely close to a rough approximation of peace in the region’. Al-Naqib says, “We should not work towards the total annihilation of all who oppose us — just some of them. And perhaps it is best we practise occasional mercy for the innocent, such as the young, who can easily recuperate.” One of his admirer says, “His doctrine of ‘slightly less violence’ and ‘passive involvement in the violence of others’ has resonated throughout the Muslim world and is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged mass movement.” About 9/11, al-Naqib is of the opinion that instead of two, only one tower should have been brought down. He says, “There is no cause for which I am prepared to kill thousands of people when it will suffice to simply blow their legs off.”

Maybe he is the man we need in Pakistan to defuse the present crisis.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Nobody had ever taken the Dodo Party very seriously. That was the reason it managed to take over the country one dull Friday morning when half the men were out shopping and half the women were busy cursing their house help. Those not out shopping or cursing the house help were parked in front of their televisions watching the latest episode of the runaway hit The Mystery Maidens of Lal Masjid.

The Dodo Party takeover was most peaceful. Its strike force, made up of school dropouts and a bunch of cricketers who had failed to make the Pakistan team because they had refused to grow beards, did not even have to jump over the wrought iron gates of the Pakistan Television Corporation in Islamabad because the gates were already open. Other television channels were busy playing videos or showing soap operas where the heroine is prevented from marrying the love of her life until the final episode. The first announcement that something was up came on PTV from a ten year old. “My dad has asked me, in return for a new bike that I have long wanted, to go on the air and say that the Dodo Party has taken over and that is that. He wants everyone to relax and go back to whatever they were doing. And now I will go and get the bike I was promised.”

The first thing the Dodo Party did was to change the name of the country to Dodoland. The Constitution was abrogated – yes one more time – and replaced with something called The Dodo Doctrine. Dodo, it turned out, was the name of the new leader, and since he had no intention of taking off whatever clothes he was wearing next to his skin, he felt it was only logical that he rename the country. Dodo also scrapped every existing law on the books, which was no great loss because as far as anybody could remember they were dead laws anyway. The nation was given a new slogan in place of “Unity, Faith, Discipline,” which was “Do it Dodo way.” What exactly that meant nobody was sure, but nobody was much bothered either on that count. All anti-Dodo activities, including thinking bad thoughts about Dodo, were banned. A Dodo Thought Police was formed. The existing police force was sent to the salt mines of Khewra and ordered never to surface again. This step was greeted by the people who were seen dancing in the streets. The crime rate fell to zero and everybody knew why.

One of the first proclamations of the Dodo Party was a ban on the import, local manufacture and possession of razor blades. All barber shops were sealed and barricaded. The public was given just 24 hours to surrender every implement that could possibly be employed to remove facial hair. In every city great bonfires were lit to dispose of the surrendered stocks. A supplementary proclamation said, “All male children should wear false beards. Any male child found without one will be deprived of his kites, marbles and any sports equipment he might possess.” False beard factories were set up in every city, since the majority of Dodoland’s population was well below the shaving age.

All television stations were set on fire, and every store selling electronic goods, music videos and DVDs was ordered closed. Protesting store-owners were pushed into the few rivers that still had water. However, so shallow were the waters that none of them drowned. The programme was declared a great success. All cinemas were turned into gymnasiums and weightlifting was declared the national support. The Pakistan Cricket Board was bombed from the air and Dr Nasim Ashraf put on a plane bound for Arizona. Women were ordered to stay indoors. Those who made the mistake of stepping out were taken to the Torkhum border and pushed into Afghanistan. Every sign, every hoarding that showed a female face or figure was brought down overnight and destroyed. It became illegal to circulate any material containing any pictorial or verbal reference to women. Madam Nur Jehan was tried in absentia although she had long been dead. Asma Jahangir, who was abroad at the time, was told never to return.

A National Book Commission was formed and assigned to rewrite every book in line with the Dodo Doctrine. Since it was not explained what the Doctrine was, the rewritten books had nothing but blank pages. The few public libraries that existed were shut down and their collections sold as garbage. All bookshops were also closed. The import of foreign magazines and books was banned. Female animals were removed from zoos. Every pet dog and cat was required to wear a collar that declared its sex to be certifiably male. Interest was banned which led to the closure of all banks and insurance companies. That also took care of Dodoland’s foreign trade. However, trade with like-minded countries was permitted but since no country met that description, all foreign trade came to an end. Diplomatic relations were severed with all states since none of them followed the Dodo Doctrine or knew what it was. Every embassy and mission maintained abroad was closed down. Dodoland also pulled out of the United Nations.

All foreigners were ordered to leave the country. A new Ministry of Ethical Deconstruction was set up and special Thought Police that came to be known as Sixth Sensers were posted outside every family home. A ban was placed on foreign languages. A national commission was established to design a new language called Dodospeak. Before long, the world forgot about Pakistan, renamed Dodoland. 20 years passed. That was when a new and curious UNESCO director general decided to send a team of investigators to the region to find out what had happened to Dodoland, once known as Pakistan. The team came back a month later to report that all it had seen was a vast desert swarming with khaki-coloured squirrels with beards.

If the purpose of the sponsored visit to the United States — not without Washington’s blessings — of a group of madrassa overlords and administrators was intended to impress the Americans about the benign nature of the institutions that have been in Washington’s crosshairs since 9/11, then that heroic bid, it is safe to say, has not exactly been a thumping success. One is of course aware that back home, on return, the visit will be played as having once and for all laid to rest the fear and loathing that the mere mention of the word madrassa triggers in this country.

The travelling maulanas, accompanied and shepherded by the Secretary of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, included Qari Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, Maulana Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, Allama Riaz Hussain Najfi and MMA MNA Dr Ata-ur-Rehman, who also runs a madrassa. It is not clear if another of the advertised divines, Maulana Naeem-ur-Rehman, head of the Salafi group of madrassas — the PMA of jihad — actually made the trip.

Those who were taking these bearded gentlemen around — the Secretary being no exception to the beard — included the Centre for Religion and Diplomacy and the Pakistani-American Leadership Centre, a lobbying group on which the Embassy of Pakistan smiles more than somewhat. As for the former, it is an essentially religious outfit that claims to be trying to bring peace to such troubled parts of the world as Darfur and Kashmir. In Kashmir, it says it is encouraging the “next generation” of leaders. It is another matter that the “next generation” on both sides of the ceasefire line is the offspring of the earlier discredited generation.

I missed breaking bread with the visitors when I learnt that the gentleman handing out the invitations, although from Sialkot, was none other than a fellow traveller of the Moonies, having once set up a Pakistan office to spread the word of the Rev. Moon. It is that sort of thing which does it for me. I am told he also presented each of the maulanas with shields that declared them to be ‘Ambassadors of Peace’. While nothing would make the world happier than to see peace come to take root here and now, there is an enormous question mark over the contribution of the Pakistani madrassas to what has been every Pakistani’s unfulfilled — and perhaps unfulfillable — dream of peace.

The four gentlemen represented the united front that the madrassas have formed to protect their interests and their view of the world. A leaflet distributed at an event organised for the visitors on Capitol Hill — young staffers from a number of congressional offices being the intended audience — credited madrassas with playing an “important role in a country where millions live in poverty and state educational infrastructure is in decay”. To which all one can say is: Welcome to Pakistan. This welcome introduction was followed by a number of questions: What is going on inside these madrassas? Does the Pakistani government have any control over them? Do these madrassas threaten US national security interests?

Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman declined the offer of his Urdu being rendered into English by stating modestly that he was capable of speaking in English, which turned out to be the case. He said, “We’ve no hatred against America as a nation: our only differences being with the policies of the US government.” The Taliban movement, he said, is an Afghan, not a Pakistani movement. He called suicide missions “un-Islamic, immoral, illegal and unethical” when carried out against civilian targets.

That bit became problematic during the question hour. Alan Kronstadt of the Congressional Research Service asked if the Mufti would kindly clarify if what he meant was that while suicide attacks against civilian targets were un-Islamic, they were permissible if they involved non-civilian targets. The Mufti replied that what was needed was a definition of terrorism. He also cited in support of his argument the suicide attacks mounted by the Japanese during World War II. Allama Riaz Hussain Najfi chipped in at this point to say that in 1965 when India attacked through Chowinda, Pakistani soldiers were able to halt the Indian advance, which would have cut Pakistan into two, through heroic suicide attacks. He said that if the nation’s existence is at stake, suicide attacks are justified.

The chink in the argument advanced by the two maulanas was that they were confusing soldiers dying in battle with suicide bombings as the world has come to know them in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the maulanas’ way of thinking, suicide bombings are not suicide bombings if they are carried out against non-civilian targets. As for the Chowinda story, it falls in the same category as green-robed saints with flowing white beards standing on the Ravi Bridge in 1965 and catching bombs released by Indian warplanes in mid air and lobbing them into the river.

I asked Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman to kindly cite chapter and verse from the Quran or in the teachings of Islam where suicide bombings or taking one’s own life is sanctioned. He replied that since I lived in the West, I had permitted myself to be carried away and, consequently, misled, by such phrases as “suicide bombings”.

Asked about Lal Masjid and its Islamic Amazon warriors in black, who abduct peaceful citizens and send out vice squads that kidnap “sinners” in the name of Islam, the Mufti said that the Tanzeemul Madaris Pakistan had “deregistered” the Lal Masjid seminary. Would it be off the mark to point out that the “deregisteration” has had no effect on the good health and well-being of the Holy Fortress in Red.

When asked if there were any women on the governing board of the madrassas, it turned out that there were none. A young African-American woman was not satisfied with the answer that women administrators of women’s madrassas were consulted and their views and suggestions given due consideration. She said African slaves in colonial America were also assured that their interests were well protected and represented by their white masters. But that was not so. She spoke with much eloquence and swayed the audience with her words. It became quite clear that our religious and educational divines are not prepared to treat women as their equals and are not willing to accord them a place on their councils.

Nobody who heard the maulanas from Pakistan will forget where they drew the line when it came to suicide bombings and women.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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