Year Two Thousand Eleven

What will the year two thousand eleven bring for us? Any feathers in our caps or would we grade more scarlet letters?

Let us consider the importance of the year 2011 with respect to recent history. Some numbers have special importance in Islam and Islamic history. The numbers three, seven, ten, forty and some others have been noticed to be of significance. So let us recall that it would be a complete ten years since we switched from being friends to foes to our Afghan comrades of the Afghan-Russian war. It would be seven years since we started bombarding our own people, women and children in the tribal areas, who were our faithful and voluntary defence-force prior to it. And it would be three years since Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been located and yet not been asked for, let alone brought back.

Ungratefulness has found new dimensions in Pakistan. Had the Russian invasion not been encountered in Afghanistan, Pakistan would have been its next target in order to reach the warm shores. Pakistan did no favor to Afghanistan, but a favor to itself when it helped Afghanistan fight the Russians. Yet people today have begun to comment upon one of the greatest feats of Pakistan as a misadventure.

Then, it says in the Holy Quran about the nation of Prophet Musa AS,
“Also remember another covenant which We took from you; that you shall not shed blood among yourselves and you shall not expel your own people from your homes; you confirmed it and you are witness to it.
Yet there you are, killing your own people, expelling a group amongst you from their homes, backing each other with sin and aggression;
And if they come to you as captives, you trade them for ransoms whereas their expulsion was unlawful for you to begin with.
Do you believe in a part of your Holy Book and reject the rest? So what other punishment do such people among you, who behave like this, deserve, than disgrace in this world and to be driven to grievous punishment on the Day of Judgment? Allah is not unaware of what you do.
Such are the people who trade the life of this world at the expense of the Hereafter; so neither their punishment shall be lightened nor shall they be helped.” [The Holy Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah (2), Ayahs 84-86]

We have surpassed the nation of Prophet Musa AS in sin and aggression. We do not even bother ransoming our people back. How can we? We sold them in the first place.

Then, the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is the height of our test as a nation. It is a rare case where all possible atrocities have added up; from her and her children being missing for five, long, terribly silent years, to children being deprived of motherhood and tortured, to this Muslim sister being strip searched daily even as you read this. It is a case very, very hard to be insensitive to. If we cannot respond to even this one, we might as well receive the medical certificate of being a dead nation.

It might be an awakening reminder, that it will also be forty years in the year 2011, when we lost East Pakistan to power greed, regionalism and deviating from the objectives of achieving Pakistan in our personal lives and society.

Hence, independence that is not honored, can be confiscated.

“Closer draws unto men their reckoning, and yet they remain stubbornly heedless (of its approach). Whenever there comes unto them any new reminder from their Lord, they but listen to it with playful amusement…”

[The Holy Qur~an, Surah Al-Anbiyaa (21), Ayahs 1-2]