Protest, protest, protest

Protest

In the nineties, when we were students, Salman Rushdie had the unholy audacity to write a book called Satanic Verses based on lexicons, committing the blasphemy of the Prophet P.B.U.H. He was sitting safely in the West and our protest was not hurting him but Pakistanis because we Muslims were blocking the roads of Pakistan but we were told that this protest is a demand of faith.


So we also left our main work i.e. studies and protested on the streets and made effigies of Salman Rushdie and burned them. Salman Rushdie apologized and did not withdraw the contents of the book but after some time we got another topic of protest and we forgot Salman Rushdie. Similarly, in the 1990s, the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and on the advice of generals like the late General Hameed Gul, the establishment decided that we should now turn the Mujahideen towards Kashmir. So we started protesting on the streets of Pakistan in favor of Kashmir.


We continued to protest and did so until 9/11 happened. After 9/11, the Pakistani state changed its policy. He stopped helping the Kashmiri Mujahideen. So they were left helpless and the matter culminated in India changing the status of Kashmir and making it the biggest prison in the world. We then protested on the streets of Pakistan. We flashed our politics and journalism for a few days and then forgot Kashmir and started looking for a new topic for protest.


In the 1990s, the Taliban became the rulers of Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan, instead of advising them to act sensibly, we supported their every legitimate and illegitimate move by taking the popular line. A Pakistani leader while addressing a public meeting in Bajaur said that we will bring a Taliban-like system in Pakistan. The Taliban's behavior paved the way for America's invasion of Afghanistan, and when the United States began to weigh in on action, we once again adopted the path of protest to shine politics. Millions of marches began to take place on Pakistani streets.


Americans did not suffer from these marches, but Pakistanis continued to be affected. We were Pakistanis but the name of the political alliance formed by the religious leaders was Defense Afghanistan Council. To play with the sentiments of the people, one leader even said that if America attacks Afghanistan, we will sink its fleet in the Arabian Sea. Then we saw that the United States and its allies bombed Afghanistan with the same fleets and ended the Taliban government, but no leader of Defence Afghanistan went there for jihad, but the simple Maulana Sufi was inspired by their slogans. Muhammad took thousands of Pakhtuns with him to Afghanistan. For a long time, there was no suitable excuse for the protest, but God bless Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas sitting in Qatar, that he made a program of action in Israel.


So the oppressive and aggressor Israel began to attack Gaza brick by brick. He invaded Gaza at the behest of the US and its Western allies and created a new history of atrocities. So, we got another opportunity to protest and this time, since the elections are around the corner and since the heart of every Pakistani beats with the Palestinians, a contest of protest rallies has started between religious and political parties. The war is going on in Gaza and we are blocking the roads of Pakistan and due to the blocking of these roads, many Muslim sick Pakistanis are deprived of reaching the hospital in time.


The money we are spending on rallies, processions and conferences, if we send it to Palestine, maybe the life of a Palestinian will become easier, but since politics does not shine on it, we only do what Pakistanis can see. He is not a Muslim who does not consider the grief of the Palestinians as his own grief and their suffering as his own. But the question is what should happen and what can we do? As far as the question of what should be done, I also demand that Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian land should end, but as far as the question of what we can do is concerned, then the submission is that our protests should not harm the Palestinians. There is no benefit or loss. We see that there was no demonstration in Saudi Arabia. There were no demonstrations in Qatar, UAE, Jordan and Lebanon etc.


The position of the governments there is considered to be the position of the people there and as far as the government of Pakistan is concerned, our position is stronger and clearer than the position of the Arab countries and at this time if Maulana Fazlur Rehman or Sirajul Haq is also the Prime Minister. If they had, they would not have done anything more than that. When it comes to demonstrations, the largest demonstrations against Israel took place in London and America. These protests had no political agenda. They took place on purely humanitarian grounds, but they were also not influenced by Israel, America or Great Britain.


The reason is obvious that the powerful understand only the language of power. This is the case of our hypocrisy that during the past years, the greatest damage to the Palestinian cause was caused by the proxy war of Arabs and Iran, but our religious leaders cannot make a statement against any of them.


Similarly, Muslim children and women were killed in the wars in Yemen and Syria, but since both sides were Muslims, no religious leader called for protests on these two issues. It is repeated that he does not deserve to be called a Muslim who does not sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians. But as far as what we can do, in my opinion, our religious leaders can play some role in the Afghanistan issue as compared to Palestine, because these religious leaders played a role in setting up the Pakistani state with the Taliban.


Therefore, by limiting ourselves to prayers for Palestine these religious leaders should go to Afghanistan and mediate between the Taliban and the government of Pakistan, so that Pakistani and Afghan Muslims do not shed any more blood. Neither the Israeli prime minister is a student of Pakistani religious leaders nor Ismail Haniyeh. On the contrary, our religious leaders continue to claim that the Afghan Taliban are their student. Therefore, they should act as mediators between their students and the Pakistani state. Let go of what should be, focus on what can be.