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| Malalaa yousafzai |
A famous Punjabi saying, ‘digga khoti tooN gussa kumhar tay’ [One is fallen from the donkey but blames the potmaker] is the most appropriate expression for describing certain Pakistani ‘friends of Gaza’ busy blaming Malala for not condemning Israel’s latest aggression. Had Jalib been around, he would have poured his scorn anew, ‘Dartay hain mo’chooN wallaya ik nehti larki say’.
What unites Ummah is definitely not Israel. It is highly contagious ignorance. Conspiracy theories to vilify Malala when she was shot at by a Talib, reached all the way to Palestine itself. Many aPalestinian declared the attack on Malala as a mock attack. However, it is our Muslim Indian brethren often proving more Pakistani than Pakistanis. A Facebook friend (I sometimes wish one also had the option of Facebook Enemies) from India has also hosted a full fledge ‘poem’ (though badly rhymed) condemning Malala. No counter-check, no verification is considered necessary when it comes to ‘Western agents’.
Our Facebook jihadis do not even read newspapers, it seems. Honestly, I heard Malala’s statement condemning the Israeli invasion on BBC Urdu before I noticed a Facebook post condemning her for ignoring the Gaza crisis. I was critical of both. Malala, I thought, should not poke her nose everywhere. Likewise, I regretted BBC Urdu’s editorial judgment. Malala is not an expert on Gaza crisis. She is not a politician She has dedicated herself to the cause of, in particular, girls’ education. In this regard, there is a justification if she travels to Nigeria to express her solidarity with the girl-students kidnapped by Boko Haram. She may be outraged over hundreds of issues on a daily basis. But we should be spared her statements on BBC Urdu and other mainstream media outlets on topics she is hardly expert on, even if she is entitled to hold whatever views and freely express them.
I was definitely wrong. Malala paid the price for violating Salafi-Sharia the Taliban had imposed in Swat. From now on, she will be paying the price for refusing to toe the Online-Sharia that middle-class, clean-shaven urban Taliban (but beards in their stomachs) have devised for Pakistani women, peasants and workers.
While Swat’s mountain Taliban attempted to assassinate her physically, their urban counterparts are trying to assassinate her integrity, commitment, and character till she recants (Will she submit?). I wish I had not written about Malala. I did not before. I still think a coward like myself lacks the moral ground to even pay tribute to Malala’s courage. But her critics unfortunately are people with few scruples. They are not angry at the OIC (justifiably ridiculed as Oh I See!) or the Arab League for betraying the Palestine cause.
It does not bother Malala-haters that both the Pakistan government and their political leadership, from Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf to Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League have looked the other way as Israel devastates Gaza [I am discounting PPP and ANP since they do not represent the Urban Taliban even if their role is equally regrettable].
Since ‘ignorance is power’ in the case of Malala bashers [even Google is helpless before the power ignorance commands in the blogosphere where Pakistani middle classes operate], I, therefore, will not blame them for not directing their anger towards Brigadier Zia-ul-Haq for his notorious role in Black September.
However, now when Malala has condemned the Gaza invasion (please do not ask her to receive a fake Israeli bullet in a mock encounter in Gaza to prove her sincerity), should not Malala critics muster courage and express solidarity with dozens of Gazas regularly created domestically: Imambargahs, Hazara and Christian neighbourhoods, Sufi shrines, Ahmedi mosques, Hindu Bastis and whole of FATA.
(II)
Rafeef Ziadah is many things – an activist, scholar, musician, poet. In every role, she is the voice of Palestine. During a demonstration, a western journalist asked her: “Ms Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?”
In mainstream western discourses, it is usually not Israel that is posing any problem. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is explained away by an instinctive Muslim/Palestinian hatred for Jews. Islamophobic clichés strengthened by the rise of Hamas help ease the job.
As if to introduce the journalist to the rich tradition of Arabic poetry, Rafeef responded with a dazzling poem, titled, ‘We teach life, sir!’Here is an excerpt:
“Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.
And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.
But still, he asked me, Ms Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?
Pause.
I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.
Patience has just escaped me.
Pause.
Smile.
“We teach life, sir!”
Rafeef, remember to smile.
Pause
“We teach life, sir! We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.
“We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies. We teach life, sir!”
Yet again Israel is pounding Gaza. In the realm of social media, any gesture of solidarity with Palestine earns you liberal wrath. ‘Why do a few dead bodies and a couple of bombs over Gaza bother you so much when the Taliban are massacring innocent Pakistanis next door?’ comes the reprimand. Ironically, this is exactly what the religious right does. Point out any puritan barbarity and in response puritans will cite two imperial/infidel outrages. The way politicised Islam refuses to be a ‘religion of peace’ beyond Nile-to-Kashgar, the liberalism of many Pakistan liberals also begins to wane when the victims at the receiving end of imperial or Zionist barbarisms happen to be ‘uncouth Arabs’.
The outrage over the Gaza bombings is not owing to the fundamentalists’ hegemonic sway over the apocryphal Muslim world, or Talibanisation in the case of Pakistan. Long before the Taliban were even born, Jalib used to mock the mullahs for ignoring the Palestinian cause while Faiz penned ‘Lullaby for a Palestinian Child’ and attributed his ‘Meray Dil Meray Musafir’ to Yasser Arafat.
That Palestine invokes such passions in the Muslim world and beyond mirrors, in the first place, the success of the Palestinian liberation struggle as a political project. Second, symbolised by Leila Khaled, Mehmoud Darwesh, Edward Said and Yasser Arafat, the heroic Palestinian resistance against the last surviving and violent colonial project has invoked a general solidarity worldwide. From post-apartheid South Africa to communist Cuba, Palestine has won global solidarity. After 200 invasion f Gaza, Bolivia and Venezuela severed diplomatic ties with IsraeI In Sweden, a Davis Cup match in 2009 between Sweden and Israel was played in an arena without spectators. Authorities banned any audience for fear of anti-Israel protesters. In fact, Palestine solidarity is much stronger in the west than the Muslim world. Third, history and the west’s guilty conscious/hypocrisy further stoke the Palestinian fire. I would humbly suggest: instead of getting irritated over Gaza, let us learn lessons in resistance and dignity from Palestine. Rafeef Ziadah correctly points out:
We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir!
(III)
Dear Liberals! When are you going to stage a Syria-solidarity sit-in? But watch out. A demonstration against the Assad regime will land you in the ISIS camp (by the same logic you bracket the left with Hamas). A demonstration against ISIS will land you in the camp of Iranian Ayotollahs.
sources : http://viewpointonline.net/2014/07/vp212/ridiculing-left-for-solidarity-with-gaza-goading-malala-for-silence-over-gaza
