Short Essay: Mind your own Business
Among the many bad habits that Pakistanis have negligently cherished all these years, the most irritating is poking nose in others’ affairs.
The meaninglessness that one experiences every second of the twenty-four hour long day must be filled with something; something that can kill time on social media, generate some discussion and unite some broken hearts, not to mention the cathartic effect of criticising some or/and sympathising others. The need to understand that the contemporary world is governed by political leaders, neither papacy nor mullah who have been mummified carefully lest the world would forget those who were the symbol of power once upon a time, has grown manifold. Modern wars are not crusades, aiming at the persecution of one and the triumph of another religious group or ideology.
A Pakistani Muslim raising voice for the “ethnic cleansing” of humanity in Burma is paradoxical when, on 27 August 2017, a 17-years-old Christian teenager, The Independent reports, on his third day in MC Model Boys Government School, Burewala, was “beaten to death by his (Muslim) classmates” because he drank from the glass of a Muslim student. The teacher present at the time of the mob-murder claimed that he did not notice the event as he was busy reading the newspaper! It is also worth mentioning that the poor boy got slapped on the face (and stood outside for the whole day) on the first day of his school as his parents could not buy him the uniform. The second day was, it is also reported, spent in insulting the lad and forcibly converting him to Islam.
Is it enough or the reader waits on the author to join the dots: the teachers who physically abused and punished the Christian boy on his first day; the students who stepped into the shoes of their heartless, inconsiderate teachers by bullying the fellow and forcing him to convert; and, finally, the climax when the majority hungry-for-the-blood-of-a-minority patiently waited for the innocent to make one mistake, out of ignorance, so that its blood could be devoured. There is no shock that the Muslim master, sitting at the crime scene with a newspaper, did not hear anything.
The unfortunate was the first, and hopefully the last, Christian to attend the school; all Christians must take a lesson from his fate and keep their children away from Muslim majority schools, and wait for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to construct a minority school in every town!
Wait ,does Malala Yusafzai, a student-cum-Nobel Laureate, got shot by the radicals (for which she was awarded the most auspicious award) because she insisted on attending school, even know the name of the student who was so mercilessly butchered, i.e. Sharoon Masih? Wait, did she just observe silence because anyhow a religiously minority does not matter. Wait, did she just ask Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist Nobel Laureate, to “stop the ‘shameful’ treatment of the Muslim minority in Myanmar”!
Since the average Pakistani does not persuade Malala to condemn the brutal killing of minorities in Pakistan, there is no reason why the whole nation is after the Nobel prize of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The plight of the reader is understandable; there is no obvious connection between the persecution of Rohingya Muslims and the “accidental” death of a Christian student. However, both, Muslims in Burma and Christians in Pakistan are minorities, and there are more Christians in Pakistan than Muslims in Burma. Out of 207 million population of Pakistan, 1.59 percent is Christian and 1.60 percent Hindu, i.e., 3,303,614 and 3,324,392 respectively. Out of the 52.89 million Burma population, Rohingya are some two millions, reports Oxford Burma Alliance, from which many have already migrated to nearby countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia and India.
If that does not satisfy the heart inflicted with boredom, consider another, more relevant, example: Afghan refugees. Aljazeera, on 26 February 2017, reported that at least 606,905 Afghans, i.e. more than 0.6 million Afghan Muslims, “repatriated last year amid reports of abuse by Pakistani authorities following border tension”. It is a known fact that for decades the Torkham border remained open for the citizens of both states. The Afghan refugees have been looking forward to Pakistan for refuge for decades: earlier from Soviet invasion of 1979 than from Taliban repletion of 1990s and later from US-invasion of 2001. Even if the more than one million undocumented refugees are to be ignored, the registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan are 1.32 million.
It is also reported that the number of refugees sent back by Pakistan is “roughly the double number of refugees that fled war in Syria, Iraq and Libya to reach Europe by boat across the Mediterranean Sea in the same period”. Besides, some 120,000 Rohingya Muslims who are forced to migrate from the country is roughly the double of Afghan Muslims that were sent back by Pakistan in 2016; however, the Rohingya are forced to flee in a fortnight.
Why did Pakistan grow hostile towards a neighbour that is also a “Muslim brother”? June 2016 marks the military clash between the two armies at Torkham border, during which “at least four Pakistani and Afghan soldiers died and several others wounded”. The tension grew and the Pakistani government withdrew support from Afghan muhajirs, not to leave them in the lurch, but to send them back to where they belong.
What if those who are still living in Pakistan, after some fifty or more years, claim Pakistan citizenship just because they have been living here for a long time or because their children were born here? And, what if they start a rebel against the democratic government of Pakistan? What Pakistan and Pakistanis would be thinking then: they are our Muslim brothers who must be accommodated in the land of pure, or they are thankless migrants who must be sent back to the debris from where they belong?
The Burmese Citizenship Law of 1982 does not recognize Rohingyas as citizens since citizenship is given to those who are either descendants of residents who lived in Burma before 1823 and who were born to citizens of Burma. Why 1823: the massive internal migration of laborers to an Indian province Myanmar, during the 124 years long British rule (1824-1948), was disapproved by the natives of the province. After independence, the government called the migration “illegal” and denied the illegal migrants citizenship. The Buddhist majority consider Rohingyas Bengalis, not Burmese.
Rohingya, just like Afghans, is an “ethnic” minority which has more to do with ethnicity than religion. Besides, the most wretched Rohingya is not the only unrecognised minority in Burma: there are also Burmese Chinese, Panthay, Burmese Indians, Anglo Burmese and Gurkha.
Going back to Myanmar, what factors forced the sudden military action against the “innocent” Muslims of Rohingya: The Guardian confirms that “some Rohingya people have taken up arms, and that the latest massacres were triggered by the killing of 12 members of the security forces last month, attributed to a group that calls itself Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army”; the paper does condemns the military action of forcing Rohingyas to flee in the last fortnight and criticise the use of armed rebel as a lame excuse to justify the “ethnic cleansing”.
Let the author clarify, before you call her blasphemous or traitor, that she condemns the killing of human beings, be it one or one hundred, be them innocent or criminal, in any part of the world. She also condemns, in the same degree, using the word Muslim as a propaganda since there are many Muslims, even in Pakistan, e.g. Afghans and Qadiyanis, who are denied citizenship or forced to flee, due to different reasons. Approving the massacre is inhuman, but it must not be labelled Muslim, i.e. Rohingya genocide.
The Rohingya are not contemporary Galileos, who have instigated the political wrath of the papacy by a revolutionary scientific discovery; they are just an ethnic minority group, living below the poverty line, which had made the mistake of taking up arms against the government and is subject to the treatment deemed suitable by the ruling body because they have no say in the running of the country.
The Muslim Ummah is not as innocent as the national (social) media portrays it not as vicious as the international (electronic) media describes it. Shockingly, the Rohingya Muslims are discovered to be more respectful towards their parents: A Rohingya carrying his parents in a handmade-carriage hanging from both shoulders is uploaded to generate the good-for-nothing sympathy vote – some 484 shares.
Suddenly, the quote of Imaam Anwar Awlaki pasted on the image of a man, with his hands clasped for forgiveness, standing in a boat pops up to increase the pressure: If you are not concerned with the affairs of this Ummah realise that you’re dead – 101 shares.
Pathetically, the image of a half-smiling black man(I wonder if the brown Muslims can relate with black Muslims!), wearing a white turban, catches attention: Buddhist kill me in Burma; Christians kill me in Afghanistan; Hindus in Kashmir and Jews in Palestine. Still I am not a terrorist. The fallacy of the quote is evident, but the ignorance and the negligence of those 20k literate facebook users, most of which are Pakistanis, who actually shared this post is only pitiable. Motivational Muslims obviously did not upload the image out of love for Rohingya Muslims; s/he did it to generate traffic which s/he obviously learnt how to attract.
History has taught this yet-to-become-a-nation population no lessons. It has poked its nose in all those affairs that it found Muslim: gone are the times when religion motivated nations to persecute each other for supremacy. This age demands par excellence scientific knowledge, beyond imagination innovations and ground breaking discoveries from those nations who intend to rule the world, not to mention the hawk-eyed political insight and military force to nip in the bud any malice that might tarnish its national integrity or image at a later time.
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