Mission Impossible for Pakistani Progressives?

By Michael Georgy

Students attend a lecture organised by the Khudi organisation in Islamabad November 26, 2011. The Khudi organisation — self-esteem in Urdu — does not expect the government to tackle the problem of spreading Islamist radicalism.  So it has taken on what seems to be mission impossible — creating a social movement that can reverse the growing tide. Picture taken November 26, 2011. REUTERS/ Faisal Mahmood

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The small but enthusiastic group of “progressive” Muslims arrives at a hotel conference room in Pakistan’s capital with the tools they hope will help blunt extremism in the unstable U.S. ally.

The Khudi organization — self-esteem in Urdu — does not expect the government to tackle the problem of spreading Islamist radicalism.

So it has taken on what seems to be mission impossible — creating a social movement that can reverse the growing tide.

Seconds after using laptop computers, a slide projector, a film documentary and examples from history to highlight the dangers of militancy, Khudi leaders are confronted by hostile university students in the audience.

A veiled woman says amputations of thieves’ hands should not be criticized because they reduce crime in Saudi Arabia, which is accused of funding hardline Islamist seminaries in Pakistan.

Others deny there is intolerance in Pakistan — where al Qaeda-inspired Sunni militants kill members of minorities — arguing instead that Western conspirators fabricate the problem.

“I just don’t know how to get my point across to you,” said one of the lecturers, visibly frustrated.

The United States and other Western countries have long urged the government to counter extremism.

Critics say Pakistani leaders have failed, allowing everyone from clerics in small rural mosques to school teachers in big cities to spread radicalism in the nuclear-armed state.
Khudi’s struggle underscores the difficulties of stabilizing Pakistan, seen as critical to U.S. efforts to tackle militancy.

It was founded in 2010 by Maajid Nawaz, a former member of the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, that tries to recruit military officers in Muslim nations to topple pro-Western governments.

Nawaz, a Briton whose family comes from Pakistan, spent years persuading Muslims — from Europe to Egypt — that Western-style democracies were doomed and only Islamic theocracies could succeed.

During four years in a notorious Cairo jail for his activities, Nawaz vowed to become a suicide bomber after watching state security agents electrocute fellow Islamists.
After holding political debates with fellow inmates, he eventually decided to preach moderation in deeply conservative Pakistan, where liberals and intellectuals are seen as impotent.

BRACING FOR THE LONG HAUL

Although Khudi has spread its message in many Pakistani universities, its leaders say it could years to make an impact.

Just mentioning the world secularism can be a problem because it is portrayed as a non-religious concept — so someone secular could easily be labeled an infidel.
“We are trying to create the al Qaeda of democratic movements,” said Nawaz, 34, in a telephone interview, referring to the militant group’s reach.
“Pakistan is uniquely difficult. Anyone who mentions the word democracy is immediately labeled a Western stooge.”

Khudi believes holding free and fair elections in Pakistan is not enough, because religious radicalism is stifling democratic concepts like free speech and freedom of association.
So it is reaching out to the young, since over 60 percent of

Pakistan’s population is under 25.

Made up of eight executive committee members and about 5,000 volunteers, it deploys ideas as its weapons, insisting that military crackdowns on militants produce limited results.
Khudi members hold workshops at universities, hand out pamphlets and show films that condemn violence.

The group is trying to uproot hardline Islam that can be traced back decades. In the 1980s, for instance, President General Zia ul-Haq nurtured Islamist militants and turned society towards radicalism.
National coordinator Fatima Mullick recalls how as a teenager in the 1990s she heard how 40 Shi’ite doctors were shot dead outside their homes or on the way to work in just a few months in her home city of Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub.

“There is no illusion,” the 27-year-old said of Khudi’s challenge. “This is the toughest job in the world.”

RECRUITMENT ON CAMPUS

For Imran Khan, a senior Khudi trainer and spokesman unrelated to the cricketer-turned-politician, it was the September 11 attacks on the United States that raised his awareness.
“People around me, even people from my family, were very happy that a few ‘infidels’ were killed by Muslim jihadis,” he said, sitting beside teenage Khudi volunteers with funky haircuts and Western-style sweatshirts.

Khudi pioneers work out of a type of safehouse in the capital Islamabad for fear of attacks by militants. To achieve its aims, Khudi holds workshops on university campuses.
A big part of the problem is the growing perception that the West is plotting against Muslims.

Recent events like the November 26 NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops on the border with Afghanistan are fuelling anti-Americanism, and making Khudi’s job harder.

“I have relatives who work for Pakistani intelligence. They told me the Americans were behind all the suicide bombings,” said Sobia Baig, a Pakistani woman at the hotel workshop.

Khudi is troubled by Pakistan’s long history of creeping radicalism. But a far more recent event shocked its leaders.

In January, Punjab province Governor Salman Taseer was assassinated by his own bodyguard. because the governor had called for the reform of Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy law, which critics say is misused against minorities.

Lawyers who once protested in support of democracy showered bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri with rose petals.

Two months after Taseer’s murder, Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian, was murdered by the Taliban for demanding changes to the blasphemy law.

After the Bhatti assassination, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said Pakistan was “poisoned by extremism.”

It was never meant to be this way.

Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah appealed for religious tolerance in his first address to parliament in 1947.

Ironically it is young Pakistanis who seem most receptive to his message, like the ones in jeans, tights and sleeveless shirts at the Jammin Java cafe in the city of Lahore — an ideal recruiting ground for Khudi.

“Pakistan should be Jinnah’s Pakistan where there is no room for extremism and intolerance,” said student Nafeesa Ali, 22.

But Nawaz’s old Islamist group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, is equally determined to find followers at the cafe as well. It has been known to leave its orange promotional stickers.

Few are more aware of the long battle ahead for Khudi than Shakil Ahmad Chaudhary, a communications specialist who passionately delivers speeches at the group’s workshops.

“My children (aged 9 and 12) go to a so-called elite school in Islamabad. And they come back and say ‘Our teacher tells us of conspiracy theories’, 9/11 for example was a conspiracy by George Bush and the Jews,” said Ahmad.

“I try to educate them. But again, I have to be careful. I don’t want them to pick a quarrel with the teacher or become outcasts in the class.”

(Additional reporting by Mubashir Bukhari in LAHORE; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Celebrating Extraordinary Muslim Women

By Salma Hasan Ali

Washington, DC – On 10 March, three Muslim women will be honoured alongside philanthropist Melinda French Gates and human rights activists Panmelo Castro from Brazil and Rebecca Lolosoli from Kenya, by Vital Voices Global Partnership, a Washington, DC-based organisation that works to empower women around the world.

The need to recognise the work of Muslim women is important. Type the search terms “Muslim women” or “women in Islam” online and chances are that a majority of English-language hits will consist of stories relating to what Muslim women wear on their heads or how women in Muslim-majority countries are subjected to physical abuse, or subjugated under the false pretext of religious principle.

But there is another side to Muslim women that is too infrequently recognised, reported or discussed. The Vital Voices Global Partnership awards ceremony, taking pl ace two days after International Women’s Day, provides an opportunity to celebrate this not uncommon, yet too frequently overshadowed, side to Muslim women.

Andeisha Farid grew up in a refugee camp outside Afghanistan. As a teenager, she lived in a Pakistani hostel for six years, where she studied and tutored others. In 2008, at the age of 25, she started her own non-profit organisation, the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization (AFCECO), in Kabul. Today, AFCECO runs ten orphanages in Afghanistan and Pakistan for over 450 children of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

In a country where non-governmental organisations that work with women and girls are frequently targeted by religious extremists, Andeisha is constantly on guard. But she remains committed to providing Afghan children not only with food and shelter, but with a sense of mutual respect, regardless of ethnic differences, a feeling of khak – connection to the earth as their homeland – and a s ense of empowerment to shape their own future, and that of their country.

“The happy faces of these children give me hope,” she says. “It helps me conquer fear.”

Afnan Al Zayani is a wife, mother, social activist, television personality and CEO of a multi-million dollar business. It’s no wonder that Forbes and Arabian Business magazine call her one of the most powerful women in the Middle East. In addition, she helped ensure the first written personal status law that protects the rights of Muslim women in cases of divorce and child custody was passed in Bahrain.

She attributes her ability to juggle so many responsibilities to her strong faith. “God will judge us on whether we use our gifts of life and health towards good or evil,” she says. Immaculately dressed in her hijab, or headscarf, she shatters the Western stereotype of the downtrodden Muslim woman. Her guiding philosophy: “Live your life as if you will live forever; live yo ur day as if you will die tomorrow.”

Then there is Roshaneh Zafar. While studying development economics at Yale University in the United States, she came across the story of Khairoon, a woman in Bangladesh who owned only one sari. Khairoon borrowed $100 from the microfinance organisation Grameen Bank to invest in a business, and now owns a sweetshop, a poultry farm, a call centre – and a collection of colourful saris.

Roshaneh met Khairoon many years after her initial loan, and saw firsthand the miracle of microfinance in changing women’s lives. She decided to start a microfinance organisation in Pakistan called Kashf, which means “miracle”. It is now the third largest microfinance organisation in Pakistan, with 300,000 clients and a goal to reach more than half a million in the next four years.

Roshaneh’s message encapsulates the sentiment of many: “Women matter to the world. We need not accept the status quo. Freeing the world of poverty and disenfranchisement of women is possible. But it will only happen when 50 per cent of the world’s population is allowed to recognise its latent strength.”

It is these stories that must be reported, not only to herald the achievements of remarkable women, but to dispel falsely created perceptions of the role of Islam in defining the fate of Muslim women.

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* Salma Hasan Ali is a Washington, DC-based writer focusing on promoting understanding between the West and the Muslim world. This article first appeared in Washington Post/Newsweek’s On Faith and was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

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Muslim Society of Paraná Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Established to provide support to the Muslims arriving at the city of Curitiba, the organisation currently promotes various cultural, educational and religious activities, acting as a reference point to those who want to learn about Arab and Islamic culture.

Courtesy Omar Nasser, ANBA News Agency

Curitiba – A solemnity to be held on Friday evening (10th) will mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Muslim Beneficent Society of the State of Paraná (SBMPR), in southern Brazil. The event will bring together, at the seat of the organisation in Curitiba (capital of Paraná), immigrants, descendents, and relatives, as well as municipal and state-level officials. The members of the Islamic society who have rendered relevant services to the SBMPR throughout these 50 years will be awarded diplomas of Highest Honour.

The minutes of the organisation’s foundation date from July 28th, 1957. “The objective, at that time, was for the Beneficent Society to provide support to the Arab immigrants who started arriving here, in greater number, after the end of World War Two,” explains Jamil Ibrahim Iskandar, the current president. Being a Lebanese immigrant himself, Iskandar recalls that the pioneers had no relatives to help them and, in many cases, did not even know the Portuguese language.

Presently, SBMPR carries out a series of activities of cultural, educational, and religious nature, such as lectures, conferences, and exhibitions. Operating in the premises is an elementary school– the Brazilian-Arab School of Curitiba – and a nursery school. In the evening, Arabic language classes are held. “One can safely say that the Society is now a reference point, not only to the Muslim community in Curitiba and Paraná, but also to the Brazilians who want to learn about Arab and Islamic culture,” says Iskandar.

Currently living in Curitiba are approximately 1,500 Muslims, including immigrants, descendents, and converted Brazilians. The majority of Arab Muslims living in the city is of Lebanese descent, followed by Palestinians and Syrians. Among the Lebanese, there is s significant presence of people originally from the cities of Hermel and Baalbek, in the Bekaa Valley, as well as from the cities of Khirbat Roha and Jezzini, among others. In a recent trip to Curitiba, the then-resigning Lebanese minister of Labour, Trad Hammadeh, was puzzled by the fact that he found, in the city, the preserved accent of the Hermel region, which no longer exists even in Lebanon.

Early on, SBMPR operated from a leased building, in downtown Curitiba, next to the Tiradentes Square. As immigrants would achieve economic stability, they started having financial conditions to afford a property of their own in which to base the organisation. By 1964, the seat of the SBMPR was already established in a solidly built masonry building, where it remains to date. The building has an ample auditorium, rooms for the teaching of the Quran, offices, and an apartment to accommodate travellers.

In addition to the seat of the SBMPR, the Muslim community in Curitiba counts on a Mosque, which bears the name of Imam Ali ibn Abi Tálib, an homage to the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. In 2007, it will be 35 years since the temple was inaugurated. Another important milestone of Muslim Arab immigration to Curitiba is Cemitério Jardim de Allah (“Garden of Allah Cemetery”). Located in the industrial city of Curitiba, the cemetery occupies a spacious area and has a wake room with bathrooms and a kitchen.

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