Losing a sublime message
Posted on 9 months ago
The nation’s business and trading class, as for one, is, by every reckoning, a largely very religious lot. Overwhelmingly, its members are practising Muslims. Yet all through the month of fasting a rank profiteering turns the market into a haunted place for the citizenry, bulk of it just living from hand to mouth. The saddest part is that this profiteering is a wholly artificially created phenomenon, with human greed and avarice sitting at its heart. But this worldliness definitely is not confined just to the business or trading class alone.
This malady of worldly acquisitions, even through means foul, creeps all over every segment and every section of the polity. All through the fasting month, the curse of graft lives very much in vogue. Greasing of palms in government offices, shaking down of the cabbies and truckers by the cops, and corruption on high places show no let up in their incidence. Frauds and swindles are much in practice. Everywhere, the spirituality shows itself caving in to worldliness. Self-abnegation is in a scarce supply; self-perpetuation is in abundance. And sorrowfully enough, no strand can rightfully boast of being an exception.
Not even the tribe of holy fathers. Indeed, their religiosity verging on patent hypocrisy is at its peak in the month. They themselves practise not what they preach to the laity. The role model of self-abnegation and high morality they should be, but they are not. No paragons of tolerance they demonstrate themselves to be. The catalyst of divisiveness they show themselves compulsively to be.
Thanks to them, this time round we are celebrating three Eids. If the outlying North Waziristan celebrated the Eidulul Fitr on Saturday, the mainland will be celebrating it on the following two consecutive days — parts of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa along with Bajaur Agency on Sunday and the rest of the country on Monday. This has nothing to do with moon-sighting; it has everything to do with the mullah tribe’s infighting.
The tribe is entangled in factional adversarial rivalries, with each faction resolved to have the final say in determining the Eid day. And they make no bones about it. The sufferers of this infighting of the tribe are, of course, the poor laities. They want to celebrate this august occasion on the one and the same day, no less to show to the world that they are a one-nation. But the tribe is not ready to condescend to let them have this pleasure. To hell with it.
This is too much for a citizenry that already has had enough of the shenanigans of the chicaners of religiosity and extremism. Wearing the cloak of religion, a clan of outright criminals and gangsters has with its wickedness taken away the peace of mind from the citizenry and imperilled the country’s security, stability and peace worrisomely. It kills and maims the citizens, including children, in bomb blasts, suicide assaults and terrorist attacks, and feels so proud of this. Not even the holy month had dissuaded this clan of thugs away from its bestial thuggery. It kept indulging in its fond orgy of death and destruction, abominably in the name of our admittedly noble religion.
The central message is, nevertheless, not lost on the true faithful. They have imbibed it, embraced it, practised it and given their best for spiritual attainment and contentment. To earn the divine pleasure and blessings, they have fasted religiously, prayed intensely, fed the poor and helped the destitute with charity. To them all and to our esteemed readers, we wish the happiest Eid.
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