I have done so, many times on this forum in many threads. But since it is like talking to a wall well why bother. There was a thread like this last month. And the month before that. And oh yes the month before that even.
Oh well poor you, I didn’t ask for your advice, and don’t think I will burden you with the heavy responsibility, I absolve you from contributing to this thread, are you happy now?
Right, let’s continue on with the discussion
What the fuck? I never said that is ALL you had to do. You had to memorize and regurgitate all kinds of shit. The education I received at the IBA was much more rigorous than many universities in the US. But upto class XII there was a huge amount of memorization, and some of what you were memorizing was offensive. Of course if you believed that Muslims invented everything in Science and Mathematics until about the 19th century, you wouldn’t find it offensive. It just seems normal to you. Tell me, do you think you got anything like a fair telling of the Kashmir issue, the Bangladesh war or the Pakistan Movement from your history books. I don’t know which years you were in school, but we were fed a complete line of bull on these. Not to mention the middle east situation in general.
I love the way you say “Great you got out. Turned out for the best, for all involved.” It just underlines the attitude of “If the non Muslims would just leave, it would be better for them and for us.” So you have a case of making life just a little uncomfortable for us most of the time, and downright deadly occasionally, but hey, that’s the way the system is suppossed to work?
For the record, most of my experiences in Pakistan were pretty positive. For the women in my family, not so much. We probably emigrated more for their benefit than anything else. Looking back, the way things were going in the mid 1980s, we thought things were going straight to hell. It didn’t turn out as bad as we feared.
Chief Pedant is in la la land on this, but you are whitewashing the situation. But this is not really that surprising. I assume that you are Muslim. Like the Han Chinese in China (my wife is one) it seems to you that all the problems are down to the “other”.
To answer a question raised by someone else, Pakistan isn’t a theocracy because most of the people don’t want it that way. Even most of the male people. From what I know about Afghanistan, you probably couldn’t say the same about there. In many parts of Afghanistan, some kind of (screw-ed up interpretation of) Sharia would actually be popular. The out and out Islamic Statists in Pakistan are a small minority in Punjab and Sindh. A tiny minority among Punjabis and Sindhis.
My friends and colleagues there now tell me the internet is available at least as far as Abbottabad and Mansehra in the Hazara District for example, and probably in some other remote places (Abbottabad and Mansehra are not remote at all, although Mansehra lately has become more dangerous for anyone not careful about how they travel and act). They are very careful about what they say and how they say it, and making any references to people who could be identified. I get frequent emails from northern Pakistan in general but deliberately don’t usually try to parse out exactly where the emails are coming from.
There is no issue “posting to the Dope,” but I would personally be careful posting anything that identifies me as “an enemy of Islam” in any country anywhere where I could be personally identified. And the more public the posting–or cartooning 
--the more risky it is.
In Pakistan, some of the groups that are very careful about what they say on the open Internet include Missionaries–for obvious reasons–NGOs to avoid insulting the cultures they are trying to help, and citizens. As a rule of thumb, it’s not what you post to; it’s what you are posting. And if you are posting anything blasphemous and are identified, you are asking for trouble if you are identified in Khyber Pakhtunkwa.
They were a minority in Iran in 1979, and they were part of a broad consensus of political groups which wanted the Shah out, it didn’t stop the country becoming a theocracy.
Power is being given to these radical groups in ways such as not upholding the law if they breach it, or giving tacit approval for their actions, each action such as the ones I describe will strengthen them at the expense of moderation.
Of course I really cannot comment much on the intellectual ability of someone who wishes to be enlightened on a message board as opposed to taking the bother of I don’t know, actually finding out through own efforts.
The heavy burden in this case is not mine.
Lets not make presumptions then shall we on what opinions I may or may not hold. And well I am glad most of your experiences were positive, though from your last post and other you have made on the message board made it seem quite the opposite. Happy was not the case.
And IBA; rigorous? Standards have gone down then.
I take it you are going to challenge my Urdu (at least by using Roman Urdu) to challenge my credibility on my opinions? In effect, accuse me that “Nach na jane aangan tera*,” huh?
Well, I may not know the entire dance for Pakistan, but I’m not so ignorant that I managed to come up with a totally bogus reason for their problems.
I’d rather be vague about when and where I was born because I think it’s reasonable to stay relatively unidentified on the Dope. As to the “thing” about Urdu being my first tongue, I learned it before English. It’s true I don’t really speak Pushto or Hindco, which are languages more common as you get deeper into the Northwest Frontier Provinces. Even my Urdu is rusty. I’m not sure you need to be familiar with all three to understand what’s going on in PKP. I’m not even sure you have to know Urdu, necessarily.
I’m not pretending that my opinions are Gospel. But neither would I describe myself as utterly ignorant regarding the land of my birth and the land where I was raised into adulthood, and that’s what I was reacting to. And I’d rather see you come up with some alternate opinions on why Islam is not Pakistan’s fundamental problem.
*Unfamiliar with the Dance; crooked floor."
(Idiomatically: Not knowing the Dance, he makes a claim the floor is crooked."
Internet to har jaga milta hai aur kaafi saal say. Aur yeh app ki ghalat fahami hai kay hazara “zilla” hai, Hazara tu Divison tha aur divison dus saal qabal Musharraf kay daor mein khatam ho gay thay.
NGO’s are careful? And discrete? yes and the sky is purple.
My intellect must of such minisule importance to someone of such calibre. However, a messageboard is one example of being able to canvass opinion and facts about various subjects, it is of course called Great Debates for a reason.
Anyway, I would love to hear your thesis as to why Pakistan is such a basketcase, that is if you have any, considering you keep trying to denigrate various posters for their positions and lack of knowledge.
I translated it myself before seeing your post…Roman Urdu is of course always a little trickier. However my father is an accomplished linguist so it’s not really a test on the internet to post something in any foreign language.
Still, I’d rather focus on the baat of whether or not Islam is a core issue in destablizing Pakistan.
I should add that Urdu, extremely pervasive in the Hazara district where I grew up (and AK84’s Roman words are Urdu), is actually common as a second language throughout northern Pakistan. Because it is so phonetically similar (different written characters) to Hindi, the advantage of Urdu is that you can use it across much of India as well. West Pakistan, when I lived there, had about 6 “official” languages. English and Urdu were the two commonest “second” languages in most of the area where I traveled. Urdu by far would be the most facile second language except for those advancing to higher education.
On the Internet, one can claim anything. Perhaps I’m just Joe Blow from Arkansas. That doesn’t mean 500 mullahs didn’t sign on to a statement that Salman Taseer needed assassinating. Imagine if a high-ranking official were assassinated here in the West by some nutcase extremist and 500 Church leaders happily signed on to a statement that such an assassination was appropriate and justified, and that they publicly supported not only the assassination, but that those who criticised the assassination were “equally guilty.” That sort of veiled threat from public leaders is the kind of thing that is so destabilizing to a democracy.
From the perspective of Muslims (at least, the conservative Muslims of northern Pakistan), it’s all appropriate. The problem is that those who can’t see from a broad perspective are not good judges of nuances that require a wider scope of philosophy.
[SIZE=“5”]بندر کیا جانے ادرک کا سواد
گرم جوشی ہو اور نیکی سے وابستہ ہو تو خطرہ عظیم ثابت ہو سکتی ہے[/SIZE]
“The blind do not judge colors well.”
“Zeal is a dangerous virtue.” (Reads right to left)
That will be the end of me dusting off my Urdu. To do so would cross a pretense into expertise I don’t have.
Come on you are as you state a “native son” and Urdu was a first language. I am sure your skills at the language put me (whose mother tongue is defiantly not Urdu) to shame. Lets see it, don’t get performance anxiety! Let it flow!
Kannada was my first language and I suck at it now (or I’m just lying to impress people on the Internet, whatever). It’s entirely possible it’s Pedant’s first language and it’s just gotten rusty with time.
Regardless, his personal familiarity with Pakistan or lack thereof is not the debate here. He just brought it up because every time this conversation comes up you always go off on how everyone here is so ignorant and doesn’t know anything (and you use extremely condescending language as well, which I’m sure turns even more people off). Well we’re trying to understand, that’s why we start threads like this.
And so far two people in this thread do claim to have personal, negative experience with Pakistan and all you’ve done is brush them off instead of trying to address their claims.
Why are you so defensive about Pakistan that you won’t debate about it?
Well, on the other hand starting the debate with “Why Pakistan is such a basketcase” can rub you the wrong way if you’re Pakistani, especially if it is almost every time Pakistan is being brought up (even Iranians seem to get cut more slack). Permanent attacks lead to defensiveness.
My own personal opinion would be that Pakistan would be as retrograde whether they are Muslims or not. Islam is just another layer on some already pretty backward views.
Well I wouldn’t put much faith in that when statements such as this are made
I really cannot comment much on the intellectual ability of someone who wishes to be enlightened on a message board as opposed to taking the bother of I don’t know, actually finding out through own efforts.
And this was directed at the person who was enquiring about Pakistan himself, through erm, his own efforts.
Because unlike Iran circa 1979, Pakistan has a
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Free media and press
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A constitutionally independent judiciary
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A very large and educated middle class
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A fairly large agricultural and Industrial base.
Iran had in 1979, the Shah,oil, KHAD, US Support and memories of the Achaemenid Empire.
What backward views? Please elucidate.
Where have I said that it was not Pendant’s first language? It was he who brought it up, not me.
If you must know without prejudice to what Pedant is or claims to be, what set off question marks for me
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Claiming that he was from the Frontier. Pakistani’s do not usually identify themselves with a province, if you ask someone they will say I am from Peshawar, or Kohat, or Karachi, or Islamabad, Quetta.
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They way he mixed up the Province of the NWFP with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, this is a big thing, the culture of the two areas, the law, the social norms and just the places generally are very very very different, if he was really from that place he would make a major distinction between the two. Its like talking about the US and Canada as if they were the same.
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His claims about being Urdu speaking and being from the North West Frontier. People outside Pakistan (ok perhaps in India) will not realize just how much languages matter in Pakistan. It is perhaps the biggest identifying marker of a person and the biggest and most relevant divide. Language politics is insane, and is probably the main reason why Pakistan still has English as an official language. Many people in Pakistan are polygots and while knowledge of Urdu on its own is fairly universal, outside of Karachi almost NO ONE speaks it as a mother language. It is learnt in school. So his claim that he grew up in an area where there are two major and several assorted minor languages and that Urdu was his first language without there being some highly unusual and exceptional circumstances is absolutely incredible.
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Of course mixing up how the administration works is also strange.
These and some other things raised questions in my mind. Again, Pedant could be everything he says he is and all his claims could be true. But the existence of the above in my mind raised questions about the veracity of his claims.
The picture does not fill me with confidence either. But then it could go either way.