Examiner.com: Malala Yousafzai, a teenager from the Swat Valley in Pakistan was shot in the head last week by the Taliban because of her unflinching quest for education despite all odds.
The attack on the unarmed, 14 year old girl has alarmed the whole world. It has sent shock waves in Pakistan and her countrymen are demonstrating unparalleled solidarity and condemning the brutal attack on her life. This appears to be the tipping point in the harrowing tale of a nation, which had seemingly lost its soul. The tragedy lies at the culmination of a malaise that has afflicted Pakistan for too long.
A few weeks ago, a Christian teenage girl Rimsha Masih was arrested on charges of blasphemy. A society that allows such unchecked acts of bigotry against children direly needs introspection. Shooting a 14 year old girl in the head and incarcerating a girl suffering from Down syndrome are grave offences that cannot be condoned at all.
it is now firm that the world media and is taking advantages out of this incident of Mlala happened in Swat Valley. I am Malala is a new slogan by UN educationists targeting Pakistan, pressing to change her eduction system especially for girls education where as No body going to talk about the Dron attacks in Wazirstan where hundreds of innocent children and women and civilians are being killed.
Malala’s case surely has given a wake up call in Pakistan. The minds have started ticking. There are discussions about how to control this menace of “using religion for politics” not only in the Muslim World but also the western powers lead by the USA. There is a need to think “out of the box” and not the usual solutions which are being fed to the world by CFR and Stratfor or the weestern anchors of BBC and the CNN.
All solutions which are “out of the box”, whether in sciences or politics require an unbiased mindset, not only at the conscious level but even at the subconscious level. Without making any sweeping statement, let me say that not only Pakistan and the Muslim world, but even the western world lives in a FEAR of the “fatwa” whether it comes from the pulpit of the minerette or the Vatican,
What is that fear? It is like the “death of the ego”, when one fears treading uncertain territory and the situation demands to align oneself with new bearings. That psyche is understood by an immigrant who faces this phenomenon after emigration. During that transition, which is called the “death of the ego”, the new personality (the new ego) which takes shape tries to find old bearings in a new territory, which is a dangerous exercise. In doing so it results in an “extremist” behaviour, sometimes one becomes religious zealot, at other times one becomes a racist. It is very seldom that the new personality remains a balanced one which was in his homeland.
This phenomenon can happen with nations. USA after the collapse of USSR exhibited similar psyche as a nation. The earlier policies and startegies were essentially at the material level – technology and nationalism. Those were the challenges which had to contained. However, when the “death of the ego” of the American nation occurred and old bearings disappeared, in search of its new identity USA exhibited similar behaviour – trying to find old bearings in a new territory. In USA’s case it became a religious zealot – “In God we trust” – on the dollar bill became more important than the earlier “race in technology” on a secular pitch.
That resulted in a barrage of articles and books which were researched and published. Some of those like “The Clash of Civilizations”, and articles on “Islamic Extremism” which later became “Islamic Terrorism” and later was branded as “Talibanism” and “Al-Qaida”, have been fed to the media. That is a typical behaviour of a personality which is in search of its “new identity”.
The question is of course why the onslaught towards Islam and Muslim World? That is because the Christian psyche, when it comes to the “morality” level has a historical “guilt” at two levels.
One goes back to the early days of Islam, when Christian preisthood had purposely misled their followers against the teachings of their own Bible and which continued till the times of Crusaders and beyond. The later level of “guilt” are the times when the Christian priesthood sanctioned the enslaving and killings of mankind during the colonial era, especially in Africa and Asia.
All this historical collected “guilt” has come up with a vengance to haunt the western psyche.
It is not that the rest of the world is jealous of life style of Europe and USA, but it the other way around. The west is jealous of the built in “morality” in other societies, Muslim World included, which in spite of every day miseries on the material plane, display an inner strength as a society and a nation. It has been that “jealousy” and the historic guilt which drives the psyche of the strategists and the think tanks to disrupt that inner strength of those societies.
A typical case is China which has baffled the west on all fronts. Unable to infilterate the system of the Chinese, the researchers in the western universities have yet to grasp the concept of “TIAN” which is more powerful than the Communist Party. And that “TIAN” is that historical “morality” which runs in the national psyche and which is the back bone of Chinese strength.
Amongst the Muslim World generally and Pakistan especally, there is something like the “Chinese TIAN” which has its roots in the Indus Valley, which inspite of all the provocations and the call for “revolution” from various quarters refuses to follow the so called “Arab Spring” and has remained stuck to that “TIAN of the Indus Valley”. That is what is not understood by the western guilt ridden mindset and makes them mad, angry and blind and it commits blunders which the human nature abhores.
The unfortunate part is that instead of promoting this “Indus Tian” it is projected as “weakness”. is time Humankind generally and the Americans specially understand the “Power of this weakness” and see through “Weakness of their Power”. There in lies that “Morality” which is common to all religions. In the war of “morals” whoever understands this truth will lead. That is why “prophets of God” always win in the end.
The Indus Tian is a blend of “Morality” which has not been imposed on the Indus Soul but has evolved, step by step, over centuries by the human species which according to Darwin, were the “fittest” and therfore were they able to come to this region. That fitness was not limited to the “genes” but equally strong was what I call the “momo”- the built in “morality” in the “genes”, which like the “genes” evolve to a higher level with every generation. That is the secret of richness of Pakistan in every field.
Malala is just one such human being of this great Indus Valley – courageous, visionary and a specimen of the free mind of the Indus Valley. Such people cannot be conquered or defeated by hi-tech weaponry.
It is not that Pakistan does not have the great minds. Every student in LUMS has an edge over the students in western universities – Oxford,Harvard, Stanford included. They are not only studying the western history but also the Asian history. That gives them an ooportunity to have a balanced world view. That is what is Pakistan in the making, in spite of the religious extremism which was created in this region by a ruling civilization which was guided not by “high moral grounds” but by their strategic interests in this region. The rest is history and the untold stories of many Malalas.
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