Qalandar mail taqreeray nadarad
Bajuz een nukta akseeray nadarad
Azan kisht-e-kharabay hasil-e-neest
Ke aab-az-khoon-e-Shabbeeray nadarad
(This mystic doesn’t wish to preach but can see no other cure apart from this: The ruined harvest won’t yield any benefit until and unless the field is watered with the blood of a Shabbir [RA])
Yes, you read the title right. On this 14th August, I aim to elaborate how Palestine, a victim of genocide, can help liberate Pakistan, the only nuclear state in the Islamic World!
I have heard many common people and intellectuals discussing the question, “How can Pakistan liberate Palestine?” Just a few days ago, I had the “pleasure” of listening to a sub-inspector of Islamabad Police telling a youth: “Son! The Arabs and Iranis are useless. It is only us, the Pakistanis, who will liberate Masjid al-Aqsa, but we will first do Ghazwa-e-Hind, and after subjugating India, we will smash Israel to pieces!” I would have laughed loudly, had I not kept in mind the solemnity of the occasion. I remembered that I was there for the purpose of offering the Janaza prayer organized by the Save Gaza Campaign for the martyred Palestinian leader Ismail Haniya. Only around a couple of hundred people from the sprawling city of Islamabad (the population of Islamabad district is almost equal to the Gaza Strip) were attending. However, the police contingent deployed to “control” these few people had more numerical strength. Not a single member of the police, including the zealous sub-inspector, bothered to offer the Janaza prayer for a martyred Muslim leader though.
I am a rational person. And I cannot bring myself to believe that a country infected with delusions of grandeur, apathy, lethargy, elite capture, bigotry, and most of all ignorance can “liberate” Palestine or any other oppressed region (eg Kashmir). The history of Pakistan, especially in the last 3 decades, quite clearly proves that Pakistan, as it is, cannot even liberate itself! So, the question, “How can Pakistan liberate Palestine?” is impertinent and only reeks of delusion. And this isn’t just the problem of Pakistan. Most of the Islamic world feeds itself on such delusions while practically ignoring even those little bits that it can do to help the Palestinians. The behavior of the Pakistani state in particular, and most of the rest of the Muslim states in general, is in line with the police sub-inspector who can but won’t even offer the Janaza prayer for Ismail Haniya but instead boast loudly about conquering India and Israel while working as a minion for the Western-slave elite of Pakistan whose only purpose is to suppress, oppress, and loot Pakistan as much as it can before it sends its sons and daughters to the Western countries where they build a paradise for themselves on money looted from millions of starving Pakistanis!
It is imperative for us to liberate Pakistan if we are to help Palestine. Not only have we failed to liberate Pakistan ourselves, but we have also managed to surrender the small bits of freedom we had earned as a nation in 1947. Clearly, we need external help. But how can Palestine, a country that isn’t even on the map (thanks to the champions of human rights and democracy like the USA), which is currently experiencing a devastating genocide, and whose bulk of population consists of pitiful refugees, liberate Pakistan? Yes, Palestine can’t send any army to dethrone the Western slaves occupying the power corridors of Pakistan. Yes, it cannot give financial aid to save Pakistan from imminent bankruptcy. But it can, and is doing something very important. It is supplying the psychological impulse for liberation to a Pakistani nation wracked with apathy and indifference. And it is doing so by expending the most suitable currency for this purpose: blood.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Iqbal, the sage, clearly wrote in the last verses of his illustrious life that blood has to be paid to turn a desert into an oasis. Pakistan was created not merely as a nationalist state only concerned with its own people. The foundational ideology of Pakistan, elucidated by Iqbal and Jinnah themselves, was that Pakistan was going to be a vanguard Islamic state, one of whose cardinal purposes of existence was to support the Islamic brethren globally. Jinnah himself had told The New York Times even before the birth of Pakistan that it would use even violence, if required, for the cause of Palestine! Without actually fulfilling its deal with history, and pursuing its ideology, Pakistan will surely perish. And we can see today the country is on the brink. Only the people of Pakistan can liberate and save Pakistan, but the chief hurdle here is the slumber and apathy of the people to the impending doom.
Here’s where Palestine comes in. If the slaughter of thousands (at least 40,000 have been killed while the deaths due to the conflict are projected as high as 186,000), if the visuals showing disfigured kids, wailing mothers, bodies blasted into smithereens, the rape of prisoners in broad daylight in front of cameras, can’t wake the Pakistani nation, nothing else will. And if the Pakistanis do not wake up, they might end up seeing the re-enactment of the Gaza holocaust in their own homes. They might end up witnessing all these horrors at the hands of Hindutva goons but by then it will be too late. Muslim Spain could have been saved before 1492, but the people remained apathetic, and after 1492, try as they might, there wasn’t going to be a chance at redemption for them.
Palestine and the Gazans had options. They could have accepted Israeli slavery. They could have accepted exile (Israel’s patron, the USA, would have funded it to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine). But they chose the way of death and supreme sacrifice. Why? Hamas couldn’t hope to defeat the military machine of Israel backed by the might of the USA. Militarily, this “war” could only result in a huge slaughter and a transition of Israel from a policy of slow genocide to an active genocide. Then why did Palestine opt to fight? The answer is quite clear to all those who understand the concept of “Husainiyyat” (the way of Imam Hussain aka Shabbir [RA]). Why did Imam Hussain fight at Karbala? 72 men could never have militarily defeated a force numbering in thousands. Why did he fight then? Dr. Ali Shariati answers: “Imam Hussain now stands between two inabilities. He cannot remain silent, but neither can he fight. He has only one weapon, and that is death. If he cannot defeat the enemy, he can at least disgrace them with his own death. If he cannot conquer the ruling power, he can at least condemn it. For him, martyrdom is not a loss, but a choice. He will sacrifice himself on the threshold of the temple of freedom, and be victorious.”
Iqbal mentions in “Rumuz-e-Bekhudi”:
Moses and Pharaoh, Shabbir and Yazid –
From Life spring these conflicting potencies;
Firm as a mountain‐chain was his resolve,
Impetuous, unwavering to its goal The Sword is for the glory of the Faith
And is unsheathed but to defend the Law.
The Muslim, servant unto God alone before no Pharaoh cast down his head.
His blood interpreted these mysteries,
And waked our slumbering community.
He drew the sword There is none other god
And shed the blood of them that served the lie;
From Hussain (RA) we learned the riddle of the Book,
and at his flame kindled our torches.
Vanished now from ken Damascus might, the splendor of Baghdad,
Granada’s majesty, all lost to mind;
Yet still the strings he smote within our soul
Vibrate, still ever new our faith abides in his Allahu Akbar,
Gentle breeze, thou messenger of them that are afar,
Bear these my tears to lave his holy dust.
The Palestinians of Gaza are dying in their thousands to wake the slumbering Islamic community. And already, there have been results. It wasn’t a coincidence that thousands of Palestinian flags were seen aloft in Bangladesh during the successful revolution that overthrew a tyrant who was an Indian stooge. Palestine has helped Bangladesh in taking the first vital step towards “Haqiqi Azadi” and complete liberation. It is high time that Pakistan follows its estranged Eastern brother. By embracing the Palestinian cause we can unite the different ethnicities and sects, awaken the nation, and march towards a free Pakistan. A Pakistan that was envisioned by Iqbal and Jinnah. A Pakistan that will be able to fulfill its promise with history and help Palestine with all its might, even “with violence, if necessary!”
