The Tablighi and the Doctor Hop a One-Way Plane

There is a whole wave of patriotism these days... Everybody wants to save Pakistan, all the PSA’s are holding fund raisers in colleges and universities across N. America and just about everyone suddenly has an opinion on the government, the mullah, the judiciary and even our very own Miss. Sherry Rehman.

This patriotic wave is really just the newest fashionable intellectual attire. It just doesn’t seem right when uncles and aunties in their 50’s argue in their jaded accents that the country is imploding into a heap of pudding - while sipping coffee in their 24 hour patrolled neighborhoods in Houston and Toronto. The point is when you leave your country you automatically give up all rights of criticism. Frankly, your opinion just doesn’t matter anymore. You become the mute kid who screams into a sock.

Expatriates are just silly people living in a delusional fantasy that they still maintain some sort of a link with the motherland. They don’t realize that when they signed up for that new passport, the Pakistani inside of them died not just a little- but a lot. It is the people who bear the consequences of unemployment, unexpected bombings at shopping centers, petty national politics, food poisoning and bad traffic who are the real heroes and inheritors of the country. Thus only their opinion counts. And if the citizens of Pakistan opt for religious law or some selective form of Shariah no numbers of protest rallies outside the Pakistani Consulate mean anything. You may sign all your pansy petitions, set up as many blogs, rant and rave in preppy newspapers: no one gives a ##@$.

Pakistani’s with dual passports are traitors who have or are willing to abandon the country at the hint of the slightest instability. They should be charged with treason. If someone isn’t ready to get screwed by the system then he isn’t a Pakistani but a conniving opportunist. It doesn’t matter if Dr. Abdul Aziz from King Edward Medical College Lahore performs cutting edge heart surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital or lectures at the Boston Conservatory of Music - he isn’t doing it for the Pakistani people.

All aunties and uncles and soon to be aunties and uncles, if you are somewhere in your life, are highly educated than please go back home. It is this hopeless era of political chaos, urban slums and smog when you are needed the most. If you are a taxi driver or work the gas station then perhaps Mississauga is better for you.

The same goes for all the Tablighies and Jamaaties who are repeatedly rewiring their guilty brains, constantly convincing themselves daily that they are here for spreading Islam and thus their Canadian passports are justified. Get real, God knows what’s in your heart and also in your pockets. Everyone is here for plundering and looting. The dollar has risen over the scripture; capitalism and upward mobility are the Jannat. Looks like you aren’t going to get those Hoors either. And don’t cross your ears in contempt and fake “Tobas� when you recall to your fellow Saudi, Lebanese, Somali brother in the Islamic Center how steeped in immorality Pakistan really is, where aunties wear half-sleeves and uncles sip gin and tonic.

If you are out for too long, then you might as well stay out: you aren’t welcome back home when you have retired, have a hernia and are searching for a match for your daughter. It is then better that you use your green passport as a coaster for tasteless pink lemonade.