Here Are the Muslim Feminist Voices, Mr. Rushdie!

Farzana: ``Get to know the poeple before you jump to rash comclusions about them...and then all your talk about godlessness and god will mean something :)``

LOL, this must be the funniest thing Ive read in a LONG while. Thanks for the intensity sis.

Scout: Im tryin to fill the gap, represent u know? I think ive failed miserably. Four lines without an elipsis.................

Play: ``If 12 Head Had an Office``

Stage: bare with a desk, a phone, a small message pad. Offstage: sounds of erratic keyboard tapping interrupted with mangled curses in Urdu/Hindi/Bengali/Arabic, shrieks, whooping and jumping around.

Characters: Office worker, a student who works this job as well as another to pay for tuition at university.Student is studying intently.

Phone rings.

Worker: Hello, 12 Heads Are Better Than One!

Caller: I`d like to speak to one of the heads, please.

Worker: Do you know the name of the personality with which you`d like to speak?

Caller: No, actually, I`ve forgotten the name...there are so many, you see

Worker (sympathetically): Yes...yes, I know...well, let me see if I can help you with this,...(taps pencil on desk) are there any distinguishing characteristics that you think of?

Caller: Well, this personality has some very unusual messages...

Worker: Uh huh..what else?

Caller: The messages have this cryptic quality to them...I can`t always understand what they mean..

loud crashing noise from offstage, screeching

Worker: I know...

Caller: Also, this personality seems to think women should not write on Chowk, or has a very weird attitude towards females...

Worker: yes...

Caller: It hates almost everyone

Worker: (writing down) ``Hates everybody..``

Caller: And posts miles of articles no one reads. And it seems to repeat phrases and words it picks up from other interactors...

Worker: Okay, I`ve got it figured out. The personality you have described could be Deepika, Fatimah, Shah, Faiza, Arrested Development, Bapu, Studebaker, or Bijli. Does that help?

Caller: Er...no

re: shah

``LOOK ,I DID NOT WRITE 296 ,THEN WHY FALSE ALLEGATIONS?

I AM GOING TO FILE A SUITE AGAINST``

...yeah, and you don`t really have a boyfriend in the madrassah....

Farzana, Drumz,

Adaab!

Farzana, thank you for your support; its much appreciated.:) Drumz, I have to agree with Farzana, Temporal was a smart, lovely interactor, who dissappeared a week after I started inflicting poetry on him... Khair, in no way should he be confused with the multinicked interactor...I believe 12 Head is peerless in that aspect.

Zafar

Vegas?! Do I get a show with dancers who wear gold lame burqas and spandex? Or is that too ``ironic``? Thanks for the compliment, esp. coming from the masterji of the subtle bon mot!

regards all

scout:

``what about the fact that when t-bhai leaves, you appear more frequently``

when the cats are away, the mice tend to go a lil wild

farzana:

lol

zafarsaab, im with you here..that was a beauty samina

Prem,

Adaab. Thank you for your welcome. My point stands....Ras Siddiqui respresents an ugly nationalism grafted on to the world of art...he can only appreciate what emantes from his own country. The point is not whether Junoon is good or not (they are not, it is mediocre music that wont survive even another few years), the point is that it is sad to see a ``journalist`` so deeply engaged in unthinking nationalism.

Unfortunately, 50 years on, Pakistan is still seeking its soul, its rationale for existence. The division of India along religious lines has led to 50 years of tragedy for the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh....the former nation is on the verge of economic and social collapse and the latter, is an international aid workers paradise. The human costs are terrible indeed. My closest cousin was killed outside Multan recently by ``car-jackers``...at the end of the day, the People of Pakistan cannot live in peace and security. Theocracy has a terrible cost, for it engenders fundamentalism and tribalism, ills that beset the world`s 2 most backward theocracies: Israel and Pakistan.

Dr Ali Akbar Poonawala

DRUMZ#352;

[I have the ``life Goes on`` (my favourite track!!) single in in one hand, some reefer in the other. Its a private memorial. RIP George!!!!!]

- Heh heh heh.....George would have wanted it...

:)

(my favourite George Harrison track is ``Here comes the Sun``)

Stuka#: 321

[What about the Real Khilafa group, the one that sent out a letter about converting Sikh girls.

Is that even an actual group or is it British Nationalists creating the trouble. I read the letter and it really made me mad, but when I thought about it, it just seemed way too out there to be real.]

Sadly the letter is real. It was handed out by some Pakistani boys to a mona Sikh boy, whom they thought was a Muslim, in Derby, near Leicester. It has been a question of damage limitation by Muslim community leaders by claiming it was carried out by far-right organisations.

Here is what I heard. These were Islamic extremist boys from Bradford who travelled down to make trouble by distributing these leaflets. They basically say that all Hindu and Sikh girls are sluts who should be targetted by Muslim boys for sex and then conversion. There has been violence in Derby because of this, it made the national newspapers. Indians have also been boycotting Pakistani owned shops there, and they are going out of business because more than 50% of their trade is from Indians. It is all very nasty.

I remember reading an almost exact same letter in Slough, west London, near Southall, about 5/6 years ago, another area where Indians/Pakistanis live cheek by jowel. It just takes one or two people to print this kind of stuff, but the effects on community relations are catastrophic.

Although Pakistani and Indian leaders have bent over backwards to condemn the leaflet and its content and stress their solidarity, the damage has been done. I wince when I read these things, it is all so unnecessary. Sikh community also has thugs in it who want a fight. These people basically all have a 1947 mentality. It is all a load of macho testosterone fuelled BS by alienated desi kids who need to grow up.

As posted by Sarwar:

“””A Letter From Pakistan - Paying for past wrongs

By Ali Ahmed Rind LA Weekly Writer

KARACHI, PAKISTAN — With most of Afghanistan (news - web sites) virtually under the control of the Northern Alliance, which is no friend of my country, an acute sense of insecurity prevails in Pakistan’s defense establishment.

Political observers here agree on one thing: Pakistan, in its immediate past, has never been so isolated from the regional geopolitic as it is today. Now representatives of all the major power players — the U.S., Iran, Russia, the Northern Alliance, the Hazaras, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pashtuns, even India — are meeting in seclusion in Bonn, Germany. Pakisan must pin its hopes on the Pashtuns, though their loyalties are uncertain….

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf relentlessly supported the Taliban until September 14, when he threw his weight behind the war on terror in an effort to keep Pakistan off the U.S. hit list. As Musharraf described it, “The Taliban were bigoted, reckless, rigid or whatever off-putting adjective you choose to describe them. But be assured, with them in command of Kabul, we didn’t have to deploy a single soldier at our western border.”

(Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) disclosed that within 24 hours of the September 11 attack, he telephoned Musharraf and asked him to support U.S. efforts or prepare for war.)

One of my military sources poses this worry: What if a future Afghan government is as unfriendly to Pakistan as were previous Afghan governments, before the Taliban takeover? He stopped short of suggesting Pakistan come up with its own protégé for Afghanistan. Amir Mateen, a political commentator, observed in The News, a newspaper circulated throughout Pakistan, that “Islamabad’s predicament is compounded by a decade of flawed policy where it has antagonized virtually every single group in the last decade. Even the good old Taliban loathe us for stabbing them in the back.”— ( quoted by Sarwar )

It is true that –“ Pakistan, in its immediate past, has never been so isolated from the regional geopolitics as it is today” -- question is – but WHY? – why should Pakistan be SO isolated -- What’s the REMEDY?

The REMEDY is simple – sign a TREATY of FRIENDSHIP and a MUTUAL DEFENSE PACT -- with India –- plough the SAVINGS in education and on infrastructure -- and Afghanistan will be yours --and a saner Pakistan will have tons of friends everywhere in the world -- as well.

For heavens sake -- at least TRY IT ONCE -- and see what happens – if you don’t like it – then become an enemy again – what the heck.

Fatimah #321 ``AND ADD ONE MORE NAME IN THE LIST OF WHINING CRYING ,COMPLAINING `IKNOW.. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU BUT I MYELF A LOSER IN LIFE MYSELF```

Sorry, writing in upper case still does not make your sentences coherent. Try writing from right to left or from top to bottom, maybe that will help.

Reply Saminashah # 334

``Could you imagine how the multinicked interactor`s office worker would have to answer the phone? ``Hello, 15 Heads are better than one!Um, no that personality cant come to the phone now, they are online...can I take a message? You`re calling from the FCC? Actually, the person you are trying to reach has left the country. Pakistan, I believe. No, I don`t know when he/she is coming back... `` Or perhaps an automated phone system message would be better; ``For Aamir, press 1. If you`d like to speak to Bapu, please enter 2. For Studebaker, press 3. To reach Bijli, press 4 now. For Fatimah, press 5. For Deepika, press 6. For Shah, press 7. If you`d like to speak to Sadhna, press 8. To speak to Faiza, press 9. For Brad Cruise, dial 10 now. For Arrested Development, press 11. For Bhardwaj, press 12. All new and developing personalities, press 13. If you`d like to hear a recording of randomly punctuated and capped screeching, please hold. If you`d like to kill yourself instead, please push the pound key. Otherwise, please hold.`` Muzak is piped in.``

Behen, I am in AWE.

You are up there with Hamidm, Kafir K, Drumz...don`t forget the little people when you play Vegas :-)

Zafar

DRUMZ #352, ``I think ive solved the 12 headed mystery. Follow me now, temporal leaves for like a month and some 12 headed guy appears... ``

you`re funny dude....what about the fact that when t-bhai leaves, you appear more frequently ;)

what`s up with that?

sadna #354,

i think those ``diamonds are forever`` commercials

get the message across pretty nicely.

the Ruby i knew was in Karachi, might be a branch here.....i have no clue. maybe oucha knows...err..i mean aicha

Thank you Urstruly, Tahmad, RSaxena, Studebaker, semipreciousme, for the clarification of the 12-headed monster - I tried to read a few of the various identities, and I have to admit: semipreciousme, you are right! This is just a quick thank you note to you all - my next post has to be on Benazir (something to look forward to, Tahmad!), as I will be in her home province later this evening. She is trying mightily to whitewash her image in the eyes of the Pakistanis, and I want to know how some Sindhis feel about her. Should be interesting ....

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