Making a Mockery of Democracy According to my brother-in-law BB avoided working class Pakistanis in London like a plague but, others like khar were always collecting funds to fight ZIA.

Making a Mockery of Democracy The road to liberal democracy is a long, hard and torturous, unfortunately there is no shortcut, east Europe is an exception. there will be many disappointments along the way, corruption, dynasties, unmet expectations. Once the democratic process runs over a length of time, the electorate will reject corrupt dynasties and new decent leadership will emerge. In west Europe there is no dynasties not even of Churchill or de Gaulle, simply because the parties and the electorate will not stand for it.

Courage in a Time of Chaos Sometime back I watched a bbc documentary about a sindhi feudal girl in Karachi.
She lived quite a liberal life in Karachi but, when she went to her ancestral feudal landholding she wore more traditional cloths.

Goodbye Pinky Farewell to light in the dark
A sad day for Pakistan, let us hope the forces of intolerance, repression and ignorance not win because f her demise, many a twisted mind will be celebrating in the caves of tora bora.

I’m no fan of dynastic politicians, simply because I think it’s another form of corruption, it tends to crowd out more talented individuals but, in emerging democracies it’s to be expected because people tend to identify with personalities rather than policies.

Abdul Latif Khalid (1944-2007) MY FORGOTTEN DAD, CHARLIE CHAPLIN
HE HATED watching his old movies, didn't like Christmas and could be a terrifying father. His son reveals why he fears the comedy legend is in danger of being forgotten on the anniversary of his death 30 years ago.
Charlie Chaplin hated Christmas. The British-born Hollywood legend would scowl as his family celebrated the season of goodwill.

“It really depressed him,” reveals Michael Chaplin, the great comedian’s son. “My mother would always put a big tree in the house and we’d surround it with beautifully wrapped gifts, while my father would grow morose and complain about the commercialisation of Christmas.

“It reminded him of his hard childhood when he’d had no presents and no tree. He’d complain: ‘If I got an orange at Christmas as a child, I was lucky.’ It’s ironic that he died on Christmas Day. That gave him even more reason to hate the holiday.”

This Christmas marks the 30th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s death, yet the triple Oscar winner known worldwide as the Little Tramp, famed for his bowler hat and cane, tight frock coat and waddling walk, whose classic films include City Lights, Modern Times and The Great Dictator, is poised for a revival.
A Chaplin Museum is set to begin construction at the Swiss mansion where the comedian spent the last 25 years of his life, and many of his old films are being restored, while his family hopes to introduce him to a new generation.

The former British music hall performer became Hollywood’s wealthiest superstar, recognised and beloved worldwide as an actor, writer, director and composer, eventually owning his own studio.

But according to Michael Chaplin, the world’s most famous funny man of his day was “just Dad” – an emotionally removed, stern disciplinarian who could never find happiness, and only won his son’s love after his death.

“He was a very difficult father, very strict and with quite a temper,” says Michael, aged 61, the son of Chaplin’s fourth and final wife, Oona. “The old guy terrified the life out of me sometimes. His own childhood had been one of poverty and living on the streets, having to go on stage to earn money to eat.”

Michael recalls: “But I grew up on a 37-acre estate in Switzerland with a butler, chauffeur, chef, under-cook, three maids, two nannies, a secretary and three gardeners. The house was often filled with famous guests, including James Mason, Yul Brynner, Noel Coward, Truman Capote, Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham. We holidayed on safari in Kenya and travelled to Japan, Bali, Hong Kong, Singapore, India and the Middle East.

“Our father made us aware of how our wealth was obscene amid all the poverty in the world. He was always warning us that all our wealth could disappear overnight. He’d experienced the Depression and never let us forget it. He really believed in the importance of education for his children: he said it was our only defence against poverty. But I was terrible at school, so we had our wars.

“One day when I was 15 I skipped school to see a girl. My father found out and was uncontrollable. He made me walk home three miles in the rain.

“The moment I walked in, he leaped down the steps and, with a sudden movement, slapped my face hard with the back of his hand. He must have been waiting there for hours. He really socked me. It really hurt. He’d given me a few spankings as well when I was younger. He had a temper and could become obsessive about things, inflating problems until they loomed huge in his mind, tormenting him.”

For the great comedian was no bundle of laughs at home, often behaving in an emotionally and physically distant manner.

“He had trouble expressing his emotions to his sons and I think it embarrassed him,” says Michael. “He found it easier to relate to his daughters.

“A lot of the time we wouldn’t see him because he was away working. He wasn’t the kind of father who drove us to school or did our homework with us. He was a great artist and maybe it was a bit much to ask for him to be a great father as well.

“He took me out fishing once but by then he was 72 and I was 15. It was too late to pretend we were going to be best buddies.

“His advanced age also bothered me. He was much older than all my schoolfriends’ dads. At times I was embarrassed by how old he was.”

Yet Chaplin was a man of sensual pleasures. “He was a bon vivant who loved fine dining, foie gras, caviar and wine,” says Michael. “And he was no puritan in his sex life – until he married my mother.”

Chaplin certainly loved women. He wed four times, was a serial seducer of under-age girls and dallied with some of the great beauties of his day including movie stars Marion Davis, Louise Brooks and his third wife, Paulette Goddard.
“He didn’t have stable relationships before he met my mother,” says Michael tactfully.

Chaplin had two sons by his second marriage to actress Lita Grey and another eight children by fourth wife Oona O’Neill, who was 18 when she married the 54-year-old comedian.

“People said: ‘Oh she’s after the money,’ or ‘He’s perverting young girls,’” says Michael’s younger brother, Eugene Chaplin, 54. “But they stayed together for the rest of their lives. He’d found the love of his life.”

Michael’s own life has been one of rebellion against what he saw as his father’s great dictatorship. Aged 16, he ran away to live in Britain and at 17 he eloped to Spain to marry his girlfriend Patrice Johns. However, Charlie refused to give his permission for the under-age wedding.

“He wanted to know how I could afford to keep her,” says Michael. “I had no idea.”

In desperation the couple fled to Scotland where they tied the knot without needing Charlie’s approval. Within a year, Michael was hooked on marijuana, unemployed in London and drawing unemployment benefit. Charlie was apoplectic with rage. “It’s difficult living with the Chaplin name,” says Michael, who eventually became a farmer. “It’s hard to find your own place in the world when you have the name of someone so famous.

“Perhaps I was intimidated by my father’s success but I never wanted a career in showbusiness. I didn’t inherit his
artistic genius.”

But ironically, it was filming that brought Michael together with his distant father when Chaplin cast his son in a movie.

“The happiest point of my childhood was when I had the chance to work with my father on the movie The King Of New York at Shepperton Studios,” he says.

“I was only 10 years old but it was the first time I felt I had shared something with my father. He worked with me, rehearsed my lines and directed me. We were close for a short while.

“It was hard to go back to school after that. I was even offered a movie that was filming in China but my father said I had to go back to school: education was paramount. After that I didn’t have a career in films.”

Chaplin was chased from America by the Communist witch-hunts of the Fifties, settling in 1952 at the Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, close to Lake Geneva.

“He felt lost when he was forced from America, leaving behind a Hollywood that he had helped to build,” says Michael.

Exiled from Hollywood, he kept few reminders around.

“There were no Chaplin relics around the place,” says Michael. “No mementos like the famous bowler hat, frock coat, baggy pants, boots or cane. He was not one to waste time reminiscing. He didn’t even like to watch his movies.”

But age undermined his genius. “His great creation was The Tramp but eventually he had to part ways with the character because he wasn’t physically able to continue and that must have been a great loss to him.

“He had a terrible fear of losing his audience and not being funny any more. That made it very hard for him to grow old.”

Chaplin was in fair health until the age of 85, when he was ravaged by a series of strokes. “In his final years he drifted into himself,” says Michael. “He was in a wheelchair and he was ready to go. He died in bed, in his sleep.”

Dead celebrities, such as Albert Einstein and John Lennon, can earn millions in licensing and merchandising but Chaplin’s star is currently struggling.

“It’s not a lucrative estate and that’s something we’re trying to change,” says Michael.

“There are still millions of fans and he’s part of cinema history but Charlie Chaplin is not part of modern pop culture in the way of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis.

“The Tramp is known from China to South America but we have to find a way to market him. That’s why we’re creating the Chaplin Museum and releasing his restored high-definition films on DVD.”

A father of seven, Michael now lives on a farm in the hills above Chaplin’s Swiss estate and admits: “Now I’m 61 years old I have a different perspective on my father. I didn’t try very hard to be a good son.

“He loved us, I now realise. He loved my mother and I know she loved him.

“But he could never quite be happy. He was always searching for something more than he had. Perhaps that’s why he was a great artist. He was a perfectionist, torn by doubts.”

Today, Michael recalls their impassioned clashes best. “Often I was in trouble with him and we wouldn’t speak. One Christmas I went home and we didn’t speak for days.

“Ultimately, my father loved his family. We had a difficult time together but I know now that we loved each other.

“All the resentment and regret I had has passed away. For many years I was angry with him but now I know: I do love him. He wasn’t always easy to live with but he was my father and that’s all that matters. I should have loved him more.”

Abdul Latif Khalid (1944-2007) Maybe it’s a cultural thing but, in the west its been said that quite a lot of sons resent their fathers for various reasons, maybe its because west is a free and open society and they are free to express their opinions about anything and everything. whereas ours is far more regimented and ruled by conventions and certain things are taboo subjects such as irreverence to parents.

Maybe Dr khalid sohail could shed some light on this subject.

Abdul Latif Khalid (1944-2007) Yasser

Please accept my condolences for the sad demise of your loving father.

You’ve not wrote about where he was buried, I’ve been told that prominent ahmadis are buried in rabwah.

Aqsa Pervez: The Casualty of Patriarchy a great civilisation is not conquered from without until, it has destroyed itself from within historian will Durant

A compassionate and tender human being, he decried the position of women in society, who he said only lived for childbearing and suckling. Moved to compassion for their misery, he wrote that women were so reduced in servitude that all their capacity for higher pursuits had been destroyed. He was saddened by their fate, stating that they only live like plants, looking after their men. This compelled him to write:
“Our society allows no scope for the development of women’s talents. They seem to be destined exclusively to childbirth and the care of children, and this state of servility has destroyed their capacity for larger matters. It is thus that we see no women endowed with moral virtues; they live their lives like vegetables, devoting themselves to their husbands. From this stems the misery that pervades our cities, for women outnumber men by more than double and cannot procure the necessities of life by their own labours.” (Ibn rushd ( averroes) a muslim philosopher in 13th century spain)
It seems the position of muslim women hasn’t changed much in some muslim countries since he wrote that, I suppose at that time the position of women in non-muslim societies wasn’t that much different but, most have progressed since then.

Aqsa Pervez: The Casualty of Patriarchy The winds of change are blowing through Saudi Arabia, a sex shop in makkah,
Astagfirullah, what next?

ANN Summers, the sex shop and lingerie chain, has been granted permission to open 22 shops in the Middle East, including one in the holy city of Mecca.
The Telegraph has learned that "erotic stock" has already been shipped to Kuwait in preparation for the opening of the first shops in October.The branch in Saudi Arabia will be at the Mecca International Mall. Permission to open the stores was obtained through the company's Kuwait-based franchise, Makae/Top Ten International.
Ann Summers, which has a turnover of more than £53 million a year, will not however be able to sell its range of sex toys in the Middle East, where such goods are illegal. It will restrict the first sales to exotic lingerie, leather goods and PVC bodywear. It hopes to introduce chocolate bodypaints and massage oils later. Other stores are due to open in Dubai, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and, possibly, Oman. Twelve are due to open from October, the rest in the New Year.
Noshaba Hussein, a leading member of the Iranian-backed Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, said she would lobby the Foreign Office and the Saudi Arabian ambassador to prevent the opening of the shops. "Who is supposed to buy these products? When Muslims go to the holy city they should only be indulging in prayer," she said.
Only Muslims are allowed to enter Mecca, the holiest city in Islam, where public observance of any other religion is forbidden. Every year, tens of thousands of pilgrims make their way to Mecca and Medina for the Hajj pilgrimage. Mohamed Ayed Alenezi, the chairman of Makae, defended the expansion. "Nice and sexy lingerie is not against Islam," he said.
Some Muslim clerics believe that Islamic married couples are allowed to share an interest in erotic underwear. Ayub Laher, the general secretary of the Bradford Council of Mosques, said that the shops would provide an outlet to explore fantasies: "Islam encourages a man and wife to please each other within the confines of their own homes. Underwear is allowed, massage oils can be part of innocent fun and as long as leather is not made out of pigskin, that is fine too."
The shops will be staffed by men. Senior staff, including Jacqueline Gold, the chief executive of Ann Summers, will be replaced by male executives for the stores' openings.

Death of Aqsa Pervez: A reflection on Canadian Muslim-Pakistanis Re: # 13
The article I posted was about a case in derby, I know derby well, there is around 20,000 sikhs living in their own ghetto and about similar number mirpuris in a separate ghetto. The problems start in schools and colleges, where the fatal attraction takes place, there have been cases where muslim girls have ran off with sikh boys, likewise sikh girls have ran off with muslim boys. Very few from either communities approve of such unions.

The question you should be asking is, shouldn’t parents respect the wishes of their children?. The paradox is, I have found that among muslim families they seem to accept sikh daughter in law but, they have disowned their daughter who has married a sikh boy that is an enigma wrapped up in mystery

Death of Aqsa Pervez: A reflection on Canadian Muslim-Pakistanis Re: # 9
It’s not only for muslims these hostels (refuges) they are for everybody as the case below of young sikh girl illustrates if there had been similar set up in Canada maybe aqsa would be alive today.

“A young Sikh girl was kidnapped by her mother and uncle after they discovered she was having a secret affair with a Muslim boy.

The 16-year-old girl's mum discovered the affair by finding messages to her boyfriend on her computer.

The teenager, fearing she would be forced into an arranged marriage, fled to a women's refuge.


But when she went out to visit a cinema, her mother and uncle ambushed her and bundled her into a car.

Refuge workers discovered the girl was missing and alerted police, who went to her Derby home and found her.

Prosecutor Richard Thatcher said: "He was a Muslim and she was a Sikh. Because of this, both parties felt if either of their families became aware of the existence of the relationship it would be ended.

"She was in fear. One of the things she was concerned about was that her parents would split them up but also that they would make her go to India to undergo an arranged marriage -- something she was not keen to do.

"She found their attitudes difficult and the attitude that there should be a lesser view taken of her boyfriend was something she could not understand and considered to be an old prejudice."

But Dan Gaskell, mitigating for the mother and uncle, said: "It was a totally misguided attempt to return this young girl to the family - to return her home, sit her down and sort things out.

"There was no intention of any forced marriage and no religious aspect to the case - this was perpetrated out of genuine concern."

Judge Christopher Plunkett, at Leicester Crown Court, dismissed the teenager's claims that her mother wanted to force an arranged marriage.

He told the two accused: "The two of you bundled your daughter into the back of your car, you drove her away against her will and you kept her against her will for a number of hours.

"If I was of the opinion that you had carried out this offence to get her to enter into an arranged marriage, I would not hesitate to send you to prison. This operation was, however ill-judged and, however misconceived, at its root well-intentioned.

"The result has been tragic - your daughter is estranged, you have lost her trust. Whatever you say your intention was, she is left in fear. This sort of behaviour is entirely unacceptable."

Yesterday, the girl's mother and uncle, who cannot be named, were given a 12-month suspended sentence and ordered to do a total of 205 hours of unpaid work between them. The mother was put under a 12-month supervision order. They each admitted one charge of kidnap.

After she left home, the 16-year-old girl was taken in by Derby's Karma Nirvana refuge, which helps women who fear being forced into arranged marriages.

The court heard that the young couple had started to communicate through MSN instant computer messaging.

The girl's family soon discovered the relationship and began sending the boy threatening messages. She then ran away to a women's refuge in Derby.

On July 26, the mother and uncle found out she was visiting a cinema in Leicester.

Mr Thatcher continued: "On leaving the cinema she became aware that her mother was in the lobby and ran away.

"She ran into a car park area into the arms of her uncle. He grabbed her. She was screaming and asking to be left alone. She was taken to a waiting car and, with the assistance of her mother, was bundled into the car."

The girl was told not to say anything when the police came looking for her. However, she ignored her family and told officers everything when they knocked on her uncle's door in Derby.

Following the case, Karma Nirvana founder Jasvinder Sanghera said, from what she knew about the case, the girl had a strong fear of being forced into an arranged marriage.

She said forced arranged marriages were on the increase in Derby, with six new cases each day. “

Death of Aqsa Pervez: A reflection on Canadian Muslim-Pakistanis Re: # 5
That isn’t true any girl can go upto her teacher demand protection from her family, they would be whisked away by the police to safe hostel. Though majority end up being addicts or prostitutes for some reason but, that’s a different story.

Feminism Under Veil Whereas some women consider hijab as a symbol of oppression, there are some women who consider it as a symbol of liberation and as a sign of feminism, that supposedly protects them from the preying eyes and unwanted attention of strange men.

Death of Aqsa Pervez: A reflection on Canadian Muslim-Pakistanis Tragic though it is, the death of aqsa should’t go in vain, Canadian social services and civil socirty groups should devise some plan of action so that similar tragedy should not happen again.

In the 80’s and 90’s in UK, honour killings and girls running away from home because of strict parents, arrange marriages, abusive husbands etc, were quite frequent.
Social workers, teachers and police were alerted of this problem, around a dozen hostels were built in the country to accommodate these girls. Police and social workers “snatch squad” were created who removed these girls from their “problem” parents and placed them in hostels with 24 hour security.

Canada has an advantage over UK in that most migrants there are educated and professional, therefore it is far easier for them to adjust to their new adopted land.

Islam and Hijab-Murder in Canada Tragic though it is, the death of aqsa should’t go in vain, Canadian social services and civil socirty groups should devise some plan of action so that similar tragedy should not happen again.

In the 80’s and 90’s in UK, honour killings and girls running away from home because of strict parents, arrange marriages, abusive husbands etc, were quite frequent.
Social workers, teachers and police were alerted of this problem, around a dozen hostels were built in the country to accommodate these girls. Police and social workers “snatch squad” were created who removed these girls from their “problem” parents and placed them in hostels with 24 hour security.

Canada has an advantage over UK in that most migrants there are educated and professional, therefore it is far easier for them to adjust to their new adopted land.

Islam and Hijab-Murder in Canada “Tahir insisted the girl was religiously observant but mainly had wanted to be more independent and "to get more out of life," and had asked to move in with the Tahirs in the same neighbourhood.”

“to get more out of life”
is that a euphemism for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, I mean at sixteen she should have been into her studies.