October 2007

These coal carriers carry coal, on their bicycles, up the hill to sell. This meager income doesn’t justify the effort required in this physically exhausting task. They operate in the areas near to the coal mines of Dhanbad, they are mostly stolen or collected coal. Poverty forces these men to take up this daunting task of carrying the coal sacks on their bicycles. A sack of coal would typically sell for Rs. 200 so this means a maximum income of 1000 per trip ( you expect more than 5 sacks, huh?), which is very lucrative considering the level of poverty in Jharkhand!

Sorry for the poor quality of the video. I didn’t stop and shoot because I think it would have been contemptuous and disparaging for the hard workers so I tried to shoot without making it obvious, after all its a profession and you need to respect someone’s profession.

I thought they made a mistake while quoting ’166 dead’. I later realized that it was the biggest terrorist attack in Pakistan. Once again innocents, who had absolutely nothing to do power game going on the democrazy of Pakistan, were targeted.

Two bombs exploded Thursday night just seconds apart and feet from a truck carrying the returning opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, narrowly missing her but killing scores of people and bloodying a triumphal homecoming after eight years in exile.

Various reports said up to 126 were killed and some 150 were wounded, including civilians and party workers. In the initial chaos, however, the Interior Ministry could only confirm 70 deaths.

Ms. Bhutto, who had spent eight hours on the roof of the truck waving to supporters, had climbed inside the armored vehicle 10 minutes before the blast occurred just before midnight, said Rehman Malik, Ms. Bhutto’s security adviser and close associate. [nytimes]

Benazir Bhutto’s return was being seen as an opportunity to bring democracy back to the country but it seems the extremist aren’t going to be happy with anything less than a Taliban style government. Or was it a planned attack by Musharraf ? The security measures enforced really surprises me. I do understand that it would have been impossible to monitor every citizen who was participating in the rally but at least a tight security near Mrs. Bhutto would have averted this unprecedented loss of human life. Those champions treat human life as just an object of exploitation. They would go to any extreme to get their government in power. The thirst of power has made them shed the principles of Islam and given the jaundiced hypocrites something to blame Islam.

I wrote this long back on the issue of enforcing shariah laws on the present day generation-

I firmly believe that forcing shariah laws down people’s throat is definitely not acceptable. The argument of the above group was that Pakistan was formed on Islamic principles so why its still to adopt complete shariah laws? As far as my knowledge about Pakistan is concerned, the society is divided between the high non-pious class and the ultra-conservative lower class (based on economic divide) so that implies there is no middle class dominance. The rich keep growing richer, and also away from religion, and the lower class keeps falling into the deep chasm of poverty, it uses religion to satiate itself that they one day everyone will be judged on religious deeds and not worldly wealth. This cry for the implementation of ardent laws will leave the society in shatters as the non-pious class cannot come to terms with the ardent laws. This is what happened in Afghanistan when the Taliban were in power; people were forced to pray in mosques and even beaten for this, public execution of culprits which was heavily criticized by the western media as barbaric, restriction of TV,movies and any sort of entertainment. What did they achieve by these? People becoming embittered against the regime and ready to leave the country at earliest given opportunity!

I firmly believe that in this present day world shariah laws cannot be enforced on people because Muslim society in general has diverted away from religion. Concepts which invite death punishment in Islam are now acceptable in many cultures, like live in relationships and extra marital affairs. Westernisation has deeply affected Muslims of all culture alike for reasons which I am not going to delve into here. You cannot amend mistakes by imposing strict laws now. This is actually a way to avoid the complexities involved in bringing the society back to religion.

The current situation requires the Muslim countries to rethink their strategies. I am not asking for a total change in laws so as to make in west compatible but a gradual implementation of shariah so that the inhabitants don’t feel the pinch. Muslims who settled in the western world can be a role model for us. There were certain things in Islam which were pushed to a level where it left a thin line between Islamic laws and western laws. Concepts like women empowerment, freedom of expression and entertainment had to be rethought of by Muslims in western countries to accommodate western way of life. Its not that these concepts were alien to Islam but just that Muslims seems to have paid no heed towards them in the Arab world. Islam was constantly under scrutiny and thus it became imperative for the Muslims to shun these voices of dissent arising from within by adjusting and pushing laws to extreme. It became a must for Islam to exist in the modern day world.

Well just to end this discussion, the disease doesn’t lies with Islam but it lies with the Muslims. They have been reduced from kings to beggars, which is something Muslims in general are still to digest, and they should learn to face circumstances which are not ideally suited for shariah laws to exist.

Saw this on the back of a truck. The truck was a petro-chemical product carrier. The the spelling of valve is totally screwed but all the words in the word ‘valve’ do exist.

My blog was down for almost a week because I was struggling with my new host, Bluehost. I have moved my sites away from media temple (mt) because the recent database server downtimes had become too annoying. (mt) didn’t live up to my expectations as the costly hosting was becoming unreliable each day.

I had issues with setting up wordpress on bluehost because I was not accustomed to cpanel. The .htaccess file was making all the php files non-executable, they were being downloaded. I finally figured out the problem and fixed the issue. Hopefully bluehost will my final home.