Dear URI Friends and Colleagues:
An honored member of our Raoul Wallenberg Insitute of Ethics CC, Dr. Mehnaz M. Afridi is a native of Pakistan. Much of her family still lives in the region and she travels there often--her connections to her homeland run deep. Affected by the gravity of the recent killings of Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Pubjab Province Governer Saleem Taseer, she has asked me to share her thoughtful insights here.
As a Muslim woman scholar and esteemed professor of Genocide Studies, Dr. Afridi has been actively working for peace and interfaith reconciliation in the US as well as in her native Pakistan. She is a member of WISE (Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality) and has collaborated with Grand Imam Maulana Syed Mohammed Abd-ul Khabir Azad both in Los Angeles as well as Malaysia.
I wanted to share her perspective of recent events and to amplify the clarity of her voice on this International Women's Day.
The Slain Brothers: Shahbaz Bhatti and Salman Taseer
Mehnaz M. Afridi, PhD.
Judaism, Islam & Genocide Studies
Department of Humanities, Adjunct
Antioch University, Los Angeles
www.mehnazafridi.com
Pakistanis have let amnesia take over the ideals of who we are as Muslims and the idea behind the creation of Pakistan. The shocking news of the recent killings of Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti is the second senior official this year to be assassinated for opposing the blasphemy law. Provincial governor Salman Taseer was shot dead by his own bodyguard in January. Furthermore, killings of minorities whether Shia, Ahmediyya, Jewish, Christian, or the wrong tribe, I can only hope that we can maintain the dictums of Islam.
The Qur’an states:
O Mankind, We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most righteous of you. __Quran 49:13
The message from the Qur’an is not just for Muslims but from the core of Islamic identity that is addressing all of humanity. While Muslims are part of one community (ummah), this message is for a larger community of all humanity. The most important message is that we were created into different groups and people. These differences that we have created because of war, feudalism, sectarian divisions, and disbelief are the ones that human beings have created. Our mission according to Islamic principles is that we were made different from one another so that we can know each other and understand these differences. Christians and Jews are primarily the ones who carried the first words of God, and we have forgotten the strong and loving message of God adhering to extreme laws of blasphemy dictate our morality as Pakistanis today.
Recently, there was a demonstration in Yorba Linda, Orange County outside a Muslim fundraiser dinner for women’s shelters and poverty in America. The demonstrators screamed at the Muslim women, men and children who attended the event with racist and anti-Islamic slurs that echoed the same hatred of what the gunmen in Pakistan did to the ministers.
Pakistan is a nation of liberty, unity, and justice and these events have overshadowed these principles. Every day I dream of this message. Every day I believe in this message. Every day I am disappointed. I am a Pakistani woman living in Los Angeles dreaming of a better future for Pakistan where all my family lives and where I was born. My dream is about diversity and Identity, my dream is about a country that includes all others with the message of Islam that echoes its message of peace, humanity, and non-violence. However, watching Pakistanis kill every day my dreams fade to grey. Killing for the sake of identity, superior beliefs, and simple intolerance haunts this land of the “pure”. It is the idea of “other” or “different” that compels me to peek back into the past where Pakistanis have let amnesia take over the ideals of who we are as Muslims and the creation of Pakistan.
I invite all Pakistanis to condemn this violence in the name of Islam and trust in God that these ministers are our own brothers. Let us remember the story of Cain and Abel from the Abrahamic faiths, and the Qur'an states that the story of Cain and Abel was a message for mankind, as it had told them about the consequences of murder and that the killing of one person would be as if he/she had slain the whole of mankind. But the Qur'an states that still people rejected the message of the story and continued to commit grave sins, slaying prophets, messengers as well as the righteous people. I hope that we will look deeply inside of us and recognize that we have slain all of humanity when we killed Shahbaz Bhatti and Salman Taseer.
