R O N I Nammar yasir’s personal blog

At the time when the excited lot at Time Square was celebrating the death of OBL, we in Pakistan were in a state of absolute shock and bewilderment. Like an uninvited guest in a party who’s asked to say a few words on the stage, we had no clue on how to react. A large fraction in the west expected us to celebrate the death of OBL like New Yorkers. Similarly a friend in India tweeted that the moderate Pakistanis should come out of their houses to show their contentment on the death of the Saudi businessman turned Al-Qaeda’s founding daddy. But on the other side of the border we were still chewing on the facts that came our way via western news sources. Contrary to Scooby Dooby Cartoon show, where the evil villain was unmasked in the end; this episode further mystified everything we were made to believe in last one decade.

The answer to why Pakistanis didn’t celebrate OBL’s death came a few weeks after; when a double suicide attack was carried out in Charasadda (taking 89 innocent lives and injuring 140 people) followed by a  drone strike claiming the death of Al-Qaeda militants. So those American friends who are still curious on why we didn’t celebrate OBL’s death should realize that you might have won this year’s ‘Super Bowl’ but like always we have to clean up the created mess irrespective of who comes out as a winner.

Having said that, I secretly wish that Pakistanis would have been banned from expressing on this incident by our pro-active Supreme Court. As only few hours after the announcement of OBL’s death a section of journalists and anchors started referring him a martyr and Islam’s true soldier, who also turned out to be a porn lover (now I know who to blame). But what disappointed me the most was the shocking stance of some of Pakistan’s respectable names including writer/poet/ diplomat Ataul Haq Qasmi (creator of PTV’s classic like Khwaja & Sons) who found nothing wrong in publicly admiring OBL on the local channels. Similarly lawyers, political parties and even citizens in various Pakistanis cities offered prayers for the terrorist who publicly declared a war against Pakistan and its people, resulting in the death of over 3500 Pakistanis (majority of who never supported the US war mongering policy in the region).

BBC radio’s Urdu service interviewed a house wife in Abbottabad who wished if she knew of OBL’s presence in her neighborhood, she would have showed him the well known Pakistani hospitality. From the mood of our nation the Abbottabadi house wife is not the only one who follow this peculiar mind set. In fact I am pretty much sure that she or someone in her family will not mind a US citizenship if offered. Pakistanis who criticize the US policy the most find no problem in living or wish to live the American dream in USA or any prosperous part of the west. I fail to understand this behavior.

Numerous times in the past Islamic states have also sabotaged the sovereignty of Pakistan but we don’t want to talk about that. We trained facilitated and harbored foreign terrorists in the past and continue to do so today even if it proves out to be hazardous for our safety, economy and future. Only because the terrorists claim to follow the same religion or appear more Muslims than we are. Does that make sense to anyone out there?

We want our kids to study and work abroad, to bring back Dollars, Pounds, Euros and foreign degrees. At the same time we find it completely appropriate to publicly display open affection towards dead Al-Qaeda leaders and approve of Taliban version of Sharia in our country. So from what it appears we are either utterly stupid or despicably a hypocrite nation that does not want to learn from its past at all, as if learning from the past was freshly banned by LHC or have been put on the blasphemy list by the local Mullahs. We secretly wish to win a gold medal for our Islamic ghairat, if there was a championship where they gave out prices to Muslim Cheerleaders for showing off their affection for the religion we would have been world champions. If there was a reality show by the name ‘Muslims got Gherat (honor)’: Pakistanis would have voted their hearts out to win the title and we would have easily won it too for banning facebook two years in a row.

But no awards or rewards; religious or otherwise are handed over for absurdity or irrationality. The world is watching us and our growing extremist behavior. The legacy we are leaving behind for our next generation is only going to make them unwanted and disrespected as global citizens. As a matter of fact we are half way there.

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