On the one hand, my patriotism for Pakistan (Karachi even more so), died a tiny death that night. The realisation that I was born in a country and a city that did not even grant me a right as fundamental as my life had hit home with haunting conviction.[/quote]
The blame is put on Pakistan - a country not ensuring modern/western life.
Quote:
It was no longer us consoling a relative on their trauma and loss, whilst secretly counting our blessings that it wasn't one of us. On the other, however, it gave me perspective, to understand that there are those who have witnessed worse -- lost brothers, fathers, sisters. It also reignited the existential struggle in my mind of what it really meant to be Pakistani and if this was something I wanted to call myself. Is it being Muslim, being a Sunni or a Shia, being a man, being Punjabi or Mohajir? If I go to a temple or a church, am I still Pakistani? If I belong to the Ahmadi sect, am I still Pakistani? If I have roots to the Gujar caste, am I still Pakistani? If I speak Balochi, am I still Pakistani? If I am embarrassed to talk about my country in front of my Western friends, am I still Pakistani? Ethnicity, religion, class, caste, gender all immersed into a black maelstrom in my over-wrought head, as I wondered who I really was?[/quote]
Pakistan was created in the name of Islam.
The question is about Islamic vs modern liberal western life style.
Rest of the ghosts are either imaginary or not relevant.
Mufti Rafi Usmani Sahab (DB) : The question arises whether we can implement our traditions and Deen in our Pakistan. We want to do that and we also want the government to practice that. If that means fundamentalism then we are guilty of fundamentalists.
[quote]"[B]eing 'Indian' taking precedence over all other markers of identity has played a pivotal role in enabling our neighbours to attain the status of becoming a global force to reckon with."
Here the implication is that India has done better in adopting the modern western way of life.
[quote]Growing up as part of a middle class that was sandwiched between the upper echelons of wealthy, ministerial indulgence on the one hand and homeless street children sleeping drugged outside shrines on the other, I realised that this is one of the differentiators for why Pakistan and India have witnessed such markedly varied trajectories, despite gaining independence almost simultaneously. Belonging to the proverbial middle class, I still distinctly recall the scarring experience of attending a school that was notorious for its ''high-brow, stiff-necked' parvenus students, thriving on the opulence they had inherited by virtue of their birth, whilst we naively doted on a father who was a professor and believed that the nobility of his profession superseded all monetary returns. What the contributions of those children themselves were to that grandeur, in many cases, still remains to be seen. I think watching my mother sell newspapers one day to buy potatoes, so that we didn't come home to empty plates at lunch, are the sort of experiences that have made my siblings and me, braver, resilient and more empathetic human beings.