The heroes of one country, one mindset or one civilization may well be regarded by another country, another mindset and another civilization as villains or traitors.
And vice versa.
Who doesn’t know that men like Salman Rushdie, Ahmad Rasheed and Najam Sethi enjoy great respect and recognition in the West—specially in the U.S which has taken upon itself the task, the honour and the distinction of being the victorious flag-bearer of the Western Civilization?
It was the duo of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis that had launched the theme of the Clash of Civilizations. This theme had been launched in the mid-1990s —soon after Francis Fukoyama had written his famous treatise named the End Of History.
By this curiosity-generating phrase Fukoyama had tried to argue that the Soviet Union having been trounced and dismembered, and China having no real chance of matching the prowess of the U.S-led West, the history had actually ended, and henceforth there wouldn’t be any epoch-making wars for supremacy on the globe.
Huntington-Lewis duo however had argued that the West had yet to bury the threat of the Rise of Islam.
To do precisely that the policy-makers of Washington built around the phrase Political Islam, a doctrine that, not till the threat of militant extremism emanating from the budding dreams of Islamic revival was effectively countered and eliminated, could the victory of the Western Civilization be forcefully declared, and joyously celebrated. To do precisely that Iraq and Afghanistan were selected as the war theatres, and Pakistan chosen as the launching pad.
It is our misfortune that Pakistan was at that point of time in control of a man whose understanding of our national identity was as flawed and misguided as is American’s comprehension of the Pakhtoon mind.
Even greater misfortune is the potential of our society to become a rich field of recruitment of intellectuals like Ahmad Rasheed and Najam Sethi for the cause of liberalism and enlightenment.
The reason I’ve bracketed them with Salman Rushadie is that he happens to be the ultimate benchmark of the emancipated-liberal mindset!
The reason I’ve picked up this subject for today’s column is that I’ve just gone through an article by Ahmad Rasheed in which he has mourned the increasing isolation of Pakistan. This darling of the West clearly is saddened by Pakistan’s ongoing effort to break free from the yoke of the U.S dictation.
(This Column was first published on 14-06-2012)
- Latest
- Trending
