Daily Times

It is said that two things are infinite in this world: the universe and human stupidity, and there might be doubt about the first! Last Friday, at my daughter’s school in the afternoon, I sat on a bench reading my law book, waiting for the school bell to ring. My concentration was broken by two women also waiting to collect their daughters. Without any apparent regard for the school hours, these women were chattering away in high, animated voices, and the topic was the protests in Pakistan against the blasphemous film. In all fairness, they condemned the violence that had erupted and then one of them said, “Did you see the picture of Obama on the Internet, the one where he is laughing, sitting with his staff, with the caption saying that we just lit a spark and the Pakistanis burnt their country down?” Then they went on to share the merits of the US government in this conspiracy against us. Next came, “See, that filmmaker has been put in jail. CNN is all over it.” They then went on to discuss how swift his punishment was for making the film. The other woman responded, “You know that Danish cartoonist who made the blasphemous caricatures? He was burnt alive in his home, but the international media has been asked not to report it.” What ensued was a feverish lecture on Allah’s ‘azaab’ (curse), all this by now being watched by more women. I was in the meanwhile trying numerous mental exercises in ‘self-restraint’. The first, in a self-righteous tone said, “Yes, it is Allah’s azaab, like it happened in Muzaffarabad,” and then went on to highlight the devastation caused by the earthquake in 2005, seemingly without any remorse for the loss of lives. The other pitched in: “Yes, what was that building in Islamabad that collapsed? You know, they’ve managed to keep it under wraps, but the residents of Islamabad know and tell that there was a ‘nanga’ (nude) club in there, that’s why Allah caused it to collapse.”

By now, I had deemed self-restraint a useless and an over-rated phenomenon as images of bodies of countless children swam before my eyes. I remembered my friend’s niece, a 15-year-old, whose father was serving in the army, posted in Muzaffarabad; how she had died in the earthquake. I remembered Mehvish, a nine-year-old, our cook’s daughter, critically injured and trapped under a huge wooden beam, as the roof collapsed, dying an agonising death, as rescue efforts by her parents failed. I remembered the 11-month-old daughter of Islamabad’s assistant commissioner who lost her life as the Margalla Tower collapsed. Yes, I remembered them all and many, many more.

The 2005 earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale claimed an estimated 74,000 lives and left over 100,000 injured. As schools collapsed, children with tons of debris on them were buried under. Can anyone imagine the pain and horror those innocent children faced in their last moments? Can anyone imagine the desperation and never-ending grief of the unfortunate parents who had to bury the crushed bodies in mass graves? Can anyone imagine that?

Is it possible that Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate, with 99 attributes, would make innocent children the targets of His azaab? What if, God forbid, the children of such women had died in that earthquake? Would it still be an azaab or would they be calling it an ‘imtehan’ (test)? Would their self-righteous interpretations be applied if their loved ones had lost their lives in the Margalla Towers with its alleged top secret nude club?

Pakistan is reportedly the only country left in South Asia to still have an active Polio virus. The vaccination against polio, while available in the country since decades and a mandatory part of every child’s immunisation programme, has failed to be utilised by all. The polio eradication campaigns have encountered severe resistance by parents who refuse to have their children immunised against this crippling disease. In addition to militants issuing warnings against immunisations to prevent incidents like Dr Shakeel Afridi’s alleged fake campaign, the local clerics in the northwest province are using the mosque loudspeakers to forbid the vaccine on the pretext of it containing pig extract. Stories claiming that the polio vaccine causes sterility, AIDS and contains the urine of Americans are also doing the rounds. Why the Americans would urinate in the vaccine instead of in the toilet bowl or the urinal or on the streets like us is beyond comprehension!

I have never ceased to be amazed at the magnificent display of stupidity ever since we became the proud owners of the ‘bum’ (the nuclear bomb)! At every threat — real and perceived both — a great many of our people resort to advocating the use of the ‘nukes’ to destroy the transgressors! Simply unbelievable! I remember when I first became aware of the nukes in the early 1980s. I was in school in London and every other day Green Peace would hold demonstrations and lobby for disarmament. The movie The Day After was aired on television in late 1983, a sombre and horrific depiction of the effects and aftermath of a nuclear war. I believe that our state and private channels would serve us well if they televised the movie, dubbed in regional languages to enable the masses to understand what exactly a nuclear attack constitutes. It would also be prudent to recall and televise the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the US in 1945 and then justify the use of the bum anywhere in the world.

An Italian Economist, Carlo Cipolla, wrote an essay, The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity. The five basic laws are: always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation; the probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person; a stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses; non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals, in particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake and a stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

There are many pictures on the Internet that are dubbed by various enthusiasts. Obama was not pictured laughing at Pakistanis, though he might have done so off-camera. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker of Innocence of Muslims was not jailed for committing blasphemy. He was jailed for violating the terms of his probation in a prior case. There is no evidence that the Danish cartoonist who made the blasphemous caricatures of our beloved Prophet (PBUH) was burnt alive in his home. In all probability, he has been shifted under protective custody by the Danish government and given a new identity, as happens frequently in the west. The overwhelming response to the 2005 earthquake by the international community and entire Pakistan lends credit to the assumption that it was not an azaab sent by Allah, but if it were, did the pious Muslims of Pakistan err by helping those who had been at the receiving end of Allah’s wrath? Margalla Towers collapsed taking many innocents with it; assuming that there were illicit activities befitting of an azaab going on there, could not Allah have sent His azaab to each guilty separately, sparing the innocents, like in the many scenarios mentioned in the Quran?

I am a firm believer in Allah’s azaab but I refuse to believe that my Allah would punish innocents. The abundant and abject stupidity of the human race transcends all logic, making common sense not that common after all and intelligence an endangered species. Take action, before stupidity endangers the human race irreparably!

The writer is an advocate of the High Court