Sajjad Bhai put it best when he commented on this incident (see post title).

Mr. 10% is now Mr. 110%

This is the fifth journal entry in a series of about 15 which I wrote over a three week period while I was in Pakistan this summer. If you go to the category Pakistan Journal you can see all the entries. There are some really interesting experiences and observations which I make throughout the trip(or well at least in my opinion).

6/9/2004

Last night we had a cultural wedding ritual called a Mayo it’s a pre-mehndi mehndi. I bet this was copied from the Hindus. Why can’t people be content with fulfilling the sunnah. Anyways I slept for a lot of yesterday. After Maghrib I was sent to my cousin’s house to pick up my clothes for this event. That was after Maghrib. This event did not start till like 11 at night! Then we wonder why desis in America are always late. They all purposefully did not leave their homes till about 10:30! Which is nuts (for me at least). I also went with my uncle to pick up “cold drinks” which essentially means Pepsi and 7up bottles in crates. We had to buy ice off of the streets. We purchased a slab of ice form this guy for like 100 rupees which is like 2 dollars. This crazy tent was setup for the event right in front of my uncle’s house (fathers cousin). These guys came to make the food on the spot! They made these Kababs on a grill and this team of two make these 3 feet long (in diameter) fried rotis (parratas). I took some pictures of that. The Kebabs were pretty undercooked no one liked it. But the roti was banging. All the kids were dying for second soda bottles. I used my privileges to get mine while all the little kids got yelled at hehe. I met a bunch of my third cousins. My father introduced me to their mother as a “Jamaati” (Which I am not, Although I do support their work). Anyways this lady starts going off on “Jamaatis” saying how they are hypocrites and she hates them. I was like “okay great”. And she kept going on and on. They really need to work on their public image here.

Yesterday I watched something called Q-TV which is Quran TV which is done by this company called ARY which has a few channels which it has started. So on QTV they had this Alim taking questions live. Someone called and asked about the different schools of thought (the 4 imams specifically) he wanted to know which ones we should follow. I don’t think the vast majority of Pakistanis even know who they are, so I was happy that this question was being asked. He gave an excellent answer explaining that all these imams were part of ahlus sunnah wal jammah and that they had different opinions in fiqh and not in aqeedah. He went on to say so you can do taqleed to ay of them. Then he pissed me off by saying “but we should follow Imam Abu Hanifah because he was the best and closest of them to Quran and Sunnah, he was Imam-e-Azam” He killed his answer.. And tossed his personal opinion in there and didn’t even say that it was his opinion. Any of the people watching WILL repeat what he said just like that. “We should follow Imam Abu Hanifah because he was the best”. And the funny thing is that I have actually heard people saying things like that. Yesterday I went to the masjid for a few prayers. At Zuhr time right when I was about to pray I looked up and realized that everyone was wearing a topee except for me… And I am like Yikes! They’ll kill me if they realize. So I leave the ranks searching for a loaner topee. But it was to no avail. So I thought okay let me see if I can find at least one other person not wearing a topee so if they want to come at me I can point at him and make a dash. After prayer everyone sits and waits to make dua. And the Imam MUST make dua out loud every single time. Again I don’t know if this is a Hanafi thing. So I knew no one would not make dua to just harass me. So before dua was over I bounced. I asked my father why he was not combining prayers since he would only be here for two weeks. One week in Lahore and one week in Karachi. And he was like “I think there’s more reward in praying at the set times”. I said “I don’t think so”. And he says “and I don’t want to leave my Sunnah Muaqada because its equal to fard prayers”. I wanted to say “you’re traveling!” But I already felt like I had pestered him enough and that I’d be annoying him if I wasn’t already. People here don’t know about combining prayers although they do know about Qasr (shortening prayers). So it must be a part of Hanafi Fiqh. Thank God I was raised in America with American Muslims (from all over). So I can both shorten and combine it. Even the normalized desis in America do this. Only the staunch Hanafis don’t. I wonder if stuff like this will be taught in the Al Maghrib Evolution of Fiqh Class. It’s so hard for me to explain to my cousins or uncles why I am not going to Asr because I prayed Asr wuth Zhur. To them it’s an abomination or something. And if they don’t know about something it’s automatically wrong, and not only is it wrong it’s also sinful.

I realized that secularism is instilled in these children from when they are really young. Someone had put my Qur’an on top of the TV set (It was the highest spot in the room) So my little cousin who is like 10 says “you can’t put the Quran on the TV that’s sinful” I said “why because you want to watch haraam on TV?” And he nods yes (they watch a lot of Indian movies with singing and dancing). So I said “so why don’t we hide the Qur’an, so then we can watch whatever we want on TV” I was basically saying that is what is already being done. People are concerned about the physical Kitab of the Quran witnessing their sins more than they are concerned about actually committing the sin. Also when I was getting my clothes from my cousins house all the kids were listening to Wedding Music and blasting it. So this one girl says “The Azaan!” So another kid runs to the radio trying to turn it off. Some can say this is a sign of respect, which it is. But if they really think what they are doing is wrong then why do they do it. They have Islamic channels and they have totally haraam channels. Why? So they can switch up according to their nafs. When they want to feel good about being Muslim they can watch some QTV. And when they want to be entertained they’ll watch Indian Movies or love songs or freemixtrous Paki Music videos. Most people here now have cable boxes/service which has about 90 channels. I asked my cousin if it’s regulated. He said the only thing which they take out is nudity/sex scenes from “English Movies” (American Movies). But when my cousins were channel surfing they showed Britney wearing one of her usual outfits performing. My point is that Islam here is such a side thing. It has nothing to do with anything. It is irrelevant to their actual lives outside of going to the masjid to pray. No masjid here has a women’s section. We should send all the “progressive Muslims” here so they can be taken care of. My aunt tried to justify why women shouldn’t go the masjid by saying the usual stuff. I didn’t even want to get into it with her. I did tell her than in America we have space for women in all of our masajid! And the progressive Muslims don’t think were making progress…ha. I’m sure it’s at the university level where this (type of thinking) is different.

One of my third cousins invited me to his house, but his mom was the one who said she hates “Jamaatis”. She had no idea about what she was talking about, but was yapping away anyways. I asked my father why he told her that I was a “Jamaati” and he said “who cares”. I told him people have a bad impression about these political Muslims, no matter how religious they are.

Pictures from this segment of the trip:

[img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/11.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/12.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/13.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/14.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/15.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/16.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/17.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/18.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/19.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/20.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/21.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/22.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/23.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/24.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/25.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/26.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/27.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/28.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/29.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/30.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/31.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/32.jpg width=100 height=100] [img=http://www.azeemkhan.info/images/pakistan/33.jpg width=100 height=100]

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