Wadiblog

If number of attendees and their active participation in a program is the litmus test of an event’s success then OPEN Forum 2008, Silicon Valley Chapter of Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America’s annual event, held on June 14, 2008, was hugely successful.

Here you see evening keynote speaker Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, speaking on ‘Leadership and Empowerment.’

See more pictures and report on
http://karachiphotoblog.blogspot.com/

In these times when the war on terror is raging high and western analysts are looking for bright spots in the Muslim world, to pin their hopes onto, Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s recently published English translation of Dastane-e-Amir Hamza (translated as Adventures of Amir Hamza) has been received with gusto. This translation has given western scholars a thick body of work to analyze and answer many questions.

“Are these people really evil? Were they always savages like they presently are? Are their folklores full of jihad lessons, misogynic themes, triumphant beheadings of infidels, and of older men getting married to underage girls?

Commentators such as William Dalrymple are exuberant that that is not the case. Reviewing Musharraf Farooqi’s translation, Dalrymple writes:

“At this perilous moment in history, the Hamza epic, with its mixed Hindu and Muslim idiom, its tales of love and seduction, its anti-clericalism (mullahs are a running joke throughout the book), its stories of powerful and resourceful women, and its mocking of male misogyny, is a reminder of an Islamic world the West seems to have forgotten: one that is imaginative and heterodox — and as far as can be from the puritanical Wahhabi Islam that the Saudis have succeeded in spreading throughout much of the modern Middle East.”

Dalrymple’s sigh of relief aside, Dastan-e-Amir Hamza has (or had at one time) the ultimate merit of entertaining early readers. Ten volumes of Amir Hamza were what children of my age read as their first collection of books. Amir Hamza was our first hero; to be like Amir Hamza was our dream –we wanted to go to distant places and conquer new lands, pretty much like how Amir Hamza did. Dastan-e-Amir Hamza gave us a chance to imagine a different, mesmerizing world, and it cemented in our value system the virtues of bravery, loyalty to friends, truthfulness, and steadfastness.

Toronto based Musharraf Ali Farooqi has been touring cities of North America, promoting ‘Adventures of Amir Hamza’. His recent talk at the Stanford University was arranged by the Center for South Asia and other sponsors.

For Pakistan, May 12, 2007 was a momentous–and a depressing–day. If violence has always been a part of the Pakistani politics then the Karachi carnage of May 12 was the ugliest manifestation of that fact. It was the day when Pakistan’s military ruler decided to break the momentum of a growing opposition by charging his political proponents to tackle the lawyers’ movement. Over forty people died on May 12 but the strategy of scaring people with violence backfired. Opposition to Pervez Musharraf grew even stronger and Musharraf was forced to make several concessions.
Friends of South Asia, a group of Bay Area watchers of South Asian politics, observed May 12 by holding a talk and a discussion on Sunday, May 11. The commemorative program featured eminent Pakistani-American law professor Tayyab Mahmud as the main speaker and Ijaz Syed, Javed Ellahie, and Dabbir Tirmizi as panelists who discussed various facets of the Pakistani judicial crisis. The program was titled “Pakistan’s Judicial Crisis and Remembering Karachi May 12 carnage.”
Tayyab Mahmud in his speech said that the Pakistani coup d’etat of 2007 was unique in the world history, because unlike other coups that one was staged to oust judges. Mahmud also said that the Pakistani events of last year should be seen in the bigger context of developing world’s response to the western hegemony.
In the panel discussion Javed Ellahie said that the lawyers’ movement in which roughly five thousand lawyers achieved a lot for the whole nation was unprecedented in the history of Pakistan. Dabbir Tirmizi said his party, Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf, did not have any hope in either Nawaz Sharif or Asif Zardari in instating impartial judiciary in Pakistan. Ijaz Syed apprised audience of the latest political situation and said that if the coalition of PPP and PML(N) breaks apart on the issue of deposed judges, then things would move towards the original “deal” that US wanted to broker between PPP and Pervez Musharraf.
With the crisis around the deposed judges dragging on, Friends of South Asia (FOSA) plans on arranging similar programs to raise political awareness on Pakistan among the local population.

September 11, 2001 was a horrible day. Thousands were killed in terrorist attacks in the US. But that day was terrible in a much more ominous way: the events of that day paved way for further killings around the globe and for suppression of basic rights of people all over.

Following 911, in its resolve to tackle terrorism the Bush administration went to the extent of insulating its actions from courts and the people.
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For whatever it is worth, here is Allen Hafman’s review of the film “A dinner with the President.”
C.

PS. Bilal Musharraf’s video is here:

Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 6:07:24 PM
Subject: A review of “A dinner with the President”

http://cemendtaur.blogspot.com/2008/02/for-whatever-it-is-worth-here-is-allen.html#links

A film with the President’s son—a review of “A dinner with the President”

Allen Hafman

“A dinner with the President: a nation’s journey” is a timely documentary film released in a charged atmosphere when nearly all have ganged up on President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan . The movie is an attempt to show the humane part of Musharraf, for example, as a son who at a dinner table listens amusedly to his mother talking about how worried she was of his future when as a child Musharraf would not do too well in school; the film tries to show the world that Musharraf still enjoys popularity among certain people (though one can argue that that part of the film was shot before Musharraf imposed Martial Law, in November 2007). But whereas the film leaves a favorable impression of Pervez Musharraf, with the director’s easy access to the General–a total of four encounters in the film–and missing shoots of hard-core critics of the present regime, the pic looks more like a propaganda movie.

“A dinner with the President” is an expository film. Director Sabiha Sumar embarks on a journey to understand what true democracy would mean for Pakistan . But the film quickly forgets its purpose and becomes a reconnaissance mission for Pervez Musharraf. Sabiha Sumar is interviewing people on the streets and then filling in Musharraf on her findings.

The viewer does not have to go too far in the movie to discover the director’s narcissist tendencies. She HAS to be there in every other scene. If an important TV newsreel has to be shown, the shoot of the TV set has to be past her earlobe. There are other irrelevant characters too in the movie. We frequently see a middle-aged man accompanying the director—one would guess he is director’s husband. If that is true then the question is, why not other family members: aunts, uncles, cousins, and all?

The film has English subtitles whenever the conversation is carried out in Urdu. The quality of translation is generally good save for a few misinterpretations here and there. [For example, when a man calls the director an ‘azad musalman’, it is translated as a ‘free Muslim’ whereas, in the context that term was used, a more appropriate translation would have been ‘carefree Muslim.’]

For foreign audience “A dinner with the President” might prove to be somewhat informative, but the film does not add much to the knowledge bank of the Pakistanis– except to reassure them that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain is indeed as non-coherent as everybody believes him to be.

Why the title ‘A film with the President’s son’? Because when “A dinner with the President” was screened at Stanford University on February 12, Bilal Musharraf, a Stanford alumnus, was in the audience and at the end of the film, on organizer’s request, came on to the stage and expressed his views about the film and carried on to answer questions about his father’s government. This soft-spoken 6’-2” tall 35-year old is a natural speaker, even when he categorizes himself an introvert. And therein lies the irony. Whereas Musharraf’s critics would paint Musharraf as a cruel, power-hungry, cunning man, in his demeanor the General appears compassionate, sincere, and speaking from the heart. His son too has that sort of benignant air about him.