In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King!

Choose the lesser amongst the two evils, something frequently referred to by people, wise and prudent people, on making a choice in a tough situation, a tough choice naturally.




In the context of Pakistan, my beloved country, the land of the Pure (its changed now) the choices all seem to be hinged around and on evil entities and people. Now I cant really classify people as good and evil, only the Gracious and Almighty Lord Has the Wisdom, Ability and Power to do that. My interpretation of evil comes in when people try their utmost best to hurt, damage, kill, destroy other people and all for their own self-interest and gain.

We have plenty of those around in Pakistan, certainly the land of the Pure has succeeded in breeding a lot of the impure kind, which seems fair since the only way to benchmark good is to make it stand with bad.
Somewhere along the way we forgot to stop the production of the bad and the evil - a probable result based on the ideology that was taught to the masses. In a lot of cases this was the resultant of the lack of an ideology, in our case Islam.
Power concentrated in the hands of a few leads to power abused, the few suppress many, the ones who know create fear, doubt, hate and suspicion in the minds and hearts of those who dont, the tall and fair rule over the short and dark, the Syeds superior to the non-Syeds, the Pirs and fake Sufi descendants over the regular motley of Muslims, the Muslims over the others....
The hierarchy of abuse continues, from one level to the next....and so on.

So what if we do have a choice? We do seem to have used choices in the past, made choices in tough times.
The problem is that choice requires democracy, certainly people over the last 40 years did not choose General Ayub, the disgraced and disgraceful idiot Gen. Yahya, the biggest idiot of them all Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, the larger than life liberalist and loud-mouthed Gen. Musharraf. These "Journals" did manage to increase FDIs, GDP growth etc. but in the end all that they brought was trouble and misery.



Coming to the choices we made - we chose the Sharif clan, the Bhutto clan at times. The former a legacy and stooge of the Great Afghani Jihad Russian Defeat and ISI Military Strategist Master Tactician General called Zia-ul-Haq, now respectfully buried in the Faisal Mosque - an act of charity by the noble Saudi King Faisal.
The latter started off with the Daughter of the East, the daughter of a man who was a great orator and a master at making talk - destructive talk which started off with the breaking away of East Pakistan and now Bangladesh. The daughter herself was talented, very forward looking and Pakistan-oriented, unfortunately the very nature of her daddys politics were inbuilt into her own system - the Sindhi feudal lord and Zamindar approach. Like father like daughter.



So there we go, we chose Benazir, we chose Nawaz Sharif and the same in quick and reverse order and then to honor the former we chose her better half (or is it worse?) and elected the party of probably the most corrupt men on this continent, if not the planet.

Am convinced now and with all certainty, that in the Land of the Pure and at times the Blind and those who turn the other Way, the One-Eyed Man is King. Only problem is that we haven't even been able to find the one-eyed man.


Keep walking and keep hoping...

May Allah Help us all!