Tag: Ethics

The Moral Demise

Daughter  killed her father …..

Shocked when I heard the news that a teenage girl killed her father; reason, he was stopping her from having an illegitimate affair. It was a breaking news on electronic media and reported widely, shocking for the entire country that how she confessed her crime and was actually not feeling any guilt about it.

One thought that continuously struck my mind was what made a daughter so angry that she went to the extent of shooting her father. What was the real cause? Was her ‘teenage love’ for a boy so strong that she didn’t care about her blood relations? Perhaps she was thinking that something magical  would happen as often witnessed in famous Indian movies and she would succeed in getting rid of all obstacles  that hindered her path & she & her lover would live happily ever after.

Similarly, a shocking news came about an elite school managing a debate on gay rights in Islamabad and I was thinking that where are we heading towards? Do these elite schools give a damn about religious and ethical values or they just believe in blindly following the ultra-liberal ideologies. They are having fun with fundamental religious and ethical values while we are sitting as mere spectators.

Few years ago, during my college days, once a friend was sitting on  the stairs, deep in thought. I asked what happened and he said, ‘ Looking at the current trends, I am thinking that If after 20 years my daughter is having an affair, how will I stop her’. It sent shockwaves down my spine at that time, but now we are seeing things actually we never thought about. Lifestyle has entirely changed in our country in past ten years. Just look at the language of our kids these days and it will shock you.

Lets play the blame game. Lets blame media for polluting the mind of the girl who killed her father. Lets blame our educational system for these shallow moral values. Lets blame parents for not teaching the kids properly. Lets blame society for promoting unethical values. Lets blame the government …  Lets simply blame!!

This blame game won’t result in anything positive. We certainly need to identify the ‘root-cause’ of the problem and take corrective measures. In my opinion, the root cause is that we have not defined our own role models. We need to define the real role models. And for that purpose, we need to put a lot of question marks on our real ideology. Who are our heroes? Who are we aspiring to become?

Kids idealize the heroes, and whoever heroes they think, they would try to follow them. We need our own real life heroes.  Or should I say, we need to project our own real life heroes, because we already have them, but our kids don’t know as many of us have also forgotten.  Is our hero Hazrat Khalid Bin Walid, Hazrat Mus’ab Bin Umair or any Bollywood/Hollywood hero. Everyone in Pakistan would certainly respond that Companions of Prophet (SAWW) are our heroes. But then how much we and our kids know about them. How much do we talk about them. How much do we try to follow them?

Our problem is much deeper. We live in a hypocritical society. We have double or triple standards in everything. We have different standards for ourselves and our future generation. We  have confused concepts of right and wrong. We want our kids to be modest, polite, religious, and yet they should be westernized, liberal, and exclusively English-speaking.  We are exactly as Ghalib said

رند کے رند رھے ، ھاتھ سے جنت نہ گئ

To sum it up in a sentence, we are confused on our ideology of ‘successes’. We need to define what does success means for us. Is having a successful love affair a success? In movies it might be true, but in real life what is the end result. A girl killed her father to succeed in her love affair. Did she get what she wanted? Can she be called successful?

Let’s turn to Quran to get the meaning of success and Quran says

And whoever is removed away from the Fire and admitted to Paradise, he indeed is successful. (Ch 2 :v 185)

Unless we redefine the success in our minds and reteach our kids the problems will only increase. Bollywood style affairs would be more important in the lives of our teenagers and issues like LGBT will be talk of the town in ultramodern Pakistan with no values to uphold and be proud of.

Defending Vulgarity

‘Branding’ as modern and targeting a niche which tags itself with ‘ultra-liberalism’ is certainly a matter of bread and butter for a section of media which is trying to bash every moral value. The target market of some newspapers might be  the ultra liberal, highly sophisticated and modern society; where ‘everything’ is allowed as long as its not religious. It’s a source of earning for them to target that niche. But there must be some standard moral values for everyone to follow.

When society raises its voice against immorality, a section of press and media retaliates by raising hue and cry over it.  Raising voices against vulgarity is immediately tagged with honour killings, acid attacks and terrorism support. These people simply fail to realize that if someone is against obscenity, it doesn’t mean that he is in favour of acid attacks (its not an with/against situation). It simply means that people are against a set of crimes which are committed in the name of liberating women. Treating woman as an object is the worst form of slavery, because the victims (women) usually don’t even know about it and they don’t realize the repercussions they have to face afterwards. Women objectified as a commodity in the commercial world often lead to their worst slavery.  Indeed vulgarity is a great marketing tool for attractiveness. It has its own charm, but its killing the basic moral values of a society. With the current pace, its leading us to collective suicide.

The greater evil is actually defending the evil. Why do certain people think that they look cool when they play devils advocate? As described by Peter Robbins, everyone wants to get attention but some want it by hook or by crook. Even if it means becoming a terrorist or taking your clothes off, both have the same purpose of seeking attention. A lot of poor girls are promised of a bright future and high levels of fortune in the fashion world by encouraging them to loose their moral and ethical values.

Those who defend vulgarity, also use the argument that it’s a non-issue and we are facing issues like poverty and lack of education. Indeed poverty is a greater cause to be addressed but moral values are also equally important. With no morality, we can not call ourselves human. Prophet Muhammad (SAWW) said that ‘Haya (modesty) is an ingredient of faith’ (Sahi Muslim). Alot of ahadith (sayings) of Prophet Muhammad (SAWW) indicate the importance of modesty. All religions give value to modesty, as its the one of the main things which mainly differentiates the humans and animals.

The problem with the liberal fascists is their confused ideology. They are westernized products in desi packaging. They can’t get rid of their packaging and that’s their dilemma throughout their life. They even go to the extent of ridiculing Islamic values, just to ‘qualify’ being a liberal. They try to promote things which are forbidden in Islam (and other religions) just to look modern. Under the label of ‘personal choice’ they want to legalize homosexuality, yet they claim to be praying five times a day. Deep inside their hearts, somewhere they know that they are going against the human nature (Islam), but still they continue on the path of glitters, leaving gold aside.

Islam categorically is against promotion of vulgarity in masses. Even the purpose of offering daily prayers is defined in ch 29, v 45 as

‘ Verily, As-Salât (the prayer) prevents from Al-Fahshâ’ (shameful, vulgar deeds) and Al-Munkar (i.e. disbelief, every kind of evil wicked deed)’;

which simply means that if you are offering daily prayers, it should result in modesty. If its not, then there is some shortcoming somewhere. Quran has given very strict remarks about those who propagate nudity and vulgarity in the society, in Ch 24 v 19 it says:

‘Surely, those who like that lewdness spreads among the believers, for them there is painful punishment in this world and the Hereafter’.

But here comes again the same problem. Pseudo liberals always ridicule the solution of  ’repentance’ and returning to Almighty. For them creating a bond with the Creator is not a solution, but then they can’t provide any substantial solution either. In their own minds they are confused-but rather than trying to find answers, they continue to follow the blind path of ignorance. In the end, its for us (the masses) to decide what path we choose. Media depict of such issues brings vulgarity to the forefront & when viewed or read about over long periods of time, it will have a sadly numbing affect on our society (especially the future generations to come). Hence, whatever path we choose to follow must be clear & transparent. Right and wrong are clearly identified, choice is ours.