More about Dr. Amina Yaqin, Special Issue Editor

I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Yaqin and the contributors in making this one of the best resources on Faiz.

Please visit our website and do take a look at the Table of Contents.

Much more information about the intended publication can be found on these Web pages:  http://blogs.univ-tlse2.fr/cwcomp/

We very much hope that as many anglicistes as possible will find something to inspire them to sign up for an article . If not, the editorial board welcomes suggestions for entries which spring from a particular area of expertise which you feel would fit in with our general approach to cultural relations within the Commonwealth. No justification is needed to sign up for one of the suggested entries, and we require only a short explanation for an entry not mentioned in our non-exhaustive list. But, for reasons outlined on the website, the deadline for sending us your choices or suggestions is very short: June 10.

• Walmart
• Gap
• Macy’s
• Sears/Kmart
• JCPenney
• VF Corp.
• Target
• Kohl’s
• Cato Fashions
• Carter’s
• Nordstrom
• American Eagle Outfitters
• The Children’s Place
• Foot Locker

We should remember these vultures and their callousness to lives of workers when we go shopping.

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During these presentations some of my students used Wikipedia as one of their sources. At the end of that semester, one of the graduate students, who is also a friend, asked me as to why did I allow the students to use Wikipedia as a scholarly source.

My answer simply was that for me, within the context of the assignment, Wikipedia was a “reliable” source. But I also understood the nature of the question. The question arose form a deeply held, and maybe unacknowledged, prejudice against open knowledge, After all, how could a freely available source, edited by nameless people from around the world be considered a reliable source for scholarly work.What shaped my answer, of course, was also the question of availability of knowledge and a slightly better understanding of Wikipedia’s editing policies. For me, Wikipedia as a was useful resource because I knew its value to so many Pakistanis who, having no access to expensive controlled databases, used it for heir research. I also knew that pretty much all Wikipedia articles are monitored and edited by a global web of volunteers and that since it is an openly edited content, as soon as someone adds anything irrelevant to a topic, someone else flags it.Tobe sure, just try adding something irrelevant to a Wikipedia article.

I saw this global and democratic process in practice when someone edited the Wikipedia entry to Pakistaniaat, my open access academic journal. Here is a record of edits:

On April 22, someone flagged the article on the journal as follows:

19:54, 22 April 2012‎ AsadUK200 (talk | contribs)‎ . . (3,286 bytes) (+15)‎ . . (i dont believe this is really a notable journal?)

What this means is that this editor added a publicly visible note questioning the validity of the journal as a worthy Wikipedia article.

But another editor did not agree to this label and removed it under the following justification:

21:48, 22 April 2012‎ Guillaume2303 (talk | contribs)‎ . . (3,259 bytes) (-43)‎ . . (indexed by MLA: meets WP:NJournals)

Note the timeframe: The objection was raised at 19:54 April 22. But in less than four hours, the responding editor had researched the journal and Wikipedia rules of “notability” and taken the note down because indexing by MLA met the notability requirement for my journal.

This is just one example of how editing collectives on the inetrnet can produce and maintain vast amounts of free content. With these assumptions about open access and communal editing, it was a no brainer for me to launch my first journal as open access. Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies is now in its fifth year of publication. When I decided to launch the journal, I wanted it to be open access simply because I wanted the people of Pakistan, in whose name the journal is established, to be able to afford it. But the advantages have been well beyond my imagination: not only is our content freely available, but this availability has also given us increased exposure, and people cite our published content more often than articles about Pakistan published in controlled journals.

So far, I must admit, this journey toward open access has been quite a trip. In the next phase of this journey, I hope to make it a point to start publishing most of my scholarly work in open access journals.

(Source: http://openaccess.commons.mla.org/2013/05/05/journey-toward-open-access/)

Cattleya intermedia alba (This is a special blooming as this was the first orchid I bought to start my hobby and this is its first blooming:

Will Pakistan experience an Arab Spring? The question has been on many minds since revolution swept across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 – and especially since a major anti-government rally took place in Islamabad this month. . . .

It’s easy to understand why. Pakistan, like the Arab Spring nations, boasts a young and mobile communications savvy population. Its masses are victims of the same indignities that incited revolt in the Middle East: corruption, oppression, and injustice.

However, the similarities end there. Let’s stop talking about a revolution in Pakistan, because it’s not going to happen. (http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/30/the-myth-of-an-arab-spring-in-pakistan/?hpt=hp_bn2)

That Mr. Kugleman’s entire argument relies on false analogies is obvious:

•  The Arab spring has happened.
• It was mostly a revolutionary attempt led by the tech savvy youth of several “Arab” countries.
• Pakistan shares the same kind of material conditions with the Arab countries.
•  Should the so-called “Arab Spring” happen in Pakistan? Yes.
•  It has not happened.
•  Conclusion: There must be something wrong with Pakistan.

Mr. Kugelmen then mobilizes the most hackneyed list to prove his point: corrupt leaders, Pakistani propensity for the cult-of-personality politics, and ethnic and cultural divisions. In this argument, revolution is offered as a progressive narrative that cannot be sustained in Pakistan because, we are to believe, Pakistan has not crossed a certain threshold of mass mobilization to join the other lauded revolutions that have happened and are happening in the Arab world.

The first problem with this framing of an argument is that it relies on a simplified understanding of revolution: it uses the spontaneous rise of the youth against their oppressors in Tunisia, Egypt, and other nations of the Islamic world as an ideal type. Thus, anything that cannot be posited as a universal popular response, somehow, fails to be of value.

What Mr. Kugleman and others like him fail to account for is the very complexity of Pakistan, a complexity that they posit as a detriment to the chances of any mass political mobilization.

Let us account for this complexity: Pakistan is a diverse nation, which has a written constitution, a defined system of government, a trained bureaucracy, and a viable educational system. Yes, in terms of political consciousness and political origination, Pakistan is far ahead of its Arab counterparts. Pakistanis have strong party affiliations and have several organized national parties and numerous regional political parties with very strong following. This is a great recipe for a democracy: organized political parties and their base is an absolute precondition for any viable democratic system.

Is there corruption? Yes, certainly. But all democracies have a set of illegalities that exist at legal and quasi-legal levels. The US political system is corrupt to the core: all politicians in the US system are paid for and bought by contributions. Now, of course, these contributions are legal, but if they purchase influence for the contributors, then that is a refined form of corruption.

So, yes Pakistani politicians are equally as corrupt as their US counterparts. But does Pakistan have the necessary scaffolding to structure and sustain a viable political system? Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Kugleman also forgets to mention that the so-called “Arab Spring” did happen in Pakistan and, in fact, it preceded the now valorized Arab Spring. In 2007 the lawyers movement supported by all major factions of Pakistani political spectrum was successful in not only restoring the sacked chief justice, but was also instrumental in the eventual ouster of Mr. Pervez Musharraf, the US-sponsored dictator of Pakistan.

Furthermore, given the particularities of Pakistan’s political climate, a mass revolution is the last thing needed in Pakistan. The current government, ineffectual as it may be, is the first government in decades that is almost there, almost about to finish its five-year term. The best path forward for Pakistan, reformative as it might be, is not to ask and hope for a mass revolution but the continuation of the process in the form of timely held general elections. Only this continuity will enable Pakistan to strengthen its institutions and build its political and public sphere.

So, not only has the “Arab Spring” already happened in Pakistan, it is also no longer necessary. Thus, it is the democratic future of Pakistan that we should be concerned about instead of hoping for a revolution that we absolutely do not need.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a monstrosity that arose from Sipa-e-Sahjaba in 1996, the organization that was launched by Maulana Jhangvi during the time of Zia-ul-Haq. Lshkar is a group of brainwashed sunni youth fed upon the myths of shia practices that, somehow, insult the three of the four caliphs. There is no truth to these claims, but when it comes to indiscriminate killing of minorities, it seems, truth happens to be the first casuality. That most of our Sunni Ulama are openly hostile to their Shia brothers and sisters is beyond doubt. Even some as learned as Dr, Israr Ahmed displayed a pathological hatred of the shia. What distinguishes the Lashkar is that the entire edifice of their bloody politics is built around an open hatred of the shia.

While it is absolutely fine to have differences of opinion and have an open discussion about issues of right and wrong, sacred and profane, the current practices in Pakistani public sphere about all minority groups–Muslim-or non-Muslim–have left the so-called “state of exception” and become the norm. This should not come to us as a surprise, especially since we have allowed our mullahs to use their mosques to spew hate about other groups without any legal or governmental restraint to their rhetorical acts of terror against other citizens of Pakistan.

The tragedy in Quetta, is, therefore, not just an event; it is a symptom of our larger problems. It is also a reminder that no religion, no matter how pure and unsullied can bring us peace and love if its practitioners do not want to practice peace and love. It is sadly ironic that when we are asked about Islam, we always tell people that Islam means “the religion of peace” but in our every day lives, those who have hijacked the so-called Islamic identity understand only the politics of death and destruction. Obviously, we are to blame for this. In the last sixty years as a nation we have neither altered the socioeconomic hierarchy of our inherited colonial national identity, nor have we been able to construct a public sphere of civilized discourse. And now, surprisingly, the most vengeful and hateful elements of our religion have somehow taken it upon themselves to force upon us a nightmarish interpretation of the very sacred core of our religion.

I know this atrocity has brought a large number of Pakistanis to the streets to condemn these attacks and to stand in solidarity with their shia brothers and sisters. We need more of this solidarity. And we need a perpetual critique of every action that the murderers perform and we need to challenge them at every step, for what they do, have done, and propose to do is not Islam, and if this is the only interpretation of Islam then we are all doomed. A religion without love has no hope to create a transformative way of life. I do not think Islam is a religion without love: one glance at the life of the Prophet is enough to teach us that “muhabbh” is the ultimate essence of Islam.

So, let us force these lashkaris and their sympathizers to show us if they are truly Muslim. We need to ask them to show us something more than death and destruction and we need to ask them about love.

In fact, the British educational system in India, which Pakistan inherited, relied on this mode of education to produce the native clerks who were trained enough to take orders without enhancing their critical consciousness. In that system, all students had to take a centralized test in eighth and tenth grade. The tests were administered by a central board of education and were sometimes sent to England for grading. After the independence, Pakistani government emulated the same system. In fact, my early education was based in this system. I remember we spent the entire ninth and tenth grade yars preparing for the “Board Exam.” Thankfully, in my case, I was at a boarding school that also encouraged reading and critical thinking through extracurricular activities so the harm done was not so extensive. I still, however, had to retrain myself to train my imagination and to develop habits of critical thought.

Based on my experience I was surprised to learn, in my earlier years in America, that the American school system was moving away from an inquiry-based system to this old-school, colonial system of education. Now that these testing practices have been in vogue for some time, we who teach at college level are interacting with the human subjects produced by this system. Our young undergraduate students, at least a large percentage of them, are increasingly less prepared to think on their own and expect to be given exact answers to be reproduced. In fact, I felt this expectation even in one of my graduate courses. I understand that the conservative politics does need these unreflective subjects to keep their fairy-tale (or nightmarish if you like) approach to issues of politics and social justice, but I don’t think this huge mass of unreflective citizens will benefit America in any way.

It is with these brief thoughts that I write in solidarity with the “Seattle 19.”

Thank you for risking your jobs and livelihood for the best interest of your students. I sincerely hope that others from around this great nation would join you to take a stand with you!!

Francisco Miranda, an expert on Brazilian orchids, has the following opinion about C. eldorado’s blooming season:

[ C. edlorado's] flowering season is not very well marked and varies from year to year. Usually there is a blooming peak around November and a second, more intense blooming period between January and March. The blooming season seems to be strongly influenced by rainfall.

So, here are the pictures from this rarest of the Cattleya species and I am honored that it has decided to bloom in my greenhouse: