I wrote this last year but never posted it.
today is the 73rd year of the independence of Pakistan. The country I left as 19 years old looking for a better future. I did find religion and a future but being away from Pakistan left a gaping hole in my personality. this will be something I need to come to terms with but alhamdulillah I was born in Pakistan and lived as a Pakistani and still love Pakistan.
what religion gave me was a sense of no nationalism. Islam doesn’t preach that. but I feel that we as Pakistanis overdo it. religion is something that needs to be lived, not just professed. we pay lip service to the religion but don’t act on it. this is true in current-day Pakistan or maybe many Muslim countries but I am talking about Pakistan. what has destroyed Pakistan in the last 50 years is the culture that was elevated above religion, the nonaccountability of religious authority, the use of religion by political forces. this created a disconnect between a normal man and the accountability that needs to exist at every level. What we still wait for in Pakistan is a better day. Inshallah it will come, not sure when. Allah helps those who help themselves.
we have institutionalized corruption, given it religious NRO. you can do corruption and you are fine. the Law is for the poor. It will keep on going for the poor. The rich are untouchable. The movie Elysium, it was something that portrayed the plight of the people while the rich lived out of reach and out of reality.
Maybe this is a rant and I am just venting but we tried. We tried when the time was right but the rich won the race. I remember when i was in Islamabad there was a Landrover showroom in Blue Area, I used to think about who buys cars from there. Never saw much Landrovers on the road. I did see a lot of Land cruisers which were a status symbol and the UN had a lot of them in Islamabad also. So I assumed it is in the garages of the rich people. Come to my last visit in 2015 and the roads were littered with high-end cars. The roads were never fixed but the Rich got Audis, Mercedes, Landcruisers and alot of Range Rovers.
Long Live the Halal earned money.