The Taliban are coming? —Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain

Once the Taliban are in power, women will cease to exist by decree. No women, no women’s problems. Another major advantage of ignoring the existence of women is that it will sharply drive up maternal and infant mortality

In Pakistan every day is Earth
Day and every other hour is Earth Hour. I always knew deep inside that there was a method behind all this load shedding. It was obviously always about saving the environment and also about preparing the people for the eventual takeover by the Taliban; the two of course not being mutually exclusive. As I have said earlier in these pages, Talibanisation of Pakistan has untold benefits that are never discussed.

No electricity or oil, no industry, no hospitals, no offices, no air-conditioners, no internet, no computers and of course no TV and no cars or motorcycles. If you cannot make it by hand, then it should not be made and if it is not alive, you cannot ride it. Ah, what tripe you say but I warn you, it all makes perfect sense. The only time when the Muslims were gloriously in charge of half the known world was when there was no electricity and before the internal combustion engine had been discovered. Also, there will be no cell phones or loudspeakers; not having these two will definitely be a blessing!

More importantly, in those days of Muslim ascendancy the environment was doing just fine and there was no global warming either. So, if we put two and two together, it becomes clear that the discovery of electricity and all the ways it is generated and all the things it is used for are bad for the environment and most likely led to the downfall of all the Muslim Empires.

Also, all the great Muslim scientists, mathematicians and scholars did their important work before electricity was discovered. Abu Ali Sina (Avicenna), Al Ghazali (Algazel), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn al-Haitham (Alhazen), Al Khwarizmi (Algorithm) to name a few all made their great discoveries and read and wrote hundreds of books without any electrical lamp around. So it is safe to say that scientific and philosophical thought among Muslims thrived because there was no electricity around.

What about women under the Taliban you ask? Well, once the Taliban are in power, women will cease to exist by decree. No women, no women’s problems. What about children then? Clearly both the origin of pregnancy and the production of children are much too risqué and un-Islamic a subject to talk about. So, we will be quite willing to accept that children, especially the male ones, just happen.

Another major advantage of ignoring the existence of women is that it will sharply drive up maternal and infant mortality. Destroying modern hospitals will also increase overall mortality, thus putting a stop to the scourge of population increase that is threatening the very existence of Pakistan.

Pakistan will then have a barter economy where services are exchanged for goods like food and clothing. Moreover, like the early Muslim society during the times of the righteous caliphs, all citizens will be paid an allowance from the national treasury (Baitul Maal) so that they can subsist. As far as national ‘income’ is concerned, we will first auction all our ‘nukes’ in the open market and has anybody ever heard of selling carbon units?

There will be no airplanes and airports so no ‘Blackwater’ or other imperialist neo-colonialist types will enter the country and undermine the fabric of our Islamic national identity. Of course we will also need no foreign loans since there will be nothing to spend them on. Present day Pakistani liberals keep talking of ‘culture’ but then as Gandhi said, the only culture I know about is agriculture.

Education and all the money being spent on education will not be needed. The only education worth pursuing according to the great Al Ghazali was always of course Ilm-ul-kalaam. And the madrassas can do that just fine, thank you. Once such a system is instituted, within a few years there will undoubtedly be a resurgence of Islam in Pakistan, and Pakistani armies will then sweep out of the country on foot, riding horses or camels and carrying swords to conquer the known world. A vision definitely worth pursuing I say.

All that I have said above might seem facetious but then Pakistan cannot go on the way things are at this time. Old fashioned concepts of ‘revolution’ are not applicable to a conservative Muslim society like Pakistan. The only revolution possible is that of the Taliban type and we already have an Amirul Momineen-in-waiting.

Perhaps what Pakistan does need is a cataclysm of this magnitude to destroy the present system based on corruption, ‘sifarish’ and exploitation. The rich, the powerful and the well connected will of course flee to their retreats in Dubai, London or elsewhere, the middle class or whatever there is of it will quickly Talibanise themselves (if they are not already there) and the vast majority of Pakistanis that are poor will not care much either way.

The self-styled liberals in Pakistan will of course suffer the most. But having proved entirely ineffective in developing a liberal society they perhaps deserve whatever happens to them under the Taliban. The same can be said of all the politicians that take the name of Islam at the drop of a hat yet live lives that are entirely un-Islamic. And no more TV anchors, another blessing!

The bottom line is simple. The Pakistani establishment, whatever that might be, better ‘get with the programme, for otherwise bad things might start happening. No, I am not worried about the Taliban types that are running around and blowing up things but rather about the quietly conservative types that are a majority in our middle classes and fill up our lower bureaucracy and the ranks of the military.

The only thing that saves Pakistan from becoming a theocracy is that the religious establishment is quite fragmented and cannot get its act together. But does that then mean that Pakistan is destined to continue the way it is, tottering from one crisis to another, democracy notwithstanding?

Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com