Ansar Abbasi is a conservative hack and Pervez Hoodbhoy should not have engaged with him...
by Salman Hameed
More than ten years ago, talk shows on new private television channels in Pakistan were a breath of fresh air. For the first time, you could hear multiple opinions on all sorts of topics. The quality of those early talk shows was often quite good. But then, the open format of talk shows became more and more chaotic. If the guests themselves would not get into a verbal fight, the anchors would often egg them on. It was all good for rating.
Pervez Hoodbhoy (full disclosure that he is a good friend of mine) is often on the talk shows to present the increasingly limited liberal views. You pick a topic: Minority rights, blasphemy law, issue of problematic contents in textbooks, or even in the sad saga of the claim of the miraculous "water-kit" - a water-powered car that would solve all of Pakistan's energy crisis. As you can imagine, Pervez's positions are not the crowd pleasers.
So now we have this episode where Pervez and a journalist Ansar Abbasi got into a verbal fight. It is awful! I think both of them are way way out of line. This is not the way to have a conversation - and Ansar Abbasi kept calling Pervez a "Jahil" - a particularly pejorative term for an ignorant (in fact, he kept on saying that how come they let this jahil let teach in a college). Pervez walked out after that. The three minute brouhaha is below.
But let me just contextualize Abbasi a bit. Ansar Abbasi is the journalist who complained that the new 10th grade Urdu textbook (Punjab Board) does not contain sufficient Islam references. Oh but in his Urdu column, he argues that this was a conspiracy to impose secularization by the Punjab government (curious note: the government in Punjab is Pakistan Muslim League - which is to the "right" of a considerably conservative political center). Pervez called him out on this past April:
It is in the context of the recent Abbasi's column on Malala and the prior history of Hoodbhoy-Abbasi interaction that you should view this altercation on this "talk-show". Abbasi's regressive and often offensive views are still no excuse for Pervez to engage in this manner. This is wrong. Period. You will also notice that the anchor is simply sitting there and enjoying the fight. Shame on him as well (Fox News has nothing on these guys...). It is painful, but if you can stomach it, here is the clip:
More than ten years ago, talk shows on new private television channels in Pakistan were a breath of fresh air. For the first time, you could hear multiple opinions on all sorts of topics. The quality of those early talk shows was often quite good. But then, the open format of talk shows became more and more chaotic. If the guests themselves would not get into a verbal fight, the anchors would often egg them on. It was all good for rating.
Pervez Hoodbhoy (full disclosure that he is a good friend of mine) is often on the talk shows to present the increasingly limited liberal views. You pick a topic: Minority rights, blasphemy law, issue of problematic contents in textbooks, or even in the sad saga of the claim of the miraculous "water-kit" - a water-powered car that would solve all of Pakistan's energy crisis. As you can imagine, Pervez's positions are not the crowd pleasers.
So now we have this episode where Pervez and a journalist Ansar Abbasi got into a verbal fight. It is awful! I think both of them are way way out of line. This is not the way to have a conversation - and Ansar Abbasi kept calling Pervez a "Jahil" - a particularly pejorative term for an ignorant (in fact, he kept on saying that how come they let this jahil let teach in a college). Pervez walked out after that. The three minute brouhaha is below.
But let me just contextualize Abbasi a bit. Ansar Abbasi is the journalist who complained that the new 10th grade Urdu textbook (Punjab Board) does not contain sufficient Islam references. Oh but in his Urdu column, he argues that this was a conspiracy to impose secularization by the Punjab government (curious note: the government in Punjab is Pakistan Muslim League - which is to the "right" of a considerably conservative political center). Pervez called him out on this past April:
At the outset, one needs to know that the withdrawn book was intended solely for the teaching of Urdu as a language, and should be judged on these grounds alone. Any book for teaching a language must introduce the student to great poets and essayists and delve into linguistic nuances and subtleties. It should not be just a supplementary text for teaching Islamic studies. Students use an entire, separate book for Islamiat.
This episode is important for only one reason: the new Urdu reader represented an attempt, albeit a feeble one, to remove the blinkers forced upon students by General Ziaul Haq’s education fantasia. The 1980s Islamisation of education meant that every subject — languages, geography, history, social studies, chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. — could only be viewed through a narrow prism. All else was to be shunned and filtered out. It is this attempt to break loose that Mr Abbasi finds so terribly objectionable.And now Ansar Abbasi has gone after Malala (and a tamer version in English). For what? Amongst other things, he is hurt that Malala is too soft on Salman Rushdie (she argues for freedom of speech while disagreeing with the contents of Satanic Verses, more particularly she says: "‘Is Islam such a weak religion that it cannot tolerate a book written against it? Not my Islam!”"), she talks about the rights of Ahamadis, the problems with the blasphemy law, that Pakistan lost three wars with India (which is a factual statement accepted everywhere in the world except in Pakistan's textbooks), etc. etc. Oh wait. And the horror of it all for Abbasi: She criticized Pakistan's brutal military dictator from the 1980s, General Zia ul Haq, and his "Islamization" policies that Pakistan is still dealing with. The problem is that Abbasi is a fan of Zia - and Malala's criticism of his hero really crosses him.
It is in the context of the recent Abbasi's column on Malala and the prior history of Hoodbhoy-Abbasi interaction that you should view this altercation on this "talk-show". Abbasi's regressive and often offensive views are still no excuse for Pervez to engage in this manner. This is wrong. Period. You will also notice that the anchor is simply sitting there and enjoying the fight. Shame on him as well (Fox News has nothing on these guys...). It is painful, but if you can stomach it, here is the clip:
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