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ISLAMABAD ( 2009-06-18 20:14:41 ) :Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Thursday said the government has directed Karachi Electricity Supply Company (KESC) to settle power related issues otherwise the government will nationalize it.
Speaking to a point of order in the Upper House of the Parliament regarding power breakdown in Karachi on Wednesday, he said the breakdown caused due to a storm in Jamshoro area of Sindh which affected 500 KV transmission line resulting in power outage in whole Karachi and other cities of the province.
He said responding to the incident KESC immediately mobilized its teams to repair the transmission lines but due to system constraints the power supply could not be resumed the till Thursday morning.
He informed the House that electricity supply has resumed in certain parts of Karachi, however, the supply to rest of the city will be restored in next few hours.
The Minister said that the Prime Minister, Sindh Chief Minister and he himself remained in touch with KESC regarding the power supply to the residents of Karachi.
Ashraf informed the House that due to system constraints including outlived power supply lines and power shortfall the Sindh province is facing loadshedding.
He said the government has allocated considerable amount for replacement of outlived power supply lines, power generation and other power projects to counter the loadshedding problem.
The Deputy Chairman Senate Jan Jamali asked the Minister to hold separate meetings with Parliamentarians from all the provinces and take them into confidence regarding power problems and projects.
Earlier, Raza Rabbani on a point of order said that Karachi was without power supply from last night and KESC failed to restore the power supply. Senator Tahir Hussain Mashhadi also said that the House should be taken into confidence on the issue.
SLAMABAD, June 19: The United Nations (UN) upgraded its staff and offices security to grade three across the country.
UN sources told Geo News that families of foreign staff have been directed to leave the country and staff should restrains their activities.
UN had raised the security level to phase three in Peshawar and Islamabad after suicide attacks on Rescue 15 and PC hotel. After reviewing the situation, UN security officials have decided to implement phase three across the country. The staff has directed to limited their activities and movements as families of foreign staff have urged to leave Pakistan.
Updated at: 1945 PST, Wednesday, June 17, 2009 LAHORE: CCPO Lahore Pervez Rathor Wednesday claimed arresting one of seven men accused of plotting the deadly attack Sri Lankan cricket team at Liberty Chowk in Lahore in March. The CCPO said the arrested man, identified as Aqeel alias Dr. Usman, is an ex-sepoy of Army Medical Store and that he is associated with a banned organization. “The police has succeeded in identifying the group involved in masterminding the Liberty Chow attack,” he claimed. However, he said, no further arrests have so far been made. He said the arrested disclosed during interrogation that Punjabi Tehreek-e-Taliban was behind the Liberty Chowk attack in Lahore and that it is headed by a man named Farooq. The other accused are Rana Hanif, Zubair alias Naik Muhammad, Smaiullah alias Aijaz, Adnan alias Sajjad and Umer alias Abdul Wahab. The CCPO said that the arrested Aqeel alias Dr. Usman was also involved in Seven people including six police guards and the driver of a Sri Lankan team bus were killed when gunmen ambushed the team as it drove to a cricket stadium for a match.
KHAR ( 2009-06-19 11:09:09 ) :Suspected Taliban fighters blew up two high schools on Friday in Bajaur, Aaj News reported.
According to the channel, miscreants planted the explosives in schools in Khar areas of Bajaur Agency, that exploded with a bang and destroyed the building completely.
However, there was no loss of life in the attacks, as schools are closed in the region channel reported.
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ISLAMABAD, June 18 (APP)- Ms. Farahnaz Ispahani, media advisor to Co-Chairman PPP President Asif Ali Zardari, has said the budget for 2009-10 is pro-people and poor friendly budget. “This is the reflection of our seriousness of the purpose and our will to translate our mandate to the welfare of the people of Pakistan”.
During her budget speech in the Parliament on Thursday she said that the Government, with its people oriented dispositions and having firm resolve in the welfare of people is ensuring that each penny spent contributes towards our economic uplift and poverty alleviation, says a press release.
“We have attempted to reduce economic stresses while meeting our obligations. Our objective has been to rationalize expenses to the maximum possible extent without compromising the developmental aspects and aim at improved productivity and maximum utilization of our available resources”, she added.
Ms Ispahani said that through a targeted program of cash transfers the Government intends to help the poor and those who have been afflicted by extreme poverty.
“The Government believes that the cash transfers and other interventions aimed at helping the poor to get out of poverty trap is one part of our broad strategy. We need to focus on the real sectors of our economy that would contribute significantly in boosting and reviving our economy and stabilizing it. These are the agricultural and the manufacturing sectors which would afford us an opportunity to raise our productivity level and would enable us to survive in cut-throat competitive markets at international levels.”
While talking about the social sector allocations she said that “through enhanced funding in education, health and people welfare programs we can improve the quality of human resource which is direly needed in our country. We believe in involving the private sector to bring about qualitative change in our country. We are also focusing on reforms aimed at qualitative improvement of our public sector and turning this sector into the real choice of the people.”
Farahnaz Ispahani asserted that Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) would directly benefit 05 million households is no small achievement. No government in past has ever directly reached to such a large number of our population-the poorest of the poor-whether in urban or in rural areas- through any such direct plan. This reflects our commitment with the poor people of Pakistan.
She said that allocation of Rs.50 billion for the relief, settlement and rehabilitation and security of IDPs and provision of 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion rupees, respectively, for low cost housing and Prime Minister’s special initiative for Hunermand Pakistan Program are reflective of our efforts to focus on providing housing, health facilities and skill development programs for the people of this county.
Increasing allocations for health, education and population welfare by 52%, 66% and 76% respectively are our prime focus in the social sector development component of our budget, she added.
The PPP MNA also highlighted and appreciated the contributions made by President Asif Ali Zardari for the country and for the nation.
Ms. Ispahani said that “it is through his able guidance and results of his leadership that today our efforts against militancy have unwavering support from entire nation with unparallel political consensus and we are actively engaged with the international community in this cause.”
She said that the President has always believed in engaging the international community and the west, particularly. “He has effectively pleaded the nation’s case to every country he has visited and to every government he has interacted in his official capacity.”
She said that “our Government has put a full stop to the politics of vilification and political victimization.” “The vilification and demonization campaigns have hounded every PPP leader since Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to the present.”
“Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was demonized for daring to give the people of Pakistan a voice, for bringing real democracy to Pakistan. Now everyone acknowledges that he transformed politics and brought it to the awam.”
“Today, we see a continuation of a similar campaign against the person of President Asif Ali Zardari. Often seen attempts to belittle his accomplishments and his efforts are in fact continuation of the same venom that PPP leadership has to face as a result of their efforts to empower the people of Pakistan.”
However, our leadership has never and would never ever be bowed by such attempts and is determined to sacrifice anything for the sake of the country, for the people of Pakistan and for the objectives that led to creation of our party, Ms Ispahani added.
NOTTINGHAM, June 18: Shahid Afridi shone with bat and ball as Pakistan dumped South Africa by seven runs to storm into the World Twenty20 final here on Thursday. The maverick batsman smashed 51 from 34 balls and then grabbed 2-16 with his leg-spin as Pakistan successfully defended 149-4 to restrict the favoured Proteas to 142-5 before a sell-out crowd at Trent Bridge.
Pakistan, runners-up to India in the inaugural World Twenty20 in South Africa two years ago, await the winners of Friday's semi-final between Sri Lanka and the West Indies in Sunday's final at Lord's.
Afridi plundered eight boundaries, including four in succession off Johan Botha, after Pakistan elected to bat on a wicket that slowed down as the evening progressed.
Veteran Jacques Kallis made a brave attempt to take the South Africans home, striking seven fours and a six in 64 from 54 balls, but the other batsmen faltered against the spot-on attack.
South Africa made a steady start in reply as openers Kallis and Graeme Smith reached 40 by the sixth over.
Smith failed to make use of an early chance when he was dropped by Umar Gul as he skied a return catch to Mohammad Aamir after making 10.
Afridi, coming on to bowl in the seventh over, struck twice in four deliveries when he bowled Herschelle Gibbs and AB de Villiers to make South Africa 50-3 in 8.3 overs.
Afridi and fellow-spinner Saeed Ajmal, made runs hard to come by, and when the dangerous Gul came on to bowl in the 14th over, South Africa needed a further 77 from 42 balls.
Kallis and JP Duminy raised South Africa's hopes by adding 61 from 53 balls for the fourth wicket, but Ajmal broke the threatening stand by having Kallis caught in the deep in the 18th over.
Duminy remained unbeaten on 44 from 39 balls but the task of needing 23 runs in the last over bowled by Aamir proved too much for him and Mark Boucher.
It did not matter at the end that Pakistan, who were 120-3 after 15 overs, failed to build on the early advantage and managed just 29 runs in the final five overs.
Pakistan had made a frenetic start, racing to 28 off the first 15 deliveries but at the cost of two wickets.
After Kamran Akmal had taken eight runs in Dale Steyn's first over, Shahzaib Hasan fell in the second over for zero when he miscued a big hit off left-arm seamer Wayne Parnell.
Akmal struck a six in Steyn's second over, but fell off the next delivery as he top-edged a pull to Morkel at mid-on. Akmal made 23 from 12 balls with four boundaries and a six.
Afridi, promoted to number three, swung Kallis for two fours in one over as Pakistan reached 47-2 by the time the field restrictions ended after the sixth.
Afridi brought up his half-century off 33 deliveries after slamming off-spinner Botha for four consecutive boundaries in the 11th over that realised 18 runs.
A desperate Smith turned to slow bowler Duminy in the 13th over and struck gold first ball as Afridi holed out to mid-wicket.—AFP
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Asra Nomani's new documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown - airing tonight on PBS - exemplifies the great American and Islamic tradition of questioning authority. But although Nomani is certainly one such challenger, Nomani seems to undercut her own objective and isolate herself as an outlier in the community by imposing her approach on others who share her views.
A new PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown, which airs nationwide tonight at 10 pm ET, goes beyond the standard headlines of a “sensational female rebel in a small town mosque” to present a nuanced, complex portrait of the conflicts within a community, a mosque and a woman. Since the tragedy of September 11, many mosques in the U.S. have felt under siege, adopting defensive postures towards anyone who criticized them. Typically the attacks came from non-Muslims, but in sleepy Morgantown, it was an insider, a member of the Morgantown mosque who began to rock the boat. Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent, returns from Pakistan to her hometown with her infant son and the knowledge that her dear friend and colleague, Daniel Pearl, has been captured and beheaded by Pakistani men who perverted Islam to rationalize his murder. She seeks refuge in her local mosque, but finds herself uneasy with the rules governing the community’s place of worship.
Nomani begins to protest the cordoning off of the women’s prayer space, insisting that women be given adequate space to pray in the main hall. She considers her protests an indictment of the community’s inability to rectify a situation which she believes has no religious sanction within Islam. Nomani feels she can not afford to handle this problem with half-measures and diplomacy; in Normani’s mind, the stakes require nothing less than a revolution. She invites a storm of media attention in what she sees as a fight for a more egalitarian mosque, but others in the community, specifically the moderates, believe she should modify her approach, adopting a path of incremental change of a conciliatory nature. The documentary quickly sets the stage for a struggle between these competing paths to social change.
As the documentary continues, Nomani’s fight evolves; she had embarked on her journey of activism with the single goal of awarding women equal prayer space in the main hall, but Nomani then begins to campaign for women being allowed to stand beside men in the congregational prayer. Finally, she joins a prayer hall of both men and women who stand behind Muslim scholar, Amina Wadud, as she leads them in prayer. For the moderates who have been pitted against her, as well as the viewers following Nomani’s story, it seems as though she is confused as to what precisely she hopes to achieve and ambivalent about her identity as an American Muslim woman. Her struggle against conservative traditions in American mosques begins to overlap with her aversion for intolerance and extremism. The viewer feels compelled to echo the sentiment of a woman in the documentary who asks why Nomani automatically links inadequate prayer spaces for women in mosques to violence and extremism.
Once Nomani’s activism shifts from an insistence for women’s right to pray in the main halls of their mosques to the demand that women stand amidst men while praying and lead mixed gender prayers, she becomes even more estranged from the moderate majority. Cordoning the women to a small prayer space above or below the main hall of a mosque is typically the result of cultural norms imported by immigrants from patriarchal societies. Women’s visibility in the main prayer hall often reflects their status and participation in the mosque and therefore, Nomani’s initial call for equal, adequate prayer space for her sisters seems a reasonable and valid one to the moderates. Her demand is backed by the Prophet’s (pbuh) unequivocal ruling that Muslim women enjoy the right to pray in the mosque; when women find themselves relegated to the sidelines, neither seen nor heard (and unable to see or hear), they are being denied access to a place of worship which the Prophet (pbuh) has already opened to them. The mosque’s leadership then stands culpable of violating a clear Prophetic command.
However, most of the members of the mosque, who sit squarely in the middle of the religious spectrum, feel that if women such as Nomani are going to empower themselves by pointing to textual evidence of their rights within Islam, then they must not try to circumvent the limitations of those rights. They feel there is no textual evidence, neither in the Qur’an nor the hadith, to support the idea of women leading their male counterparts in prayer or women praying alongside men—and by this I am referring to women interspersed with men in the prayer congregation, not women standing adjacent to the men separated by a few feet. It is important to note that men and women do pray in an intermingled congregation in the Holy Shrine of Mecca but the vast majority of scholars attribute this anomaly to space and logistical concerns.
Edina Lekovic, the Communications Director at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, approaches Nomani at one point in the documentary and suggests that while she respects Normani’s passion and her struggle to garner equal and adequate prayer space for women, by zeroing in on the issue of women leading prayer Nomani is adopting an extremist stance of her own and thereby lending credence to misogynists within Islam who are all too eager to dismiss all women as potential radicals who must be kept in check. Lekovic goes on to say that by pushing this issue, Nomani risks distracting from more important indicators of women’s empowerment in their mosques—women serving on the mosque’s governing board or the community inviting female scholars and guest speakers to share their ideas at the mosque.
Lekovic invites Nomani to adopt issues and a methodology that resonate with the moderate majority. Her suggestion crystallizes the problem Muslim moderates within the Morgantown mosque, as well as across the country, have with Nomani. Nomani is convinced that the systemic inequality between the male and female members of the mosque can only be stomped out by a revolution of sorts. She dispenses with dialogue in her hope to level the playing field for Muslim women. The moderate contingency of her community find her tactics confrontational and lacking nuance; as a result these potential allies are left feeling alienated. They feel her mission for reform is better served by working with the men and women in the mosques who share the aspiration for reform in the Muslim community.
Questioning authority is a great American and Islamic tradition. The schools of thought and jurisprudence we find in classical Islamic law today are the product of those who dared to challenge the authority and the status quo of their time and place. Nomani is certainly one such challenger but by imposing her approach on others who share her views, Nomani seems to undercut her own objective and isolate herself as an outlier in the community.
Zehra Rizavi is Associate Editor of Altmuslimah.
