When our beliefs were innocent...

I was surfing the net, avoiding the news from Pakistan, as usual. The TV was playing in the background with the usual bits about the Prime Minister speaking in English in interior Sindh, and I am thinking, why, oh why, is the world like this?

Suddenly I heard 'lab pe aati hai dua ban ke tamanna meri,' that poem by Iqbal which we all so proudly sang in school.

Such innocent words, that poem. And look where we stand today.

Where did that innocence in our beliefs go? When did we start becoming like this? Our Islam was a belief that the world can be a better place, that it will be a better place. It was an undying value system which allowed us to see the beauty in God's most sterling creation: mankind itself.

But somewhere, there were this other kind of Islam that was being nourished. An Islam based on hate, violence and intimidation. No one could possibly want it, or so it seemed.

Things look so much different today.

For what good?

"They fled through heat and rain...the dust of the caravans stretched low across the Indian plains and mingled with the scent of fear and sweat, human waste and putrifying bodies. When the cloud of hate subsided, the roll of the dead was called and five hundred thousand names echoed across the dazed land - dead of gunshot wounds, sword, dagger and knife slashes and others of epidemic diseases. While the largest number died of violence, there were tired gentle souls who looked across their plundered gardens and then lay down and died. For what good is life when reason stops and men run wild? Why pluck your baby from the spike or draw your lover from the murky well?"
- Donald F Ebright, "Free India: The First Five Years: An Account of the 1947 Riots, Relief and Rehabilitation"

Seriously, for what good?

Premonition

...
Said I one night to a pristine seer
(Who knew the secrets of whirling Time),
"Sir, you well perceive,
That goodness and faith,
Fidelity and love
Have all departed from this sorry land.
Father and son are at each other's throat;
Brother fights brother. Unity
and Federation are undermined.
Despite these ominous signs
Why has not Doomsday come?
Why does not the Last Trumpet sound?
Who holds the reins of the Final Catastrophe?"
...

- "Chirag-i-Dair" (excerpt)
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib,
Benaras, 1827
(translated by Qurratulain Hyder)