Dinner with the President...A documentary!

I caught a documentary on SBS last night, ( a multicultural TV station that caters for other non-white Australians). It was a very interesting concept dealing with politics/life in Pakistan, religious factionalism, poverty, education, women and more importantly Islam and the Quran in modern times.

The interviewer or Narrator is a Pakistani woman - no headscarf, highly well-educated I presume with her rather astute questions and also brave. At one point she addressed the religious mullahs of Northern Pakistan on the interpretation of the role of women in Islam and challenged them to show her exactly where in the Quran dictated that women should have a passive role in Islamic life.

The most controversial question I suppose was when she asked them whether which one of them can dictate that her God and her Islam was any different from theirs being a modern muslim. The exact word was reiterated out loud- Modern! And the group instantly disbanded; walked away from the meeting with a hint of illiterate curses under their breath.

For me I guess the biggest flaw with any religion is how it fails so disastrously when transposing religion with modernity and evolution. Progress calls for new strategy, new interpretation and new application to a rather moralistic yet divine universal truth - good vs bad.

It seems that Northern Pakistan is a law to themselves - it has a hierarchy that is trying to impose age-old laws defined not only by its long affiliation to tradition but customs carried down through generations, hardened by war, poverty and lack of intervention by a government that is in constant fear of Jiihad fuelled further by really low literacy rates among the masses; the minority has little choice but to turn to their religious leaders for guidance.

And because the borders are highly sensitive, it becomes difficult for any intervention to take place without the risks of loosing support from these individuals in curbing the Taliban from slipping through the cracks.

If you have a chance to catch it where you are you should... the filming is also very candid.

The only thing that really struck me is that a lot of modern Pakistanis believe that Musharraf is good for the country because he brings about modernity and secularism where Muslims can make their own choices while others have always thought about themselves rather than the people.

The younger generation especially those living abroad seems to have survived the brunt of all the turmoil. In a sad way, they've isolated themselves almost to the point of elitism which is another negative result of affluence which makes their stance rather questionable! It is just another form of the caste system (semantics)!