Through the eye of a needle

While corruption stalks the land, our clueless government has been conned by India

My son Muhammad Ali and I got to talking about corruption. I took the conversation seriously because he is only 27 and it is vital that the right values are instilled in him so that he can be a good world citizen. There is no dearth of people who mislead the young: “Principles are all very well,” they tell them, “but grab all you can when you have the opportunity. Those who don’t are fools.” The message is loud and clear: “Corruption is intelligent; honesty is stupid. The few honest are those who never got the chance to be dishonest, not because they are intelligent.” Welcome to the darkness of ‘democracy’ – dishonest, rigged, sham. We have no electricity here in Pakistan’s capital for the last four hours and counting. Our ‘democracy’ is an insult to democracy. Time to change Shehbaz Sharif’s name. How about ‘Dracula: Prince of Darkness’?

I know that today’s world has got so corrupt that the right values are no longer the yardstick of success. Now the universal yardstick of ‘success’ is money and wealth to the exclusion of morality or anything else. Success is when a person does not hate himself. Success is being able to look at one’s face in the mirror. Success is to have self-esteem. Success is being able to go to sleep at night with peace of mind. Success is knowing that one is feeding one’s family and meeting their genuine needs honestly.

I reminded Ali again of Jesus Christ’s admonition as related in Matthew, Chapter 29 Verse 24 in the New International Version of the Holy Bible. Other versions too carry the same the verse:

“I tell you again, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go to the Kingdom of God.”

The words “I tell you again” shows that Jesus had to say it again and again to din the message into people’s heads, that they should stop worshiping the Golden Calf that symbolises unlawful and immoral wealth in its various forms and manifestations. Later, God repeatedly gave the same message in the Holy Quran.

Being rich is not bad in itself: the question is how one has got rich. If corruption is the source of one’s wealth it is ungodly and so bad that such people will not be able to go to the kingdom of God, which is Heaven, which is perfect peace that one finds in God only. It’s not without reason that the word ‘Islam’ means peace. Follow its fundamentals and principles based on adl or balance, equity and justice, kindness, moderation, mercy and forgiveness, our duties towards God and His creations and you will find peace, which you will be able to take with you to your grave, leaving behind your bank accounts, real estate and gold for they will be of no use to you in the next world for you will not be able to impress God or bribe your way to Heaven. In fact, more than necessary wealth is of no use to you in this world either, unless you spend it in looking after humanity.

If corruption is the source of one’s wealth it is ungodly and so bad that such people will not be able to go to the kingdom of God, which is Heaven, which is perfect peace that one finds in God only

But do people listen? The history of humankind since Jesus is littered more with people trying to become rich any old how than people who look upon money to meet essential worldly needs only while saving a fair amount for a rainy day and not accumulate it beyond those needs, sometimes so much as to be buried under it without using some of it for the good of humanity except as a public relations exercise as diversion to camouflage corruption by proclaiming their benevolence. Such people help the poor with free food, education, healthcare, housing, daughters’ marriages and what have you and then let their benevolence be widely known. When time comes to go through the eye of a needle many stand up to proclaim their munificence. It might help them in going through the eye of the worldly needle, but not the divine needle. Then they shall know, for God is all knowing. They will have to desperately depend on Him being all merciful, all forgiving, which depends on their intentions and compulsions behind their deeds, which only God. They will hear about their deeds from their skins, tongues and other organs and senses. Actually, they will start getting their dues in this world for God says that wrongdoers and tyrants will not be able to find an inch of land to hide in.

Corruption of all sorts stalks not only our land but the entire world too. Look at Turkey’s Erdoğan whose family was buying oil on the cheap from ISIS and thus covertly helping it while overtly waging war against it – hypocrisy that kills and leaves one aghast. Now the terrorist inferno has started engulfing Turkey. It will be worse for Erdoğan because he peddled Islam to acquire power.

But the most amazing is the land of the pure that we call Pakistan that has tried to embarrass Jesus by making it possible for the corrupt to go through the eye of a needle. Obviously, since we have as our finance minister a self-confessed money laundering expert. Pakistan’s government in desperate need of money has announced that a corrupt person can now pay only one per cent of his or her ill-gotten wealth as ‘tax’, turn black into white and go through the eye of a needle to what they think is heaven. When they get there they will discover much to their discomfiture that they have entered the kingdom of Satan, not of God, where total absence of peace awaits them – that is hell. Then they will know that not all their wealth can save them. And they will find illegitimate rulers there too who conned them into believing that after ‘whitening’ their money they would enter God’s Heaven. A dreadful fate awaits them all.

That’s not all. Our government floated Euro Bonds at huge interest rates but we don’t know for sure who or what purchased them. But whoever did can now sit back and enjoy a neat ‘legal’ income for ten years, higher than they would get from any deposit account, thank you very much. Could it be, perchance, that a lot of the Euro Bonds were purchased with Pakistani corrupt money, a lot of it by our rulers? Of course God knows, but we will discover it one day as well when this government is done and dusted. The word ‘Darnomics’ has been ‘Darlaundering’ – our finance ministry is a shop called ‘Snow White Launderers’.

As God says, the corrupt will not find an inch of ground to hide in on earth except, if they are lucky, a grave, but there is no guarantee. Ask Dr Asim Hussain who cannot find an inch of land to hide his shame in. Ask former army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and some generals before him. They too cannot find an inch of ground to hide their shame in. It has just started because Nawaz Sharif made his habitual ‘mistake’ of appointing an honest general as army chief, the ‘wrong’ one for him. He may have only nine months left in office, but nine months is a long time my friends, long enough to produce a child. More power to General Raheel Sharif’s elbow. May the force be with him and may he not be seduced by Satan’s glitter of gold.

Such world-class corruption has been begotten by a corrupt system that throws up stupid and corrupt rulers. It has got so bad that desperate people are selling their bodies to keep their souls together with them. Prostitution has become the fastest growing profession in a state that blasphemously calls itself ‘Islamic’. We know the punishment we are getting on earth but how bad will it be in the Hereafter I shudder to think. Gun runners, drug dealers, land grabbers, kidnappers, assassins, human traffickers, brothel owners, buyers of public office have overrun this land of the ‘pure’. Ours is a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured corruption.

We have deficit upon deficit. Our clueless rulers suffer acute intelligence and morality deficits that that cause unmitigated suicidal stupidity that in turn causes fiscal, trade and all sorts of deficits. Government will find that such perfidious laws and actions will still not fill the chasm between earnings and spending. The message is reiterated: it pays hugely to be corrupt in this ‘Islamic’ state as long as it is big corruption. Only the poor and small corrupt get punished for appearances sake except when the Rangers investigate the big corrupt. The danger is that after some time people wielding near unmitigated power are in danger of getting attacked by the corruption virus themselves – the glitter of gold. Now with Saudi Arabia on the skids Middle Eastern safe havens for charlatans, rascals and freebooters are in danger of evaporating. Where will they go? They better start looking for other havens that will have them else they might go to the kingdom of Satan the wrong way – feet first, not through the eye of a needle but a tunnel of fire.

A few individuals notwithstanding, collectively our politicians are a gang of witches who cook up lethal brews. They are not implementing the ‘National Action Plan’ against terrorism properly or totally to save themselves from the wheels of God

A few individuals notwithstanding, collectively our politicians are a gang of witches who cook up lethal brews. They are not implementing the ‘National Action Plan’ against terrorism properly or totally to save themselves from the wheels of God. Recently this Conclave of Losers, ugliness personified, met to demand a piece from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor pie without regard to feasibility. All they have is to look at the map of the Corridor and see the network of road and rail links all over Pakistan in every province and area. It covers everyone. What can one do when surrounded by morons like this? It is like children fighting over inheritance from their dead mother. They are trying to turn the CPEC into another Kalabagh Dam that has become as dead as a dormouse.

In just a few hours Indian Prime Minister Modi turned the tables on our clueless rulers with his unannounced ‘sudden’ visit to Lahore. In a trice he turned his image from mass murderer to moderate peacemaker in the eyes of the world: ‘comprehensive’ talks on all issues would resume in January at foreign secretary level. Then a few days later followed a most convenient attack, the Pathankot attack on an Indian air base, though for once some Indian media have started saying that it was an inside job. Now India is again setting the agenda for ‘peace’ talks: the talks are stalled indefinitely but now only terrorism will be on the agenda before ‘comprehensive talks’ can begin. Cornered, we will have to comply, especially with a leadership spoiling for ‘normalisation’ with India for selfish reasons. Kashmir, the real issue that is at the core of all our problems has faded far into the international horizon. This is what happens in the blink of an eye when clueless moronic leaders are confronted with a clever wily leader. Serves them right, indulging in the kind of showmanship that they did in Lahore. Our prime minister should break from his irrelevant international jaunts and consider paying a sudden visit to Pakistan as well.

I’ve made my point. Now let us pray that our moron begetting system that in turn begets corruption bites the dust if Pakistan and its people are to be saved.