12 quotes found
"Journalists are bigger terrorists than terrorists themselves."
"What can I do if everyone from the president to a junior bureaucrat is dying to convict me. If I am such a criminal, what was I doing outside jail before my marriage to Benazir?"
"I am not Benazir, and I know it. The people respect me only because I spent eleven years in prison."
"I still don't think like that. Because of Benazir, nobody else [in her party] was thinking about leadership. This position comes about only because of the vacuum that was created with her death."
"When the lights on the stage of life go out, those names shine brightly that were dedicated to the people, Gods agents in this world and its true masters. Asifs name will be one of those shining stars while those of his tormentors will fade from history."
"Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari have both been looting Pakistan for the last 30 years, and both are equally responsible for destruction of the country."
"You live life once, you live it by your principles and you live it courageously- that’s what it's about."
"“I felt sure that none of Islam’s once powerful moral imperatives existed within him, but he was a Muslim because he doubted the Holocaust, hated America and Israel, thought Hindus were weak and cowardly (despite marrying a Hindu journalist Tavleen Singh), and because the glories of the Islamic past excited him. The faith decayed within him, ceased to be dynamic, ceased to provide moral guidance, became nothing but a deep, unreachable historical and political identity,” wrote Aatish."
"“Pakistan was made in the name of Islam and building another Hindu temple in the capital is against the soul of Islam” ..."We are with the rights of minorities but the existing temples should be repaired."
"Faced with insoluble social, political, and economic crises that threatened the very existence of Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sought to compensate by adopting a strict version of the Sharia as the country’s legal system.... By mid-September, Islamabad was arguing that Islamization offered the only chance of holding Pakistan together as it slid toward political and social collapse amid technical bankruptcy and increasing political assertiveness by the local Islamist parties. Relying on their powerful militias and allied Kashmiri terrorist organizations, the Islamist parties flexed political muscle Nawaz Sharif could no longer confront. By the end of the month the Pakistani government was hanging by a thread, and the crisis was exacerbated by economic disaster and a collapsing social order that brought the country to the verge of a civil war. The Islamist members of the army and ISI high command warned Nawaz Sharif that the only alternative to chaos was to implement “Talibanization”—the transformation of Pakistan from a formally secular pseudo-democracy into a declared extremist Islamic theocracy.... Sharif orchestrated a profound purge of the entire military and ISI high command, throwing out the Westernized elite and replacing them with Islamists who are ardent supporters of bellicosity toward India, active aid for the war by proxy in Kashmir, and assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan and other Islamist jihads.... Washington cannot offer Islamabad anything that would be worth provoking a major confrontation with the Pakistani Islamists. Even if Sharif gave an order to apprehend bin Laden, his order would not be carried out by the Pakistani security services because they are riddled with, even actually controlled by, militant Islamists. For them bin Laden is a hero, not a villain. These Islamists are also the new army and ISI elite Sharif just empowered. The Pakistani security establishment knows that any cooperation with Washington will place it in a “state of war” with the local Islamist militias, the Arab “Afghans,” and the Kashmiri terrorist organizations they sponsor. With the Afghan Taliban providing safe haven to these groups, they can easily destabilize Pakistan and drag it into a fratricidal civil war the Islamists are sure to win."
"As Guardian journalist Jon Boone wrote in 2013, “Sharif tried to turn Pakistan into an Islamic caliphate ruled by sharia.”"
"As the Pakistani journalist Khaled Ahmed wrote: When ideology stiffened under the pious military ruler, General Zia, Nawaz Sharif was with him, following the lead given by him and didn’t object when the laws against blasphemy and desecration of the Quran were passed and even made more draconian. Zakat tax meant to be spent on the poor can’t be spent on non-Muslims who are counted among the poorest communities in Pakistan. Muslims who are born in Christian hospitals and study in English-medium schools funded by Christian charity don’t mind if poor Christians are not helped with Muslim charity."