Dear Ahmed Shahzad,
In Dambulla, while walking to the dressing room, when you were preaching Tillakaratne Dilshan your faith, the goddesses of decency and tolerance were hiding their heads in shame. Your action was both lewd and narrow-minded.
The puritan zeal that you people are not merely blessed-and-lucky to have found the right path (hidayat), animates you with a sense of superiority. As a matter of fact, one begins preaching only when one believes in his/her own superiority. Everytime I confront a Tablighi or a puritan, my arguments are not countered by arguments. I am instead insultingly dismissed with a business-as-usual comment: ‘May Allah grant you hidayat’, as if Tablighis and their ilk have been blessed with hidayat (true path) despite their utter ignorance of Islam itself, let alone other faiths and atheistic notions.
In any case, I wonder if it is mere a coincidence that you were trying to proselytize Tillakaratne Dilshan born to a Muslim father and a Buddhist mother. Or perhaps you cannot tolerate neither a Yusuf Yohana in your dressing room [he must convert to Mohammad Yusuf] nor you can stomach the fact that Tuwan Mohamed Dilshan in the opposite dressing room has gone Tillakaratne Dilshan.
However, you remarks or ‘incentive’ you offered to Tillakaratne Dilshan was definitely no happenstance. I know you and your fellow Tablighis staunchly believe in what you told Tillakaratne Dilshan: ‘If you are a non-Muslim and you turn Muslim, no matter whatever you do in your life, straight to heaven’.
By this logic, Gengez Khan, Hitler, and Stalin could have bought their tickets to heaven only if they had embraced the true faith in the end, genocides-they-scripted notwithstanding. Is this your sense of justice? Or imagine George W Bush embracing Islam before he departs for his rightful heavenly place. Even if he ends up in paradise, I am unable to understand: how his conversion to Islam and a house in janat (paradise) will mitigate the plunder of Iraq and Afghanistan or sufferings of Iraqis and Afghans.
Incidentally, George Bush is your duplicate except that he preaches another faith. His invasion of Iraq, he told the world back then, was approved by Jesus Christ. Funny that you or George Bush, are always worried about the life hereafter. You cannot see that an imperative task is to convert this world into a paradise. I know the answer budding in your mind. ‘This world is a temporary abode. Life hereafter is permanent’, will be your pet reply. This is the first sentence, crammed by every Tablighi, one hears from the blind followers of Maulana Tariq Jamil in every encounter. If so, why play a sinful sports like cricket? Maulana Tariq Jamil may not have declared it a sin but mullahs of our famous Lal Mosque consider it Haram (forbidden).
Another thing that irritates me is your intellectual and moral cowardice. Moral cowardice because you only preach to the weak, those who cannot counter-preach. I wonder if you will dare preach to a snobbish Gora on the Lords Cricket Ground or MCG. Or for that matter, a Hindu member of Indian team in Bombay. Please test your faith next time you visit England, Australia or India. However, it is not your moral cowardice that I find disgusting. It is your hypocritical intellectual spinelessness that is indeed scandalous. You people travel all over the world to preach but refuse the same democratic right to Christian missionaries, Ahmedis, and other proselytizing faiths. You want non-Muslims to embrace Islam but refuse to respect a Muslim’s democratic right to convert. Conversion of a non-Muslim is celebrated in Pakistani press and social networking sites. However, any Muslim embracing another faith or atheism is a murtad (apostate), hence wajibulqatal (liable to death). You want to spread your faith but refuse to hear any counter-arguments. Hence, all the blasphemy laws in Pakistan. It is not a handful of Ahmedis, Christians and Hindus your Jamaat-e-Islamis and Lashkar-e-Toibas fear. You people want blasphemy laws because you cannot tolerate/answer counter-arguments, questions raising doubts, references to Muslim history, and challenges posed by science or philosophy. You do not preach. You people threaten. In the case of Tillkaratne Dilshan, threat was confined to verbal warning: ‘Then be ready for fire’. In Saudi Arabia, Iran, various Emirates of Taliban and Caliphate of ISIS, preaching is accompanied by sword.
My dear Ahmed Shahzad,
Next time you go to Raiwand Ijtimah, kindly ask Maulana Tariq Jamil to show some courage and ask him to demand for the repeal of blasphemy laws in order to have a democratic atmosphere for preaching and counter-preaching. It will lead to a dialogue. I promise, it will benefit Muslims because the Muslim World, in general, and Pakistan, in particular, needs a dialogue. Let there be dialogue instead of preaching. This dialogue is not possible in an atmosphere of intimidation where disagreements are solved by lynching the defenceless.
Also, it is not Ahmedis, Christians, and Hindus in Pakistan in need of your preaching. It is not even poor peasants, urban poor, and students on the campuses. You need to preach to our mighty generals, exploiting capitalists, power-hungry politicians, landed Pharaohs, and the Taliban. Tell the generals to stay away from economic ventures and stop subverting democracy. Tell the politicians to pity the national exchequer. Preach to the feudal lords the importance of land reforms. Above all, dare ask the Taliban to stop their spree of beheadings, campaign of bombing schools and shrines, and ‘jihad’ on religious minorities. Next time you itch for preaching, kindly preach to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi & Co. Tell them to stop the Shia genocide.
If you cant preach it all, then shut up and concentrate on your shabby batting. In Pakistan, we are already burning in fire. We need not fear any other fires.
In agitation,
A Sinner
