Of two pictures in Dawn

              TWO pictures (one of savagery and the other of progress) that appeared on back page the same day in Dawn’s issue of Nov 22 would make every sane Pakistani hang his head in shame and ponder.
             One captured the devastation of a Pakistani school bombed to rubble; the other showed scientists clapping at the successful restart at Geneva of the Large Hadron Collider at the control centre of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern).
                 The scientists were clapping at the success of their experiment aimed at replicating the Big Bang
                 The Big Bang experiment is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our Universe and how it came into being. Prior to the beginning of the Universe there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something — our Universe, which has billions of galaxies, each having billions of stars and suns.
          The name of the Cern spokesman, Steve Meyers, shows how the talented Jewish people are leaders in science and technology. (Let us not confuse Jewish with Israeli. Throughout history Muslims and Jews have enjoyed excellent relations.)
          Muslim scientists at Baghdad and in Spain were pioneers of most modern scientific disciplines. The Muslims were then the masters of the world. Then the world turned upside down. Masters (both in science and in polity) became slaves and slaves became masters. The Muslims receded deep into darkness.
        Pakistan came into existence in 1947, and the Muslim world looked to it as the harbinger of a new era. We had all the prerequisites — land, people, history and culture and scientific manpower — to assume the role of a leader of the Muslim world.
           Initially, we, as a nation, took positive steps towards that goal but then strayed from the path of progress, enlightenment and democracy. Look what we have made of the dream of Allama Iqbal and the vision of the Quaid.
          The land, where peace reigned, now echoes with terror. Here schools and universities are being bombed; culture is being shackled; sports are being targeted.
          The US threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age”, unless it joined the war on terror and helped it prosecute the war on Afghanistan and punish the Taliban government for harbouring the hijackers who flew their planes into the twin towers.
           General Musharraf said that the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan’s ISI Director Ahmad Mahmood. Whether or not the United States would have done so is a matter of opinion, but the enemy within is threatening to show us the glimpses of the stone age.
          Most regretfully, some leading ‘religious’ parties and ulema are keeping quiet at Pakistan’s descent into darkness and looking the other way while the Taliban kill innocent men, women and children.