Social Fiber
By: Abu Shazil

Societies are made of religious believes, ethics, values, culture, traditions and morality. We the Pakistanis (known as PAKYS as an abusive terminology) are Muslims at times hardliners but have we ever asked ourselves a question "Do we practice Islam in our day to day life. I am sure the answer of most of us will be "PARTIALLY" or "NO". Now coming to rest of the elements of society ethics, values, culture, traditions and morality; these all are measured with different scales, by different societies. When we analyse our society we find the meanings of each element are changing with every passing day. And in fact are deteriorating or melting down with each new generation. The reason mainly is globalization, advent of cyber space, electronic media and digital divide which has exposed us with foreign/alien cultures.

When we analyse the society we come to the conclusion that we can divide our society into three clear bands. One, Tip Top/Elite Class; Two, White Collared/Middle Class; Three, Down to earth Poor/ Delete Class.

After evaluating the characters, dealings, and moral fiber of these three bands we find that only the middle class possesses some percentage of ethics, rules, morals and traditions whereas these qualities are absent from the dictionary of other two classes. The only value which ROCKS in the elite and delete class is money. To the elite class religion is fashion, relations are measured with the yard stick of bank balance, ethics, rules, morals and traditions, if at all they exist are imported from western societies and still we are proud to be Muslims, proud to be Asians. To the delete class religion exists but in books because in real life they are faces with hunger, poverty, ailments etc. Day in and day out they are haunted by discrimination, injustice and denial. Deprivation of basic necessities and continual struggle to satisfy the physical needs, they remain least fretful about spiritual needs thereby making religion irrelevant for them. So they believe in money not in religion, because it, if available, has the power to satisfy their physical needs. They even do not understand the meanings of ethics, morals, culture, traditions and are exonerated of all these jargons. Day long struggle only fetches them may be nothing or one time food.

Its only and only the Middle class (white collared) which host fear of ALLAH in the hearts, try to follow the religion, stick to the traditions of their ancestors, have morality and take pride in traditions/culture. They believe in life after death, pray for Allah's mercy and are not ready to do the wrong or follow the wrong willfully.

Now see that only 1/3 of your people try to follow Islam and Asian culture and rest 2/3 of US are astray as for as religion and culture is concerned.

Judge yourself and ask! "In which band you fall in?". If in the heart of your hearts you feel that you belong to 2/3 of society then:-

CHANGE YOURSELF

Change for the best so that you are blessed with EMAN and become a true Muslim.

BE ALLAH WITH YOU so that you lead a successful life (Aameen).