Saturday 1 January 2011

A NEW YEAR. A NEW DECADE. A RENEWED HOPE.

 I began this blog in the latter half of the year 2010 hoping to post something different in my first attempt. However, academic obligations and the complexity of beginning this platform have moved this first post into the early hours of the year 2011 and a new decade of the 21st century. Therefore, I thought it appropriate to begin this blog with a message and prayer for hope and change.

I still remember the moments on the 1st January of the year 2000 when the twentieth century ended. There was an aura of hope. A hope for change and progress. A hope for peace and tolerance. A hope that humanity would finally draw lessons from the millennia of bloodshed in the past and seek an existence less destructive.

This hope in itself was illusory and unrealistic.

When the world was celebrating the dawn of the second millennium, an Air India plane was parked at Kabul airport in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan held hostage by Islamist terrorists. In 2001, humanity saw the single most demonic instance of violent terrorism when Boeing airplanes were rammed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington killing more than 4,000 innocent citizens of the United States of America. The ensuing American response to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Second Gulf War of 2003 have led to the death of millions of innocent Muslims. Pakistan barely survived the first seven years of this millennium in a dictatorship. In 2007, our most popular leader and the beacon of democracy in the Muslim World, two-time former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was murdered by terrorists in alliance with the dictatorship.

Today, the whole world is threatened by the spectre of terrorism. Wars continue at a slower pace and on a gradually shortening timescale. Intolerance has created further schisms in an already divided human race.

Yet, one can hope for a better future. A better year. A decade of progress. A time of learning and of reflection. A period of peace...or at least the beginning of one. With these ramblings, I wish all who chance upon this post and read it, a very Happy New Year 2011.





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