June
19, 2018
Dear
friends:
When
I came to the United States to get educated at MIT from UET Lahore, I
never imagined that I would become one of the 'nut-jobs' of
modernity, i.e., the uber-skeptic of official narratives. Beyond
that, that I would even help unravel some of the greatest Big Lies of
our time which have directly contributed to creating deadly havoc
upon humanity. What has surprised me is that I have even been able to
do this at all, because, firstly, I don't rank myself very highly in
either possessing a superior intellect or a superior morality. In
fact, among my stellar friends throughout the world, I value myself
at the bottom in relation to their global successes, piety, virtues,
and all that is deemed motherhood and apple pie. Secondly, and
surprisingly, this hasn't been terribly hard to figure out! I don't
understand how I have been able to do it but not a single one among
my many illustrious friends and teachers? They have elected to stay
publicly silent even if they may have figured any of this out in the
private quarters of their mind and living rooms ---- and these people
are the most well-known and valued members of society. They are
counted among the most imposing intellectuals of our time holding
lofty academic, social, philanthropic, humanitarian, and moral
credentials. Can I be permitted to say: what the fck?
Where
is their high-falutin morality? What happened to their far superior
intellect that they have remained silent on some of these greatest
Big Lies of our time? All my life I remained in awe of such people
and today I can only exclaim what the fck! Is any of this rocket
science that they should feel silence is the better part of valor?
That they should so willingly contribute to the propagation of these
Big Lies by at least tacit endorsement of silence, and at worst by
active propagation? I have to wonder what has made these stellar
individuals such cowards? They had struck me as the most valiant and
brave in my university days --- before these tests were put upon us
that is. And I extend that observation of cowardice and moral
depravity to all Pakistanis who have a mind, a mouth, and a pen!
Indeed, to all mankind in all nations on earth. Instead of spewing
gibberish on the prayer mat and dreaming selfishly of some Heaven
beyond, I have never understood why so few even attempt to make
heaven right here on earth for everyone by standing up to the
villainy of power right here and now?
This
villainy of power, reflected in the state and authority figures, when
it remains unchallenged, manages the public's perceptions, public's
beliefs, and thus controls public behavior to United We Stand
them with the imperatives of power. Which is always primacy. Thus,
not just in Pakistan today, but in the entire world, successive
crises of humanity that all can witness and the majority can
experience, have taken deep roots and become the “new normal”
as the consequence of the greatest Big Lies of our time – the
crisis of social dysfunction and global dystopia in the making, the
crisis of disenfranchisement, the crisis of warfare and hegemony,
refugee displacement, lavish lifestyles of the increasing few while
increasingly the majority struggle for meal a day, etc. Indeed, many
can come up with their own similar list of unhappiness and
displeasure with the way things are – but do they do anything
about it?
No,
of course not, why should anyone care about these crises, except make
high-falutin commentaries in their living rooms, in television talk
shows, in social media chat rooms, in academic forums, and in
political speeches, all remarkably devoid of substance; the careers,
the fat paychecks, and the good life often gets in the way of those
not directly under the jackboots of tyranny. Six feet under the
maggots surely can't tell the fcking difference! Atheist and theists
both taste death alike; the maggots eat them alike. Then, regardless
of theology, since the end is dust for all, what life is worth living
while alive? A coward's chasing the American Dream? A bullshit
con-artist's paying lip-service to humanity while all these Big Lies
stand tall and equally disenfranchise all except the elite and the
co-opted? Or the inveterate zombie's who dies well before its time?
They can't all just be plain stupid to not see through these Big Lies
now can they?
Stupid
or co-opted or zombie, evidently for such stellar members of
humanity, that life is worth living -- that of cowards
and sell-outs wearing the garb of respectability. I have no words of
praise for their high-minded virtuosity regardless of the piety so
prominently stamped upon their forehead; all are syphilis ridden
underneath that virginal gown. I hope none receiving or reading this
letter are counted among that hypocritical lot. Since my religion is
Islam, I feel privileged to seek refuge in the prayer: May
God protect us all from this villainy. But that also means
acquiring the courage of our convictions!
Today,
many areligious and irreligious people display this courage far more
than the religious man of any cloth. This is evidenced from the fact
that among the truthful rebels who have chosen to take on the mantle
of unraveling these Big Lies as a categorical imperative, a vast
majority seem to be religionless, and many rebels, in fact, appear to
be from Jewish background. What has happened to Muslims? Or
Christians? Or Hindus? In his book: The Religions of Man,
subsequently retitled: Religions of the World, Huston Smith had also
mentioned Confucians and Buddhists as I recall, also equally missing
from the scene of truth-telling and falsehood repelling the greatest
Big Lies of our times.
Indeed,
more profoundly religious and Heaven or Nirvana or Rebirth seeking,
the less inclined one appears to be to become engaged in making
heaven right here on earth! Minor exceptions are notable only for the
fact of their minuscule numbers. I have never understood this, for
one would have thought that the religions of man would at least have
wanted man to live in moral decency and valor. Is the problem in man,
or in his religions that he leaves the field wide open for the
sociopaths to exercise their primacy? The secular humanists will of
course rush to endorse the latter, but what would be funny if it
wasn't so criminal, is that this avant-garde breed is equally notable
for its absence in dispelling these Big Lies.
We
are living in the age of the hypocrite.
Has
it ever been any different? Is this the lot of man?
When
I first read Elie Wiesel's books (when my kids were in junior high
and had to read Diary of Anne Frank, and as was my custom while
raising my children in the West, I would read their assigned texts
first to judge appropriateness) I was struck by this HolocaustTM
survivor's lament in his memoir All Rivers Run to the Sea: “and
I still curse the killers, their accomplices, the indifferent
spectators who knew and kept silent, and Creation itself, Creation
and those who perverted and distorted it. I feel like screaming,
howling like a madman so that that world, the world of the murderers,
might know it will never be forgiven.” I have
often wondered whether this is exclusively only a Jewish lament, that
the Jewish HolocaustTM is the only supreme crime, and Jews
the only supreme worthy victims?
Or,
does such lament also escape the lips of the unworthy victims of
hegemony who have survived these Big Lies, and also those who haven't
and have mercifully seen the end of it?
Muslims
today are the unworthiest of victims. And we naturally, albeit quite
unfashionably, tend to blame the victim. But does the fault lies in
the serpent that bites or the victim who does not prepare for its own
defence?
Pakistan's
media, its judiciary, its military, its intelligentsia, its
industrialists and its super-rich class, its political class, and its
ruling classes in general, alongside the ordinary common man, the
middle class, and the have-not class, will all be replaced by a
better people who will not be silent before falsehood and tyranny ---
so promises the God of Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the Holy
Scripture. I imagine that there is only One God of all creation
regardless of religion, tribe or nation. Thus, that promise must
apply to all peoples if it applies to any people. Are we ready to be
replaced? I am not.
“There comes a time when silence, is betrayal. The truth of these words
is beyond doubt. But the mission to which they call us is a most
difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do
not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy,
especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great
difficulty, against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's
own bosom, and then the surrounding world. ... Some of us who have
already begun to break the silence of the night, have found that the
calling to speak, is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We
must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited
vision, but we must speak.” --- And spoken, I have.
So,
I present the following deconstruction of some of the greatest Big
Lies of our time because I do have a pen, a mouth, and whatever
little mind that I am fortunate enough to be bestowed with that still
functions. I doubt that this humble attempt is in anyway sufficient
protection from being replaced by a better people, but I try. A
Pakistani friend shared with me the simple epitaph that he had
frustratingly written for himself which I had shortened to: “He
tried.” I hope you reading this are doing the same.
If
I have uttered any falsehood, I invite correction.
Some Important Big Lies of Our Time
Thank
you for reading.
Zahir
Ebrahim
Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
Letter
to Friends of Humanity: Some Important Big Lies of Our Time