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Immediately after WWII, a major NGO, the Rand Corporation was set up by the United States Army Air Forces as Project Rand, under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company. The Douglas Aircraft Company has its headquarters in Santa Monica, California. During the Second World War, Douglas Aircraft manufactured war planes which were used to drop atom bombs on Japan. Photographs of the devastation caused by the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki arrived in America, were published in the newspapers and found their way to the Douglas Company's workers who became prey to feelings of guilt. They began considering themselves murderers of millions of people and so they separated from Douglas and became independent on 14th May 1948.
Rand Corporation had four basic aims. One, to promote science in the American society; two to spread higher and positive education; three, to work for the betterment and welfare of the society; and four, to save the American people from future apprehensions.
Rand had an extensive scope with the largest number of scholars in any organization of the world. These scholars carried out research work on main issues of the day and provided the result to world agencies that needed them. Until 1960 Rand worked on these principles. By this time it had become famous in America and most parts of Europe and people had started taking it seriously. But then in 1960, the government's influence started taking effect. The US govt. ordered all major business concerns, groups and corporations to provide financial assistance to Rand. All influential companies added Rand to their charity list and began providing it funds on a monthly basis. The US government created sections in the Rand Corporation which began research on international issues. By 1970 research was extended to various countries of the world and different classes of thought.
In 1984 a section on Pakistan affairs was added to the Rand Corporation which began an in-depth survey on the political, economic, social and religious activities in the country. The survey reports were provided to all relevant small and large American agencies. If an American official decided to visit Pakistan, the Rand Corporation provided him all the information he needed.
At present Rand Corporation is the largest private corporation in America. It has 1600 employees based at six locations: in the US ---- Santa Monica, California; Washington DC and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In Europe ---- Leaden, Netherlands; Berlin, Germany and Cambridge, United Kingdom. In 2003, it opened the Rand-Qatar Policy Institute in Doha. It also has 26 Noble Prize winners working in it. Interestingly enough, Donald Rumsfeld was the Chairman of Rand from 1981--1986, Condoleezza Rice its Trustee from 1991--1997 and Zalmay Khalilzad an active member. Samuel Cohen, who invented the neutron bomb in 1958, is a member too.
In the year 2000, Rand Corporation put into effect its plan to bring about social changes in Pakistan. The plan had sixteen main aims:
One: To search for young educated Pakistani men who were against religion and include their thoughts and views in the Islamic curriculum.
Two: To provide special coverage in the media to the thoughts of liberal minded young people concerning religion.
Three: To create websites, publishing houses, societies, schools, colleges, universities and NGOs that would challenge the thoughts of fundamentalists.
Four: To introduce pre-Islamic history in Pakistan so as to create a love for pre-Islamic heroes in the hearts of the young people.
Five: To create dissension between the traditionalists and fundamentalists.
Six: To encourage co-operation between modernists and traditionalists so that both can jointly fight against the fundamentalists.
Seven: Traditionalist organizations to be encouraged so that they can take on the fundamentalists in the future.
Eight: To increase the number of modernists in traditionalist organizations.
Nine: To encourage religious circles prone to modernism.
Ten: To promote distaste for Islamic Mysticism and love for innovative
Mysticism.
Eleven: To challenge the fundamentalists' interpretation of Islam and discover aspects to which they have no satisfactory answer.
Twelve: To link religious fundamentalists to terrorists and project this image.
Thirteen: To prove by means of the media that religious classes are incapable of governing the country.
Fourteen: To publish and broadcast on a high level false reports of corrupt, deceitful and immoral activities of the fundamentalist and terrorist group.
Fifteen: Two promote the philosophy that in Islam too religion and governance and two different things.
Sixteen: To use the media, especially newspapers and TV channels for the purpose of bringing about a social change in Pakistan.
As I studied the plan it dawned upon me that the Rand Corporation and America were behind all the moral, social and ideological changes that had taken place in Pakistan recently. America and the agencies linked to it were changing the entire society of our country under a well-planned, silent strategy. Take the one-month campaign launched against the Hudood laws, for example. The media group responsible for it used two of its major news papers---English and an Urdu daily--- and its most widely-viewed TV channel for a programme called, "Just Think".
It was the first time in history that the media had been used to bring about a change in the people's way of thinking. The entire programmes, even the News section of the channel had been bought by America. Each Hadith and ayah of the Quran that was recited during the entire month was first vetted by Washington and then allowed to be broadcast. The views of all such ulama-i-keram, thinkers, journalists and educationists who were against the Hudood laws were run as they tried to emphasize that the Hudood Ordinance should be amended. All these people tried to prove through fake references that men and women are free where their relationship with each other is concerned. Not only can they have a relationship with anyone they choose but can satisfy their sexual desires with whomever they like. They have a right to do so and no law can stop them. A man is helpless where is sexual urges are concerned, the thinkers and wise ones said, and so he should be allowed to fulfill them with anyone he chooses. The Hudood Ordinance should thus be changed.
The media group, besides using the TV channel, employed both its newspapers for the high-pressure campaign. For a whole month statements of the "ulama-i-keram" and eminent "thinkers" appeared in the dailies along with their photographs. On 14th June the media campaign came to an end with two entire pages devoted to advertisements against the Hudood Ordinance in both the newspapers. This was a first in journalism history.
If we take an impartial look at the entire campaign we find that it had been launched with the express purpose of changing the religious thinking of the public. Its aim was to make the people think independently of Quran and Hadith which would in turn spread immorality and shamelessness in society. Its target was the Islamic laws, traditions and 'fiqh' or jurisprudence. The promoters wanted to make human emotions and desires an excuse to create a rift in the laws of Allah Ta`ala. If we look at it from their point of view it seems that the greatest issue Pakistan is facing is that of the Hudood Ordinance and all the countries of the world are trying it help it out. This is certainly not the case. In the last 20 years no one has been tried in Pakistan under the Hudood Ordinance, no one has been publicly flogged; no one stoned to death.
Hudood Ordinance is not the real problem in Pakistan. The real problems are unemployment, lawlessness, injustice, mismanagement, lies, hypocrisy, adulteration, black-marketing, nepotism, illiteracy, bribery and lack of peace and order. Yet no one, has ever addressed these issues, no one has mounted such a high-pressure campaign against them. Stark statistics show that there is a daily increase in cases of terrorism, looting, hoarding, rape and suicide. Every year more than 5000 to 6000 people commit suicide due to unemployment. Thousands of women are murdered in domestic violence, thousands are sold as prostitutes and thousands face divorce at the hands of their husbands.
Our hospitals are no better off. Countless patients die because of non-availability of medicines and medical treatment. More than 5500 children become a prey to Thalassaemia every year and die as treatment isn't available. Yet no one raises a voice for them. The conditions in our society are pitiable indeed. The number of addicts, drug-peddlers, beggars and gangsters is increasing in our country day by day. One has only to stop one's car at an intersection, get out at a shopping centre for ten minutes, when one is stormed by an army of beggars. Under every bridge, on footpaths, countless addicts can be seen injecting themselves or lying blissfully unconscious.
The same is the case with unemployment. There are 14.5 million jobless young men in our country today. More than 133,000 post-graduate youth are wandering from office to office in search of employment. Inflation has risen to such heights that it has become well nigh impossible for even middle-class people to keep body and soul together. More than 34 per cent people of Pakistan are living under the line of poverty.
In the past three years the price of gas has risen from 10 to 49 per cent. Commodities such as pulses, rice, flour, cooking oil and sugar are beyond the purchasing power of the common man. And we are still dependent on foreign loans. Today each child that is born in Pakistan is indebted to the tune of Rs. 37,000 and this is in spite of the fact that we don't get tired of repeating and nauseum that we have smashed the begging bowl.
Nineteen per cent of our population goes in want of food. Thirty-eight percent children below the age of five suffer from malnutrition and as a result fall a prey to such fatal diseases as arthritis, polio, blood deficiency and cancer. The rate of population increase is touching the danger level. The unchecked rise in population is causing an unprecedented rise in 'katchi abadis'. Thousands of people are still living under the open sky. Even today 5,500,000 new houses are needed in Pakistan. In the education sector we are so backward that we rank 35 in the world. Our education structure, whatever there is of it, is shaking to its very foundations due to defective planning.
In last year's earthquake more than 4, 5000 schools, colleges and madaris were destroyed in Azad Kashmir. These have yet to be re-built. Each and every department in our country is suffering the same fate. We are even deprived of our basic rights. We have neither clean drinking water nor bread to eat nor medicines when we fall sick. The system of justice is such that if a false case of robbery is lodged against a person, he has to spend the next twenty to thirty years of his life to prove his innocence. An 82-year old man is imprisoned in Karachi Jail. He was accused of committing a murder. The police arrested him and threw him in jail. This man had been bed-ridden for five years before his arrest. Let alone murdering someone he can't even look for his slippers. In our country more than 40 per cent of children have never been inside a school. And yet no foreign NGO has ever paid attention to their plight nor has our government ever done anything to improve their condition. Ignoring all the vital issues, what is the American government after? The Hudood Ordinance! And our own government is lending it all out support. What is this? Is this the progress, prosperity and stability our ministers keep hyping about?
Just think for yourself. If our government changes the Hudood Ordinance, if it allows men and women to indulge freely in sex, will all the problems of Pakistan be solved? Will the people get medicines, bread, food, homes and education? Will we really become prosperous?
No, I certainly don't think so. So what was the use of all the effort? What was the need of spending Rs. 250 million on a non-issue such as the Hudood Ordinance? I think that the colossal amount could have been spent to change the lives of the people of this country but instead it was spent to spread immorality, indecency and obscenity in our land. Our enemy is invading our minds through the camera, television and newspapers and we are readily allowing it to do so.
O thinkers of my country! Wake up. Come forward and save your people from the clutches of these Satanic forces otherwise you will surely be held responsible before Allah Ta'ala on the Day of Judgment.
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