Letter to Dawn (Pakistani Daily Newspaper) on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

March 26, 2016


The Editor

Dawn

Karachi, Pakistan

Dear Editor,

I am a Pakistani Muslim woman marathoner, living in the Washington, DC area. Since 2009, I have run 26 marathons in ten different states of the U.S. (A marathon, by definition, is 26.2 miles.) In at least five of these 26 competitions, I have qualified for the Boston Marathon. (The Boston marathon is an elite and exclusive race, for which one must first meet the rigorous qualifying standards set by the Boston Athletic Association in another marathon.)

On March 12, I ran the Washington DC Marathon to call attention to the plight of another Pakistani woman: Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

Dr. Siddiqui holds a bioscience degree from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in neuroscience from Brandeis University. Although I have never met her, I can say with some certainty that she is highly intelligent, articulate, deeply Islamic, and cares about Muslim suffering in faraway lands. As such, she is a hero to me, as to many other Pakistani woman (and men).

March 31 will mark 13 years since Aafia was kidnapped from Karachi with evident collusion between the Musharraf regime and U.S. intelligence services operating on Pakistani soil. Her three minor children were captured along with her. Despite clear prohibitions on the imprisonment of children in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights—to which Pakistan is a signatory—two of Aafia’s children were imprisoned along with her. The third, an infant, appears to have been killed in the course of the rendition.

Running 26.2 miles without stopping is not easy. It can hurt. It can make one feel hopeless, very minute in the overall scheme of things. Many people never complete the race. Exhausted, they commence walking part way through.

There can be other complications like the one I had the night before the marathon. Due to some complication, the custom-made black and white “Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui” tee shirt I had ordered to wear during the race did not arrive. So I took it upon myself to make one. The excitement of the race and painting the homemade “Free Dr Aafia” shirt kept me up the night before, and I slept only four hours. Around 20,000 people would be running the race, so parking near the starting line was out of the question. I got up before fajr, grabbed my gear, and boarded the Washington DC subway to the race start near the Washington Monument.

The race started at 7:30 AM sharp. As I ran up a steep hill near DC’s famed Dupont Circle, the lack of sleep caught up with me and my muscles ached. I wondered how I would complete the race. For some reason, as I ran along DC’s picturesque Southwest Waterfront, the picture of Aafia’s angelic face in hijab came clearly to my mind. I thought about the horrors she had endured. Aafia, mother of three, who loved children so much that her PhD thesis centered upon them—watching helplessly as her baby Suleman slipped from her arms and fell to the ground, his skull fractured, as Pakistani police roughly arrested the young mother. Innocent, sweet Aafia, with the face of a flower, repeatedly raped and tortured in a remote U.S. military base in Baghram, Afghanistan. What kind of sick bastards could do that to a Muslim woman? My physical pain melted away, to be replaced by psychic pain, and I ran faster, finishing the marathon in 3 hours, 57 minutes.

After five years of being held without charge, and denied even official recognition that she was a prisoner (her name did not appear in any prison, police, or military registry during this time), Aafia was officially handed over to U.S. authorities, and tried in a New York court. The trial was presided over by Judge Richard M. Berman, a Zionist who was clearly biased against Muslims. Not surprisingly, she was convicted and sentenced to 86 years in U.S. prison.

What is surprising—and indeed was the reason I felt compelled to run the Washington DC marathon in Aafia’s name—is that she remains in prison. She is in extremely poor health, has been denied proper medical attention, and can die in U.S. prison—without ever having seen her children and other family members.

The ordinarily vociferous feminist groups, quick to deplore the violations of women’s rights by “those horrible Talibans” have been completely silent on her case. In fact, it is noteworthy that feminists on both sides of the Atlantic, including those who embraced Malalai Yousafzai, have said not a word about Aafia and the very long range torture she endured. Similarly, the liberal U.S. media, such as the Daily Beast, Salon.com, and others, who are ordinarily extremely vigilant about the violations of Pakistani—and in general—Muslim women’s rights because they love us so much [sarcasm intended], have uttered not one word about Aafia.

The Pakistani government has taken no effective steps toward her release. “Israel,” when its citizens are captured, sends commandos to free them. The U.S. government, under President Jimmy Carter, sent a military mission to free American hostages then held by Iran. Other nations have interceded either militarily or diplomatically (eg, via prisoner exchange) when one of its citizens is wrongly held by a foreign government. General Musharraf, under whose reign Aafia was captured, is long gone, and largely discredited at least among some sectors. But- Pakistan, a nation headed by Muslim men—with Qur’an and hadith as their Guiding Light—continue to sit idly by while a Muslim woman is held captive, tortured, and raped for over a decade.

The Pakistani press, too, appear to have written her off.

Aafia is a political prisoner, being held not for any wrong doing, but for the crime of being a Muslim and in the wrong place at the wrong time. What is wrong with us, that we can’t stand up even in this most clear cut case of injustice?

As a Pakistani Muslim woman athlete, I urge the immediate release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and a cessation of illegal and unmandated (by the Pakistani populace) U.S. intelligence activities on Pakistani soil which lead to tragedies such Aafia’s.

Sincerely,

Nadrat Siddique

Maryland

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Juma'ah Reflections on Masaud Khan

I visited the Islamic Center of Maryland (Gaithersburg) for juma'ah prayers today. Political prisoner Masaud Khan and his mother, Elizabeth Khan attended here. She still visits time and again. I thought of them, as I stood distributing the New Trend (anti-imperialist Muslim newsmagazine), about how he, incarcerated as a young man, and now in his thirties, lost his youth to an incredibly unjust System. And- I thought about her, a mother, fighting desperately to get her son out of the clutches of that System.

In the last four weeks, I've visited four different masajid in the Baltimore-Washington area) for juma'ah. Three of the four masajid had political prisoner associations to them. That is, either a Muslim locked up on political (bogus) charges attends/ attended there, or the family of a political prisoner attends/ attended there. I realized what a tragic commentary this was on the state of affairs and suffering of the Muslim community: Many, many communities have been devastated by the targeting of political dissidents, or at least operate in fear. They dare not exercise basic First Amendment protected freedoms, not even in the House of Allah. Muslim-on-Muslim snitching is pumped as a solution to the "extremist problem," all speakers/ imams, other than government-approved ones, are excluded from most masajid; even imams on the government's "approved" list must sign agreements not to speak on certain topics, or to approach topics in ways objectionable to the authorities. While local and national government officials and candidates are welcomed into the mosque, dissident Muslim speakers are excluded. Literature from Democratic and Republican candidates for office is welcomed, while Islamic literature is frequently banned (or rules greatly impugning its distribution are enacted).

In the course of the FBI's "War on Terror," completely innocent men and women from communities across the U.S. have been locked up on the words of informants, or harassed and hounded by federal agents, often to justify intelligence budgets. All of this is meant to keep the public in fear of approaching "Muslim Hoard," which have replaced the "Reds Under the Beds," or to justify support for Israel and various dictators ruling Muslim lands.

Under such a climate, we have the choice of becoming apolitical, mindless drones, who question nothing, and swallow any nonsense directed at our people. Or we can speak, write, and go forth for that which we know to be just- at the peril of becoming political prisoners ourselves.

We then cannot afford to be silent. I encourage everyone to help the families of those unjustly detained; to write to Muslim political prisoners (as well as other political prisoners) so that they know they are not forgotten; to join a committee to free a political prisoner; and to educate others on the reality of political imprisonment in this country.