Release Zaid Hamid
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN

Zaid Hamid, a controversial tele evangelist with fantastic (if not completely insane) ideas, was arrested in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) last month for making controversial speeches against the ruling Royals, an illegal act according to the local laws which can result in years of imprisonment and hundreds of lashes.

Wrapped in shroud of secrecy, very little information is getting out in the media about the exact circumstances in which he was arrested and what was the wording or the message of his speech/es that has led the regime to take such an action. All we know is that so far the counselor access has been denied even after multiple requests. But, his wife has eventually been granted permission to meet him. We also have, at the moment, no confirmation about how long he will end up staying in the kingdom and if or when he will be allowed to travel back to Pakistan. Sure, there are news in the local media regarding the verdict of eight years of imprisonment and one thousand lashes to him. Nonetheless, they await official verification.

I am sure from this introduction you have an idea about my personal feelings for him. But, to remove any ambiguity (if it exists), let me say: I don’t like him at all. In fact, I disagree with him on almost every issue, to the point that I think he is a fraud. For instance, if he says Pakistan was created in 1947, then knowing fully well about the day of our independence, I will still think he is being untruthful. In my opinion, he confabulates or exaggerates about everything he talks about, which includes but is not limited to Islamic History, the Hadees, the Qur'an, the independence movement of Pakistan, our armed forces, national politics, corruption of the current government, and the geo- political situation of the world in which Pakistan sits at the center. If we put all these separate entities together in one person, we will find a defense specialist which he claims he is, a religious scholar which he acts to be, an investigative journalist, a historian, a legal expert, a social scientist, a mystic and a soldier with a camouflaged vest! Can you imagine a single individual wearing so many hats on top of the red one that he normally wears?

Among all of his controversial and many times baseless claims, I specifically don’t think Pakistan is the center of the world’s attention; nor do I believe that the West pays any heed about us until it finds someone as important as Osama bin Laden hiding a few miles away from the Pakistan Military Academy in Abottabad, or after the Mumbai Attack which shows direct links to a Pakistani organization. To be honest, I believe to the contrary: it is us who seek the world's attention like a fussy nine-

year-old who is screaming and shouting, after he fails to convince his parents to buy him a new toy.

I also do not agree with Zaid that the RAW, Mosad and CIA are perpetually contriving a crisis-like situation in Pakistan to keep us entangled in their web of conspiracies. To me, it is almost insane to assume that they believe we will realize our own strength overnight and knock them out with a single blow on the following morning, if they failed to keep our attention diverted. Actually, they might find it humorous if we shared this kind of grandiosity about ourselves with and may even recommend psychiatric evaluation for our national collective bipolar illness!

Having said that I still find it unacceptable to remain quiet when he is incarcerated and probably sentenced in the Kingdom.

I think, as wrong as Zaid is in his views, he still is a Pakistani citizen and we should do whatever we can to ensure his safety and possibly his early return to Pakistan. I am not sure how successful our embassy would be after our refusal to send troops to help Saudi Arabia against Yemen, but we should not leave any stone unturned.

Not only that, the regime did not budge even under great pressure from the West to release Raif Badawi, a blogger who has been sentenced to one thousand lashes - fifty per week for twenty weeks - and ten years in jail for encouraging liberalism and promoting the idea of separating religion from the state in his blog. Also remember that Badawi did not criticize the current regime directly; instead, in some of his writings, he praised King Abdullah for bringing some of the reforms that Badawi wanted to be introduced. This though, in the absence of the excerpts from his speeches, cannot be said about Zaid Haimid.

I must also add in the end that over time Zaid has made more enemies here and has befriended very few, if any, in the influential circles; and no one else is responsible for that but him. Yet, freedom of speech for me is much more important a virtue to protect than any kind of ideological or personal differences.