Farid Esack, Islamabad, Pakistan
".....Ah the great jetsetter visits the Third World and becomes even more illustrious as he pisses on his own people.
At the end of the day, you have to decide whether you want to be a Christopher Hitchens/Irshad Manji lone ranger who just wants to be a contrarian for contrarian’s sake, or whether you want to have some purpose, some accountability to real people in real movements that you say you support. If you want to be contrarian, then that’s fine too, but you should choose your battles and not piss in the containers that feed you. Activists like Junaid are in the vanguard of actual struggle involving real people and real institutions -- however inadequate these may be -- who provide intellectuals like you and me some space to speak to our people, "our" people as being not citizens of the Empire but its victims.
As’ad, my brother, we who for many reasons, have "made it to" and "made it in" the world of power need to reflect a bit more on the supposed backwardness of the "Third World." People here die of undereating because some of us who have made it to the "First World" die of overeating. There is a connection here. Let us not piss on people who pay the price for our comforts and for our "development." They are our people."
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