Individual Counts

The prologue of Benazir Bhutto ’s new book ‘Reconciliation: Islam Democracy and the West” declares that BB remained devoted to this inspite of her hectic schedule.The reason for this was ‘ that she was convinced that the battles between democracy and dictatorship and between extremism and moderation were the two central forces of the new millennium.‘Through this book BB wanted to advocate reconciliation between the two.”This book was meant to present some reconciliation measures.

Given that this was the stated objective of the book it is disappointing.In the three hundred some pages of the book BB has essentially done a copy paste job of reproducing portions of Islamic history and Hadiths [saying of Prophet Muhammad.] Anyone having preliminary knowledge of Islamic history would find most of the pages of the book repetitive and certainly not worth the fourteen hundred rupees that the book is selling for.

At the end of a long drawn book some measures for reconciliation have been proposed but they are half baked.BB oscillates from proposing empowering women to having educational reforms to having a middle class as reconciliatory measures.How in her opinion it will lead to reconciliation between extremism and moderation is unclear.

On the whole apart from personal reflections on her return which form about ten pages of the book there is nothing worth reading in the book.Except ofcourse her remark about the PML Q as the party ‘that can’t gather a hundred people voluntarily at a rally even at lunchtime.”

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Pakistan's Political Leaders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.