So this morning, I watched about half of a TV talk show on Dunya TV featuring our friend Mosharraf Zaidi, our decided non-friend Ansar Abbasi, Marvi Memon and a journo based in London named Ayesha Ejaz Khan. The show was meant to be 60 minutes but I could only get through about 30, because it was very stupid and a complete waste of time. Here is the entire show for those who are particularly into sadomasochism (parts 2 and 3 are really the operative ones if you’re concerned with making your blood boil).

 

Anyway, as you may have surmised, watching Ansar Abbai claim that the entire WikiLeaks saga was a grand US conspiracy meant to spread hate amongst Muslim peoples around the world annoyed the hell out of me. (Did he ever consider that there’s plenty of hate amongst Muslim peoples for each other, with or without US help?). He said several other inane things, but that was really the gist of it.

Of course, as a result of this, I let Mr. Ansar Abbasi know exactly what I think of him on Twitter: I called him “disgusting” and a “kameenay aur jahil insaan”. To this he responded “Sending abusive tweets is what liberals do. Freedom of expression?”

To be fair, I do regret my use of the word “Kameenay” and I apologize for it (I stand by “disgusting” and “jahil” though). [Major oops. The Ansar Abbasi twitter profile is a fake. My bad.] However, one interesting issue that I want to deal with here is this whole idea of being civil and reasonable with those we disagree with.

The thing is, I completely agree with being reasonable and tolerant of other people’s opinions, and I am pretty tolerant for the most part — being at grad school sort of forces this upon you, even if you are not personally inclined that way. However, there is a big difference between respecting other people’s opinions (which I think I do) and respecting other people’s facts (which I do not and will not).

You see, people like Ansar Abbasi (and Hamid Mir and Javed Chaudhary and basically anyone who works in cable news in Pakistan) simply make stuff up. They assert things which are untrue. I don’t know if I can say it more plainly: they lie. More than that, they spread hate and bigotry and intolerance all over our country, and then have the temerity to ask for tolerance of their beliefs.

Well, I’m sorry, but I refuse to respect this. You don’t get to say the type of things these people do — remember, it wasn’t that long ago that a Geo employee could be directly linked to the Taliban’s murder of Khalid Khwaja — and be “respected”. On everything from violence against Ahmedis to blasphemy laws to rape laws to the war to whatever, these people deliver callous and hateful sermons from their media perches every day, and then they want “respect”.

Why should I (or anyone else) do that? Why should these “opinions” be respected, and why should disagreement with them be done in anything other than vehement and vociferous terms? Yes, it is a fair question of where exactly the line is between “opinion” and “baseless nonsense” and I don’t really know the answer to that question. But I do know that Ansar Abbasi is on the wrong side of it.

It’s ironic that one of the guests of the show today was Mosharraf. This past summer, we had quite a lengthy chat at my place in Karachi (he was in town for a week with his family and stayed at our place). I remember the talk being about civility and reasonableness and what not. Mosharraf has an inner Obama to him on this stuff; he refuses to get angry or uncivil as it were with people he disagrees with. This is evinced by his nice-and-sweet tweets after the show, where he said “Thanks for all the feedback and words of support. Wish we’d had a more substantive discussion about #Cablegate” and followed up with “Pakistani media is diverse and by far the freeest media in the Muslim world. By a country mile. Don’t hate.”

Anyway, during our summer conversation, Mosharraf kept trying to impress upon me the wisdom of respecting one’s opponents and dealing with them gracefully. Well, sorry, but episodes like today show why such a strategy is completely useless. Do you think people like Ansar Abbasi are convinced by reason and civility and gentle prodding? Please. You can’t teach stupid, and you can’t unteach it either. Hateful bigots deserve mocking and scorn and hate in return. They’re not going to change their mind either way, but at least you let them know you’re not a pushover.

I mean, think of the lack of balance in the media in Pakistan. We liberals are forced to listen to these insane and crazy people, day in day out. We have no choice. But how often do you think they hear a real, liberal opinion? Once a day? Once a week? Never? Isn’t the Pakistani electronic media just one giant echo chamber, where anti-minority, anti-politician, anti-American and anti-Indian “journalists” get together and basically try to outflank each other’s craziness?

Think about it: they’re not forced to hear us the way we’re forced to hear them. And politely tapping them on the shoulder is not going to get to them. They outnumber us, and their power obviously dwarfs ours; if we be just nice and cuddly, they altogether ignore us. So, yeah, I’m not going to do that.