Lahaute Foundation, Inc.

01/12/2024

When a people take a principled stand, not motivated by allegiances to anything other than human rights, you have this kind of clarity, resolve and character of a society.

Some have called it the most anti-Israeli country in Europe, others view it as the most pro-Palestinian country in the EU : ...

10/26/2023

Person with a conscience!

The war between Israel and Hamas has caused an eruption of anger and grief in many corners of the world. It has also launched governments into action with th...

10/23/2023

Do you believe in universal human rights? This is about Gaza.

But do these exist in Pakistan? We do not need an Israeli army. We have our own to deny us our basic human rights. We have our own army to abduct citizens, torture them, deny them due process, deny them all basic human rights. A human right to protection by law that defends its fundamental rights; a human right to dignity and self respect, a human right to self defence, a human right to protection and safety, a human right to freedom of speech, to have an opinion and voice it without fear of retribution, a human right to live free from fear of the powerful.
We don't need an Israeli army, we have our own. It has usurped all human rights of its own people, who share the same motherland, the same religion, the same language n culture.

We don't need an Israeli army, we
have our own!

10/22/2023

President Biden will visit Israel on Wednesday in an unprecedented show of support for the country following last week's surprise attack by Hamas that killed...

10/22/2023

"Of lies n deceptions", an apt title applicable equally to a number of narratives woven in the world today. Stand with Truth n Justice. Stand with those suffering!

OF LIES AND DECEPTIONS1. President Joe Biden’s statement regarding the bombing of the hospital in Gaza was from a misfired Palestinian rocket is totally ridi...

10/19/2023

The inhumanity humans are capable of! The oppressed are made to suffer further for asking for their God given human rights. In our lives who do we stand with?
This single event alone captures the horrific aftermath of absolute evil that comes to be when the hearts are blind.
Stand with this Palestinian mother, this father, the little sister in their moments......May all those suffering be in the Divine Embrace eternally, ameen

A Palestinian doctor was forced to identify the body of one of his sons, in the hospital where he was working, after he was killed in an Israeli air strike.D...

10/13/2023

When the soul is a truth seeker, you get people like like Gabor Mate!

As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the N**i genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such...

10/06/2023

What is generosity of spirit?
Let Khalil Gibran speak!

Keywords:Khalil Gibran, Gloria Steinem, Henry Ford, C.S. Lewis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paulo Coelho, Theodore Roosevelt, John C. Maxwell, Plato, Confucius, Ano...

10/06/2023

"The danger of a single story" I share here is worth your time. Listen.
The same can be said about Pakistan, Muslims, any community or person. The same power politics come into play from the micro to the macro level. Those with loud voices will voice their single story. Whether that is to reduce another complex, multifaceted human being to a single trait or to narrowly conceptualize a group of people with mere socioeconomic status as the viewing lens.

But who says that socioeconomic status is the most relevant aspect of a human being? The Divine Speech says it certainly is not. So say all the prophets, sages, and philosophers I call 'enlightened.' Even our innate human nature testifies to this: your character or personal traits are the most defining aspect of your existence. Yet, this convenient single-story attitude marks our way of being in this world. We have placed people in reductionist narratives of our liking and treat them accordingly.

At the macro level, those who have studied critical race theory and classic and quite necessary texts such as Edward Said's "Orientalism" or Faucault's texts like "The Order of Things" have written on the roots in academia and can easily relate to the points this wonderful writer-speaker is making. Or our sages from the Sub-continent like Iqbal, Bulleh Shah, and the likes of these truly knowing have spoken much on the roots of the self and knowing the self and warned of the perils of not knowing. As people living in Pakistan, we have internalized a dangerous narrative. People are sorted and placed in categories of hierarchies based on a single narrative that we constantly insist upon and lead our lives accordingly: the single narrative I speak of is judging people according to their socioeconomic status. The complex self with the Divine Breath is absent from this dangerous view.

If we were to revert to the discerning mode that God posits is the true worth of a person, then we would not admire, enable, or support people who are financially well-off and morally corrupt. But the state of things is such that we prostrate before the morally corrupted because we are projecting our lack of values and our single more predominant criteria of judging people, i.e.,e. money. The problem is when we weigh ourselves and other people through this single aspect of our lives, one that is but only material in its worth and hence has a shelf life, we not only diminish our own worth as a person gifted by the Divine, we invalidate the value of others who are equally gifted if not more. Talking of giftedness, ironically, where we are born, to whom, and what potential gifts we are given, none of that is our doing. Yet, we pride ourselves on what we have not earned. We acknowledge deep down God's rationale for the single most apt dimension of a human being that ultimately elevates or diminishes the self, and it is that immaterial good that is eternal, i.e., the character. But, in our daily lives, the way we glance at people without even being conscious of our habit, how often our discerning lens is this single dimension of a person? Until this is the lens we have on, we are far from our aspiration of being a decent human being, let alone our grandiose views of ourselves as being elevated. The danger of this reductionist and faulty view is losing the self, and, hence, losing in the very trial we are journeying through in our very short human existence.

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

09/29/2023

Have you encountered this way of being, when one is stingy and hard with the oppressed n suffering, and so generous before the well off and arrogant? If one reflects, one may encounter it through one's own acts or through other's. To see it in our own acts is harder, but it reveals, our affinity to truth is not irreparably damaged.
Live a life of reflection so we may be given insight into truths.

Sharing a moving story below.

The old seller replied, '$0.25 an egg, Madam.'She said to him, 'I will take 6 eggs for $1.25 or I will leave.'The old seller replied, 'Come take them at the price you want. Maybe, this is a good beginning because I have not been able to sell even a single egg today.'She took the eggs and walked a...

06/02/2023

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Reparations for 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors and Descendants

05/25/2023

The Pharaonic Paradigm

It is the 24th of May in the US. My day begins with yet another heart-rending image, in a series of horrific images that we as ex-pats must see for the love of our land compels us; Shireen Mizari, a woman of principles, courage, a strong voice for human rights, and the most highly educated (all genders inclusive) ex-minister of Pakistan is forced to leave not just PTI but all politics.

I am drawn to the Pharaonic Paradigm. Those familiar with the Quranic Divine Speech, even at a very cursory level, know there is no paradigm, a pattern in the human psyche, individual or collective, which will persist as the Pharaonic. But first, what and why of this paradigm; what did Pharaoh exemplify? And so the question arises what did Moses stand for? God presents the two as two people of opposing stances; the former has allegiance to the SELF, Moses to The Truth-Justice-Reality-God. I use hyphenation because the Arabic word ‘Al-Haqq’ encapsulates the semantics of the Ultimate Principle, the Divine. As to why one wonders, God sees it necessary to bring this narrative up so many times in His Speech, although each instance appears to highlight a different aspect within a specific context.

In our contemporary language, the term closest to the Pharaonic Paradigm is Narcissism. When the love of the Self turns into worshipping the Self. When one does not stand for principles of truth, justice, reality, one is standing in opposition to God. One becomes the earthly god, the false god. Its contrary is the Mosaic stance. When one speaks up for truth, for justice, and hence for Divine Principles, one is standing up for the transcendentals, what is high above us in sanctity and honor. These principles are granted to us as Divine gifts in our very innateness. Even a child has a sense of fairness and unfairness, of truth and falsehood. But we get corrupted within our families, within our societies. We start compromising on these innate principles, diluting truth, covering up or falsifying truth. In doing so, we become unjust. And when we make a habit of it, we get better at it. We realize we can get for our SELVES what we want through aggression, coercion, manipulation, falsification, and deception, all of which are species of ugliness. This SELF-SERVING ugliness.

The mosaic stance, on the other hand, is a paradigm when a human being rises above Self-serving attitudes and stands up for principles of Truth and Justice. In doing so, the human being is standing with Beauty-God. Often, we approach the narratives of the Quran as stories of the past, which God explicitly corrects. So, the Pharaonic-Mosaic discourse shall persist throughout human existence. We have the potential of both. And often, I believe we are in every moment somewhere in the continuum between the two polarities of the Self-serving stance and the principled stance.
We all have within our psyche the potential of the Pharaonic stance, or its contrary, the Mosaic stance. Our very short journey on this earthly life is the actualization of the Mosaic stance and our opposition to the Pharaonic. Hence, the famous prophetic saying that jihad bi’al nafs is the biggest struggle. The battle with the Pharaoh within, the ‘I’.
It is not a story of the bygone era. It is my story and yours and that of every human being that will tread this earth. We all are in this battle every moment. It is the most intimate, uniquely personal, critical struggle of all. Yet, it is the most universal. Each one of us is a unique being in unique contexts and situations. In that sense it is particular, but because we all go through it, it is universal. The fact is, this enduring human struggle will be the making a Moses and of a Pharaoh within us. This is the ultimate battle.
Now, as we return to Shireen Mizari and every one of those who stood up for the principles of social justice, desiring a fair and just society, all equal under one law, equal human rights; right to self-determination, equal dignity of every human being, the rights of the weak and the underserved. We also see those subjugating the weak and defenseless women, children, elderly, sick, mentally or physically challenged---no exemption---through blackmail, force, oppression, tyranny, and lies. Pharoah threatened to crucify those who dared to question his authority. We see the living Pharaonic paradigm at its height in current Pakistan. But let us not distance it for our convenience. We are in this discursive battle in every waking moment of our lives.
I learned that to date more than 10,000 human souls who chose to stand up for social justice, to raise their voices, are locked up tyrannically by today’s Pharaohs. We each have a right to our personal voice. A voice that originates deep within my soul after the tribunal within adjudicates and forms a reasoned judgment. What gives anyone a right to take that away? If God had wished, he could have everyone believing in Him. But He chose to grant us the Human Will. This means, that the Divine granted us the right to determine whether I will prostrate before Truth-Justice-Reality-Beauty that is God. Or, whether I will choose to prostrate before my ‘Self’. Whoever takes these Divinely granted rights away, has tread too far on the Pharaonic Way.