The Lounge - To kill a mocking lizard!
- Tue 08 Sep, 2009 9:19 am Post subject: To kill a mocking lizard!
Like most women, my wife too detests lizards. Whenever she sees one in our house, she wants me to kill it there and then. Finding them mostly harmless �?????�????�???�??�?�¢?? in fact they do us a favour by having mosquitoes and flies for lunch and dinner �?????�????�???�??�?�¢?? I ask my wife to at least give the poor reptile a fair trial.
But no sir, nothing doing. They have to be heartlessly slaughtered by yours truly no matter what. These extra-judicial killings of lizards has, unfortunately, turned me into a reluctant expert at killing them. But it wasn�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t always like that.
Years ago I just couldn�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t get myself around to killing lizards and had to fetch my chawkidar to do the honours.
Though he did kill them, he always followed up the ritual by saying, �?????�????�???�??�?�¢??Why kill lizards? They bring good luck.�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??
He is a pious man who prays and recites the Quran regularly. And in spite of the fact that pious men do not bode well with my awkward sceptical disposition, I always found this superstition of his rather endearing. However, recently my sister (who also, of course, hates lizards), told me a related tale about another very pious man.
The gentleman works as a driver for my sister and her husband. She told me how he simply loves slaughtering lizards. Why? Well, according to him, every devout Muslim should kill a lizard the moment he sees one because the killing is ordered by a so-called text! So, on the one hand I have a pious Muslim who thinks lizards bring good luck, and on the other, I have an equally pious man who believes that beating the hell out of a lizard is akin to a jihad.
That reminds me of the famous Justice Munir Report on the 1954 anti-Ahmadi riots in Lahore. In the course of the inquiry, Justice Munir pointedly asked every Muslim scholar who appeared before him if he knew of a definition of Islam which could be acceptable by the other sects as well; which could equally apply to everyone and by the help of which we could define, �?????�????�???�??�?�¢??Yes, this is a Muslim�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??, and �?????�????�???�??�?�¢??That is not a Muslim�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??.
In the report Munir submits that no two scholars among all Muslim scholars interrogated, agreed on a single definition of what Islam was.
In the case of one particular scholar, he wanted some more time to think over it, and Justice Kayani, who was a partner of Justice Munir in the enquiry commission, said: �?????�????�???�??�?�¢??I cannot give you more time because you have already taken more than fourteen hundred years to ponder over this question. Is that not enough? If fourteen centuries, plus some years are not enough for you to be able to define the very fundamentals of Islam, how much more time would you require?�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??
Anyway, though I entirely loath the driver�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s reason for killing lizards, I can�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t help but say that his pious counterpart, my watchman, is equally irrational in his take on the subject. But what about me, the rational, enlightened, secular lizard killer? What is my take on it? Well, my reasons are aesthetic. My wife finds lizards to be slimy creatures and I tend to agree with her. Maybe that makes us racist.
However, as long as I am rationally conscious of my hypocrisy in this respect and refuse to involve religion in the matter, I think I have hope. As for my two pious friends, well, I hope the watchman retains his pacifist superstitious bearings, but I sincerely hope the driver gets mercilessly bugged by the mosquitoes and the flies that would have been sumptuously gulped down by all the lizards that he disembowelled.
Ah, what a ruthless Darwinist am I.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/03-nadeem-f-paracha-to-kill-a-mocking-lizard-ss-0
- Tue 08 Sep, 2009 4:15 pm Post subject:
I agree totally with you mate, my wife does the same but with spiders, she likes lizards to the contrary, when one steps into the house, she calmly carry it with her hand and move it to the backyard, however I try to move the spiders away without killing it, I consider it a brutal act of killing to kill an insect that does nothing to you, however if the insect may cause any harm like mosquitoes, then most certainly I will kill it without any remorse or mercy