Tuesday 20 March 2012

Profile: Zaid Hamid



Biography

Zaid Hamid was born in Karachi on March 14, 1964. His father, Col. Zaman Hamid (Retd), served in the Pakistan Army. Zaid spent his early life in Karachi. He received a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree in Computer Systems Engineering from NED University, Karachi in 1980's.

According to the brochure published by BrassTacks, available on the website www.zaidhamid.pk. Zaid Hamid rose to the fore when he started a program named Brass Tacks on a TV channel, discussing “Economic Terrorism, CIA Threats to Pakistan, Zionist Wars against Islam and Role of Spiritual Forces in War”.
The brochure also proudly states that, “The International think tanks and media, especially the Americans and Iranians have distinctively noticed him as well. A New York Times article and documentary specially featured the impact his so falsely termed "conspiracy theories" have on the Pakistani youth”

Claim to Fame

Zaid Hamid proudly confesses taking part in the Afghan “Jihad” (which was funded by American Money and Israeli weaponry. Khulla Tazad?). Since then he has been working at Brass Tacks, a security analysis company. After the show on ARY news, he also did a show named “Iqbal ka Pakistan” on Aag TV (that program has been reviewed thoroughly by myself which can be seen here).  We will see a sample of one of the reports of BrassTacks and my comments on that afterwards.

The “Confidential Weekly Edition: Pakistan Security and Political Situation Report & Threat Analysis© 2011 BrassTacks. All Rights Reserve Issued on April 24th, 2011” available here(despite being termed confidential) states that

“What is most unfortunate is that it is the Pakistani PM who is acting as Indian Information minister and doing the bidding for the enemy state. Now it is clear that Pakistan and India would go to war on water in not so far future! With summers approaching and water shortage hitting the vital food crops, the temperature on diplomatic and military axis would also rise rapidly. Proxy war between Pakistan and India is now heating up in the entire region with regional countries also becoming the battle ground for Indian total war on Pakistani state. It is incredible that how Indian foreign office, information ministry and their leadership maintain a friendly face towards Pakistan while attacking Pakistan on all economic, diplomatic and military axis in the entire region.”

It further informs us that,
“Pakistan is not a monolithic state like Iran or Saudi Arabia rather its sectarian demography contains a sizeable Shia population among the majority Sunni. This Shia populace is well integrated with Pakistani society and is playing a vital role in
progress and development.”

Yes, Shia populace is SOO well-integrated in Pakistani Society that thousands of Shias have been killed in the last 20 years and there has not been any sectarian violence in this “Land of Peace”.
The Broucher also provides the details of Zaid Hamid’s appearances in media, and that he has appeared in multiple episodes of Thori si Siyasat with his lackey, Ahmad Qureshi.
The website zaidhamid.pk also informs us
 “Welcome to our battle station in a war to defend Pakistan's Islamic ideology and national identity! This is our platform and weapon system to launch the counter attack against ideological subversion by the hostile forces through the axis of disinformation and propaganda warfare.” The website www.brasstacks.pk has only one working page, the rest is “Under Construction”.

Antagonists

Another very useful website is http://zaidhamidexposition.org/who-is-zaid-hamid/ which was instrumental in bringing his drama to a premature end in 2008-09. The problem was that this website based all its hatred and opposition of Zaid Hamid on some previous blasphemy charges of his. He successfully reinvented himself a few months after that because you just cannot fight illogical people with illogical claims. Very few serious attempts were done to understand and destroy the utopian fallacies being propagated by Zaid Hamid.

Zaid Hamid has been exposed and ridiculed in the media by columnists Fasi Zaka(whom ZH had accused of being a Jewish agent because he was a Fulbright Scholar), Nadeem Farooq Paracha and Mohammad Haneef. He has also been parodied multiple times on the Four Man Show. Despite all these efforts, he still was invited on TV channels as a “Political Analyst” while he has advocated an Anti-politician bias throughout his programs and speeches. Last year, he appeared in a program with Marvi Sirmed in which he tried to defend his delusions and myths propagated in history by the establishment.

Recently, in a program on Express News, Zaid Hamid was dealt expertly by Hasan Nisar and Ali Chishti. They ruthlessly exposed his baseless claims and so-called ideology by using facts. Not surprisingly, the very next day, Hasan Nisar was labeled as a “RAW agent” and “Anti-Pakistani, depression-creator Traitor” on the Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid[Official] page. (Interestingly, Zaid Hamid re-branded himself as “Syed” after his prosecution based on alleged links with Yousaf Kazzab, to show the world that he in-fact is a big Aashiq-e-Rasool.)
In Zaid Hamid’s universe, anyone that does not agree with him is either a traitor or Anti-Pakistan/Anti-Islam/RAW agent/Zionist.

Zaid Hamid’s Views/Ideology:

Zaid Hamid advocates the establishment of Khilafah and an Iranian style revolution. He is staunchly anti-democracy. He wants the Gold Standard back. He wants to “conquer” India. He has a different definition for “Zionists” and labels everyone whom he dislikes as a Zionist. He was one of the proponents of the “Good Taliban/Bad Taliban” theory.
 He thinks Allama Iqbal was not a human being but a “spiritual” super-human. He is openly pro-establishment and wants Army to take over the political system until the Khalifa arrives. He thinks Muslims can form a political bloc to fight against the “immoral, corrupt and conspiring West”. He believes that the cause of floods in Pakistan was some secret Indian/American mission. He thinks Baloch Insurgents and TTP are foreign-funded. Zaid Hamid has changed his positions many times as well. There was no mention of Khilafah in his earlier programs, but after the “Kazzab” allegations, he took up a new name, changed his identity to a hyper-national, Spiritual, Dynamic person. In short, he is the Glenn Beck of Pakistan, without the black-board that is. Our worry is not that Zaid Hamid will get a chance to rule this country, our worry is that main stream politicians like Imran Khan have espoused the same ideologies as Zaid Hamid and this trend needs to be checked(If you do not believe this, please do watch the show Iqbal ka Pakistan, in which Imran Khan was invited to the show in episode 4 as a guest and apart from other similarities, Zaid Hamid used the word “tsunami” as a political force in episode 21). Fringe players like Zaid Hamid are present in almost every country, they shouldn’t be allowed though to enter the mainstream and affect National Discourse.

(also published at Pak Tea House)

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