As a Canadian Muslim of Syrian-Arab background who has always felt deep and enduring affinity to Pakistan and its people, I would like to share with my fellow Canadian Pakistani friends my views regarding the merits as well as the demerits of the late BB.

What I admired the most about the late BB is related to four areas. These are:

(1) She seemed to symbolize hope for together with confidence in a Muslim country (Pakistan) where hope and confidence have been, unfortunately, in short supply for a long time. Hope and confidence, like despair and self-doubt, can be contagious. Presently, the world of Islam in general and Pakistan in particular, perhaps more than ever, are in need of forward looking, charismatic, enlightened, intelligent, and well-educated leaders capable of injecting hope and confidence compatible with the enormous challenges of the contemporary world. In this respect, who is better qualified to undertake this noble mission than Pakistan; a country whose very idea, as expounded by the late Muhammad Asad in his book This Law of Ours, was founded on infinite hope and self-confidence? [Strangely enough, not too many Pakistanis, let alone other Muslims, know the late Muhammad Asad who was the son of a Polish Jewish Rabbi, born Leopold Weis on July 2, 1900 in Lwow, Galicia, now in Poland; converted or rather reverted to Islam in 1926 and adopted the name Muhammad Asad; served as Pakistan's Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Nations; participated in the writing of Pakistan's founding Institution; wrote many books, the most outstanding of which are his enchanting Road to Mecca, Islam at the Crossroad, and This Law of Ours; and went on to become one of the most outstanding Islamic scholar of the 20th Century. He died in Spain in 1992, at the heart of the rich and enduring Islamic  legacy in Andalusia, after completing his English translation of, and commentary on the Qur'an, entitled The Message of the Qur'an, considered one of the best, if not the best, of its kind in the English language - The other best two translations are the one by Maulana Muhammad Ali (of the Ahmadiyyah branch of Islam whose adherents, strange as it might seem to the "admirers" of the Bhuttos, were shamelessly declared as "non-Muslims" during the rule of BB's father, the late Zulfikar Bhutto), entitled The Holy Qur'an, and the other is the recently published translation by the American-Iranian female Muslim scholar Laleh Bakhtiar, entitled The Sublime Quran.]

(2) She managed to combine in a profoundly admirable way, the remarkable qualities of the articulate and worldly politician with those of the sophisticated and thoroughly urbane and cosmopolitan intellectual. In this respect. when one looks around over virtually the entire landscape of the Muslim world, one can hardly find a leader who has these badly needed qualities for a truly modern and successful statesman/stateswoman. Just look at the practically illiterate clown Kaddafi of Libya, or the repugnant and thoroughly corrupt small, indeed very small, old Pharaoh of today's Egypt, or the uncouth dictator of Sudan, or the naive, unseasoned, and tribal kings and princes of the Arabian Peninsula, to mention but a few, in order to appreciate the sophistication and cosmopolitan flair of the late BB. To her credit, she used to meet regularly with Tariq Ali who is perhaps one of the most insightful political commentator of our time, with a very deep and remarkable sense of history. Just go and give yourself the chance to read Ali's enchanting and compelling Islam Quartet, namely, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Book of Saladin, The Stone Woman, and A Sultan in Palermo and you would "discover" what I am talking about.

(3) On many occasions, BB demonstrated a great deal of courage and vision. As a case in point, it was the late BB who at the time of the scandalous Satanic Verses' controversy, who had the courage, and wisdom, to advise her fellow Muslims to completely ignore that silly and hardly readable book and to leave its author Salman Rushdi alone. She perceptively advised that "The more you talk about the book, the more blasphemous it becomes." That was, in my view, an unmistakably insightful and intelligent advice that all thoughtful and self-respecting Muslims should have paid heed to BB's warning. Instead, many "thoughtless" Muslims managed to make fools of themselves by reducing their entire faith and its rich and vibrant civilization to a silly and demeaning war (Jihad?) against a writer - thus giving enormous publicity to Rushdi's virtually "unreadable" book; certainly not his best when compared to his Midnight Children and/or Shame. In retrospect, the late BB showed vision, something so many Muslim leaders lack.

(4) Last, but not least, the late BB was an exceedingly beautiful woman. What vibrancy! What elegance! What eloquence! Indeed, what a ravishingly graceful beauty she was! I don't think our contemporary troubled and troubling world has seen a female politician even remotely as beautiful as BB was. And I happened to love beautiful women. This is NOT a sin, but a virtue in a world too "endowed" with ugly stuff, but too "impoverished" when it comes to beauty and grace, especially in the  realm of politics in the Muslim world (Bangladesh's two feuding ladies are but a case in point). This is precisely why I failed to understand how did the late BB allow herself to marry such an UGLY husband as Asif Ali Zardari? For he is not only not handsome, he also devoid of eloquence, sophistication, grace, and even the semblance of honest.

As for BB's demerits, these are in one way or another related to what I would like to describe as the four failures of the state of Pakistan, for which the Bhutto's feudal dynasty bear a great deal of responsibility. These can be summarized as follows:

(1) After almost six decades of independence, during which time the Bhuttos played a considerable role, Pakistan has failed miserably to eradicate illiteracy and/or to alleviate poverty - or even to narrow the widening and demeaning gap between the few rich and the many poor. Feudalism, tribalism, and sectarianism are, unfortunately and tragically, are still "alive and well" in the land of the Pure. That was NOT what the idea  of Pakistan was meant to be. We should always remember that the first word revealed in the Qur'an is IQRA" or READ.

(2) Pakistan has also failed to maintain its unity. Not only the former East Pakistan was replaced by the present deeply troubled state of Bangladesh, but even the very unity of the present state of Pakistan is under threat, more from within than from without. The despotic nature of the ruling regimes that ruled Pakistan for the greater part of its history has contributed to this sad state of affairs. The Bhuttos were, and still are, an integral part of this despotic dilemma.

(3) Pakistan has also failed to establish a stable and sustainable democratic system. Military dictatorship which has ruled pakistan for most of its history has done immeasurable damage to Pakistan and, by extension to the rest of the world of Islam. The longer it stays, the more debilitating dictatorship becomes. More than that, a successfully democratic Pakistan would have a profoundly positive impact on the rest of the Islamic world. In this respect,  The rather undemocratic way by which BB's Party (the PPP) "selected" BB's utterly inexperienced young son Bilawal (who does not even live in Pakistan) to lead his mother's Party  speaks volume about the despotic nature of not only a supposedly "democratic" and "secular"  Party, but also the feudalistic and tribalistic nature of Bhutto's dynasty itself. Has Pakistan, with its close to 170 million inhabitants, become (or rather, being viewed by the ruling elite, i.e., including the Bhuttos of course) , the same as those petty feudal Sheikdoms of the Arabian Peninsula? What has happened to all this seemingly vacuous talk about democracy - and the "revenge" of democracy?

(4) It is unfortunate, indeed tragic, that similar to the ruling elites in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) whose  members tend to feel much stronger affinity to the former colonial power (in this case France) than to their own peoples, the Pakistani ruling elite, particularly the Bhuttos, seem to have greater affinity to the British way of life (especially that of the rich & famous) than to that of the people of Pakistan (affinity to British democratic principles and practices are exempted of course). In this respect, Pakistan, not unlike present day Turkey which has finally re-claimed its Islamic identity, can either become a BIG player within the larger Muslim world, or continues to be an adjunct and hence trivial player within the geo-political strategic design of Britain and the USA. One would hope that a truly democratic Pakistan would opt for the former rather than the latter, as has been been the case since the days of Pakistan's first military dictator the late Muhammad Ayub Khan.    

God bless Pakistan and its noble people.

Ibrahim Hayani