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Dear
Zahir Anwar,
You have asked me about the birth and growth
of the Family of the Heart. It has been an exciting experience for me to
see the family grow from ten to one hundred members in only three years.
It all started when my dear friend
Dr. Dennis Isaac
and his charming wife Maria moved from Pakistan to Canada with their
children and made Toronto their new home. I wanted to welcome them and
introduce them to some of my creative friends hoping that it would help
them integrate in the new country and culture.
So I invited nearly ten poets, writers and
intellectuals for dinner and introduced them to Dennis and Maria. After
dinner I asked all of them to share their poetry. Most of my Canadian poet
friends had known Dennis as a playwright as they had enjoyed his plays on
Pakistani Television, but did not know that he also wrote poetry. It
turned out to be a wonderful evening far beyond my expectations. People
enjoyed the meeting so much that they wanted to do it again and Pervaiz
Salahuddin suggested that we all meet at his house the next month. I
suggested that we ask Dennis to sing a few ghazals as people did
not know that he was also an accomplished musician and singer. When we met
at Pervaiz and
Neelofer’s house it transformed into a mushaira as well as a
musical evening. Like the first meeting people thoroughly enjoyed the
informal atmosphere of sharing wonderful poems, songs and stories. That
evening was a great success.
After the second meeting
Fozia Butt and
Mubarika Shakoor, our enthusiastic female family members, suggested
that we should meet in a restaurant where there would be a buffet so that
every member could pay for their own meal. We did not want one member to
shoulder the financial burden for the whole group. We also realized that
when the evening was arranged in somebody’s house the hosts were so
preoccupied with the arrangements that they could not fully enjoy the
evening. The other factor was that in the restaurant people felt free to
invite their friends and family members and pay for the dinner without
worrying about burdening the hosts. So the buffet arrangement in a
restaurant turned out to be a useful and practical suggestion.
During the first poetry and musical evening
in a restaurant Pervaiz was approached by
Rubina and
Faisal, a lovely couple, in the restaurant who had come there to have
dinner. When they heard the poetry and music they wanted to be part of the
group and come for future meetings. By this time the number had increased
from ten to thirty so Pervaiz prepared a list of names and email addresses
to inform members of the dates and times of the future meetings.
Since Pervaiz is an inter-net and website
wizard, he prepared a special section in my website of
Family of the Heart Clinic and
put the names and pictures of all the friends who regularly came to the
meetings. Since we did not have an identity for the group I suggested the
name Family of the Heart and everybody liked it. I suggested that name
because it reflected a personal, intimate and affectionate relationship
between friends rather than any reference to religious, linguistic or
nationalistic affiliation.
In the next few months in our regular
meetings a number of poets and writers presented their creations for an
honest and sincere feedback. I remember those evenings when
Shakila Rafiq,
Rubina Faisal,
Faisal Farani and
Nasir Shah presented their stories,
Jawaid Danish
presented his play,
Amrik Zirvi shared his essay and
Afzaal Naweed,
Nasreen Syed,
Kaleem Zafar,
and Rafi Raza
shared his poetry while
Rasheed Nadeem,
Atif Shikoh,
Shahid Akhtar,
Dennis Isaac and many others offered
their critical reviews.
During that time when Family of the Heart
was growing my book
From Islam to Secular Humanism…A
Philosophical Journey was published. Pervaiz shared the book with a
number of colleagues and friends. After they read the book, Abbas Jaffery
and many other friends invited me to their homes for dinner and got
engaged in an in-depth discussion about my book. I was surprised to find
out that there were a number of Muslims who had left Islam in their hearts
but were reluctant to share their truth publicly. They were afraid of the
social reaction. My book and my interviews on radio and television gave
them some encouragement and inspiration to express their views openly and
candidly. As those discussions became more intimate and passionate we
started meeting at
Rafiq Sultan’s house every Sunday evening
to share our thoughts and discuss the books we had read. So weekly
meetings became the meetings of the Nuclear Family and the monthly
meetings became the meetings of the Extended Family of the Heart. We are
always appreciative of
Rafiq Sultan’s
family who welcome us with an open mind and an open heart.
Over the months I gradually realized that in
our family there was a core group that enjoyed the serious discussions
about the ideological and philosophical issues. So when I started writing
my book
Prophets of Violence and Peace in
which I reviewed the biographies of reformers and revolutionaries of 20th
century, I shared the chapters of my book in the meetings. When it was
announced that I was going to review the biographies of
Gandhi,
Tagore,
Jinnah,
Iqbal and
Ataturk, a number of Indian intellectuals like
Khursheed Ahmed, a peace activist and
Subuhi Ansari, a serious scholar of the
psychology of religion and politics, came to the meetings as they were
curious what would a Pakistani writer say about Indian leaders. Those
meetings were very productive and thought provoking. I encouraged friends
to review my articles and it created an atmosphere of a serious dialogue
among the family. I was impressed that we could have serious disagreements
about religious and political issues in a respectful way.
Finally those meetings culminated in a
seminar on the subject of
Islam, Muslims and 21st Century
in which we asked five friends to present their articles and asked other
five members to review those articles. It was thought provoking to listen
to the passionate essays written by
Akber Chaudhry,
Javed Chaudhry,
Najib Qazmi,
Rashid Mughal and
Tahir Qazi and equally passionate reviews
by
Subuhi Ansari,
Zia Uddin Ahmed,
Nasir Shah,
Khursheed Ahmed and
Masud Sheikh. We made sure that the
believers and non-believers were equally respected and given equal
opportunity to express their views openly and honestly. Some people were
surprised to see that an atheist like me was respectful of believers. I
shared with them that being a Secular Humanist I respect all faiths but I
wish that believers be also respectful of non-believers. I believe in not
only freedom of religion but also freedom from religion.
That seminar provided an opportunity for friends to have a genuine and
sincere dialogue.
We are all very indebted to Pervaiz as his
dedication to update the website on a regular basis, arrange the meetings
and inform everybody about the meetings has been a great help in the
growth of the family. Even those members who could not attend the seminar
were able to read the papers on the website and share with their friends.
We were pleased to receive complementary letters not only from other
friends in North America, but also from Europe and Asia. It seems Pervaiz
has been able to connect with hundreds of members all over the world.
When we started sharing our thoughts in
English we enlarged the circle of the family, and those Canadian friends
could also become part of the meetings who did not understand Urdu, Hindi
and Punjabi. We were surprised last month when a friend Arif Razvi, who
was visiting his family in Toronto from USA expressed a desire to meet us
during his Christmas Holidays. It was a pleasant surprise and proved to us
that Pervaiz’s efforts are reaching friends in different parts of the
world through our website. We also try to arrange a special meeting if a
creative friend is visiting from another country. We had special meetings
when
Sain Sucha was visiting from Sweden,
Abrar Hasan from France and
Sohun Qadri from Denmark..
We have encouraged not only poetry and music
but also other forms of art. In one meeting we had a painting exhibition
of
Youngo Verma, a well-respected artist
from India, alongside our poetry recital and
musical evening.
While we were having serious discussions
about politics, religion and philosophy, we met a number of journalists
who were courageous enough to publish some of the controversial and
thought provoking articles.
Rafiq Sultan translated some of the
chapters of my book in Urdu and
Adnan Hashmi published them in his newspaper.
It seems that in the last three years the
family has not only grown from ten to hundred but also touched friends all
over the world. Since there are no elections and no office bearers, there
is a very friendly atmosphere in the meetings, an atmosphere of
cooperation rather than confrontation, an atmosphere of acceptance rather
than judgment and an atmosphere of encouragement and inspiration rather
than rivalry and jealousy. I was so impressed by friends volunteering
freely for different activities. They are all so generous in sharing their
time, energy and money when needed.
In the last few months, different
journalists, who were curious about our members and meetings, approached
us. A Canadian journalist
Gabrielle Bauer interviewed some of the
members and listened to their life stories as she was preparing for an
article on Secular Muslims for a Canadian magazine Saturday Night. One of
our journalist friends
Radhika was asked by her colleague
Ujjwal Bhatacharya
to interview me for his Hindi Program with German Radio.
Ujjwal, a poet and a
journalist, was quite impressed to know that we have a group where people
from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds get together and
have a genuine dialogue about our philosophies and lifestyles. During my
interview I shared that in the world of intolerance, prejudice and holy
wars, we are lucky to have an island, where Family of the Heart meets
regularly and Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Agnostics and Atheists
share their art and creativity and have intellectually stimulating
discussions.
When I look at our meetings and see more
than hundred people getting together and enjoying themselves, I feel good
that the family tree has taken roots and now giving fruits of creativity,
friendship, tolerance, dialogue and peace. Through the
website those fruits reach others who cannot attend the
meetings. I feel especially thrilled when I see those friends sharing
their creative products who have never shared their poetry and songs in
public. They feel encouraged by the informal family atmosphere of the
meetings. Having dinners and discussions and dialogues the family provides
the food not only for the bodies but also for the minds and souls. Family
of the heart has also developed a wonderful sense of humour. When a small
group goes out to have a cigarette, they call themselves Family of the
Lungs.
Being a writer and a psychotherapist I
always believed that growth was a natural process. Creative gifts are like
seeds of the tree. If we provide them with fertile soil, fresh air and
proper sunshine then those seeds are inspired to grow and blossom. That is
what we are seeing the Family of the Heart. We are providing people an
atmosphere where friends are encouraged to share a new idea, a new poem, a
new concept and a new point of view. We encourage a genuine dialogue and
following the tradition of Socrates we realize that a genuine dialogue is
one way of finding truth and also a meaningful way to get to know each
other.
On 12th of March 2004, we are
planning to have another seminar on the subject of Women’s Liberation, Men
and 21st century in which speakers would discuss men/women
relationships from a religious, cultural, social and personal points of
view, relating to the dynamics of the contemporary world. There is already
a lot of enthusiasm expressed in that seminar and many friends are looking
forward to the evening. Azad Danish, a wonderful poet and musician had
conducted our last meeting of poetry and music, and our respected friend
Zia Uddin Ahmed, who has won people’s hearts by his impressive
English translations of Ghalib’s poetry, would coordinate our next
seminar.
Dear Zahir,
Although you live in Calcutta, India,
thousands of miles away from Toronto but we feel connected to you and many
other friends including
Rafi Aamir and Nauroz Arif from America,
Dr. Saadat Saeed from Turkey,
Nasar Malik from Denmark,
Ujjwal Bhatacharya
from Germany and
Naeem Sadiq from Pakistan and many others
as the
Family of the Heart is gradually becoming
a tribe, a tribe of friends from different languages, religions and
cultures, who want to share their creative ideas and products and would
like to join us in breaking down walls of prejudice and intolerance and
build bridges of compassion, creativity, dialogue, peace and love. We hope
that all friends from other countries could come and join us in one of our
meetings.
Affectionately,
Sohail
January 2004
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