University Professor Zia Ullah Hamdard ka university sy istefey k baad interview

PESHAWAR: Being a teacher is hard work. Early hours, heavy workloads, angry parents, and disinterested students are just some of the things teachers put up with. But they stick to it, hoping to help mould their students into better human beings. So what happens when it doesn’t work out that way?Just ask Ziaullah Hamdard.A lecturer at Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (AWKUM), Hamdard decided to quit teaching and resigned from lectureship after the brutal lynching of his student Mashal Khan.His reason is straightforward.“How can I go on teaching when my students have become murderers,” Hamdard told The Express Tribune in an exclusive interview.

Fighting the good fight

Before the harrowing incident that led Hamdard to resign, he had already been struggling in the face of adversity for years. Born into a middle-class family in K-P, Hamdard – after the loss of his older brother to cancer –became the sole breadwinner for his entire family and still bears the expenses of his deceased brother’s children. He completed his education from first grade to intermediate-level in an orphanage due to financial constraints.

People I trusted would teach my son, killed him: Mashal’s father

The 28-year-old eventually completed a master’s in journalism from University of Peshawar (UOP) and went to the US to complete a one-year diploma in Broadcasting and International Politics from City College, San Francisco under the prestigious Fulbright programme. He then joined AWKUM as a lecturer, while also enrolling in an MPhil in media studies programme at UOP.“He used to work as a painter after his intermediate education to cover his educational and household expenses,” said one of his friends, adding that he was always committed to becoming the best teacher in the university.

“He is Hafiz-e-Quran, an Urdu poet and has full command over Arabic language, Urdu, Pashtu, Spanish and English,” his friend tells The Express Tribune.“It really hurt me [When I heard Hamdard] on television,” said Professor Altafullah Khan, a former chairman of the journalism department at UOP who taught Hamdard. He was referring to how university students confronted their teacher before the lynching.

He said he had known Hamdard for many years and always found him to be a straightforward, diverse and intelligent person, adding that it hurt him to learn that they young man lost his flair for teaching after the incident.

Hang my son if he is involved in Mashal’s lynching, says Asfandyar Wali

“We have few professors in Pakistani varsities who are prolific readers with strong academic backgrounds to teach and educate students. Hamdard was one of them,” Khan concluded.

Finding, and losing, a calling

Hamdard worked as an editor for PTV and Radio Pakistan in Peshawar for a while and was also the project coordinator of “Dialogue with the Muslim world: the changing role of social media” – a joint cultural venture of UOP and University of Erfurt, Germany.But he soon moved on to teaching, which he happily did for four years until that fateful day last week.Hamdard who was also the spokesperson of the University Teachers’ Association,

told The Express Tribune that the association have always decried irregularities in AWKUM and always wanted things to be streamlined, but no one was listening. “Now everyone wants me to speak on the brutal killing and the flaws in the administrative set up of the varsity,” he lamented.He said administration would always blame him for being “negative-minded” and accuse him of having some political motivations behind his criticism of the administration, but now the entire country can see that there were serious issues.

Probe finds no proof of blasphemy against Mashal

“If the people and the media have paid attention to the issues in the university earlier, the incident (Mashal’s killing) wouldn’t have happened,” he laments, adding that, he does not want to be a hero, but only wants to present the facts around the incident he bore witness to so that they would remain on record.Hamdard also gave a worrying reminder of the intolerance rooted at the heart of the lynching.

“Teaching and studying subjects such as public speaking, intercultural communication, mass communication theory, media and society in the department are linked to how society can be diverse so as to absorb each other opinions,” said Hamdard. “Yet, this incident of intolerance happened”.