www.sacw.net
- July 24, 2006 >
Citizens
Action & Ideas for
Peace in South Asia
Pakistan: Waiting
For Enligtenment
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
The centrepiece of Pakistan’s relationship with the West
since September 11, 2001, has been dubbed "enlightened
moderation" by its president and philosopher-general, Pervez
Musharraf. Under his rule, Musharraf claims, Pakistan has rejected the
orthodox, militant, violent Islam imposed by the previous
chief of army staff to seize power in Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq (who
ruled from 1977-1988), in favour of a more 'modern'
and 'moderate' Islam. But Musharraf's
actions, and those of his government and its allies, are often at odds
with this. In fact, after almost five years of 'enlightened
moderation,' it seems there is more continuity than change.
And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy
can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming
Pakistani society.
No one doubts that there have been some changes for the good. There is
a perceptible shift in institutional practices and inclinations. Heads
of government organizations are no longer required to lead noon prayers
as in the 1980's; female announcers with undraped heads
freely appear on Pakistan Television; to the relief of many passengers
thickly bearded stewards are disappearing from PIA flights; the first
women fighter pilots have been inducted into the Pakistan Air Force.
More importantly, in early July 2006, Musharraf directed the Council of
Islamic Ideology to draft an amendment to the controversial Hudood
Ordinance, put in place by General Zia-ul-Haq and not repealed by any
of the civilian governments that ruled from 1988 to 1999. This law
gives women a lower legal status and punishes the victims of
rape. Repeal of these anti-women laws has been a long
standing demand of Pakistani women's groups. A vastly
overdue--but nevertheless welcome--action was taken
by the government when it released in July hundreds of women prisoners
arrested under the Hudood Ordinance, many of whom had spent years
awaiting their trial.
But the force of these pluses cannot outweigh the many more weighty
minuses. General Musharraf has formally banned some of many Jihadi
groups that the Pakistan army has helped train and arm for over two
decades, but they still operate quite freely. After the October
earthquake, some of these extremist groups in Kashmir seized the
opportunity of relief work to fully reestablish and expand their
presence. Exploiting Musharraf's ambivalence, they openly
flaunted their banners and weapons in all major towns of Azad Kashmir
and fully advertised their strength. Some obtained relief materials
from government stocks to pass off as their own, and used heavy
vehicles that could only have been provided by the authorities. Many
national and international relief organizations were left insecure by
their overwhelming presence. Only recently have the jihadists moved out
of full public view into more sheltered places.
Other Pakistani leaders send similar messages. Shaukat Aziz, a former
Citibanker and now prime minister of Pakistan, made a call for
nation-wide prayers for rain in a year of drought. This effort to
improve his Islamic credentials became less laughable when, at an
education conference in Islamabad, he proposed that Islamic religious
education must start as soon as children enter school. This came in
response to a suggestion by the moderate Islamic scholar, Javed Ghamdi,
that only school children in their fifth year and above should be given
formal Islamic education. Otherwise, said Ghamdi, they would
stand in danger of becoming rigid and doctrinaire. The
government's 2006 education policy now requires Islamic
studies to begin in the third year of school, a year earlier than in
the previous policy.
Other ministers are no less determined to show Islamic zeal. The
federal minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul Haq, speaking at the
launch of a book authored by a leading Islamic extremist leader on "Christian Terrorism and The Muslim World," argued
that anyone who did not believe in jihad was neither a Muslim nor a
Pakistani. He then declared that given the situation facing Muslims
today, he was prepared to be a suicide bomber.
According to a newspaper report, Pakistani health minister, Mohammad
Nasir Khan, assured the upper house of parliament that the government
could consider banning female nurses looking after male patients at
hospitals. This move arose from a motion moved by female parliamentary
members of the MMA, the Islamist party that commands majorities in the
provincial assemblies of the Frontier and Baluchistan
provinces and offered crucial support for Musharraf staying on as
president. Women's bodies are of particular concern to these
holy men: "We think that men could derive sexual pleasure
from women's bodies while conducting ECG or
ultrasound," proclaimed Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, provincial
secretary of the MMA. In his opinion women would be able to lure men
under the pretext of these medical procedures. Therefore, he said, "to save the supreme values of Islam and the message of the
Holy Prophet (PBUH), the MMA has decided to impose the
ban." Destroyed or damaged billboards with
women's faces can be seen in several cities of the Frontier
because the MMA deems the exhibition of unveiled women as un-Islamic.
Total separation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the
consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9,
2006, 21 women and 8 children were crushed to death, and scores
injured, in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi where
a large number of women had gathered for a weekly congregation. Male
rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving injured
women to hospitals.
One cannot dismiss this as just one incident. Soon after the October
2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a
student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his
male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out
injured girl students from under the rubble of their school
building. The action of these elders was similar to that of
Saudi Arabia's ubiquitous religious "mutaween" police who, in March 2002, had stopped
schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not
wearing their abayas. In rare criticism, Saudi newspapers had
blamed the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.
The Saudiization of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a
relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among
educated women. Vigorous proselytizers bringing this message, such as
Mrs. Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to heights of fame
and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades ago the fully veiled
student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college
campuses. Now she outnumbers her sisters who still dare show
their faces. This has had the effect of further enhancing passivity and
unquestioning obedience to the teacher, and of decreasing the
self-confidence of female students.
The intensification of religious feelings has had a myriad other more
significant consequences. Depoliticization and destruction of
all non-religious organizations has lead to the absence of any
noticeable public mobilization--even on specifically Muslim
causes like US actions against Iraq, Palestine, or Iran. Events in
these areas rarely bring more than a few dozen protesters on to the
streets--if that. Nevertheless large numbers of
Pakistanis are driven to fury and violence when they perceive their
faith has been maligned. Mobs set on fire the Punjab Assembly, as well
as shops and cars in Lahore, for an act of blasphemy committed in
Denmark. Even as religious fanaticism grips the population there is a
curious, almost fatalistic, disconnection with the real world which
suggests that fellow Muslims don't matter any
more--only the Faith does.
Religious identity has also become increasingly sectarian. A suicide
bomber, as yet unidentified, killed 57 people and eliminated the entire
leadership of the "Sunni Movement" when he leapt on
to the stage at a religious gathering in Karachi in April,
2006. Months earlier, barely a mile down from my university,
at the shrine of Bari Imam, 25 Shias were killed in similar attack. In
the tribal areas, sectarian tensions have frequently exploded into open
warfare: in the villages of Hangu district, Sunnis and Shias exchanged
light artillery and rocket fire leaving scores dead. Earlier
this year, when I traveled for lecturing in the town of Gilgit, I saw
soldiers crouched in bunkers behind mounted machine guns. It looked
more like a town under siege than a tourist resort.
The clearest political expression of this shift towards a more violent
and intolerant religious identity is the rise of the MMA as a national
force, which on key issues both supports and is supported by General
Musharraf's government. A measure of its power, and the
threat it poses to society and the state, is the Pakistani Taliban
movement that it has helped create, especially in the tribal areas
bordering Afghanistan. Their success draws in large measure on the
lessons they learned when working hand in the hand with the Pakistan
army to create and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Unable to combat the toxic mix of religion with tribalism, the
Pakistani government is rapidly losing what little authority it ever
had in the tribal parts. Under US pressure, the army has been
mounting military offensives against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who
fled Afghanistan. The convenient fiction that the army is merely
combating "foreign militants" from the Arab and
Central Asian countries is accepted by no one. Its assaults have taken
a heavy civilian toll and local resistance has grown.
The local Taliban, as well as Al-Qaida, are popular and the army is
not. In the tribal areas, the local Taliban now run a parallel
administration that dispenses primitive justice according to tribal and
Islamic principles. A widely available Taliban-made video that I saw
shows the bodies of criminals dangling from electricity poles in the
town of Miranshah while thousands of appreciative spectators look on.
In Wana, a regional capital, about 20 miles from the Afghan border,
Taliban supporters have decreed that men are forbidden to shave. A
Pathan barber, who migrated to Islamabad, told me last month that many
others like him are making their way to the big cities or abandoning
their traditional occupation.
The Pakistani Taliban (like their brothers in Afghanistan) see
education as insidious. Pakistani newspapers frequently carry news of
schools in the tribal regions being attacked destroyed by the Taliban.
But rarely are these incidents followed by angry editorials or
letters-to-the editor. Implicit sympathy for the Taliban remains strong
among urban middle-class Pakistanis because they are perceived as
standing up to the Americans, while the government has caved in. In
Waziristan, one of the locales of a growing insurgency, the state has
essentially capitulated and accepted Talibanic rule over tribal society
as long as the army is allowed to maintain a spectator presence.
Stepping back, the Islamist shift underway in Pakistan becomes yet more
evident. According to the Pew Global Survey (2006), the percentage of
Pakistanis who expressed confidence in Osama bin Laden as a world
leader grew from 45% in 2003 to 51% in 2005. This 6 point increase must
be compared against responses to an identical questionnaire in Morocco,
Turkey, and Lebanon, where bin Laden's popularity has sharply
dropped by as much as 20 points.
It is worth asking what has changed Pakistan so and what makes it so
different from other Muslim countries? What set one section of its
people upon the other, created notions of morality centred on
separating the sexes, and sapped the country's vitality? Some
well meaning Pakistanis--particularly those who live
overseas--think that it is best to avoid such difficult
questions. These days they are venturing to "repackage
Pakistan" for the media. They want to change negative
perceptions of Pakistan in the West while, at the same time, hesitating
to call for a change in the structure of the state and its outlook.
But at the heart of Pakistan's problems lies a
truth-- one etched in stone--that when a state
proclaims a religious identity and mission, it is bound to privilege
those who organize religious life and interpret religious text. Since
there are many models and interpretations within every religion, there
is bound to be conflict between religious forces over whose model shall
prevail. There is also the larger confrontation between religious
principles and practices and what we now consider to be 'modern' ideas of society, which have emerged over
the past several hundred years. This truth, for all its simplicity,
escaped the attention of several generations of soldiers, politicians,
and citizens of Pakistan. It is true that there has been some learning
-- Musharraf's call for "enlightened
moderation" is a tacit (and welcome) admission that a
theocratic Pakistan cannot work. But his call conflicts with his other,
more important, responsibility as chief of the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan is what it is because its army finds greater benefit in the
status quo. Today the Pakistan Army is vast, and as an institution, has
acquired enormous corporate interests that sprawl across real estate,
manufacturing, and service sectors. It also receives large amounts of
military aid, all of which would be threatened if it comes into direct
conflict with the US. In the 1960s and 1980s, and again since 9/11, the
army discovered its high rental value when serving the US. Each time
the long-term costs to the society and state have been terrible.
The relationship between the army and religious radicals is today no
longer as simple as in the 1980's. To maintain a positive
image in the West, the Pakistani establishment must continue to decry
Islamic radicalism, and display elements of liberalism that are deeply
disliked by the orthodox. But hard actions will be taken only if the
Islamists threaten the army's corporate and political
interests, or if senior army commanders are targeted for assassination.
The Islamists for their part hope for, and seek to incite, action by
zealous officers to bring back the glory days of the military-mullah
alliance led by General Zia ul Haq.
Musharraf and his corps commanders well know that they cannot afford to
sleep too well. It is in the lower ranks that the Islamists are busily
establishing bases. A mass of junior officers and low-ranking
soldiers--whose world view is similar to that of the Taliban
in most respects--feels resentful of being used as cannon
fodder for fighting America's war. It is they who die, not
their senior officers. So far, army discipline has successfully
squelched dissent and forced it underground. But this sleeping giant
can-- if and when it wakes up--tear asunder the
Pakistan Army, and shake the Pakistani state from its very foundations.
(The author is a professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University,
Islamabad. Comments may be directed to:
pervezhoodbhoy@yahoo.com)
Return
to South
Asia Citizens Web