Our goose is cooked’ 0
Pakistan is on the brink of a clerical conflagration: Pervez
Hoodbhoy
BY FAROOQ SULEHRIA
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, who received his undergraduate
and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been
teaching nuclear and high energy physics at the Quaid-e-Azam University
in Islamabad for 37 years. He also lectures at various universities in
the USA. Hoodbhoy is a frequent commentator, on Pakistani TV channels as
well as international media outlets, on various social and political
issues. In this interview with Viewpoint, he discusses the
situation in Pakistan in the wake of the assassination of Punjab
governor Salmaan Taseer.
Q: The murder of Governor
Salmaan Taseer, who opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law, has shocked the
world. But in Pakistan, the killer has become a hero for a sizeable
section of society. Why?
A: In a society dominated by traditional religious
values, heroism often means committing some violent and self-destructive
act for preserving honour. Although Governor Taseer was not accused of
blasphemy, his crime was to seek presidential pardon for an illiterate
peasant Christian woman accused of blasphemy by some Muslim neighbours.
Taseer’s intervention clearly crossed the current limits of toleration.
With no party support, he went at it alone.
Malik Mumtaz Qadri – the official security guard who
pumped 22 bullets into the man he was deputed to protect – is not the
first such hero. The 19-year-old illiterate who killed the author of the
book Rangeela Rasool in the 1920s, and was then executed by the
British, was held in the highest esteem by the founders of Pakistan,
Muhammad Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It is reported that Iqbal,
regarded as Islam’s pre-eminent 20th century philosopher, placed the
body in the grave with tears in his eyes and said: “This young man left
us, the educated men, behind.” Ghazi Ilm-e-Deen is venerated with a
mausoleum over his grave in Lahore.
In his court testimony, Taseer’s assassin proudly
declared that he was executing Allah’s will. Hundreds of lawyers – made
famous by the Black Coat revolution that restored Pakistan’s chief
justice – showered him with rose petals while he was in police custody.
Two hundred lawyers signed a pledge vowing to defend him for free.
Significantly, Qadri is a Barelvi Muslim belonging to the Dawat-e-Islami
and 500 clerics of this faith supported his action in a joint
declaration. They said that those who sympathised with Taseer deserved
similar punishment.
Significantly, most of these mullahs are part of the
Sunni Tehreek and are supposedly anti-Taliban moderates. Indeed one of
their leaders, Maulana Sarfaraz Naeemi, was blown up by a Taliban
suicide bomber in June 2009 after he spoke out against suicide bombings.
But now these “moderates” have joined hands with their attackers.
Jointly, they rule Pakistan’s streets today while a cowardly and morally
bankrupt government cringes and caves in to their every demand.
Q: Pakistani voters have always
voted for secular-leaning parties but it appears that today the
religious parties actually represent popular discourse. Do you concur?
A: Yes, I do. Those who claim that Pakistan’s silent
majority is fundamentally secular and tolerant may be clutching at
straws. They argue that the religious parties don’t get the popular vote
and so cannot really be popular. But this is wishful thinking. The
mullah parties are unsuccessful only because they are geared for street
politics, not electoral politics. They also lack charismatic leadership
and have bitter internal rivalries. However, the victory of the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) after 9/11 shows that they are capable of
closing ranks. It is also perfectly possible that a natural leader will
emerge and cause an electoral landslide in the not too distant future.
But even without winning elections, the mullah parties
are immensely more powerful in determining how you and I live than
election-winning parties like the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Awami
National Party (ANP). For a long time the religious right has dictated
what we can or cannot teach in our public and private schools. No
government ever had the guts to dilute the hate materials being forced
down young throats. They also dictate what you and I can wear, eat or
drink. Their unchallenged power has led to Pakistan’s cultural
desertification because they violently oppose music, dance, theatre, art
and intellectual inquiry.
To be sure there are scattered islands of normality in
urban Pakistan. But these are shrinking. Yes, the Baloch nationalists
are secular and so is the ethnically driven Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM)
in Karachi. But these constitute a tiny fraction of the population.
Q: The government has
capitulated. The prime minister has announced the decision not to touch
the blasphemy laws. Does this mean that religious fanatics can dictate
their terms even without any parliamentary representation?
A: It is indeed a complete abdication. When the
bearded ones brought out 50,000 charged people onto the streets of
Karachi, a terrified government instantly sought negotiations with them.
Even before that happened, the current interior minister – Rehman Malik,
a venal hack and as crooked as they come – promptly declared that he’d
personally gun down a blasphemer.
The government’s pants are soaking wet. In fact, so wet
that the ruling party dumped Taseer – who was their own high-ranking
member – after the murder. There’s talk now of getting American guards
for Zardari, since his own guards may be untrustworthy. Sherry Rehman,
the brave parliamentarian who dared to table a bill to reform the
blasphemy law, is now hunkered down. She is said to be receiving two
death threats an hour. Significantly, the army high command has made no
public statement on the assassination although it is vocal on much else.
Q: Pakistan’s media is often
described as independent and vibrant. But this media had painted Taseer
negatively almost a month before he was killed. Your comments?
A: The media’s so-called independence and vibrancy
is reserved for attacking a manifestly corrupt, but nominally secular,
government. On other issues – such as a rational discussion of religion
and the army’s role in society – it is conspicuously silent. Few sane
people are brought on to shows, or are too scared to speak.
Let me recount some personal experiences. The day after
Taseer’s assassination, FM-99 (Urdu) called me for an interview. The
producer tearfully told me (offline) that she could not find a single
religious scholar ready to condemn his murder. She said even ordinary
people like me are in short supply.
The next day a TV programme on blasphemy (Samaa TV,
hosted by Asma Shirazi) was broadcast. Asma had pleaded that I
participate. So I did – knowing full well what was up ahead. My
opponents were Fareed Paracha (spokesman, Jamaat-e-Islami) and Maulana
Sialvi (Sunni Tehreek, a Barelvi and supposed moderate). There were
around 100 students in the audience, drawn from colleges across Pindi
and Islamabad.
Even as the mullahs frothed and screamed around me (and
at me), I managed to say the obvious: that the culture of religious
extremism was resulting in a bloodbath in which the majority of victims
were Muslims; that non-Muslims were fleeing Pakistan; that the
self-appointed “thekedars (purveyors)” of Islam in Pakistan were
deliberately ignoring the case of other Muslim countries like Indonesia
which do not have the death penalty for blasphemy; that debating the
details of the blasphemy law (Section) 295C did not constitute
blasphemy; that American Muslims were very far from being the objects of
persecution; that harping on drone attacks was an irrelevancy to the
present discussion on blasphemy.
The response? Not a single clap for me. Thunderous
applause whenever my opponents called for death for blasphemers. And
loud cheers for Qadri. When I directly addressed Sialvi and said he had
Salmaan Taseer’s blood on his hands, he exclaimed: “How I wish I had
done it (Kaash ke maine khud kiya hota)!” You can find all this
on YouTube if you like.
One can debate whether this particular episode (and
probably many similar ones) should be blamed on the media, whether it
genuinely reflects the public mood and whether those students fairly
represented the general Pakistani youth. But there is little doubt which
side the Pakistani media took. This was apparent from the unwillingness
of anchors to condemn the assassination as well as from images of the
smiling murderer being fęted all around. Mullah guests filled the
screens of most channels. Some journalists and TV-show participants
favourably compared Qadri with Ilm-e-Deen. Others sought to prove that
Taseer somehow brought his death upon himself.
Q: Many in Pakistan, like Imran
Khan, the cricket star turned politician, blame the recent rise of
extremism on the US occupation of Afghanistan. Is that the root cause in
your opinion?
A: If the US had never come to Afghanistan, Pakistan
would not be the violent mess that it is today. So there is an element
of truth in this claim but no more than an element. Let me give you an
analogy: imagine lots of dry wood and a lighted match. The US-led
anti-Soviet war was that match. But the combustible material is that
dangerous conservatism which accumulated over time. The strength of the
Islamist parties vastly increased after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto kowtowed to
them after 1973-74. This was five-six years before the Soviet invasion
so one can scarcely blame America for that.
Yes, the West did set dry wood on fire. But the
staggering quantity of wood comes from the rotting mass of Pakistan’s
state and society. Ours is an apartheid society where the rich treat the
poor like dirt, the justice system does not work, education is as rotten
as it can be and visible corruption goes unpunished. Add to all this a
million mullahs in a million mosques who exploit people’s frustrations.
You then have the explanation for today’s catastrophic situation.
Of course, I would love to see the Americans out of
Afghanistan. The sooner they can withdraw – without precipitating a
1996-style Taliban massacre – the better. But let’s realise that US
withdrawal will not end Pakistan’s problems. Those fighting the
Americans aren’t exactly Vietnamese-type socialists or nationalists. The
Taliban types want a full cultural revolution: beards, burkhas, five
daily prayers, no music, no art, no entertainment and no contact with
modernity except for getting its weapons.
Q: In Tunis, a dictator has
been humbled by peaceful mass mobilisation instead of al-Qaeda
affiliates. In Bangladesh, superior courts have reinstated the basic
secular Constitution of the country and religion in politics has been
banned in recent months. Do you see the tide turning in the Muslim
world? Does it offer a hope in Pakistan?
A: The grievances in Tunisia are similar in some
ways to those in Pakistan: raging unemployment, grotesque corruption and
the opulent lifestyles of the elite. Like Zardari, who fills Pakistani
cities with pictures of the Bhutto clan and renames streets and
airports, Ben Ali also promoted his family. Both plundered national
wealth and both got the West’s support because they claimed to be
bulwarks against extremism. Today Ben Ali is gone and tomorrow Zardari
will be gone.
But the differences are profound: Tunisia’s population
of 10 million is minuscule compared to Pakistan’s 180 million. Young
Tunisians do not suffer from a toxic overdose of hard-line religion. So
they came out bravely into the streets to fight for real social change.
One can therefore hope that Ben Ali’s departure will lead to a flowering
of Arab democracy rather than invite the dark forces of religious
extremism. Yet one can be absolutely sure that Zardari’s departure,
which may happen sooner rather than later, is not likely to lead to a
more secular or more peaceful Pakistan.
As for Bangladesh: let us recall that it emerged from
the collapse of Jinnah’s two-nation theory. Nationalism triumphed over
religion in 1971. Hence the positive new developments in Bangladesh are
not difficult to understand.
Q: What do you think is the way
to stem the rising tide of religious extremism in Pakistan?
A: If you want the truth: the answer is, nothing.
Our goose is cooked. Sometimes there is no way to extinguish a forest
fire until it burns itself out. Ultimately, there will be nothing left
to burn. But well before the last liberal is shot or silenced, the
mullahs will be gunning for each other in a big way. Mullah-inspired
bombers have already started blowing up shrines and mosques of the
opposing sect. The Internet is flooded with gory photographs of
chopped-up body parts belonging to their rivals. Qadri, the assassin,
admitted his inspiration to murder came from a cleric. So you can also
expect that Muslim clerics will enthusiastically kill other Muslim
clerics. Eventually, we could have the situation that prevailed during
Europe’s Thirty Years war.
To save Pakistan, what miracles shall we ask of Allah?
Here’s my personal list: First, that the Pakistan army stops seeing
India as enemy number one and starts seeing extremism as a mortal
threat. Second, that Zardari’s government is replaced by one that is
less corrupt, more capable of governance and equipped with both the will
and legitimacy to challenge religious fascism. And third, that peace
somehow comes to Afghanistan.
(Now with the Stockholm-based weekly,
Internationalen, Farooq Sulehria has previously written for The
News, Rawalpindi, and the Lahore-based dailies, The Nation,
The Frontier Post and Pakistan. This article was published
on the e-zine Viewpoint on March 11, 2011.)
Courtesy: Viewpoint;
www.viewpointonline.net
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The lengthening shadow of violent
intolerance
HRCP outraged at foul murders
Lahore: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
has condemned the assassination of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer,
expressing grief and alarm at his murder and calling it a manifestation
of growing intolerance in society.
A statement issued by the commission on January 4,
2011 said: “HRCP is saddened by the murder of the governor, which must
be condemned by all sane people, and is alarmed at the ever growing
shadow of intolerance and violence in society. A thorough inquiry to
establish the motives of the killer must be held so that people do not
jump to conclusions. It would be exceedingly unfortunate if it turns out
that the governor’s call for sanity following the death sentence of
Aasia Bibi on charges of blasphemy or differences with political
opponents in any way led to his assassination. The fact that the killer
was a policeman is a matter of acute concern and shows the extent to
which the services have been infected by intolerance.”
Elimination of non-Muslims and human rights defenders
The HRCP has also expressed its sense of outrage and
grief at the murder of federal minister for minority affairs Shahbaz
Bhatti and HRCP coordinator in Khuzdar district Naeem Sabir and called
the assassinations the work of militants out to eliminate anyone who
raises his voice against persecution of the vulnerable people.
In a statement issued on March 2, 2011, the HRCP
said: “The assassins of federal minister for minority affairs Shahbaz
Bhatti and Mr Naeem Sabir, HRCP coordinator in Khuzdar district, may
perhaps belong to different groups but they represent the militant
hardliners who are out to obliterate the rights of the non-Muslim
citizens of Pakistan and eliminate the human rights defenders who raise
their voice against persecution on any ground. HRCP expresses its sense
of outrage and deep grief at the foul murders.
While Mr Shahbaz Bhatti had been active as a human
rights defender before he joined the federal cabinet, as a minister, he
had confined himself to performing his official duties. HRCP shares the
anguish of his family at this difficult time. His murder says much about
the state of security for the ordinary Pakistanis who do not share the
religious faith of the majority.
Naeem Sabir had been associated with HRCP since 1997
and had been promoting human rights in Khuzdar with courage and
devotion. Off and on he had been targeted for his activities by minions
of the state. But in the recent past he had apparently given no cause
for offence to anyone except the local satraps who could not bear his
truthful coverage of human rights abuses. HRCP deeply condoles Naeem’s
death and shares the grief of his widow and a less than two year old
child. HRCP demands that those responsible for the killing must be
brought to justice and that the government must do all it can to ensure
that the two murders do not join a long list of similar killings where
impunity for the killers and perpetrators has been the norm. The
commission also reminds the government of its responsibility to offer
succour to the bereaved families.”
Dr Mehdi Hasan
Chairperson, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
www.hrcp-web.org
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Protect Pakistan’s minorities; apprehend their attackers
Indian civil society condemns the brutal killing of Shahbaz
Bhatti
March 2, 2011: The brutal assassination of Mr Shahbaz
Bhatti, minority affairs minister of Pakistan, in Islamabad today is a
cowardly act perpetrated by forces which are bent on terrorising
minorities across Pakistan and silencing the voices of sanity. The
murder of Mr Bhatti and others and persecution of minorities in Pakistan
is a blot on the record of that country and shows that Pakistan has
failed to protect its citizens.
It is shocking to know that Mr Shahbaz Bhatti, who
was facing death threats for long, was not under security cover despite
being a federal minister at the time of his brutal murder. The killing
of an important leader of minorities in Pakistan who was also an
important minister shows the threats and pressures under
which minorities are living in Pakistan.
The assassination of Mr Bhatti has exposed the casual
attitude of the government of Pakistan towards the threats Mr Bhatti had
received in the past. After the assassination of Punjab governor Salmaan
Taseer, who was also killed for the same reason for which Mr Bhatti has
been assassinated, the indifference of the government to Mr Bhatti’s
security is shocking.
Mr Bhatti’s killing has also raised serious questions
about the survival and safety of the minorities in Pakistan. There have
been press reports from the interior of the country about abduction,
false implication in blasphemy cases and killings of members of the
minority communities on a daily basis.
We request the government of Pakistan to immediately
apprehend the culprits responsible for the assassination of an important
leader of the minorities and of Pakistan and to ensure the protection of
the common citizens of the minorities in the country.
Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, editor, Kashmir Times; Asif Khan,
general secretary, NEEDS, Mumbai; Aziz Burney, editor, Rashtriya
Sahara Urdu; Fr Cedric Prakash, Prashant, Ahmedabad; Fr Dominic
Emmanuel, Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, Delhi; Farooque Shaikh, actor,
director; Hasan Kamal, editor, The Sahafat Daily, Mumbai; Javed
Anand, co-editor, Communalism Combat, Mumbai; John Dayal,
secretary general, All India Christian Council, New Delhi; Manzoor Alam,
general secretary, All India Milli Council; Navaid Hamid, secretary,
South Asian Council for Minorities; Niaz Farooqui, secretary,
Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind, New Delhi; Noorjehan Safia Niaz, Bharatiya Muslim
Mahila Andolan, Mumbai; Ram Puniyani, Mumbai; Sajan George, president,
Global Council of Indian Christians; Sajid Rashid, editor, Naya
Waraq, Mumbai; Seema Mustafa, resident editor, The Sunday
Guardian, New Delhi; Shabnam Hashmi, Anhad; Teesta Setalvad,
secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace; Zafarul-Islam Khan, editor,
The Milli Gazette
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