Backyard Bullies

05Aug07

For the past four years I have been traveling extensively across Europe. Being a Pakistani post-9/11, this eventually becomes a matter that goes beyond being just a tourist. The moment you utter words like “I’m from Pakistan,” you are at once given a second, more thorough glance. Usually this has nothing to do with racism or any other kind of discriminatory fanfare, but a concerned curiosity. A glance that becomes even more curious when you agree to have a drink with the glancing subject.

One almost wants to burst out laughing when faced with the next logical question: “Do Pakistanis drink?” One wants to say “yes, many Pakistanis do, especially after a tough day riding their camels and perfecting their home-made exploding devices!”

Of course we can always blame our neighbouring Afghans for bestowing upon the West such an impression, but the question the Westerners find most pressing is, why would a country so steeped in religion have millions of people looking for an escape through one of the deadliest and destructive drugs: heroin. This is the question that has been on my mind as well. Back in Pakistan nobody seems to want to answer it, apart from, of course, the many urban, middle-class religious folks who always have a Jew-related, blame-America theory for all our own follies. This is scary, because most of them are educated as well.

Everything is conveniently simplified. We are a great, pure nation of Muslims, under social, cultural and political attack by the Jews and their western allies. And these folks will not listen at all about the social and cultural hypocrisies right in our own backyard, ultimately banishing you as a part of the great “conspiracy” against Islam and Pakistan. My take on the government’s efforts to better the image of Pakistan beyond being a mass of violent religion-touting Muslims is that it is a huge task, in spite of the fact that such people are still in a minority. But ever since General Zia took over 30 years ago, it is this minority that has been shaping the country’s mindset through the media, literature and madressahs.

It is not really the archetypal mullah that has done all the damage as such, because he too is just a pawn. It is also that part of the urban, educated middle-class which suddenly rediscovered (or so they claimed) God and Islam. It is members of this class that have been the most active in the direct and indirect evangelising of a hotchpotch version of puritanical Islam.

Ever since the ’80s these people have managed to seep deep into institutions that are in the forefront of moulding the nation’s psyche. Institutions like universities, colleges, the electronic and print media and evangelical concerns. What’s more, in the last 10 years or so, many of these have even made it into multinational organisations where now many employees can be seen busy firing a mass number of evangelical emails among colleagues.

I actually knew a guy at an advertising agency I used to work for who went around proudly expounding his passion to promote “Islamic advertising.” Of course, when I asked him exactly what he meant by the term, he came up with the most outlandish explanations. It did not surprise me though, when I found out that not only was he once a member of a right-wing politico-religious party, he had also spent some time as an employee at one of the dozen or so Dianetics/Scientology clinics in Karachi. The so-called common Pakistani mostly of the urban working class and the peasants in the rural areas are just too busy trying to make a living to have the pleasure of having a strait-jacketed puritanical religious view and angle on life.

But when approached by the re-converted version of the middle-class to comment on these, he feels being under a microscope that is questioning the authenticity of his beliefs. He wriggles out by speaking like a creaking robot what he has heard on the many religious shows on TV and in the mosque. On most occasions these are not his views, because if truth be told, if he ever really starts to follow the sort of nitty-gritty and highly ritualistic versions of Islam peddled to him by these shows and his local maulana, he will have little time left to do anything about earning his next meal.

So, it is not the masses the government should be concerned about in this respect. They are pawns to bid for the religious whims (all related to the economic interests) of the re-converting bourgeois. And this (growing) section of the middle-class is not hermit. Far from it. They are active in almost all modern spheres of life. In fact they will make a living exactly from the same sources their mostly “non-religious” and “liberal” contemporaries are making, even if these sources and avenues of employment (to them) constitute the “corruption of man and society”.

So how do they tackle that imminent feeling of hypocrisy which cannot be ignored? Simple. Evangelise to “Islamise” the source. Thus, do not be surprised to find an advertising copywriter attacking “Jewish capitalism” or a so-called secular and “liberal” music network deciding to run a parade of naats in Ramazan, or when a capitalist company’s session on how to grab more markets (and make bigger profits) opens with the recitation from the Holy Book.

What this class of businessmen, politicians, teachers, TV personalities, executives and traders have done is that they have institutionalised religious hypocrisy. Religion in Pakistan has become an excuse to do anything, from tormenting a threatening employee to wanting to assassinate the president.

A poor man is “brainwashed” into taking up violence especially when his lack of knowledge in religion is taunted and his economic problems given a religious reason instead of an economic one. He is told that his economic problems apparently stem from what takes place in the Pentagon and lack of Islam in society back home. How very convenient.

Of course, all the corporate and feudal institutions that are usually at the forefront of economic exploitation are conveniently forgotten. This is because these are the re-converts’ own source of income. And, of course, their owners pray five times a day, rendering themselves “sharif.” The reconverted bourgeois’s exhibitionism is at times as loud as the common mullah’s. One can observe the highly ritualistic nature of this exhibitionism in an office. Especially on a Friday.

Rubber slippers will always be placed well in sight under desks (never hidden), to be used during ablution. This is also a way of proving that the person whose desk they are under prays. Once the trousers are rolled (another learnt behaviour) and slippers worn, the faithful will enter washrooms to perform the wazu. For some odd reason, tons of water will be splashed on the walls and floors of the washroom. Also, even more curious are the loud noises that are voluntarily made from the nose and the throat. Every Friday, almost all offices’ premises are awash with hundreds of marks made by wet slippers. No effort is made not to do so and no sympathy goes out to the hard-working sweeper who is always seen following these men, literally cleaning after them.

Asking them about the religious significance of trivial but widespread exhibitionism such as this will only get you curious looks. Some will even take your questions as a way of mocking. And a suggestion that maybe such exhibitionism had nothing to do with religion but has most probably more to do with certain cultural traits of the region that have been tied to religious belief, will be shunned.

My question has always been: Why does one have to be so loud about anything done in the name of religion? One can understand a jahil mullah being all loud and animated, but is it not true that now more and more educated people are being as loud and exhibitionist as well? What and where lies the doubt to be so loud? My take on this is that ever since the British toppled Muslim supremacy in the subcontinent, Islamic evangelism has squarely based its pleas on the paranoid notion proclaiming “Islam khatray main hai” (Islam is in danger).

Over the last 100 years this feeling has been so deeply ingrained in the psyche of the more religious Muslims of India and Pakistan, that every time they are exposed to a more secular surrounding, they become louder than ever in executing religious rituals. Thus, on Fridays, as if unconsciously, the loud exhibitionism is like a tribal act of reclaiming the ground perceived to be more secular in nature. Such as an office? So be it.

Can such overwhelming acts of religious exhibitionism amount to harassment of any sort? For example, eversince the ’80s, in offices, one can also see men suddenly grow a beard and start wearing a namazi’s cap during the holy month of Ramazan. What’s more, once that is done, one can also expect most of them loudly asking their less Islamic-looking colleagues whether they were fasting, and if not, then why? Of course, answering them appropriately usually does no good. But ignoring them has only made the situation worse, leaving them with the impression that they are correct in their noisy ways. So I do wonder, what is the best way to fend off such open harassment? I’m all at sea on this one.

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