ricket is perhaps the only sport in which the captain is a lot more than a person with an armband or a ‘(C)’ scribbled in front of his or her name. In cricket not only is the captain supposed to be a fairly talented sportsman, he has to be an astute strategist, a lucid communicator, a diplomat and I dare say a shrewd politician as well.

Some of the finest skippers in the modern version of the game have all been clear examples of such qualities. Take Clive Lloyd, Ian Chappell, A K Pataudi, Steve Waugh, Arjuna Ranatunga, Steven Fleming, Graeme Smith and Imran Khan, for instance.

What’s more, sometimes a cricket captain has had to be a better strategist than a player to propel his team to multiple victories, as was the case with England’s Mike Brearley — a mediocre batsman but a masterful strategist and communicator.

In Pakistan and Indian cricket, a successful captain is required to not only be an immensely talented player and strategist, he has to be a sharp politician as well who through example and diplomacy can lead a coalition (as opposed to a unit) of players from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds (and thus vulnerable to break into self-serving groupings).

The two most successful Pakistani captains, A H Kardar and Imran Khan, had to couple their cricketing and strategising talents with a dictatorial attitude to curb the divisive volatility of their teams. They became like military generals. As captains both Kardar and Khan were products of their own times. Kardar symbolised the authoritarianism Pakistan’s early ruling elite emphasised to unite a diverse and struggling new country with an enforced (and somewhat artificial) ideological singularity, whereas Khan, though in his playing days a secular and colourful personality, rose as skipper during one of Pakistan’s longest and staunchest military dictatorships (that of Ziaul Haq).

Whereas another shrewd and successful Pakistani captain, Mushtaq Muhammad (who was made skipper during the Z A Bhutto regime), had used the localised variety of liberalism and populism of the Bhutto era to unite the team, Kardar and Khan used authoritarianism backed up by their own individual performances. Uniting a Pakistani cricket team, usually brimming with outstanding talent but always vulnerable to disintegrate along class and ethnic lines, has been one of the leading priorities of Pakistani cricket captains.

A H. Kardar                                                   Imran Khan

n the 2000s, another ploy in this respect was experimented with players like Waqar Yunus and Inzimamul Haq. After the controversies and divisions that plagued the captaincies of Miandad and Imran’s handpicked protege, Wasim Akram, new skipper, Waqar Yunus, began dabbling with the idea of using religion to bring the players on a common platform. Though it was Yunus who first allowed members of the conservative Tableeghi Jamat (TJ) to visit the players’ dressing room for inspirational lectures, the idea was taken many steps further by Inzimamul Haq.

A naturally gifted batsman, Inzimam came from a southern Punjab’s middle class background and didn’t have Kardar and Khan’s education or elitist authoritarian underpinnings nor Mushtaq Muhammad’s social adaptability skills. He became a stark reflection of the growing trend of religiosity that cut across society after 9/11. Joining the TJ, he moulded the team to operate like a willfully isolated TJ unit, but with corporate sponsorship and cricketing abilities.

The exhibitionistic unity-in-piety ploy did keep the team intact for a while, but it could not eliminate the many vulnerabilities that still plagued the unit. Just like Pakistani society of the last decade or so, religious piety and material greed conspired to actually (and destructively) complement one another, and thus, by the end of Inzimam’s topsy-turvy tenure, Pakistan cricket suffered from serious infighting, groupings and stumbled from one horrendous controversy to another. Until Misbahul Haq arrived.

Inzimamul Haq with Muhammad Yusuf

In a short span of a little over a year, Misbah has already become an inspirational success story captain. Though educated, Misbah does not belong to Kardar’s or Khan’s elitist-authoritarian school of captaincy. Instead, he is highly diplomatic and consciously retains the perception of him being low-key, private and media-shy.

Though his shrewd, calculated and inspirational captaincy has been making headlines, he remains elusive and private. And quietly he has also dismantled the religiosity factor introduced by Inzimam, as well as the perception that only an authoritarian figure can captain the Pakistan cricket team.

So what made this most unlikely of heroes tick? Common sense and the fact that he has continued to score prolifically even at the age of 37. Also, he does not seem to have a raging ego. His neutral, selfless appeal, thoughtfulness and egalitarian posturing and largely democratic approach seems to have helped him make a renegade, volatile and diverse bunch of players unite, not behind or under, but around him.

Misbah and the resurgent Pakistan team

He has learnt that he does not need to have a charismatic authoritarian stature or exhibitionist religiosity to bag the players’ and the media’s respect. He just needs to be Misbah — a contemplative selfless professional who articulates only on matters he knows best but is extremely private about his social and religious musings. Perhaps every other player needs to become a Misbah (and seems to have become); and maybe so does the Pakistani society as a whole.

The moment (in the 1990s) the ‘Kashmir struggle’ allowed its militant aspect to rudely overshadow the doings of the more moderate All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and the Jamuha Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) I was convinced the movement was doomed.

Alas, like most movements (involving Muslims) of the 20th Century that adopted what is called Political Islam as its calling card, the Kashmir militancy too collapsed under its own weight.

Now compare this with the uprising of the Kashmiris in the last two or three years, led by the APHC and JKLF against the Indian state.

One can clearly notice the difference. Like the three Palestinian Intifada movements, the recent Kashmiri uprising too has nothing to do with bombs, beheadings and assorted terrorist tactics. Instead, the movement is now unfolding on the streets with stones, flags, speeches and slogans confronting bullets, arrests and teargas.

This movement has put the Indian government and state under more domestic and international pressure than the armed militant movement was ever able to.

In fact, armed militancy in this respect has actually mutated and mangled the look of the whole issue, attracting more condemnation than sympathy.

And, barring Pakistan, this condemnation did not only come from countries that are expected to play a more sympathetic role towards the Kashmiris’ legitimate demands of self-determination. The bulk of the Kashmiris too were left feeling exhausted and cornered by the actions of the armed militants.

In other words, uprisings in Kashmir in the last five years are not only a conformation of the Kashmiris’ resolute commitment to look for its own destiny as a nation, but in a way, it is also a bold act of stamping a seal of disapproval against the tactics of the armed groups.

So what went wrong, or for that matter, right?

The movement that revived itself in 1987 when the Kashmiris accused the Indian government of rigging that year’s polls in the valley was soon overtaken and infiltrated by elements advocating an armed uprising against the Indian state.

The inspiration in this respect was the armed success of the mujahideen against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. The mujahideen were an armed movement of various Islamist groups driven by the philosophical dictates of Political Islam.

According to most political historians, the years between 1988 and 1997 were a vital period in the history of movements advocating Political Islam.

But it was a paradoxical event because this is also the period in which modern Political Islam witnessed a kind of an upsurge that also eventually led to its own downfall.

Modern Political Islam is closely associated with three central figures: Pakistan’s Abul Ala Madudi, Egypt’s Syed Qutb and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

Syed Qutb

Political Islam, also called “Islamism,” is a collection of ideologies advocating Islam as a political system. It must be noted that there is a difference between Political Islam (whose advocates are also called Islamists), and Islamic Fundamentalism.

Islamists do not shun western science and philosophy like the fundamentalists do. Instead, Islamists have been known to advocate the thorough study of western intellectual, political and cultural trends in an attempt to challenge them through their understanding and interpretation of Islam.

This has made the writings of Islamists rather fascinating. However, the discourse between Islam and Western secularism that the Islamists present eventually mutates from being an absorbing, intellectual exercise into becoming a somewhat frail ostentation, especially when the Islamists use the discourse to derive a suggestive political program.

For example, at the culmination of their otherwise well-informed intellectual discourses, Abul Ala Madudi (who in turn inspired Syed Qutb), ended up suggesting the reinstatement of the traditional caliphate system in place of Western political and economic systems like democracy and socialism.

Of course, in spite of the sound intellectuality behind their discourses, it was rather casually forgotten by the Islamist intellectuals that the history of the caliphate system that they were using to justify their argument too was riddled with the cynicism and cut-throat politics that they were decrying about the so-called western political ideologies.

When questioned and criticised in this regard, the Islamists suggest that the “true implementation of Islamic Law (the sharia),” will take care of such an eventuality. It’s just like saying that had Stalin not distorted Marxism, Communism would have been the finest politico-economic system. It’s a hurried, vague and Utopian assumption.

The truth is that the founding members of modern Political Islam were first and foremost interested in positioning Islam against Marxism and Socialism.

This was because at the time of these learned gentlemen, Socialism and Marxism were the two ideologies that were influencing Muslim nationalists the most (in the 1950s and ‘60s).

For example, Syed Qutb’s “Muslim Brotherhood” was opposed to Gamal Abul Nasser’s “Arab Socialism” in Egypt, and against “Ba’ath Socialism” that was taking root in Iraq and Syria.

The “Islamic Socialism” behind the Algerian independence movement against the French too was looked down upon.

On the other end, Maududi’s Political Islam became the basis of movements against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s “Islamic Socialism” in Pakistan and against the left-leaning dictatorship of Sukarno in Indonesia in the 1960s.

It was ironic that thanks to the dynamics of the Cold War, Islamists found themselves in the “American camp” due to Nato and the United States’ opposition to Muslim leaders who were considered to be anti-West, “Socialist” and thus pro-Soviet Union.

As a result throughout the Cold War the Islamists’ radical anti-West angle largely remained to be nothing more than a literary and an intellectual exercise, whereas the political and active sides of the ideology were mostly reflected through movements against the left (Marxism, Socialism, Arab Socialism, Islamic Socialism, etc.).

This is at least one reason why when Political Islam, even in countries where it managed to find some implementation (such as Pakistan and Sudan in the 1980s and Afghanistan in the 1990s), only managed to generate superficial changes.

What’s more, due to the ethnic, tribal and religious pluralism of the societies in which Political Islam aspired to implement itself as a singular concept of “true Islam”, caused huge social and political fissures and fractures.

Political Islam’s consequent failure to produce the desired results that its intellectuals had promised, and also its doctrinal involvement in the armed “jihad” in Afghanistan, generated the creation of modern-day Islamic militancy.

This militancy too faced the same problems in trying to triumph with a singular concept of Islam and the sharia in the face of the social and religious complications that run across Muslim countries.

So much so that by the late 1990s, Political Islam had devolved into what we now call “Islamic fundamentalism,” and/or stripped clean off its intellectual moorings and reduced to being an ideology of pure terror and having a myopic and narrow understanding of Islam and of the West. Entities like the al Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban and the many militant outfits that were active in Kashmir (Harakat ul-Mujahedeen, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba), are clear examples.

So it was heartening to hear Kashmir leaders like Bhatt and Yasin distancing themselves from those aspects of the movement that have caused nothing more than bloodshed, pain and chaos, more at the cost of the Kashmiris’ rather than their ‘occupiers.’

Last week a video clip of a morning show hosted by one Maya Khan on a local TV channel began doing the rounds. The clip shows Ms. Khan with a posse of assorted thirty-something women and a cameraman raiding a famous public park of Karachi and prowling the lush vicinity looking for young unmarried couples.

The idea was to confront ‘wayward’ young women and embarrass them for ‘betraying their parents’ trust’.

The very next day another video clip showing the same Maya Khan bouncing off the walls on TV via a dance routine that can at best be explained as a hefty personification of a rhythmic earthquake, appeared.

This thus perfectly capped the volatile moral state of Pakistan’s urban bourgeoisie that, especially in the last 15 years or so, have managed to grow two heads on a single body – one spouting loud moralistic clichés while the other animatedly bopping up and down and sideways to the tune of assorted Bollywood masala numbers, as if totally oblivious about what the other head was harping about.

This also affirms the fact that contrary to popular perception, the ‘Islamization’ wave that began cutting through and across Pakistan from the 1980s onwards had little to do with the uneducated and the have-nots.

It was always and still is a phenomenon that is largely associated with the country’s urban middle and trader classes.

In the 1980s, a number of Islamist outfits had already made in-roads in the politics and sociology of Pakistan by riding on the Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation process.

But as most of them were highly militant and eventually got themselves ‘strategically’ linked with certain sections of the radicalised military institutions, it were the evangelical movements that managed to reap the most success within the country’s social and cultural milieu.

The largest of them was also the oldest. The ranks of the Tableeghi Jamat (TJ), a highly ritualistic Deobandi Islamic evangelical movement, swelled. But since the TJ was more a collection of working-class and petty-bourgeoisie cohorts and fellow travellers, newer evangelical outfits emerged with the idea of almost exclusively catering to the growing ‘born again’ trend being witnessed in the county’s middle and upper-middle classes in the 1990s.
Three of the most prominent organisations in this context were Farhat Hashmi’s Al-Huda, Zakir Naik’s ‘Islamic Research Foundation’ and Babar R. Chaudhry’s Arrahman Araheem (AA).

Farhat Hashmi

Naik, Hashmi and Chaudhry were all constructing feel-good narratives and apologias for the educated urbanites so that these urbanites could feel at home with religious ritualism, myth, attire and rhetoric while at the same time continue to enjoy the fruits of amoral modern materialism and frequent interaction with (Western and Indian) cultures that were otherwise described as being ‘anti-Islam.’

Of course, the whole question of such narratives smacking of contradiction went out the window as young middle-class Pakistanis admiringly saw pop and cricketing stars ‘rediscovering God’ with the help of the mentioned organizations – but not without the things that kept them materially satisfied (corporate contracts, modern fashion businesses, music products, etc).

Such contractions and their patrons were largely passive in orientation, but with the emergence of 24/7 electronic media in the last decade, they became more visible and evangelical and a lot more ‘popular’ – a happening that went down well with the cynical ratings-hungry TV channels.

What’s more, the trend in this respect is now no more the sole domain of the trendy ‘born-agains’.

One can even see decked-up film and TV actors and actresses, pop stars, morning show hosts and even chefs on cooking shows completely bypassing the irony and absurdity of them spouting the almost obligatory sentence or two about the need for piety and good morals in society.

Not that their respective passions and professions are immoral, but they are certainly not in step with the kind of pious spiritual alignments habitually advocated by these men and women and that too, smack-dab in the middle of topics and scenarios that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

Pussycat vigilantism: A brief history

This strange phenomenon is not just about simple hypocrisy, it is also and actually about glorifying this hypocrisy through gung-ho acts in which pussycat media vigilantes prey upon soft targets to exhibit their ‘bravery’ but squeak away if ever an opportunity arises to do the same to those who can and will bite back.

Since when have so-called ‘educated’ and affluent urbanites become moral crusaders? Is this a new phenomenon

encouraged by a ratings-hungry and vindictive private electronic media that is reflecting the contradiction-laden acts of morality being flexed by the country’s urban middle-classes; or is there more to what meets the immediate eye?
A quick research on the matter suggests that nothing of the sort was ever reported in Pakistan till about 1979. I mention this year because after going through newspapers of yore, the first reported case of moral vigilantism that I stumbled upon was mentioned in an issue of Dawn of 1980.

The report is about groups of youth carrying sticks and bricks, moving into streets of some of Karachi’s areas, randomly knocking on the doors of houses and ‘ordering’ the male occupants of the houses to come with them to the mosque to say their prayers.

According to Rauf Talib, a former chief reporter of Urdu dailies Imroz and then Aman, most of such groups became active between 1978 and 1980 after the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship decided to form ‘Salat Committees’ whose job it was to enforce compulsory prayers (in mosques) upon the men; and (during Ramazan), punish those found eating or smoking in public.

Talib said that when these committees propped up, most Pakistanis did not even know the meaning of ‘Salat’ – the Arab word for the Urdu word ‘namaz.’

Interestingly, reports about the committees simply evaporate in newspapers after 1982, but news items about how groups of moral vigilantes publically punished supposed offenders of Ramazan’s ‘decorum and spirit’ increase between 1981 and 1985.

The punishments usually included beating the offender with shoes and sticks but there were at least two reports (one in Dawn and the other in Jang) where the accused (men caught eating during Ramazan), were first beaten and then tied to lampposts, with a garland of shoes hung around their necks!

Talib suggests that the idea of forming Salat Committees by the government was soon shelved when the people of some areas where the committees were active, reacted to the constant and unwelcome knocking by strangers on the doors of their houses, ended up scuffling with the committee members.

But who were these people who ran the committees?

‘Young Jamat-i-Islami members,’ says Asghar Waris Ali, a lecturer at a local government college in Karachi. ‘It was them and some high school kids from various government schools.’

Asghar says that the organisers of the committees were usually university students belonging to religious and pro-Zia student organisations working closely with the head molvies of the areas’ mosques.

‘They were a huge failure,’ Mr. Ashgar said.

What about those who were going around punishing people caught eating or smoking during Ramazan?

‘Yes, that became common in those days as well,’ Mr. Ashgar explained. ‘I don’t know exactly who was doing that, but such behaviour was being encouraged by the government as well as by the police,’ he added.

The ‘encouragement’ that Mr. Asghar was talking about triggered two tendencies in this respect, one saw the overenthusiastic displays of moral policing by certain religiously-inclined civilians and media outlets and the other was the more cynical trend amongst many policemen who began to exploit the carelessly defined moral edicts of the Zia dictatorship to actually extort money from the public.

For example by the late 1980s groups of conservative middle-class youth calling themselves the ‘Allah Tigers’ emerged. Between 1989 and 1995, they became infamous for ‘raiding’ hotels and social clubs during New Years Eves and harassing and attacking ‘obscene women’ and ‘drunkards’ there.

Then throughout the 1980s, newspapers (especially English dailies and monthlies) are full of reports about policemen stopping couples in cars and on bikes and asking for their marriage certificates (nikanamah).

Farah Nawaz who was an active member of a women’s rights group during that period and now runs a small education-related NGO in Karachi, says that in their greed to extort money, the cops did not even spare old couples.

Farah said: ‘There was an incident at Karachi’s Sea View area in, I think 1987, where a son who was driving his old mother to her sister’s place in a rickety car. He was stopped by two cops and asked to first explain his relationship with his mother and then prove that she was his mother and not a prostitute! He got enraged and began beating up the cops who could not retaliate because a mob had gathered. So they ran away.’

Until about the late 1980s and early 1990s, the growing cases of moral policing and harassment largely involved conservative urban men coming from lower-middleclass backgrounds (the petty-bourgeoisie) or among the youth from nouveau-riche families who’d gotten rich during the Zia regime.

I returned to Rauf Talib to ask him when did these tendencies of moral policing by certain sections of the society and the police become entangled with the ways of the media?

He said that during the Zia regime the private media (mainly newspapers and magazines) did not play any major role to encourage or advocate his politics of morality.

He explained: ‘I think only Jasarat (Urdu daily sympathetic to the Jamat-i-Islami) paid any heed to highlighting the supposed areas of immorality in society,  but all the major Urdu and English papers and magazines actually spend more effort in castigating the actions of those who were harassing people in the name of faith.’

‘But, he continued, ‘it was very tough for a lot us who were journalists in those days to criticise the regime. It was a time when journalists and students were being flogged, whereas known drug barons were being patronised by the regime and young men were openly harassing defenseless men and women in the name of safeguarding Islamic morals.’

Most journalists that I talked to pointed at the famous/infamous Urdu magazineTakbeer as the media organ that ‘pioneered’ the idea of turning civilian moral vigilantism into a successful media ploy.

Though a right-wing political magazine, Takbeer also became famous for publishing social ‘exposés’ in which it printed photographs and reports of men and women drinking alcohol and dancing, and couples caught dating in certain public places such as parks, cinemas and restaurants.

When Takbeer became a hit with readers, many other Urdu dailies and magazines began forming their own moral raid brigades.

 

These different people on most occasions have simply refused to come under the all-encompassing umbrella of ideological unity the country’s establishment, its religious allies and the urban bourgeoisie have been shoving down our throats for the last six decades.

But no doubt there is also polarisation of a more genuine kind in society. On occasions it’s been like a black comedy that can generate sheer bafflement. Every Friday at my office during the second half of the morning session, I notice guys who regularly go for prayers at the mosque break up into little groups. One day I decided to figure out why that happens, or why they are all not going to the same mosque.

It is easy for me to understand that the Shia among them would visit the Shia mosques, but one Friday I was rather amused when I overheard a group of Sunni guys discussing why they would not go to a particular (Sunni) mosque because the mullah’s sermons there offended them. It turned out that the lads were Deobandi Sunnis, who, due to lack of time, had had to visit a nearby mosque whose mullah belonged to another Sunni sub-sect, the Barelvis, who are the majority Sunnis in Pakistan. So the discussion was to locate a Deobandi mosque nearest to the office.

A senior colleague who’d seen me talking to these guys, approached me in the evening, smiling: “Did you see how they were whining?”

I smiled back, “I’m not very good at understanding these things.”

He shook his head and then said something that took me by surprise. He said, “I was the one who introduced them to the mosque they are now whining about. Do you know in their hearts they now believe I am a heretic.”

This senior colleague is a very religious man, with a beard and all, so his claim did baffle me but not for long. I soon realised what he was suggesting: He belonged to the Barelvi sect. It was a strange experience because on so many occasions I’ve seen him agreeing with his Deobandi counterparts on so many issues, especially on things like the Blasphemy Law, the need to enforce the Shariah, etc. But here they were, refusing to go to one another’s preferred mosques.

This actually shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where the state has for long been active in defining what or who a ‘Muslim’ is, and that too in a society brimming with various sects and sub-sects. This has left the sects judging one another, sometimes overtly and sometimes discreetly.

The state did not learn anything from the findings of the famous Justice Munir Report in which — after the 1954 anti-Ahmadi riots, instigated by the Jamat-i-Islami and Nizam-i-Islami Party — Justice Munir noted that according to his interviews with a number of ulema on the matter, he found that no two ulema agreed on a uniformed definition of a good Muslim.

Later on history recorded another rather amusing episode. During the movement against the Z A Bhutto government in 1977, led by an alliance of various religious parties (the PNA), the alliance leaders met at the Karachi Press Club to brief the press about their plan of action. Demanding the imposition of Shariah laws and the ouster of the ‘secular, socialist’ Bhutto regime, the alliance’s top three parties were representing the country’s main Sunni sub-sects.

The Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) followed the Deobandi school, whereas the Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) the Barelvi. PNA’s third main party, Jamat-i-Islami, had a following among middle-class urban Sunni conservatives and pro-Saudi elements.

PNA leaders talk to press at Karachi Press Club (1977)

Newspapers reported that after outlining their plan of action and professing their unity of purpose (the downfall of Bhutto and the imposition of Shariah), the PNA leaders broke for the evening prayers.

In those days there were no prayer rooms or mosques in places of work, and certainly none at the Karachi Press Club (though there is one now). So some journalists cleared a room for the PNA leaders to say their prayers in. Urdu dailies, Imroze, Jang and Musawat, then went on to report how a restrained but firm commotion broke out amongst the leaders when they couldn’t agree on who would lead the prayers as all three followed their own respective schools of thought.

The issue was not political but sectarian. Some newspapers reported that JUI’s Maulana Mufti Mehmood refused to offer prayers behind JUP ‘s Shah Ahmed Noorani. Syed A. Peerzada in his book Politics of JUI quotes a JUI leader who alleged that the reporting of this discord was the doing of the PPP’s Kausar Niazi whose job it was to exploit the sectarian differences between the PNA’s religious parties.

This might be true, but then this was perhaps the easiest thing to do, i.e. disturb the make-up of what Bhutto might have (correctly) thought was, at best, a cosmetic face of unity among the political-religious figures of Pakistan. The fact still holds true, and like it or not, perhaps, it always will.

Many years ago, when Swat was still green and free from bushy warlords, I knew a middle-aged man there who was also a tracking guide.

His name was Atique Ali Khan and I remember every time I used to ask him about how his two children were doing at school, he had this habit of constantly quoting a well-known hadidh. “Allah be praised,” he used to say. “They are doing well at school. As the Prophet used to say, go as far as China for knowledge.”

Well, I haven’t been to Swat in a long time and I have no idea what became of Atique, but thanks to the rude mushrooming of the rowdy keepers of faith in that part of Pakistan that took place in that area some two to three years ago, I’m sure his children weren’t even able to walk a kilometer for knowledge, let alone ever visiting China.

These Islamist Rambos were an angry lot. Once upon a time, it is said, they used to let off steam by chopping down trees. That was bad enough, but I guess ever since trees have become somewhat scarce in Swat, the level of their delusions about faith and religious laws suddenly doubled, rather quadrupled.

As a consequence they began ranting incoherent loud nothings on clandestine FM radio stations about how extremely angry they were about all the obscenity and injustice in the world and about matters related to the education of little girls.  Indeed, a grave danger to Islam these young ones certainly are.

Well, the loud FM stations too didn’t seem to satisfy their monstrous appetites for divinely-inspired action, so off they went blowing up CD shops and girls’ schools.

Blow ‘em all, became their heartfelt mantra, as they became angrier, louder and a lot bushier.

Unfortunately, since supposedly their faith was a lot deeper than that of us ‘bad Muslims’, it required more from them. So these angry men started blowing themselves up!

What’s more, for an impressive display and effect, they did this in wide open public places. Off they went with a bang, taking along with them mutilated and severed bodies, dozens of men, women and children. And up they all went to good ol’ paradise, or so they say, and so they believed.

But what about you and I? The bad Muslims. We, who are ready to shout down the US for its drone attacks, and the Zionists for their barbarity against the Palestinians?

What do we have to say about the blowing up of girls’ schools, CD and barber shops in our own backyard? Happenings that are still a reality in various towns, enclaves and cities of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and South Punjab?

What do we have to say about men of faith in our very own country who actually believe that suicide and multiple murders in the name of God will land them a cozy little corner in paradise?

The ideological and material clash of two extremes – Bush’s clean-shaven neo-cons and the bushy Islamist terrorists – have left most ‘moderate’ Muslim populations in a scared and awkward state of myopia.

This disposition has helped serve the purpose of the Islamists. Because sadly, most ‘moderate Muslims’, instead of forming a third opinion through some sort of a rational consensus, have decided to take sides between the two extremes.

For example, most Pakistanis naturally took an opposing view of Bush’s ‘War on Terror’. Fair enough. But since much of this was done without a clear third view, commentaries and opinions against matters like drone attacks, suicide bombings and ‘war on terror’ have regrettably sounded more and more like jerky, jingoistic, reactionary spiels.

Unfortunately, these excitable tirades helped fatten the delusional and self-righteous complexes of the Islamists.

The third view – that is directly linked to the democratic political parties and the self-interest of the military, government and society of Pakistan – was ultimately sacrificed at the alter of hyperbolic political clichés and rants, making the country to continue suffering from a scenario in which we went on bad mouthing one extreme (neo-cons) while uncannily allowing the other extreme to get fatter, bolder and wilder.

As for Atique Ali Khan, I wonder if he’s still alive, or for that matter, if his children are still alive. One thing’s for sure, though. They won’t be having many schools left to go to. But what’s a school compared to a place in Paradise, aye?

The Pakistan army as an institution is a curious creature. A self-absorbed  bulky white elephant, it can suddenly transform into becoming a raging bull in a china shop every time it feels the vast political and economic space it needs to move around in is being shrunken with the help of fences and boundary walls.

Though it has lost almost all of the wars that it has fought against archenemy India, it has done well against in this respect against the people of the country it it claims to defend.

It has constantly waged brutal battles against Baloch nationalists  (1960-62; 1973-77; 2003-); mercilessly wiped out whole villages with the help of tanks in the interior of Sindh (1983 MRD Movement); ran circles around MQM activists in Karachi (1992), and, of course, has been accused of engineering a genocide of Bengalis in the former East Pakistan in 1971.

More than being a dependable and effective fighting machine, the Pakistan army has risen to become a monolithic corporate and political empire that has increasingly safeguarded its vast economic interests and social perks under the cover of being the guardians of that vague abstraction called the ‘Pakistan ideology’, and by constantly meddling in civilian political affairs.

In spite of all this and especially due to the fact that Pakistan’s civilian set-ups have always seemed to be look utterly chaotic and ragged compared to the shining, monolithic and high sounding cohesiveness of the army, most Pakistanis have been known to actually applaud military intervention in civilian affairs.

Though the above is true, many analysts and politicos who use this argument to endorse military intervention fail to mention the fact that honeymoon periods of military regimes in Pakistan have been rather short-lived.

All military dictators have had to eventually face not only armed insurgencies but also large scale democratic movements. The reason behind this has little to do with Pakistanis being great admirers of democracy, because constant military interventions thwarting the evolution of the democratic process has not exactly produced a democratic polity.

The main reason why military regimes have had to face intense political opposition in a not-very-democratic Pakistan is that Pakistan (unlike its monolithic military) is an extremely diverse entity with numerous ethnicities, muslim sects and religions.

Theoretically such a diversity is best served by an uninterrupted and evolving democratic system that produces its own filtering system, checks and balances, and helps most elements of an animated diversity become part of the country’s political, economic and cultural processes.

However, the Pakistan armed forces’ views in this regard have usually been rather myopic and with which it has constantly tried to enforce its monolithic and narrow understanding of nationalism and faith over a diverse polity of ethnicities, Muslim sects and religions present in Pakistan.

In its pursuit to do so – ever since Ayub Khan’s military regime – the military has bagged the help of various other forces of myopia and supporters of monolithic ideological constructs, such as politico-religious parties, right-wing sections of the media, conservative politicians, and many technocrats, industrialists and bureaucrats, all of whose own political and economic interests now seem to be attached to those of the military’s.

That’s why in the last few decades, especially ever since the mid and late 1970s, apart from, the military and its civilian mouthpieces have been so enthusiastic about safeguarding ‘Pakistan ideology’ and its Iqbal-meets-Maududi ‘Islamic’ raison d’être.

Of course, the safeguarding of the so-called Pakistan ideology (largely constructed in the 1970s after the 1971 debacle in former East Pakistan), may mostly mean the safeguarding of the military’s, the religious parties’ and their capitalist and bourgeois supporters’ political and economic interests from the perceived ‘chaos’ of a democratic system that, they fear and warn,  might strengthen the political and economic aspects of Pakistan’s diverse polity and that this can lead to the Balkanization of the country.

That’s why the military and its economic and political allies have continued to harp loudly about the ‘threats’ that Pakistan faces from forces that want to divide the country on ethnic and sectarian basis, and it seems one of these threats include democracy.

Over and over again whenever a democratic (rather, an anti-dictatorship) movement or even the country’s largely immature and pot-holed democratic system has shown hints of liberating large sections of the population from the shackles of the vagueness and myopia we call the Pakistan ideology and hurl the people towards a more pluralistic, autonomous and progressive set of economics, politics and culture, the military has gotten nervous – as if it was about to loose a conquered people.

This is the time when it intervenes. The above process is vehemently denounced as being chaotic and a threat that may break Pakistan. And of course, never mind the fact that things like economic corruption were largely institutionalised during the Ayub and Ziaul Haq dictatorships and the fact that the military has come under increasing criticism of being one of the most shady institutions when it comes to generating and accumulating wealth, it’s allies are quick to denounce democratic set-ups as being inherently corrupt and a danger to the country’s security apparatus.

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Let’s now briefly go through the political and ideological credentials of the four military regimes that Pakistan has suffered from to determine why after more than thirty years of military rule (out of Pakistan’s sixty-four years of existence), the country is still struggling to make up its mind about whether it wants an uninterrupted flow of democracy or a system that is constantly punctuated (and thus retarded) by military takeovers and indirect  military interference through hostile pro-establishment politicians, right-wing media, religious parties and desperate political opportunists.

Field Martial Ayub Khan dictatorship

Ayub Khan – File Photo

Ruling period: 1958-1969

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; corruption; threat to the unity of the federation (mainly from Sindhi, Baloch, Pushtun and Bengali nationalists, and from communism).

Promises made: To eradicate corruption; to wipe out politics of ethnicity; to unite the federation; to bring about ‘real democracy’ and/or a democratic system more suited to a third world country like Pakistan; to remain being part of Western alliances (led by United States) to protect Pakistan from Soviet-backed communist infiltration and take-over.

Achievements: A robust, state-funded capitalist economy and economic growth; secularization of the constitution and passing of liberal social and economic laws and policies; opening up Pakistan to economic and cultural aspects of western modernism and to the western cultures and markets.

Disasters:  Brutal crushing of Baloch nationalist movement (1961); witch hunts against leftists ( and thus suspected ‘Soviet agents’); farcical electoral system (called ‘Basic Democracy’) that encouraged cynical and amoral politicking; widespread corruption emerging from the state’s nepotism; handing out lucrative deals to favourite businessmen and politicians and to relatives; failure of regime to make economic growth reach beyond the clutches of the preferred business, feudal and political elites; concentration of wealth among the chosen few; going in an ill-advised war with India and then backing out after claiming the army was winning the war; handing over power to another General after being bogged down by a popular democratic movement.

Ideological orientation: Secular and pro-west but highly authoritarian and anti-pluralistic.

King’s party: Pakistan Muslim League (Convention) formed in 1962 to give Ayub the platform to draft a constitution and become President.

General Yahya Khan dictatorship

Yahya Khan – File Photo

Ruling period: 1969-71

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; threat to the unity of federation; spread of corruption and anti-Pakistan movements.

Promises made: Will end political chaos; hold free and fair elections; safeguard Pakistan’s borders.

Achievements: Holding of Pakistan’s first elections based on adult franchise (1970).

Disasters:  Refusal to hand over power to majority party (the Bengali nationalist, Awami League); engineering a genocidal purge of Bengali nationalists, killing thousands of men, women and children in the process, accusing them of treachery; radicalizing religious youth ( especially from Jamat Islami) to help the military to eradicate Bengali ‘traitors’; incompetent administration and utter failure to eradicate corruption rampant among business elite, the military and the bureaucracy; whipping up anti-India emotions, then going in an ill-planned war with India, only to surrender meekly after claiming Pakistan forces were winning the war.

Ideological orientation: Largely secular and pro-West, but began to incorporate Islamic rhetoric during the purge in former East Pakistan (denouncing Bengali nationalists as being funded by Bengali Hindus), and then during the war against India that was explained as a fight between Islam and Hinduism.

King’s party: None, but gave patronage to factions of pro-military Muslim League and the Jamat Islami during 1970 elections. Both parties were routed by Awami League and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

General Ziaul Haq dictatorship

Ziaul Haq – File Photo

Ruling period: 1977-88

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; threat to unity of the federation; fears of civil war; threat to Pakistan ideology and to the Islamic credentials of this ideology; unchecked ‘immoral’ liberalism in society; threat from pro-India and pro-Soviet forces.

Promises made: To bring Pakistan back on track by enforcing ‘Islamic’ economic, political and justice system (Nizam-e-Mustapha, Islami Nizam); to turn Pakistan into an ‘Islamic welfare sate’; to cleanse society and politics by  eradicating western and leftist influences; to hold elections in 90 days and make sure only ‘good Muslims’ are elected.

Achievements: Successfully ending the military operation in Balochistan; pulling back recession and economic uncertainty and halting the rot that had set in various institutions due to the Z A. Bhutto regime’s carelessly implemented nationalization policies; engineering the emergence of an economically vibrant urban middle-class, especially in the Punjab.

Disasters:  Retarding the constitution with highly vague and unfathomable moral clauses that have not only caused and even justified intolerant acts of violence but have also been tough to rectify by the democratic governments that followed; plunging into the Afghan Civil War on the side of the US and Saudi backed Islamist forces; failing to check the flow of heroin and guns in society pouring in from the anarchic Afghan-Pakistan border; funding the emergence of radical/ puritanical Wahabi and Deobandi madressas and indoctrination centres to whip up enthusiasm among young Pakistanis for the ‘Afghan jihad’; giving a free hand to anti-Shia and anti-Barelvi outfits that were also being patronized by Saudi Arabia; allowing the infiltration of the armed forces by fundamentalist groups and the indoctrination of junior officers and common soldiers by these groups; tactically allowing the springing up of militant Sunni sectarian organizations; encouraging the existence of a thriving ‘parallel economy’ based on gun and drug trade and involving a number of businessmen and military men; failing to curb rampant corruption; enacting reactionary cultural policies that evicted a number of talented artistes, performers, intellectuals and media personnel from TV, radio, newspapers and other cultural platforms (accusing them of being ‘anti-Islam’); conducting constant witch hunts against leftist, liberal and anti-Zia politicians, students, journalists and lawyers; introducing discriminatory  anti-women and anti-minority laws; exhibiting blatant nepotism, favoring pro-regime businessmen, traders and relatives; ignoring corruption among senior military personnel; allowing the radicalization of the ISI; patronizing Punjabi businessmen, traders, landed elite and politicians and consequently giving birth to a hatred towards Punjab in Sindh and Balochistan; hanging an elected prime minister through a controversial and one-sided trial and a largely compromised judiciary; sending thousands of opponents to jails and torture cells; leaving behind a society reeking of cynicism, moral hypocrisy, growing religious radicalization and intolerance and a twisted idea about the military being the only true guardian of Islam and ideology in Pakistan.

Ideological orientation: Islamist/conservative but pro-west.

King’s party: A revamped Pakistan Muslim League formed in 1986.

General Parvez Musharraf dictatorship

Pervez Musharraf – File Photo

Ruling period: 1999-2008

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; rampant corruption; sovereignty of country under threat; civilian government insulting the prestige of armed forces; dynastic politics.

Promises made: Will eradicate corruption; protect state institutions; bring ‘real democracy’; tackle extremism in society.

Achievements: Revived a spiralling economy; took action against a number of extremist and sectarian outfits; allowed the mushrooming of private TV channels and the freedom of the media; took positive and progressive cultural initiatives; gave Karachi one of it’s finest and most stable city governments as part of the dictatorship’s ‘devolution of power’ scheme.

Disasters: Was selective towards action against extremist outfits, acting against some while clandestinely harbouring others (supposedly to be used against India in Kashmir and in Afghanistan to claim Pakistan’s stake in that country); lost initial burst of popularity by retorting to the Ziast tactic of engineering a farcical referendum to become president; gathered renegade and ‘sell out’ politicians from the country’s mainstream parties to form a cosmetic political party made up entirely of ‘lotas’; triggered another Baloch insurgency by assassinating the once moderate Baloch politician, Nawab Bugti; ignored the high handedness of the ISI against the Baloch; contradicted his liberal rhetoric by showing spite against some rape victims who went public about their cases ; mishandled a troublesome Chief Justice (accidentally turning an unimpressive, conservative judge into becoming a hero); delayed taking action against extremists who’d taken over a mosque in Islamabad (Lal Masjid) – the delayed action caused great chaos and thanks to the kind of coverage it got from the hostile right- wing media, the action sprang up a number of revenge-seeking Islamist outfits that created havoc among common civilians and soldiers alike; failed to check the threat that was stalking Benazir Bhutto; engineered a bubble-like economy and illusion of prosperity that, by 2007, burst and plunged Pakistan into a grave economic crises.

Ideological orientation: Largely liberal, but at the same time authoritarian and adding a more modern twist to the usual militaristic nature and make-up of the Pakistan ideology.

King’s party: Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) formed in 2002.

It’s back. That vague, all-encompassing term, ‘Islamic Welfare State’. Imran Khan has been advocating it loudly in his recent speeches; but so have been the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and the like. During his party’s impressive rally in Karachi, Khan equated his concept of such a state with the celebrated welfare states of Scandinavian countries, albeit with a twist.

He said the state he is envisioning will be based on the dictates of collective economic well being and justice found in Islam. He said if the Scandinavians converted to Islam they’d consequentially become better Muslims than us. The question is: if one is able to achieve the task of making masses of people benefit from the many advantages of a well-oiled welfare state without involving religion, shouldn’t that be taken as an example instead of the social and theological complications that religion can throw up in this context?

Anyway, it can also be convincingly argued that the western concept of the welfare state that Khan is quoting emerged from economic manoeuvres of staunchly secular social democratic parties, and through a conscious effort by these parties to separate the church from the state. In other words, especially in Europe, the welfare state was a direct consequence of a strong secular tradition that was highly suspicious of the church (for being on the side of the aristocracy and capitalist monopolists).

The European concept of the welfare state offered itself as a middle-ground between radical Marxist anti-theism and dogmatic economic regimentation and the unchecked capitalism and aristocratic oligarchies. All the while many of these economic and political sections remained allied to the religious forces.

Organised religions have always had the tendency to side with (or be used by) those elites that attempt to halt reformist manoeuvres that may pull the people away from the orbit of religious institutions and of those economic sections that resist any kind of limits put on their profit-making. In Pakistan as well, religious institutions and parties have had a history of siding with the economic and political interests of the ‘establishment’.

This is an establishment that has tried to safeguard its interests mostly through military dictators or through a cosmetic democracy punctuated by constant interference in civilian affairs. It can do so by using religious parties which eventually end up endorsing the ways of this establishment as being something close to ‘Pakistan ideology’ and therefore, religion. Thus, the slogan of the Islamic welfare state is not exactly a culmination (as Imran suggests) of Jinnah’s original vision, but rather, it has evolved directly from the slogan of ‘Nizam-i-Mustafa’ first raised by the right-wing anti-Bhutto coalition, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), in 1977.

Interestingly, the ‘Nizam-i-Mustafa’ slogan was a reaction to Z A. Bhutto’s (and the PPP’s) slogan of ‘Masawat-i-Muhammadi’ (Islamic socialism), crafted to pad his socialist manoeuvres from the criticism he was receiving from the religious parties and the establishment. The two conveniently denounced Bhutto’s plans for economic and land reforms as being ‘non-Islamic’. It is thus not surprising that the PNA was a recipient of generous funds from traders and industrialists bitten by Bhutto’s (albeit badly managed) nationalisation.

The slogan of ‘Nizam-i-Mustafa’ was soon picked up by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship, and it was Zia who first expressed it as meaning to be the setting up of an Islamic welfare state. His model was Saudi Arabia — itself a 20th century theological dystopia with pretentions of being the Islamic Utopia initially visualised by political Islamists such as Abul Ala Maudoodi and Syed Qutb.

Religion is a moral guide. But when this guide is turned into a rigid political manifesto and used to derive social and political legislation from, it does not help one build a welfare state as such; it actually ends up strengthening the forces to which most modern economic and social reforms appear as being akin to imposition of heathen ideas. This is exactly what happened during Bhutto’s Islamic socialism and more so, during Zia’s era of Islamic state.

The Islamic welfare state that he promised only helped strengthen obscurantist sections of society, and gave birth to an enterprising but conservative bourgeoisie who are inherently opposed to the concept of the welfare state. To them such a proposition smacks of a state using their money to subsidise services to those who, to them, are not willing to work hard.

Thanks to Zia, the whole concept of Islamic welfare state is not only vague, but it has for reasons discussed come down to mean a populist promise but with an extremely elitist and at times, outright obscurantist agenda. This was also the slogan carried around by Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N in the 1990s, until one fine day he decided to get the parliament to crown him as ameerul momineen (commander of the faithful). And now here we are hearing that slogan again.

This not only proves that we have refused to learn from the economic, political and cultural debacles brought on by the state dabbling in legislation derived from what are basically moral guidelines, but also the fact that the establishment continues to use religion and political convolutions like ‘Islamic state’ as a way to safeguard its and its allies’ economic and political interests. This it does by keeping all thought of genuine economic and political reforms at bay.

“Alhamdulillah, I am a Muslim and a Pakistani.” How often does one come across statements such as this? But what does such a declaration really mean in a country where more than 95 per cent of the population is Muslim – and, of course, Pakistani?

Why do we keep hearing it over and over again? Do most Pakistanis have doubts about their religious and patriotic inclinations? Whom are they talking to?

It is Pakistanis talking to Pakistanis. So then why the constant reminders about them being Muslims and Pakistanis?
The reasons are rather simple. Our’s is a country where there is no one cohesive understanding of faith or culture.

Though there is nothing wrong in being a diverse society (in fact the diversity should be celebrated), the problem starts when the state and certain intellectual and religious circles begin to shape and enforce a single concept of “correct religion” and “true patriotism.”

When this supposedly correct version of religious belief and nationalism is given constant currency and propagation, an overriding social psyche starts to develop in which anyone criticising or even debating this version automatically becomes suspect and is likely to be accused of being “anti-Islam” and (thus)  “anti-Pakistan.”

This psyche has not only hindered the development of the culture of holding informed discourses, it has also given birth to a mind-set that explains the act of mud-slinging as “debate,” and which encourages the floating of bizarre conspiracy theories as a way to actually fatten one’s credentials as a “political analyst”, “religious scholar” and “economic expert.”

Thus, even when a view is aired, especially if it is a learned, insightful and well informed opinion, the person is subconsciously bound to also apologetically explain his Muslimness and Pakistaniat – as if trying to speak one’s mind is a no-go-area and can bring the involved person’s religious and patriotic beliefs into question.

Constant declarations such as, “After all we are all Muslims …” have become mantras of apologia without which a person is exposed to all kinds of accusations by the  keepers of faith and nationalism who can be found in great numbers across large sections of the society, media and the ‘establishment.’

But the progressive and the less religiously demonstrative politicians, journalists and intellectuals are not the only ones forced by this psyche to constantly announce their faith and patriotism.

Artistes, cultural figures and the common man too – especially when they are given a public platform like, for example, television –  find themselves subconsciously and almost instinctively invoking the words, “Islam,” and “Pakistan,” even while talking about a totally secular and unrelated topic.

It is as if each one of them feels that while in front of a camera, more than anything else, it is their religious and patriotic credentials that are being judged.

One can expect this from an actress, a pop star, politicians, cooking show host and common people. The psychological pressure to do so is such that they are bound to add a statement like, “Akhir hum Muslaman aur Pakistani hain” (After all, we are Muslims and Pakistanis), to whatever they may be saying.

This is actually them answering an invisible and unsaid, but nonetheless, forceful question: “Declare your faith?” As if not answering this question can get them accused of being “un-Islamic” and “un-patriotic.”

This is a sad state of affairs. It smells of an elusive and unspoken form of fascism imposed in the name of faith and patriotism. The situation gets even worse when such declarations are ironically not expected from people who perhaps make the biggest mockery of faith and nationalism. These are certain politico-religious figures, conservative personalities and most televangelists.

They seem to be free to distort faith and history, clutter minds with crackpot conspiracy theories, mock intelligence and rationality, and sometimes even instigate hatred and violence – yet not a single question is asked of them.

Nobody is judging their credentials in this respect. Maybe because their declarations in matters of faith and patriotism come in the shape of loud reactionary ranting, hare-brained theories and their “Islamic way of dressing.” As if being a good Muslim and a concerned Pakistani only amounts to being loud, exhibitionistic and self-righteous.

After all, isn’t it true that though the mindset I am talking about is always quick to call an actress “fahash” (obscene), a secular politician “anti-Islam,” a liberal “pro-West,” and an objective/progressive political analyst “anti-Pakistan,” it never bothers to question preachers, fanatics, TV personalities and those televangelists who openly peddle faith and patriotism through hate speeches, reactionary insinuations, reckless conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated gossip?

Think about it.

And by the way, I too must declare: I am a Muslim and a Pakistani.  Just in case.

I would like to describe it as an unhealthy obsession with religion that is carelessly used to not only inflict bodily harm on those considered to be infidels or ‘bad’ Muslims, but to also use it as an excuse to rob, lie, cheat and attempt to maintain manipulated dominance over those considered religiously flawed and inferior. It is also used to describe one’s own professional, social and political shortcomings as something that is due to the intrigues of those who are against Muslims.

Religiomania also constitutes a myopic fixation to preach; it engulfs many from the generic maulvis to those belonging to large outfits like the Tableeghi Jamat and Dawat-i-Islami, the ever-growing number of Islamic televangelists, and all the way to those who just can’t help but roll out numerous emails and text messages on the subject on a daily bases. Growing up in an era in which the whole myth about Islam being in danger has reached a new, unprecedented peak, many Pakistanis’ fixation with religion has at times seen this obsession turn into a rather disruptive allergy.

Even the most educated men and women suddenly become allergic to recognising some obvious truths about what we as a nation and polity have ended up doing in the name of faith and morality. We will wail, moan and whine about Islamophobia in the West, but keep mum over the discrimination and hatred that take place by Muslims against other religions as well as between and within Muslim sects in this country.

This mania has generated a childlike stubbornness in which all avenues of reason and rationality are purposefully blocked. By doing this we are convinced we are dutifully defending our faith, even if this means actually becoming apologists and defenders of the most destructive and inhuman expressions of religious extremism. An extremism of our own making.

Religiomania also includes literally wearing one’s religion loudly and for all to see as if otherwise God won’t be able to judge our religiosity. Take the example of the way many Pakistanis reacted to the niqab ban in France. Some women who use burqa or hijab say they feel liberated. In our media we hear their voices loud and clear, but never of the other side who suggests that a woman who observes hijab/ burqa/ niqab may as well be submitting to the historical Arab tribal male-driven tradition of claiming control over women.

Various Muslim women authors and thinkers believe that the observance of veil remains a dictate of Muslim men. They say that the practice is an outcome of laws and social mores constructed over the last many centuries by judges, ulema and lawmakers who were all men. Muslim women who do not use the veil are right to demand that if some of their sisters in France are so agitated by the veil ban, then they should be equally agitated by the act of enforcing women to wear a veil, a burqa or a chador in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan. It’s only fair, if this really is a matter of the freedom of expression.

While we busy ourselves in discussing the veil issue in France, bemoaning the discrimination faced by Muslim women there who observe the veil, we conveniently forget that in many Muslim countries, women who believe that modesty is a state of mind and can be demonstrated without veiling are coming under increasing pressure. Much of this pressure, of course, is coming from men.

Yet, unveiled women also face a telling pressure from the ever-increasing numbers of veiled women or from even those who wear hijab. This begs the question: Is it really liberation that a woman feels behind a veil, or is this liberation only about liberating oneself from that awkward thought of ever daring to challenge male-dominated interpretations of a woman’s modesty?

In a male-dominated society driven by religiomania such a question can land a woman in trouble, so many may as well submit to the male idea about morality and explain it away as an expression of faith and identity instead of a cop-out. It’s just a question.

Two of the most common comments I receive through emails are: ‘If only Pakistan imposes a true Islamic system, we’ll be able to get rid of the hypocrisies committed in its name.’ Of course, such suggestions are proposed by fellow Pakistanis. The other comment is usually from readers in India or the West. It’s a simple question: ‘Why are Pakistanis always so engrossed in religion?’

I am no scholar (religious or otherwise), but a student of history with a keen interest in understanding it through the lens of cultural anthropology. You see, most of us living in Pakistan have always been advised to look at cultural studies with suspicion. It has been embedded in us that this sort of enquiry leads one to question the very foundations of the country’s ideology.

But the problem is, the less equipped or inclined we are to question what we’ve been told is our ideology, the more one-dimensional remains our understanding of the diverse range of people that reside in Pakistan; and also, we become more venerable to the continuous volley of half-truths and glorified delusions that have been coming our way from dictators, textbooks and the usual media crackpots.

The whole notion of being a country buzzing with ethnic, sectarian and religious diversity becomes something to be afraid of, or something to be repressed with the help of an ideology that has, over the decades, been imposed upon this diversity by a curious nexus of so-called modernist Muslims and their puritanical counterparts. At the centre of this all is an ever-weakening state, which, from 1947 till 1977, shunned recognising the dynamics of Pakistan’s diversity by imposing a nationalistic, Muslim identity. It didn’t work.

In the absence of the kind of rigorous democracy that a diverse nation requires, this all-encompassing Muslim nationalism only ended up alienating the centuries-old cultural moorings of a number of ethnicities in Pakistan. So, as the Baloch, the Sindhis and the Pashtuns rose up in anger, as had done the Bengalis in the former East Pakistan, who eventually decided to rip themselves away from Pakistan’s ideological equation.

Though the anti-diversity dynamics of Muslim nationalism was by and large successful in keeping this ideology’s more radical advocates at bay, the 1971 East Pakistan debacle left this ideology vulnerable to the influence of what was once dismissed as the Islamist fringe.

Gradually, especially with the arrival of the dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq, the ideology’s early modernist Islam was turned on its head when the new ideologues wanted to Islamise the modern. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan gave way to Abul Ala Maududi.

The kind of theological, political and cultural damage this long-winded attitude has inflicted in the past three decades has made the state and governments of Pakistan willing hostages to the abrasive and reactionary ways of the puritanical ideologues. What’s more, today, even some of the most educated young Pakistanis have lost the capacity to question what is dished out to them as Islamic/ Pakistani history and ideology. We are still not prepared to face an obvious truth that may call the very essence and foundation of our so-called ideology into question.

Has not this ideology irst of the modernist ‘One Unit’ Islam variety, and then the exhibitionistic and militarist version of it completely failed to achieve what it wanted to? That is, to turn a diverse Pakistan into a united, ideological whole based on religion.

It was always an over-ambitious and Utopian task. We were never ‘one people.’ The majority of us were Muslims (and still are), but our understanding of faith is intricately linked to and informed by the cultural moorings of our own distinct ethnicities and sects.

Laws and policies cannot be made to succeed based upon the simple idea that all Muslims believe in the same God and the same book. What passes as Islamic law in certain Muslim countries would be an anachronism in Pakistan. Same way, what may be a success (as an Islamic law) in certain areas of the Deobandi dominated Khyber Pakhtunkhwa could be offensive to the Barelvi or Shia of Punjab and Sindh. There has never been a wide-ranging consensus among the sects and ethnicities of Pakistan about the ideology of Pakistan. How can there be?

Shouldn’t the consensus be sought more on recognising the ethnic and sectarian diversity of this country, giving all democratic participants of this diversity as much autonomy as possible (through a fair democratic process) to take responsibility of just how much religion, or what sort of religion (if at all), would every ethnicity and sect want to use in their respective communities’ politics and society? The state’s role should be to make sure that such a national consensus holds and that none of the state’s institutions is allowed to identify with any one ethnic or sectarian group or ideology.

We have to finally recognise (on an official level) that we live in a land of many ethnicities and multiple interpretations of Islam. This phenomenon has to be harnessed and celebrated, not repressed or be afraid of. This very repression has produced nothing but an ideological neurosis that we suffer from today.