Recommended Readings Post Lahore Terrorism

I am not going to write about Wednesday's triple Lahore blasts during the Youm-e-Ali procession. Not because they didn't affect me deeply (they did) but because there is nothing I can say about this kind of terrorism which I have not already said countless times before.

Inevitably, media attention has focused on security and organizational lapses which, had they not occurred, might have prevented such a large number of casualties. Focusing on organizational inefficiencies is fine... up to a point. I would like to steer the discussion towards another usually ignored tangential aspect of the whole issue. But instead of writing about it myself, today I am going to rely on other writers who have done an excellent job of presenting the point, even though at least one of them was not motivated by yesterday's specific incidence.

First up, do read Nadeem Farooq Paracha's very good (and thankfully, well measured) analysis of the forces that have brought Pakistan to this point and which are shaping the mindsets of the country's burgeoning youth populations even now.

Secondly, if nothing else, read the excellent op-ed piece in Dawn from one of journalism's grand old veterans, I.A. Rehman, a vanishing breed of professionally sound, thoughtful analysts whose integrity is beyond reproach. I am posting the entire article below, if only so those who have a knee-jerk response to the idea of secularism in Pakistan (some perhaps because of those who propound it as thoughtless fashion themselves) might reconsider their beliefs that it has no roots or legitimacy in the country. The points I.A. Rehman makes bear repeating because, increasingly, we are producing literate illiterates - those who can read and write (and hold forth on the media) but know nothing of our own history, culture or the philosophical debates that have shaped us.

Spectre of Secularism

By I.A. Rehman

Thursday, 02 Sep, 2010

      

The spectre of secularism is haunting the privileged elite of Pakistan, some privileged by birth or status, others by their grading in the realm of belief. Now pollsters have joined the effort to scare the people with reports that a majority of young persons prefer theocracy to secularism.

Unfortunately, huge confusion has been caused by presenting Islam and secularism as two mutually antagonistic and irreconcilable philosophies. In many cases this is done by persons who cannot, or do not wish to, analyse both Islam and secularism objectively.

The Oxford Dictionary gives many meanings and usages of the word ‘secular’, including a member of the clergy not bound by a religious rule; not belonging to or living in seclusion with a monastic or other order; belonging to the world and its affairs as distinguished from the Church and religion; civil, lay; non-religious, non-sacred; et al.

The strongest opponents of secularism always rely on its definition as “the belief that religion and religious considerations should be deliberately omitted from temporal affairs”.

However, it can be substantiated with the help of authoritative texts that Islam views secularism as a way of life that is inspired by Islam’s ethical ideal (Iqbal’s favourite expression) but in which reason is used to promote the good of humankind. That is why duties to human beings are considered more important than obligations to God.

The principle that Islamic injunctions can be amended to suit changes dictated by time and social development has been upheld by a long list of Islamic scholars, from Ibnul-Qaiyyam Jauzia and Ibn Khaldun to Allama Iqbal and that makes a strong case for Islam’s compatibility with secularism. (Falsafa Shariat-i-Islam, Majlis Taraqqi-i-Adab).

In Pakistan the advocates of secularism rely mostly on the Quaid-i-Azam’s dictum that religion has nothing to do with the business of the state. Actually, the subcontinental Muslims’ contribution to secularism has a much longer history, beginning (if not earlier) with Allauddin Khilji’s refusal to follow Qazi Mughis’s plea to convert or kill the more numerous non-Muslims. Babar advised Humayun to treat people’s religious affiliations as changing seasons and Aurangzeb scolded his teacher for making him waste his time on Arabic grammar while he should have been taught governance in a world that was larger than Shah Jahan’s kingdom. All these ideas bore the stamp of secularism.

In the modern phase of our history, Syed Ahmad Khan is considered the founder of the movement for Pakistan. He declared “the root cause of people’s misfortune lies in mixing the problems of the world with the problems of religion that are immutable…. Mixing of the affairs of the world with the affairs of religion is madness … conditions of society and civilisation change day by day, therefore, they cannot be part of religious commandments”. (Sibte Hassan in the Battle of ideas in Pakistan, Pakistan Publishing House, 1986).

Pakistan’s anti-secularism lobby has little respect for Allama Iqbal though quite a few mujavirs have won comfort by selling his name. In Iqbal’s life 1930 was a most significant year. It was the year he delivered the Madras Lectures, later on published in a book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, and it was the year when he addressed the Allahabad session of the Muslim League.

In the lectures, Iqbal’s overriding concern was to see the unfreezing of the Islamic jurisprudence that had been frozen for 500 years and had suffered greatly under what he described as “Arab imperialism”. He began his sixth lecture, ‘The principle of movement in the structure of Islam’, by describing Islam as a “cultural movement” and holding “that all human life is spiritual in its origin”. He added that a prophetic revelation was world-life’s intuitive perception of its own needs and its choice of direction at critical moments, and that “loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature”. He told his fellow Muslims that “a false reverence for past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a people’s decay”.

Allama Iqbal upheld the Turkish view that “according to the spirit of Islam the caliphate or imamate can be vested in a body of persons, or an elected assembly”. He gave ijma great importance as a source of lawmaking through a modern assembly. Then he addressed the question as to how to prevent mistakes by an assembly of lay persons. He rejected the idea of a board of ulema to advise parliament and told the ulema to be part of the assemblies.

“The only effective remedy for the possibilities of erroneous interpretations is to reform the present system of legal education in Mohammadan countries, to extend its sphere, and to combine it with an intelligent study of modern jurisprudence” (emphasis added, all references from the book published by Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 2007).

In the last week of December 1930, Iqbal gave his Allahabad address. He declared that “Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity — by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal — has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India.” Then he added: “Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best.” Since no Islamic theocracy was ever established by the Muslims in India, Iqbal could only be extolling their secular traditions.

After proposing a Muslim state in the north-western part of India, Iqbal dispelled the “Hindus’ fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states”. He then approvingly referred to a newspaper comment to the effect the Indian Muslim states did not ban interest and offered it as an example of “the character of a Muslim state”. This is secularism.

One should like to suggest a fresh interpretation of the Allama’s lectures and his Allahabad address. He may well emerge as a strong Islamic defender of secularism.

While the common people of Pakistan have no reason to share the ashrafiya’s fears of secularism they have every reason to dread the anti-secularism lobby. The “principal institutions of a secular society” listed by Altaf Gauhar are: the elected legislature, the judiciary, and the press”. (Battle of Ideas)

It is quite clear that all these institutions have to bear with one another. The Supreme Court can never sack parliament or the media, nor will parliament ever be foolish or strong enough to abolish the Supreme Court or the media. But the extremist militants that are being reared by anti-secular elements, if they ever capture the state, will almost surely pack off parliament, the Supreme Court and the media into oblivion. The choice before the people of Pakistan has never been clearer.

Two Twits Down, One To Go

This has really been a good week in some respects.

First there was news about wankmeister Zaid Zaman Hamid's long overdue comeuppance, initially at the hands of students in Peshawar and finally with a cartoonish flop show on 23rd March in Lahore. This is how Nadeem Farooq Paracha blogged about it on Dawn's website:

"For months the Zaid Hamid brigade had been congesting cyber space and the two TV channels that the haughty ideological quack is a regular fixture on, with promises of holding a ‘massive gathering of youth’ at the Minar-e-Pakistan on this year’s Pakistan Day (23rd March).

However, the no-show by Zaid and his fans at the Minar-e-Pakistan suggests the long honeymoon Mr. Hamid had been enjoying may be as good as over.

He simply failed to reach the Minar-e-Pakistan, not because he had a massive body of passionate young men with him chanting for his caliphate, but mainly due to him chickening out in the face of an announcement made by a radical Islamist group that recently named him in a police FIR for murder.

Perturbed  the articulate (but not very accurate) TV ideologue decided to hold his ‘historic’ rally at Lahore’s spacious Alhamra amphitheatre.

A man who likes posing in (passé) revolutionary attire and who it seems is always ready to pick up a Stinger missile and boldly cross into India and take-over Delhi, decided to quietly escape being at a venue where presence of a fringe group was expected.

So, the following message was fired by the man on the 23rd March: “Alhamdulillah, for tactical reasons, the venue for Takmeel e Pakistan has now been shifted to Alhamra Open Air Theatre adjacent to Gaddafi Stadium. Insha’Allah it is going to be an emotionally charged ideological, historical, earth-shaking event. Spread the message to your friends. Each one of you please do bring along a sabz hilali parcham. Be there by 3:30 p.m. Insha’Allah. PAKISTAN ZINDABAD! ONWARDS TO TAKMEEL E PAKISTAN! See you there Insha’Allah!”

Now that we know what the ‘tactical reason’ was for the sudden change of venue, what happened next was even more ‘earth shaking.’ No-one turned up.

Reports coming in from those who did decide to go, suggest that there were hardly a hundred Hamid fans present there. Funnier still was the fact that the Alhamra Hall was booked on urgent basis (by Hamid and co.) not as a venue for a rally, but for an ‘urgent marriage ceremony’!

So what happened? A figurative divorce of sorts."

You can see for yourself the "earth-shaking" event at the Alhamra:








And then today we've had news that the incompetent and afflicted-with-verbal-diarrhoea Mr Jamshed Dasti (of the Muzaffargarh PPP and chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Sports) has been forced to resign from the National Assembly after his Master's degree in Islamiat was adjudged to be fake by the Supreme Court.

The details of Mr Dasti's humiliation are rather tantalizing. Asked a series of questions by the Supreme Court hearing the challenge to his credentials, Mr Dasti managed to make even the justices cringe. Asked what were the subjects he studied for his degree and which year his degree was awarded, Mr. Dasti expressed complete ignorance. He was then asked to name the first 15 chapters of the Quran - he could not. Asked to name the first 5, he again could not. Finally asked to name at least the first and second, he replied that they were "Alhamd Sharif" (it's actually called "Sura-e-Fateha") and "Sura-e-Aal-e-Imran" (it's actually Sura-e-Baqrah, Aal-e-Imran is the third). Now, I doubt most people could name the first 15 chapters in exact order but keep in mind that the man supposedly had an MA in Islamiat. He was also asked how much 4 times 2 is, which he also apparently got wrong. After the Chief Justice told him to rethink his defence, he asked for time and ran away from the court only to have his lawyer come back and tell the court that he had submitted his resignation from the parliament.

Dasti lords his incompetence over others (Source: APP)

But dheet that he is, he still had the temerity to appear on Geo News to sheepishly say that he accepted the court's verdict and that he put his faith in God. I think his actual words were "Allah khair karay ga" (God will make everything all right). Do recall that this is the man who used to breathe fire and brimstone from the pulpit of the Sports Committee and fling around allegations like nobody's business. So not only is he a fraudster and incredibly stupid, he is also unrepentantly macho. The combination boggles the mind.

But he is not the only one who has been caught out faking his credentials. At least 3 other parliamentarians from the Punjab have resigned in the face of similar humiliation. Personally, I see no reason why this should be the end of the matter. Firstly, what about the two years' worth of salaries, allowances and perks they have managed to wangle from the people of Pakistan? The least that should be done is for these amounts to be recovered from them. But equally importantly, why should resignation from parliament be the end-all for them? They have knowingly defrauded the state of Pakistan, subverted the electoral will of the people and denied the legitimate candidates who stood against them. Even if this does not fall within the ambit of high treason, a stint of jail time is the least they should now enjoy.

You know what would make it a perfect week? If someone took a shoe to another fake fraudster, Mr Hardilazeez Twit himself.