Author: Pervez Hoodbhoy
Publication: News Line
Date: January 2, 2009
URL: http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsJan2009/cover2jan2009.htm
A stern, unyielding version of Islam is replacing
the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis in Pakistan.
The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic
radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions
serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is
breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan's
towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation
incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset
it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan's demise as a nation state.
For 20 years or more, a few of us have been
desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. In
fact, I am surprised at how rapidly these dire predictions have come true.
A full-scale war is being fought in FATA,
Swat and other "wild" areas of Pakistan, resulting in thousands
of deaths. It is only a matter of time before this fighting shifts to Peshawar
and Islamabad (which has already been a witness to the Lal Masjid episode)
and engulfs Lahore and Karachi as well. The suicide bomber and the masked
abductor have crippled Pakistan's urban life and shattered its national economy.
Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital
workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have
all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically,
in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all
Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they
approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts
because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and
against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran
Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic
extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator
drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own
people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
What explains Pakistan's collective masochism?
To understand this, one needs to study the drastic social and cultural transformations
that have rendered this country so completely different from what it was in
earlier times.
For three decades, deep tectonic forces have
been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving
it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but
cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity
for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are
replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in
India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the
Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern,
unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam
of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.
This change is by design. Twenty-five years
ago, the Pakistani state used Islam as an instrument of state policy. Prayers
in government departments were deemed compulsory, floggings were carried out
publicly, punishments were meted out to those who did not fast in Ramadan,
selection for academic posts in universities required that the candidate demonstrate
a knowledge of Islamic teachings and jihad was declared essential for every
Muslim. Today, government intervention is no longer needed because of a spontaneous
groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state - still in an
amorphous and diffused form - is more popular now than ever before as people
look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing state.
Villages have changed drastically; this transformation
has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries.
Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi
and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed
to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The
Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now
beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun
to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions
of the Lahore High Court.
In Pakistan's lower-middle and middle classes
lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement that frowns
on any and every expression of joy and pleasure. Lacking any positive connection
to culture and knowledge, it seeks to eliminate "corruption" by
regulating cultural life and seizing control of the education system.
"Classical music is on its last legs
in Pakistan; the sarangi and vichitraveena are completely dead," laments
Mohammad Shehzad, a music aficionado. Indeed, teaching music in public universities
is violently opposed by students of the Islami Jamaat-e-Talaba at Punjab University.
So the university has been forced to hold its music classes elsewhere. Religious
fundamentalists consider music haram or un-Islamic. Kathak dancing, once popular
with the Muslim elite of India, has few teachers left. Pakistan produces no
feature films of any consequence. Nevertheless, the Pakistani elite, disconnected
from the rest of the population, live their lives in comfort through their
vicarious proximity to the West. Alcoholism is a chronic problem of the super
rich of Lahore - a curious irony for this deeply religious country.
Islamisation of the state and the polity was
supposed to have been in the interest of the ruling class - a classic strategy
for preserving it from the wrath of the working class. But the amazing success
of the state is turning out to be its own undoing. Today, it is under attack
from religious militants, and rival Islamic groups battle each other with
heavy weapons. Ironically, the same army - whose men were recruited under
the banner of jihad, and which saw itself as the fighting arm of Islam - today
stands accused of betrayal and is almost daily targeted by Islamist suicide
bombers.
Pakistan's self-inflicted suffering comes
from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia's system, provides an ideological
foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood
as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child
a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat
everywhere.
On the previous page, the reader can view
the government-approved curriculum. This is the basic road map for transmitting
values and knowledge to the young. By an act of parliament passed in 1976,
all government and private schools (except for O-level schools) are required
to follow this curriculum. It was prepared by the curriculum wing of the federal
ministry of education, government of Pakistan. It sounds like a blueprint
for a religious fascist state.
Alongside are scanned pictures from an illustrated
primer for the Urdu alphabet. The masthead states that it has been prepared
by Iqra Publishers, Rawalpindi, along "Islamic lines." Although
not an officially approved textbook, it is being used currently by some regular
schools, as well as madrassas associated with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI),
an Islamic political party that had allied itself with General Musharraf.
These picture scans have been taken from a child's book, hence the scribbles.
The world of the Pakistani schoolchild remained
largely unchanged, even after September 11, 2001, the event that led to Pakistan's
timely desertion of the Taliban and the slackening of the Kashmir jihad. Indeed,
for all his hypocritical talk of "enlightened moderation," General
Musharraf's educational curriculum was far from enlightening. It was a slightly
toned down version of the curriculum that existed under Nawaz Sharif which,
in turn, was identical to that under Benazir Bhutto who had inherited it from
General Zia-ul-Haq. Fearful of taking on the powerful religious forces, every
incumbent government has refused to take a position on the curriculum and
thus quietly allowed young minds to be moulded by fanatics. What may happen
a generation later has always been a secondary issue for a government challenged
on so many fronts.
The promotion of militarism in Pakistan's
so-called "secular" public schools, colleges and universities had
a profound effect upon young minds. Militant jihad became part of the culture
on college and university campuses. Armed groups flourished, they invited
students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, set up offices throughout the
country, collected funds at Friday prayers and declared a war which knew no
borders. Pre-9/11, my university was ablaze with posters inviting students
to participate in the Kashmir jihad. Post-2001, this ceased to be done openly.
Still, the primary vehicle for Saudi-ising
Pakistan's education has been the madrassa. In earlier times, these had turned
out the occasional Islamic scholar, using a curriculum that essentially dates
back to the 11th century, with only minor subsequent revisions. But their
principal function had been to produce imams and muezzins for mosques, and
those who eked out an existence as 'maulvi sahibs' teaching children to read
the Quran.
The Afghan jihad changed everything. During
the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the
US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy
war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia,
funded new madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan. A detailed
picture of the current situation is not available. But according to the national
education census, which the ministry of education released in 2006, Punjab
has 5,459 madrassas followed by the NWFP with 2,843; Sindh has 1,935; the
Federally Administrated Northern Areas (FANA), 1,193; Balochistan, 769; Azad
Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 586; the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA),
135; and the Islamabad capital territory, 77. The ministry estimates that
1.5 million students are acquiring religious education in the 13,000 madrassas.
These figures appear to be way off the mark.
Commonly quoted figures range between 18,000 and 22,000 madrassas. The number
of students could be correspondingly larger. The free boarding and lodging
plus provision of books to the students, is a key part of their appeal. Additionally,
parents across the country desire that their children be "disciplined"
and given a thorough Islamic education. The madrassas serve this purpose,
too, exceedingly well.
Madrassas have deeply impacted the urban environment.
Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet, orderly, modern city different
from the rest of Pakistan. Also, it had largely been the abode of Pakistan's
elite and foreign diplomats. But the rapid transformation of its demography
brought with it hundreds of mosques with multi-barrelled audio-cannons mounted
on minarets, as well as scores of madrassas illegally constructed in what
used to be public parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of their students,
sporting little prayer caps, dutifully chant the Quran all day. In the evenings
they swarm the city, making women minus the hijab increasingly nervous.
Total segregation of the sexes is a central
goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For
example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and eight children were crushed to death
and scores injured in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi,
where a large number of women were attending a weekly congregation. Male rescuers,
who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving the injured women to
hospitals.
One cannot dismiss this incident as being
just one of a kind. In fact, soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I
walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical
College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious
elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their
school building. This action was similar to that of Saudi Arabia's ubiquitous
religious 'mutaween' (police) who, in March 2002, had stopped school girls
from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas
- a long robe worn in Saudi Arabia. In a rare departure from the norm, Saudi
newspapers had blamed and criticised the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn
to death.
The Saudi-isation of a once-vibrant Pakistani
culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also
being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytisers carrying this message,
such as Mrs Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to the heights of fame and
fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades back, the fully veiled student
was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. The abaya was an
unknown word in Urdu. Today, some shops across the country specialise in abayas.
At colleges and universities across Pakistan, the female student is seeking
the anonymity of the burqa. And in some parts of the country she seems to
outnumber her sisters who still "dare" to show their faces.
I have observed the veil profoundly affect
habits and attitudes. Many of my veiled female students have largely become
silent note-takers, are increasingly timid and seem less inclined to ask questions
or take part in discussions. They lack the confidence of a young university
student.
While social conservatism does not necessarily
lead to violent extremism, it does shorten the distance. The socially conservative
are more easily convinced that Muslims are being demonised by the rest of
the world. The real problem, they say, is the plight of the Palestinians,
the decadent and discriminatory West, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus,
the Kashmir issue, the Bush doctrine - the list runs on. They vehemently deny
that those committing terrorist acts are Muslims, and if presented with incontrovertible
evidence, say it is a mere reaction to oppression.
The immediate future does not appear hopeful:
increasing numbers of mullahs are creating cults around themselves and seizing
control of the minds of worshippers. In the tribal areas, a string of new
Islamist leaders have suddenly emerged: Baitullah Mehsud, Maulana Fazlullah
and Mangal Bagh. Poverty, deprivation, lack of justice and extreme differences
of wealth provide the perfect environment for these demagogues to recruit
people to their cause. Their gruesome acts of terror are still being perceived
by large numbers of Pakistanis merely as a war against imperialist America.
This could not be further from the truth.
In the long term, we will have to see how
the larger political battle works out between those Pakistanis who want an
Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic. It
may yet be possible to roll back those Islamist laws and institutions that
have corroded Pakistani society for over 30 years and to defeat its hate-driven
holy warriors. There is no chance of instant success; perhaps things may have
to get worse before they get better. But, in the long term, I am convinced
that the forces of irrationality will cancel themselves out because they act
at random whereas reason pulls only in one direction. History leads us to
believe that reason will triumph over unreason, and the evolution of the humans
into a higher and better species will continue. Using ways that we cannot
currently anticipate, they will somehow overcome their primal impulses of
territoriality, tribalism, religiosity and nationalism. But, for now, this
must be just a matter of faith.
- The author teaches physics at Quaid-e-Azam
University, Islamabad.
