Author: John Lancaster
Publication: Washington Post
Date: June 20, 2003
Reshaping Pakistan Along Religious
Lines
At Punjab University last month,
professors of English literature were flabbergasted when they learned that
a top administrator had ordered their curriculum reviewed for un-Islamic
texts. Among the books deemed offensive to public morals: "Gulliver's Travels"
and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles."
"It was so absurd," one of the professors
recalled. "We didn't know whether to laugh or cry."
Emboldened by an unexpectedly strong
showing in national elections last fall, Islamic fundamentalists are stepping
up their efforts to reshape Pakistan along religious lines, alarming moderate
Pakistanis and casting doubt on President Pervez Musharraf's ability --
or willingness -- to curb the fundamentalists' power.
One site of their new power is parliament,
where a coalition of six radical Islamic parties -- the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal,
or MMA -- constitutes the main political opposition to Musharraf and is
obstructing legislative business to protest his military rule.
In North-West Frontier Province,
one of four provinces in Pakistan and the only one where the coalition
holds undiluted power, the local legislature passed a bill earlier this
month calling for imposition of sharia, or Islamic law. It is considering
a companion measure that would create a force of morality police modeled
after one fielded by Afghanistan's deposed Taliban movement.
Islamic militants in the province's
capital, Peshawar, have taken the law into their own hands, vandalizing
satellite dishes and other things they see as symbols of Western decadence.
But even in places where the fundamentalists
do not hold formal political power, they are exercising major influence.
Lahore is one of Pakistan's most
cultured and cosmopolitan cities and capital of Punjab province, home to
Pakistan's moderate mainstream culture and long known more for food and
festivals than religious zealotry. Yet here student couples have been physically
attacked on college campuses for holding hands. The bar association recently
elected a lawyer from a fundamentalist party as its head. And on the streets
lately, night-riding vigilantes have been splashing paint on billboard
images of unveiled women.
Clerics have mounted a partially
successful campaign to curb the spread of pedestrian-friendly "food streets"
in Lahore's historic walled city. Such amenities, the clerics say, promote
mixing of the sexes and prostitution.
"I have questioned them: Is there
room for entertainment in your religion?" said Kamran Lashari, the U.S.-educated
head of the Punjab Parks and Horticulture Authority, which has promoted
the food-street plan. "I think they're basically joy killers. I don't see
any event which has brought public joy and happiness being accepted by
these elements."
Leaders of the religious coalition
deny they are seeking to emulate the Taliban. They say they are committed
to the rule of law and to working within a democratic system. "Islamization
is not Talibanization," said Farid Ahmad Paracha, a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami,
the largest party in the religious alliance, and a member of the national
assembly from Lahore. "There is no model of Iran or Afghanistan."
Paracha said that while Islamic
law forbids most forms of music, "we are not going to eliminate it at once.
. . . We believe in educating society toward the Islamic system." He dismissed
the billboard vandalism, which many people here believe to be the handiwork
of party followers, as "just a reaction of some people" and "not an organized
campaign."
The growing strength of the religious
alliance is of no small concern to the United States, which considers Pakistan
a front-line ally in the war on terrorism and has praised its efforts to
capture al Qaeda fighters who took refuge in the country after U.S.-led
forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
At the same time, U.S. officials
remain deeply concerned about Pakistan's support for Islamic militants
fighting Indian forces in Kashmir and the use of Pakistan's border areas
by resurgent Taliban forces fighting the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.
Both topics are likely to figure prominently in talks between Musharraf
and President Bush scheduled for Tuesday at Camp David.
Among secular-minded Pakistanis
-- many of whom welcomed the 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power
and his subsequent pledges to transform Pakistan into a modern, progressive
Islamic state -- the muscle-flexing by the fundamentalists has sparked
warnings that the country has instead embarked on a path of "creeping Talibanization."
"I think we are entering a new phase,"
said Ahmed Rashid, author of an international bestseller on the Taliban
who makes his home in Lahore. "There's a cultural change happening. This
is going to spread in [the frontier province] and spread in the whole country.
It will certainly silence the voice of the liberals," people who favor
a more secular state. Rashid places much of the responsibility for that
on the military, which he says has fostered the fundamentalist groundswell
as a bulwark against India and is now living with the consequences.
Such warnings date at least to the
military government of Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 and
embarked on a vigorous effort to "Islamize" Pakistani society that ended
with his death in a plane crash in 1988. Musharraf and his defenders say
the president is committed to unraveling that legacy.
Zia's efforts notwithstanding, the
religious parties have traditionally commanded little support among Pakistanis.
Their success in last fall's elections, analysts say, was in some ways
brought about by Musharraf's efforts to neutralize the country's main opposition
parties, both of whose leaders -- former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto
and Nawaz Sharif -- were barred from participating. The religious parties
moved into the resulting vacuum, many analysts say.
Pakistan's political cross-currents
converge in Lahore, a sprawling low-rise city of about 6 million people
220 miles southeast of Islamabad. Studded with minarets and the tombs of
ancient kings, Lahore has been a center of politics and intrigue for centuries,
first as a center of the Mughal empire, more recently as an outpost of
British colonial administration in pre-independence India.
In many ways, the British era lives
on through a small but influential Westernized elite, whose generally secular
outlook is evident in the city's many art galleries and a performance of
"The Vagina Monologues" scheduled for later this month. One of the city's
most distinctive landmarks is Aitchison College, an exclusive colonial-era
boarding school -- often described as "the Pakistani Eton" -- that sends
many graduates to top universities in the United States and Britain.
"You can go to parties here and
you can imagine you were in New York or anywhere in the world," said Shehla
Saigol, the city's leading art patron -- Lahore's "Peggy Guggenheim," in
the words of one associate -- and the wife of a wealthy industrialist.
Sitting in her billiards room one recent night, Saigol, 49, said she sometimes
frets that her grown children "seem to know Monte Carlo and Cannes and
Sardinia more than they know Pakistan."
But the political and cultural winds
may be shifting in Lahore. Although it is not heavily represented in the
provincial government, the religious alliance wields considerable street
power in the city, which serves as the headquarters of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Youth organizations linked to the
religious parties are deeply involved in campus politics, and are often
accused by secular-minded faculty members of promoting an atmosphere of
intolerance. At Punjab University last month, militant students used wooden
clubs to beat a male and female student -- both from Iran -- after the
two were discovered sitting together on a campus veranda, according to
three professors.
Masud Haq, a retired military officer
and the university's registrar, said in an interview that he has taken
a number of steps to curb fundamentalism on campus and that one of the
students who carried out last month's attack has been expelled. "I have
firm control of the university," he said. "I don't allow any student or
any extremist to raise his head."
But the fundamentalist influence
is felt in subtler ways as well, some faculty members say. Last month,
the university's academic council engaged in heated debate over whether
to drop English as a requirement, as fundamentalist groups have urged.
And then there was the flap over
English literature, which began when Haq ordered a member of the department,
Shahbaz Arif, to scrutinize the curriculum for offensive material.
Arif compiled a long list of examples,
including Jonathan Swift's description of "a monstrous breast" in "Gulliver's
Travels" and the title of Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," according
to a copy of the memo he supplied to colleagues in the English department.
Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," was deemed especially offensive:
"All characters sexually astray: men homosexuals; females lesbians/promiscuous,"
he wrote.
In an interview, Arif said he did
not hold extreme religious views and described himself as "very much Westernized,"
citing, among other things, his linguistics doctorate from Essex University
in Britain. But he defended the logic of his review, asserting that in
a conservative Islamic society, "some limitations should be there."
Infuriated by what they regarded
as an assault on academic freedom, professors in the department alerted
the local press to the controversy. Haq, the registrar, described the text
review as routine and said it would not result in any curriculum changes.
He said he had ordered the review only after receiving a complaint from
someone he declined to name.
"We are proud to be Muslims, but
we are gentleman Muslims," he said. "We are good liberal citizens of the
world."
But faculty members, who have been
ordered not to discuss the case with reporters, in some cases interpret
the episode in a more sinister light. "What's happening in the university
is more or less a microcosm of the political environment of the entire
country," said one English professor. "We feel a very real threat to the
liberal environment."
Iqbal Hussain shares their worries.
A prostitute's son who grew up in the red-light district, where he still
occupies the family home, Hussain, 51, is one of the city's best-known
artists. His frank portraits of prostitutes and dancers fetch prices as
high as $10,000 on international markets. They also have gotten him in
hot water with religious zealots, one of whom paid him a disturbing visit
last year.
As Hussain recalled the episode
recently, the bearded visitor pointed to a wooden sculpture -- an abstract
representation of a woman -- at the entrance to Hussein's home, part of
which has been converted into a gallery and restaurant. "You have a nice
house," Hussain recalled the man saying in flawless English. "You have
a nice gallery. I suggest you remove this sculpture now."
"I got the message," said Hussain.
He moved the sculpture inside.
