Islamic Society | |
28 Feb 2010, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
Pakistan: Not Behind Iron Curtain, But A Very Repressed Society | |
We are not a police state in the political sense of the term. This is not a country behind any kind of iron curtain and, the notoriety of our intelligence services notwithstanding, we do not have anything like the East German Stasi prying into every aspect of national life. We have one of the freest media in the Islamic world. Our kind of talk shows would not be permitted in most Muslim countries.
While we should count our blessings we should not forget that in the social sense this is a very repressed society. The pity of it is that it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time mosque and tavern stood side by side (in a metaphorical sense of course) and even as they did, no one said Islam was in danger. How distant that time seems. We were Muslims in 1947; we are Muslims now. There is a difference, however. Today we wear our religion on our sleeves and shout it from the housetops. -- Ayaz Amir
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The Misery on our Faces
By Ayaz Amir
February 26, 2010
Times may be hard but why add to the sum of national misery? Some of our afflictions, like the economic downturn and the war raging along the Afghan frontier, may be beyond anyone's control. But some are entirely self-created.
We are not a police state in the political sense of the term. This is not a country behind any kind of iron curtain and, the notoriety of our intelligence services notwithstanding, we do not have anything like the East German Stasi prying into every aspect of national life. We have one of the freest media in the Islamic world. Our kind of talk shows would not be permitted in most Muslim countries.
While we should count our blessings we should not forget that in the social sense this is a very repressed society.
The pity of it is that it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time mosque and tavern stood side by side (in a metaphorical sense of course) and even as they did, no one said Islam was in danger. How distant that time seems.
We were Muslims in 1947; we are Muslims now. There is a difference, however. Today we wear our religion on our sleeves and shout it from the housetops.
Protesting too much about anything betrays a sense of insecurity. An honest man, not given to self-righteousness, feels no necessity to proclaim his honesty. An honest woman, normally, does not protest her virtue -- unless there be the memory of a past sitting uneasily on her conscience.
Just as
But if someone were to read our Constitution, with its repetitive references to Islam, or if someone were to read our court judgments wherein our learned judges are hard put not to deliver extended lectures on Islam, or if someone were to hear political speeches being delivered at public meeting where references to the faith are virtually endless, he/she would come away convinced that here was a people in perpetual fear of something dreadful happening to their faith.
The problems we were called upon to solve at our birth were political and economic in nature: temporal problems, secular problems, not problems of the hereafter. We solved some, failed to solve others. But every time we ran into difficulties, we retreated into the bosom of extraneous issues, seeking comfort under the banner of Islam. This has been an extreme form of national escapism.
Soon after independence we should have been able to frame a constitution. But our attempts at constitution-making were sidetracked by a never-ending debate about the role of Islam in our collective life. It was amidst the cacophony of this debate that Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly.
What is this Resolution? Read it and it is hard to escape the impression that it is a tribute to needless rhetoric. Many years later, Gen Ziaul Haq, not famous as a respecter of constitutions, made the Resolution a substantive part of the 1973 Constitution, his move another Islamisation gimmick at which he was so good. Since Zia, many parliaments have come and gone. None thought it fit to do away with his constitutional innovations.
The people of
Today we present the picture not of a house divided -- which would be too harsh an indictment -- but of a fractured society. The share of other faiths in our population is miniscule. We are an overwhelmingly Muslim country. But if we are still a fractured society, this should give us pause to think whether our problems are related to religion or other things.
If our cities are unclean we need better municipal services.
The problems of
But we are not unique on the planet. Every place has its problems, in many cases worse than ours. We stand alone in making our problems worse by shackling ourselves in fetters we could have done without.
We don't look a happy people. Other things may abound in the Islamic Republic but not the spirit of joy. There are people who celebrate life. There are people who carry a cross all the time and mourn about life. We fall in the second category. Partly through choice, partly through the sheer force of circumstances, we have elected to become a killjoy society.
This is not what we deserve. People laugh and cry. Tragedy triggers sorrow. But that is not the whole truth. When the shadows of tragedy depart people still have a yearning for some fun. This is part of our inheritance as human beings, an inalienable aspect of the human condition. But since the Islamic Republic, and what we have made of it, frowns upon the outward expression of joy, things to do with joy and happiness have been driven indoors.
The veil in
Hypocrisy as a national characteristic, an all-pervading phenomenon, is not a good thing. It makes a people sick and stunted. It makes them less free. Isn't it time the veil was rent asunder?
That parliament could cleanse the Constitution and return it to the form in which it existed on the eve of Zia's coup is hoping for too much. There is nothing in parliament to indicate the audacity required for such a leap. But appealing to the god of lesser things, why can't we do away with the Hadood Ordinance, one of Zia's most poisonous gifts at the altar of hypocrisy. Many of our social shackles derive their strength from this iniquitous legislation. What allows the police to smell breaths and ask for marriage papers is this ordinance. Scrapping it would allow the people of
Forget about universal solutions. Forget about appeals to revolutionary arms. This won't happen. In the season of our discontent if only two small miracles can happen -- getting rid of the plastic shopping bag, more of a long-term threat than the Taliban, and the Hadood Ordinance -- Pakistan will look a cleaner and healthier place. Along with the social police state, the frontiers of morbidity will also contract.
Source: The International News,
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