The making of the modern maulvi — XII

The writer edits a quarterly Urdu literary journal Aaj from Karachi, runs a bookshop and City Press, a small publishing house

In the previous column, we saw how Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi does not favour granting a woman the right to make the most personal decisions of her life — marriage and divorce — because in his view she is deficient in both reason and religion, and therefore in perpetual need of someone to make these decisions for her. His popular treatise on teaching ‘correct’ behaviour to the shurafa women — Bahishti Zevar — describes in detail what is expected of them in different situations of their — strictly domestic — lives.

As long as men in position of authority over these women had their way, there was hardly any problem. They decided, for instance, to what extent — if at all — a little girl in their custody would be educated, when and with whom she would be married off, what her behaviour would be if she faced unpleasant conditions in marriage and whether she (in fact, her husband) would demand and get a share in her father’s property. And, as long as the women of that propertied class knew their place and followed traditional norms — sanctified and buttressed by Bahishti and other Zevars — everything was hunky-dory. The problem started when pressures of changed — and constantly changing — social conditions made it more or less compulsory for girls to get educated if their parents could afford it. As these girls got access to modern education, to whatever extent, they came into in contact with new thoughts as well — including the simple idea that forms the basis of democracy: that everybody — man and woman — must have a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

The specially published, ornamented editions of Bahishti Zevar (or other such books written under an uncontrollable yearning to keep women’s behaviour in check) typically form part of a young woman’s dowry even today. However, as parents as well as producers of such texts know very well, today’s young women do not want to accept the code of conduct suggested for them as submissively as, for example, women of a similar class would half a century ago. Hence the need to propose a ban on teaching ‘English’ to our girls, or keeping them away from ideas (expressed even in a local tongue) that would encourage them to consider themselves capable of making their own decisions. Another approach, getting increasingly popular among Pakistani urban middle-classes these days is to somehow alloy modern education (containing whatever modernity allowed in it in our national curriculum) with religious learning so that the former’s corrupting influence on their young daughters’ (or even, for that matter, sons’) minds could be curbed or at least mitigated.

This is in line with Thanvi’s (and other modern maulvis’) approach to try to control the effects of modern education on the minds of those who unfortunately cannot escape being exposed to it. The fundamental difference that such education makes is to enable a person to read and interpret all kinds of texts directly — without anyone determining its meaning for him (or her). And this is considered dangerous by Thanvi (and other authorities like him).

We have seen how women are considered incapable of making up their own mind as to what kind of life they want to lead. But this is not limited to women. As modern education has enabled a number of men and women to read books, newspapers, magazines and other print products (that have become part of urban life from late 19^th century onwards), they felt that they had acquired a kind of power to think and decide for themselves what the features of their lives in modern times were going to be. From the point of view of the modern maulvi, this power had to be controlled. Which is why Thanvi famously declared that to read books written by “the adversaries” — mukhalifeen — even with the pious intention to write a refutation, is dangerous and, therefore, disallowed under his interpretation of sharia. The immediate meaning of this interesting category was the texts written by maulvis of other sects, but it could — and did — include any text that would give a person the misleading idea that he (and specially she) can think and decide what constitutes right or wrong.

However, such a categorical instruction or decree to keep away from the dangerous material produced by the adversaries (Thanvi’s Barelvi, Shia, Ahmadi or other sectarian adversaries would no doubt impose the same restriction on their followers) creates an intriguing dilemma. The avalanche of books, booklets, pamphlets, handbills, posters, audio and video cassettes, CDs (and currently YouTube clips or even complete websites) devoted to a dissection and refutation of the opposite sect’s beliefs and pronouncements — that we have to inevitably suffer along with its divisive and violent repercussions day in and day out — would not have been possible had the maulvis themselves not created its contents by reading the ‘banned’ material and culling passages from it that they considered provocative enough to be useful for their violent sectarian purpose.

It is unavoidable to draw a simple conclusion from this state of affairs: there exists a crisis in our society as to who monopolises the authority to read and interpret relevant texts (in whichever form) and to decide what course of action an individual, a group or a collectivity such as the entire nation must take. Certain elements of modern, essentially democratic, thinking and practice — such as mass education, print (and now electronic) media, and social space for individuals and groups to articulate their opinions — have popularised (at least in the relatively privileged classes of society) values which are in constant conflict with the traditional values expressed in texts produced, for example, by Thanvi and other modern maulvis. The increasingly fundamentalist — and even, in some cases, violent — positions taken by maulvis of different denominations and their equally modern supporters point to the gravity of this very crisis. The maulvis of the modern era find it increasingly difficult to continue to enjoy the monopoly of reading and interpreting texts.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th,  2011.