An iconoclast silenced

When bigotry seeps into university, there are few spaces left for critical thought or any kind of academic conviction

Muhammad Shakil Auj, the dean of the Islamic Studies faculty at Karachi University, was shot and killed on September 18. Typically, his killers were not identified. Dr Auj was an outspoken citizen never afraid to disagree with orthodoxy, but he always voiced those disagreements with academic diligence, intellectual integrity and moral clarity. That mix has become lethal as challenging religious orthodoxy looks increasingly like a death sentence, as it indeed was for Dr Auj. The police have said that he was accused of blasphemy in 2012, with calls for his decapitation circling on text messages.

Given the gravity and consequences of these accusations, Dr Auj was well aware of the threats he faced to his life. That he lodged an FIR against his accusers, but it was to no avail. No one pursued his case; no one searched for his would-be killers. It must also be asked why the university did not make adequate arrangements to protect its senior staffer; the university must also have known about the danger to his life. In fact, as a bastion of secular learning and diverse discourse, the university was equally threatened, and Dr Auj’s loss has been a mortal blow not just to his family, but to his students, his university and to academia in Pakistan as well.

There is a sinister cycle of violence in this city. Those who seek to challenge select narratives of faith are not safe on the streets, in the mosques or in institutions of secular learning. When bigotry seeps into the university — the one site which is regarded to be the haven of different views, a place where minds are nourished — there are few spaces left for critical thought, diversity of opinion, or any kind of academic conviction that strays outside the tyranny of the mainstream. That mainstream itself has been, and continues to shift unceasingly to the right, and its presence demands an oppressive silence, if not outright conformity. On September 18, an iconoclast was silenced and the murderous bigots had won.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2014.

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