ISLAMABAD: The attack on Malala Yousufzai has morphed into a debate about the future direction of Pakistan. Such debates are healthy for a society which is marred by all sorts of problems and issues. But before we enter into debates and discussions about ideas, we need to agree to some fundamental rules about debates. You cannot deceive someone into accepting ideas that are not based on reality or facts. Both sides should be heard and given a fair chance at explaining themselves. This is important because if an idea has taken root in society and enjoys the support of the masses, then that very support (of the masses) makes the idea eligible to be heard, no matter how irrational and how inappropriate the idea may appear to be.
This is because these ideas and these debates are not academic discussions for the intellectual pleasure of the thinkers and philosophers of the society. These ideas are related to the organisation of the society, the management of the relationships which exist between its members and the relationship between the ruling and the ruled. And finally, who decides who wins the debate? Who’s the judge? In debates about ideas, which govern society, the judges are the masses because the authority lies with them. It is the masses who decide who wins by supporting the ideas which they believe should be implemented in the society.
We have heard the liberal intelligentsia on the issue of Malala. Here is the case for the right wing. That female members of society should have a right to good education is not only something which majority in the right wing support, but they strongly believe in it. Of course, there is a difference of opinion on how the education curriculum should be set and what values it should seek to promote but the right of education for all women is supported by a big majority. The attack on Malala is, however, not about women’s right to education; rather, it is about a broader vision about the comprehensive structuring of society and the state.
To present the intellectual battle for the soul of Pakistan as a battle between urban liberal elite armed with ideas against a rural Taliban force which wants to fight ideas with violence is grossly misleading. The Taliban are not the intellectual leaders of the right wing, neither are their views dominant in right-wing circles. The liberals don’t get to define the right wing. The fact that urban Pakistan is overwhelmingly moving towards the right and yet liberals choose rural Pashtun tribes as their ideological adversaries suggests that perhaps the liberals want to avoid a debate with the urban political right wing. It is, therefore, interesting to note that the liberals present a vision for Pakistan, a secular Pakistan as an alternative to the Taliban’s vision for Pakistan. But this is a false choice. It is a false choice because the majority of Pakistanis are conservative and they believe in a strong role for religion in politics and yet, they don’t believe that the Taliban’s vision is the only model for that.
The advocates of a modern caliphate in Pakistan are the true stakeholders in the debate for the soul of Pakistan, yet we see liberals avoiding them and realising that this group, at the moment, represents the right wing and leads it. So really the debate about the future of Pakistan is about two visions, a liberal secular Pakistan and a Pakistan with a new governance model, the caliphate. The idea of unification of the temporal with the religious has strongly taken root in the Muslim world with the caliphate as a model of governance becoming increasingly popular by the day. The liberals have a choice: to continue to feign their intellectual superiority by refusing to debate with the real stakeholders and thus risk being overwhelmed into ideological oblivion by a society moving towards the right, or bring their ideas on the table and into society for scrutiny and critique. Scaring the people is not an option anymore. Let’s have a fair debate.
Moez Mobeen
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2012.
