When will the appeasement end?

Clerics take opportunity of uniting once again, causing Pakistan’s faltering democracy to collapse in name of faith.

Lahore saw Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasul stage a protest against the Pope on January 16 to inspire more fear among the few remaining conscientious citizens hurt by the way a fanatic took the life of Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer. And there was nothing the Punjab government could do, scared as it is of losing its rightwing vote to religious parties. And the speakers bayed not only for the blood of the chief cleric of the Catholic Church, but also for the blood of those who think the clergy will ultimately back off from the pro-blasphemy law campaign after being handed a walkover by the governments at the centre and the provinces.

Clerics of all brands were there, as if to take by the forelock the opportunity of uniting once again and causing Pakistan’s faltering democracy to collapse in the name of religion. Pope Benedict XVI, who has no army and no drones to deploy, was just an excuse to show muscles to the jittery administration. The Barelvis, Deobandis and Ahle Hadith were all there, repeating the arguments against not touching the blasphemy law despite its known misuse against the poor sections of Pakistani society. No political party could have organised the rally: people from all over Punjab had joined the protest on motorcycles, cars, buses and on foot, a major portion also coming from the small cities to Lahore on trucks.

The procession that tore down the remaining banners mourning the killing of Governor Taseer and the new ones welcoming the new governor, Latif Khosa, was led by the second-in-command of the most powerful single jihadi organisation, the Jamaatud Dawa, banned by the UN Security Council after the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. According to a report in this newspaper, the leaders of the march “spewed hate speech upon hate speech, targeted minorities, incited people to violence with impunity and roused people to adopt the way of jihad.” Speakers praised the killer of Governor Taseer and warned the already frightened media commentators against opposing the fatwas inciting people to violence. Jamaatud Dawa leader Abdul Rehman Makki said that Mumtaz Qadri “played his due role and the police department should be proud of such a true lover of the Holy Prophet (pbuh)”.

Extremism rules when reason has fled and passion is made to dominate people’s lives. And the only way to sustain reason in people’s lives is action by the state against those who incite people to resort to extreme action. All religions reach out to reason by mandating ‘moderation’ which, in the case of Islam, is the exact meaning of ‘adl’ (middle). One measure of how far our weaponised clerics and their violent seminarians have strayed from the path of Islam becomes clear when the more visible but minimally gifted clerics confront the best-known Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. Mr Ghamidi — who can no longer come out in public because of threat to his life — clearly says that the man-made law on blasphemy is wrong because it is against the spirit of Islam as interpreted by the country’s majority jurisprudence, the Hanafi School.

Extremism bans argument and scares those who disagree with its exponents. Extremism catches on when backed by elements that effectively challenge the state itself. The leader in the Lahore rally was the Jamaatud Dawa, whose banned publication has already boasted that the pro-blasphemy law agitation was organised by it. There was a time when it listened to the state and its intelligence agencies; it is now being seen as a power no longer under Pakistan’s control. Its ban by the UN cannot be carried out and is stuck in the court of law. Its new guise in Lahore is scary because it has crossed the limit set by its two ‘guided’ rallies — one in Lahore against the ‘stealing of Pakistan’s waters by India’ and the other in Islamabad signalling Pakistan’s intent to bring the Kashmir dispute to another boil — and now threatens the state. Is there a ‘revolution’ concealed behind the agitating clerics who boycotted the 2008 elections? If there is, then who will be its guide and mentor? Somewhere in Fata, al Qaeda is watching the scene carefully.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th,  2011.