A timely intervention

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal has made a very necessary and robust intervention in the matter of ‘fatwas for jihad’ and the role that clerics and the social media play in the phenomenon. He called on religious leaders to denounce them saying that only the state can declare jihad and no group of people has the right to declare jihad against another group. In a country as bitterly and bloodily divided as Pakistan such declarations can have dangerous and fatal consequences. ‘Enemies of the state’ were cited as trying to pit Muslim against Muslim and the state needs to prevent that from happening — by no means easy when the internet is a freewheeling and anarchic entity still, with the Dark Web and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) allowing anonymity and access despite attempts to block offending websites.

The minister set out a somewhat dystopian view of a country turned into a battlefield with groups and ethnicities fighting in cyberspace as well as on the ground. He also noted that there is a trend towards issuing fatwas as to who may be murdered and why. A few minutes searching the internet in Pakistan will quickly reveal such calls.

It is now for the clergy across the nation to pick up on the call from the minister. They have a power that far transcends that of the internet, and a reach that extends far beyond it as well. The clergy have a collective responsibility to act responsibly in this matter and we expect to hear of their positive response on successive Fridays. Of welcome note also is that a government minister stood up in parliament and made such a strong statement on a subject that to say the least is fenced about with thickets of sensitivities. The rapid growth of internet penetration in Pakistan has been a game changer — for good and ill. As for fatwas the genie is out of the bottle, and genies rarely agree to go back in.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2017.

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