Pakistani liberals — closest hypocrites

Liberalism in different times and different countries has meant different things. Generally, however, it is understood to be a political and moral ideology that believes in liberty and tolerance for the diversity. Some of its core beliefs are secularism, democracy, gender and race equality, freedom of speech, the press, and religion.

In Pakistan, liberalism is equated — even by the proponents of it — with opposing the Army and Mullahs and nowadays the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The left-wing political orientation is laudable and espouses the liberties of the people. The American left-wing liberal Democratic Party advocates the rights of immigrants, their path to become citizens even if they have crossed the border illegally. It advocates lowering taxes on low-income people while increasing them on corporations. More importantly, it believes in climate change. The conservative right-wing Republican Party believes in none of the above.

As I had written in these pages before, Pakistanis cherry-pick certain policies and stances of both Liberalism and Conservatism. I know many liberals in Pakistan who believe in gender equality as long as it is outside their home. Many conservatives relent to their daughters who want to wear jeans and join the workforce. Liberalism and Conservatism do not work like Walmart. You don’t put in your cart what you like and discard the rest. If you are a liberal or a conservative, you embrace the entire political and moral ideology. In Pakistan, it is worse than we think. It is not even the Walmart approach. It is basically the market trends approach. This week’s hottest right that liberals advocate is the right to peaceful protest. Pakistani liberals have another tendency: if you do not agree with them, you are wrong.

Some of the permanent stances of Pakistani liberals include praising Malala and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, gender rights, and now a days #MeToo. They support #MeToo by saying that they are doing it so that other women can’t be sexually harassed. That is commendable. However, if the urge really is to prevent possible human suffering then climate change is an equally daunting issue that will haunt our posterity in a horrible way. We have all observed extreme summers and extreme winters around the world. We have experienced that winters aren’t the same anymore. Pakistan is one of the worst-affected countries. And climate change is not just the one issue. There are so many other problems out there like hunger, child labour, wrongfully convicted prisoners and so forth.

But those issues aren’t highlighted by Ashley Judd or Rose McGowan. We don’t see Hollywood celebrities on our screens advocating the rights of victims of drone strikes. There are no such hashtags promoted by them otherwise we here in Pakistan would be talking about their rights. Let us admit, we copy the West’s trends but sadly we don’t copy their radical voices, which are on the fringes. We follow the mainstream.

A piece titled “Right To Protest” was published in a Pakistani newspaper this week. The writer compares her right to protest in London to that in Lahore. She said, “My compatriots in Lahore were being denied the opportunity to peacefully gather in support of Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz, and express their perception that the PML-N has been denied a fair playing field ahead of polls.” Interestingly, the same rights are frowned upon when parties such as the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan run an election campaign. If we don’t believe in the rights of those we dislike, we don’t believe in those rights at all.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2018.

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