Much that is ugly

Three most telling comments in the press this past week should have us all worried stiff. To a former ambassador the Pakistan of today is “less a state than a criminal enterprise”. This is a damned good description which can only be refuted by those happily and lucratively running the flourishing enterprise. A former senator has it that never, not even at the end of 1971, has he seen this country in a worse state than it is now. Again, this can only be countered by our national entrepreneurs.

And from a foreign correspondent who confessed that often in the past he has found himself defending Pakistan against attacks from outside but is now stumped: to him the national silence following May 28 “exposed something ugly at the heart of Pakistan — its laws, its rulers, its society”. Indeed, utterly irrefutable and added to this must be the worry of the fast link now witnessed between democracy, the presidential ‘best revenge’, and violence — violence of deed and word coupled with an endemic political corruption, material and moral.

Yes there is much else that is ugly at the heart of Pakistan and its moral confusion can be explained in several ways — the nation has not yet sorted out why it exists, if it should have been given birth, and if so in what form. A state religion was forced upon it by a succession of shaky self-serving rulers, without taking into account that the religion itself in this country is deeply divided. The May 28 massacre must be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of all politicians and military leaders from 1948 onwards who, rather than encouraging and at least attempting to build cohesion, have purposefully created schisms in the selfish hope that they would act as seat-preservers.

Whilst branding the Ahmadi sect as being out of the realms of Islam it would do our torch-bearing branded protectors of the state religion, including the present army chief who believes Pakistan to be a fortress of Islam, some good to read (which they probably never have done) the 1954 report by the court of inquiry into the Punjab disturbances of 1953 instigated by the ulema against the Ahmadis.  Justices M Munir and M R Kayani delved long and deep into trying to define what a Muslim was (and is) in terms of being a Pakistani. They failed to come up with any definition, unifying in any way. After extensive chats with the clerical gentlemen they wrote : “Keeping in view the several definitions given by the ulema, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulema, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but kafirs according to the definition of everyone else.”

So much for the ‘fortress of Islam’! What we have now, after the passage of 56 even more divisive years bolstered by religiosity, is a veritable mish-mash of cards waiting to be blown to smithereens. And then, besides this, we have a nation many members of which – and not restricted to those who were alive at the making of Pakistan but including a lot of young citizens — wonder and ponder upon why the country was ever made, such is the manner in which it has evolved.

The closing sentence of the Munir-Kiyani findings resounds today: “But if democracy means the subordination of law and order to political ends — then Allah knoweth best and we end the report.”

Who was it that spoke of a house divided against itself?

Published in the Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2010.