State’s responsivity — to project soft power of Islam

People always perceive things differently, and if interpretation can be termed an art of understanding and explaining things in different ways then why blame each other for interpreting things differently. Let there be disagreements and dissents but let them remain small and not grow larger than our egos. That way, maybe having different perceptions and in turn believing in different realities may become not a vice but a great virtue of the society. Historically, the growth and development of all grand human struggles and their profound consequences wouldn’t have resulted if men had not chosen to perceive things differently. Not the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of recent years but the Greeks and the Romans, the Europeans, the Mongols, the Ottomans and the Ataturks of yester years all perceived the world around them differently.

Different perceptions build different realities and difference in perception not only split friends, families and communities at a larger scale, these differences take the form of extreme polarisation and splits even the countries. For a decade or two, our society has been consumed with the disease of extreme polarisation and that is sickening us to the core. Our problem was not to find who is the best to rule the country but how best the country could be ruled. In trying to find the answer to the former, the latter has become a joke.

Even the best of the geniuses has their blind spots so there never is going to be a perfect ruler and his or her interpretation of a given situation or a problem will always remain open to questioning and debate. This is simple if I am professing this in one of my university classes but situating the same concept in politics becomes a monumental job. But our students of today are the policymakers and politicians of tomorrow and there lies the hope of infiltrating their minds and bridging an intellectual gap with a wish that such plain logic will help them stand up and face the great responsibility of running the affairs of this country in much different and better ways in future.

Right interpretation helps us to correctly explain what we don’t understand — unfortunately, since the regime change in Pakistan it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand most things happening around us and there is this constant feeling that one has which suggests as if everything is written in sand, that it is temporary and something permanent needs to be done, and done quickly. A house set on fire needs firefighters to save it and not arsonists. And in this plain logic lies the reason of this prevailing uncertainty.

Countries facing very difficult times such as ours must remind themselves of the Hobbesian world in which we live where if the society breaks down, we will end up living in a ‘state of nature’ in which essentially law and order breaks down and life becomes nasty, brutish and short — a condition of war of all against all. This is not the road that this country wants to take.

Twentieth century will be most remembered not for the Russian revolution, world wars, change in the status of the women or arrival of information age. Intellectually, it will be more remembered as a century in which a titanic struggle took place to figure out which ideology would be best suited for organising societies around the globe. Other than the ideology of Islam, other ideologies including fascism, Marxism, communism were all tried and tested; and eventually western liberalism with promotion of democracy and human rights as its twin goals and liberty and equality as the twin principles of attainment of democracy stood out as the most acceptable ideology to lead the way in organising societies around the world. It took over a century to undertake the diagnosis and when democracy was ascertained as the precise treatment it did work. But in case of Pakistan what troubles us is not the wrong diagnosis and therapy of democracy but the improper and inappropriate diagnosis of our recognition. When the diagnosis of recognition is not correct then no amount of democratic treatment can work.

Religion is supposed to be a private act of faith but in Pakistan it has been allowed to mix with politics so much that it has grown to become a matter of national security. All that democracy had to do in this country was to sit down on one point agenda of depoliticising Islam. That could never be done because no party was willing to risk losing the religious votes or leaving an ideological vacuum that other competitors would most willingly fill in.

The Taliban have once again raised their ugly heads and there are increased incidents of kidnapping and killings. Our soldiers are once again embracing martyrdom from cross-border firing on the western front. It seems that the non-state actors are once again pushing for implementation of their agenda which stems from their concern, their world view and their perception of seeing and creating a more Islamic form of politics. But what about our state?

Political power in Pakistan is clothed in uncertainty. State is projecting power through different mediums and one of them is state media which it recently used to declare a political opponent as a follower of non-Islamic practices and accusing him of being non-religious and an apostate is a new low in our politics. What dictates the course of politics and democracy in this country is not justice, equality or rule of law but influence peddling, money, guns propaganda and ideology. Promoting grand ideological designs as a state policy has brought us to this juncture where our religion has become a matter of national security.

Look at Saudi Arabia. It invested billions of dollars to fund mosque building and exported its ultraconservative vision of Islam to countries like Pakistan. It supported organisations and political parties like Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt but today Saudi Arabia together with the UAE and Egypt label Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. Saudi Arabia like many other countries has turned. Employing new geopolitics of religion — the Islamic soft power is fast reshaping its regional and global relations. Are we correctly perceiving what’s happening in the Islamic world and the world at large? Or do we still want to pursue our grand ideological designs? Would the politics in this country finally decide to stop using religion and religious ideas to promote its interests and increase its prestige?

Modern Pakistan never took birth. If we want to become a modern welfare state, the way forward is by unifying the political space under the soft power of Islam. Else we will remain out of step with the rest of the world marching towards wealth, affluence privileges and prosperity.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th, 2022.

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