Class, religion and conflict

Lesser status of women, poor and minorities under Pakistan’s laws, makes them most vulnerable to criminal behaviour.

The political economies of conflict are a defining feature and compelling motivation for violence all around the world. In the case of Pakistan, the additional role of religion has also been a determining factor. Yet, recent apologia is now attempting to underplay religion as a motivation or resource that gives fuel and even, legal cover, to such conflict. There is now overwhelming evidence on the role of Islam, madrassas and jihadist literature that motivated the establishment and sustained the role of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and India, in the 1980s. Yet, far too many of us continue to believe the myth that conflict is always motivated and sustained by profane secular reasons and religion is only incidental, misapplied and not a causal factor for hostilities.

The symbols and trappings associated with nationalist songs, milli naghmas, war imagery and jihadist slogans confirm the legitimate association of Islam, nationhood and the global imaginary that is, the ummah. Clearly, if economics is the underlying compelling feature of warfare then religion is, not just the most persuasive justification for that conflict, it is also the most effective driver.

The rationale behind class-based, gender-based and minority-based crimes ultimately depends on the lesser status of women, the poor and minorities under Pakistan’s laws. This makes them most vulnerable to criminal behaviour while providing a moral and legal cover.

To suggest that, in the case of the burning down of (the predominantly Christian) St Joseph’s colony in Lahore, greed for property played a bigger role than anything else, is a deliberate or disingenuous attempt to distract us from the fact that, this is neither the exclusive nor permanent explanation for all such crimes. It’s like saying that in Gujarat, Narendra Modi’s talent for mob mobilisation was an exclusively secular programme, too. And while we should resist viewing mobs as illiterate atavistic crowds yet, to deny our permanent sense of Muslim superiority or the anti-minority, anti-sectarian, anti-women pool of discrimination that simmers very close under our collective surfaces, is to offer an equally superficial analysis.

Very often, moral outrage against blasphemers and infidels is the genuine reason for murder and hate crimes. For example, the planned and vicious desecration of graveyards of minorities, systematic attacks on Shia processions and Hazara pilgrims or, the willful persecution of poor women and students for contaminating ‘Muslim water’ or making spelling errors in exam papers. In many such cases, the accuser is often from the same working class as the ‘perpetrator’.

Apart from the fact that economics determines exploitative relationships in society, religion, too, serves as an equally pervasive tool and genuine resource for such exploitation. The recent upper-class outrage over the ‘resolution’ of the murder case of Shahzeb fails to grasp how the lower classes have been at the receiving end of such a travesty of justice for years. It’s not just the certain law that corroborates with the capitalist principle that everything can be bought, including freedom from a murder sentence. Instead, the same principle applies to the much-celebrated khula provision under family law whereby Muslim women have ‘the right to buy their freedom’ from marriage. Yet, this is always hailed as proof of the (unequal to men yet) liberatory, progressive, religious right of Muslim women.

The conflict in Lyari demonstrates that when organised mafias, capitalists and/or secular criminals want to usurp means of production, they do not need to invoke ethnicity or take recourse from religion. Religious militants are successful because they use the most powerful combination of both, religion and arms. But it is the petty bourgeoisie, as in the case of Lahore, who are prone to rely on religion not just as a weapon of mass sentiment for justifying their crimes but also, because the literal belief in Muslim supremacy and expansionist appeal of Islam is genuine for them and their aspirant followers. The uncomfortable and mutually beneficial relationship between religion, class and conflict cannot be simplified and wished away through a crude ‘class analysis’.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th,  2013.

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