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 Only reason can oppose extremism. Religion encourages extreme action if divorced from reason. The Islamic world as a whole has become extreme in its actions and reactions after the demise of its socialist dictatorships and the rise of the religious leader. Jihad is a practical form of extremism. Pakistan has followed the road of jihad to become dysfunctional through extremism. Extremism is a negation of Islam as it was interpreted in the past. The result is transformation of Pakistan into a rogue state, presaged by its frequent designation as a failed state during the 1990s.
Let us see a mosaic of Islamic states turning to extremism, starting in the 1980s. In 1987, 404 people, 270 of them Iranians, had been killed after disturbances in Makka. When Ayatollah Montazeri objected to extreme action taken against Iranian society after the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini rejected him saying he (Imam Khomeini) was following the example of the treatment meted out to Banu Quraiza. By 1994, 48 writers and journalists had been executed, including novelist Rehman Hatefi and Said Sultanpour. A thousand Iranian intellectuals were in jail.
Islamic world turns extremist:
In Egypt, the intellectual was under threat from a 1980 press law. Aala Hamid a novelist was sacked and imprisoned in 1997 for writing a novel the court thought obscene. In 1993, Egyptian professor Abu Zayd was declared apostate by a court and his wife forced to leave him. The same year Nawal El Saadhawi was hunted out of the country for writing objectionable novels. She had described the horror of her circumcision, a ritual that a majority of the women in that region of Africa have to suffer without a single cleric saying that it is against the teachings of the Quran.
In 1995, an Algerian cartoonist was kidnapped and executed. In 1992, cartoonist Karimzadeh was sent to prison for one year and given fifty lashes because his cartoon looked suspiciously like the Spiritual Ruler. Iran closes down newspapers and publications considered anti-Islamic. One was the magazine edited by former president Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashmi.
In Algeria the religious party FIS was not allowed to rule after winning elections by an oppressive Algerian army. It went terrorist along with GIA, an extremist outfit inspired by the Afghan mujahideen. In 1995, GIA killed journalists it thought were ‘moderate’. It targeted the cartoonists in particular for being disrespectful. In 1998, pop singer Matoub was killed at a roadblock by GIA.
Nigerian and Saudi examples:
In 1999, the Nigerian state of Zamfara adopted
shariah
and a mob chopped off the hand of a petty thief with a large knife saying they were using Saudi Arabia as a model because there people left their shops open without fearing theft. Their idea of
shariah
was going into the toilet with the left foot forward and coming out right foot forward. In 1998 six people were killed by stoning and Article 119 of the Qisas law specified that the stones used for
rijm
should not be so big as to kill the victim immediately.
In 1980, a Saudi man was beheaded for forming a relationship with the daughter of a potentate. The daughter was executed with bullets through the head. In Malaysia in 1997 couples were wrongfully arrested under laws against
khalwa
. In Afghanistan, men had to keep beards under pain of punishment and could be lashed for wearing shorts and flying kites. Women were beaten with car antennae for going out without a
mehram
. In 2001 Afghan film-maker Sairah Shah made a film showing girls raped by the Taliban after killing their mother in front of them.
Rise of clerical rage:
The fulminating man of God has to be blind to give out fatwas of extreme toughness. Saudi Arabia’s chief cleric late Sheikh Bin Baz thought anyone not believing that the earth is fixed and doesn’t revolve around the sun was outside the pale of Islam. King Faisal tried to confiscate his book but it was too late. Egypt’s Sheikh Omar Abdur Rehman was so violent in his oratory that he caused violence in the country and was driven into exile in the US where he was found guilty of planning a bombing of the Trade Center in 1993.
In 1988 Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for his novels but was stabbed by an Islamist youth in Cairo enraged by official criticism of his work. In 1976 Al Azhar of Egypt caused moderate Islamic leader Muhammad Taha of Sudan to be killed for apostasy. In Iran, moderate Ayatollah Shariatmadari was also rejected in favour of more extremist leadership. Islam is a moderate creed. There is misdirection in what is happening in Muslim societies.
Divide and die:
The murder of Governor Salmaan Taseer by a policeman deputed to guard him has divided the nation into fragments of varying opinion. However, the most significant segment is the solid religious opinion on one side speaking out in favour of the murderer in the name of Islam and agitating on the roads with a lot of intimidatory clout. The second segment is political which is further divided between supporters of the PML-N and the PPP. Watching these two phenomena is civil society at large which has become polarised with a majority cleaving to the conservative view.
When divisions take place the essence of the divisive issue is lost. It no longer suits the clerics to focus on why the Blasphemy Law is in dispute. They insist that anyone who disputes the law is blaspheming against the Prophet PBUH; they refuse to get into the details of why a lot of good believing but non-clerical people think that Blasphemy Law is finally a man-made law which contains not divine but human error and should be improved in light of the jurisprudence of the law. Why are only the poor and mostly non-Muslims trapped in it; and why after the accused is found not-guilty is the accuser not held to account for ruining his life?
The argument is won by the clerics, not because they are right but because they are powerful and have behind them a number of supporting elements no longer within the power of the state to curb.
Blessing of not being sovereign:
Wisdom has fled Pakistan. This is revealed when human beings are helpless in the face of unreason. Wisdom is now located outside Pakistan, which means Pakistan can shed its rogue state identity only by looking outside of itself, not inside. Muslims should never do introspection because their thought process is pre-modern and gets caught up in frozen solutions no longer applicable. There is some hope in the realm of foreign policy where no constitutional or parliamentary consensus is needed. No ‘principles’ should be announced because principles among Muslims cause mental calcification through stasis. If the government wants to avoid being lynched by mobs aroused by blasphemy, it must use trade openings.
Somehow the army should stand aside as Islamabad and Lahore normalise relations with India, opening up trade through SAFTA along with Indian investment in Pakistan. This should not mean that Pakistan has to verbalise its retreat from the ‘dispute’ of Kashmir; it should simply ignore Kashmir for a while, which actually means not infiltrate Pakistani terrorists into it. It should seek international help in plucking from its guts the jihadi terrorists it trained against India. Since World Bank reports indicate that mergers of small markets with big markets are always to the benefit of the small markets, Pakistan must guarantee India’s big market easy access to the mineral-and-gas-rich regions on its western border. Not being sovereign can be the big blessing in disguise. The world can come in and pluck Pakistan – represented by a cleric with a flowing beard – from the nipple of the succubus of extremism.
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