21 February 2004
Out of step, out of time
By Irfan Husain
Given Pakistan's recent track record of nuclear proliferation, its help for the Taliban, its active assistance to guerrillas in Kashmir, as well as its own home-grown terrorists engaged in killing anybody who does not conform to their ideology, you would think all responsible politicians would try and change the image we have acquired.
But if that's what you hoped for, you would be disappointed: for our politicians in and out of uniform, it is politics as usual. Abroad, Pakistan is viewed as a mediaeval theocracy ruled by the army, and where women and minorities are treated as third class citizens. Random violence is seen as endemic, and somehow, the ramshackle country survives on foreign aid. It is for the readers to judge how accurate this view from abroad is.
The Daily Telegraph is the largest selling broadsheet in Britain, and for two consecutive days this week its South Asia correspondent, David Blair, has been filing reports from the North-West Frontier Province. Needless to say, these do not prompt the average tourist in Islington to immediately ring his travel agent and book a seat to Peshawar.
In one long article, Blair describes the tribulations of Gulzar Alam, the popular singer, who was beaten up with rifle butts when 20 cops raided a wedding party in Peshawar where the poor man was singing. The battered singer was then locked up in jail before being released through the intercession of friends. Two months later, the police raided his house and when he was found to be absent, they dragged away his brother and two sons, incarcerating them overnight on the ludicrous charge of kidnapping. Apparently, the obscurantist provincial government has banned music, along with most other things considered normal and pleasurable in the civilized world.
You would think that with all the crimes being committed every day in the province, its police force would be busy elsewhere. But no, it seems that music is a high priority with NWFP's law enforcement agencies. A close second is the banning and burning of video tapes: according to Blair, thousands of videos have been confiscated and burned in public, including films of cricket matches which showed (horror of horrors!) women watching the game.
No doubt barbers are next in line for prosecution. After all, the coalition of Islamic parties ruling the NWFP has the Taliban as role models. The next step to taking the unfortunate province back to the stone age is the passage of a bill in the provincial assembly creating a 'ministry for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice' similar to the gang of thugs the Taliban had running around measuring the length of men's beards, and flogging women for the 'crime' of showing an inch of ankle.
Already, the bearded genie is out of the bottle: according to the Telegraph, armed gangs have attacked dozens of barber shops in Wana, a town in South Waziristan, and ordered barbers to stop shaving men. They have threatened to kill them if they did not obey. That's the other thing about religious fanatics: their one and only punishment for anybody infringing their barbaric rules is death.
If anybody doubts the respect the Taliban enjoyed in much of the NWFP, he only has to talk to Maulana Gohar Shah, principal of the Dar-ul-Uloom madressah in Charsadda, just as David Blair did. He quotes Shah thus: "We are in mourning for the collapse of the Taliban. We are still weeping for them. As soldiers and rulers, the Taliban served the people well."
Say what? After the horrors they inflicted on the Afghans, and the needless American attacks they called upon them through their mad policies and their support of Al Qaeda, you would have expected a collective sigh of relief at the exit of the Taliban from Kabul. But not in the NWFP and the tribal areas, it seems; and nor, I fear, in large swathes of Pakistan where that wretched gang of illiterate holy warriors are still viewed as heroes.
But perhaps the most shocking aspect of these tragi-comic stories is that the MMA coalition was elected to office by a majority in the last elections. Even if the ISI had a hand in the creation of this electoral alliance, the fact remains that a lot of people voted for them. As a democrat, I support their right to rule and enact such laws as are within their powers, but as a secular liberal, I am aghast at what is happening in the province. No wonder the Indian cricket team wants to spend as little time as possible in Peshawar.
Incidentally, Maulana Gohar Shah is a member of the National Assembly and was elected on a JUI ticket. At his madressah, students rise at 4 am, and with short breaks for meals and prayers, learn the Holy Quran by heart until 9.30 pm when the lights are switched off. While the Maulana claims to teach his 1,000 students English and computers, none of his teachers know anything beyond broken English and the madressah only has five computers.
Although General Musharraf promised to reform madressahs two years ago, Shah says he has no intention of changing anything. And he admits sending his students to help the Taliban in the last days of the fighting against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
So the division in Pakistan keeps growing deeper between a Talibanesque vision and a modern one. The latter keeps the country in touch with the rest of the world and, indeed, keeps the wheels of industry, government and trade turning. The former acts as an anchor, keeping us from attaining our full potential.
This contradiction is built into the very existence of Pakistan. For many Pakistanis, the difference between Jinnah's vision of a secular homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent and 'a fortress of Islam' as Zia put it, is purely semantic. They view this country as a home for Muslims where the minorities live on sufferance, and where Islamic law should prevail. Never mind that there is no consensus on what precisely constitutes 'Islamic law': until religious scholars agree on a body of jurisprudence, the law of the Taliban will suffice, and singers like Gulzar Alam will be beaten up, barbers will be killed for shaving men, and 1.5 million Pakistani children will be taught nothing of the world they live in, or its natural laws and diverse cultures.
A weekend in Peshawar, anyone?
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2004