The heartrending incident at the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar stirred our collective conscience as a nation and the state machinery moved into top gear to uproot militancy. The political and military leadership put their heads together to devise an effective strategy for bringing peace to the land. The moratorium on executions was immediately lifted. Military courts have been set up after amending the Constitution. The central and provincial governments are striving hard to implement the measures suggested in the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo incident, the Islamist parties are flexing their muscles to demonstrate their street power against the proposed reforms for madrassas (seminaries).
However, the anti-terror drive is hollow and mechanical rather than organic and coherent because the ideological counterattack against violent and deformed theology is missing from the equation. The policymakers have failed to take cognizance of the ideological framework that provides motivation to the perpetrators of such barbaric acts. The counterterrorism policy adopted by the government may be helpful in providing symptomatic relief but the underlying pathology will remain untreated. The dogmatic interpretation of religion, based on the ninth and 10th century Asharites doctrine (the antithesis of the Mutazilites), is the primary culprit behind our present woes.
The violence-laden narrative of religion has currency in our society because it has been employed by state institutions to achieve geostrategic objectives in the region. The state pursued a policy of outright appeasement vis-à-vis the religious orthodoxy from the very beginning. The passage of the Objectives Resolution anchored the role of religion too firmly in the state’s affairs. During the 1970s and 1980s a holistic exercise was carried out to construct a religion-based identity for the remaining state after the departure of East Pakistan. From the Constitution to textbooks, everything was tailored — rather distorted — in a way that paved the way for the ascendancy of the clergy in the state’s affairs. These state-sponsored efforts bore fruit and successfully inculcated the germs of violence and fanaticism deep into the genetic makeup of a considerably large section of society. To avoid the wrath of the inflammable religious right, the liberal intelligentsia retracted into its shell and left the field wide open for semi-literate mullahs to spread their venom and hatred in the garb of religion. This alliance between the state and political mullahs muffled — rather gagged — the voices of reason and pushed us towards intellectual and cultural suicide.
On the contrary, those who opposed the ideological drift towards theocracy and advocated enlightenment and moderation were demonised as security risks by the powers-that-be that mattered in this state. After the East Pakistan debacle, the voices advocating sanity and wisdom in foreign and strategic policies were labelled anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam. This demonisation of reason and wisdom gradually pushed us into medieval, dogmatic slumber. The coercive machinery of the state, though it succeeded in silencing the voices of enlightened dissent, led us to the present cultural and intellectual paralysis. The death and destruction we have been witnessing in the last decade has amply proved that those voices who opposed the security and foreign policies of our security establishment in the 1980s and 1990s were worthy of better treatment than the kind they received.
The threat haunting us is existential in nature and without taking the bull by the horns we will find it hard to reclaim peace. We are paying with our blood for the policy of outright appeasement pursued by the state vis-à-vis the religious right. With half-hearted measures we cannot win a war against these ferocious enemies hell-bent on imposing their way of life on society. The militants and their sympathisers are clear about their objectives while confusion reigns supreme on our side of the barricade. Unless the government and the security establishment come clean and bring a paradigm shift to their policies of promoting religious orthodoxy, the threat of militancy will loom large over our heads for the foreseeable future. This war cannot be won by relying only on fighter aircraft, tanks, helicopters and artillery. Why, when, where, who and how are the other battalions of vital importance for countering militancy and extremism.
The military courts, military operations, crackdown against madrassas and a few arrests here and there are too little too late. The rolling back of this horrible jihadist infrastructure, erected in the last three decades in connivance with our establishment, requires double the energies and time that went into its making. The state of Pakistan needs to espouse a more humane and less violent narrative of religion to combat militancy and extremism effectively. The revival of the mystical laughter of Sufis and the rejuvenation of reasoning and thinking faculties can provide us a way out of the present morass. From the Constitution to textbooks, everything needs complete overhauling to undo the Frankenstein’s monster of militancy and sectarianism. The gate of ijtihad (independent reasoning) remained closed for too long and, without its reopening, the war against terror will remain inconclusive. Without finding a clear way to reconcile sharia with the realities of modern life and government, the dream of the deradicalisation of society will remain elusive.
The author is assistant accountant general, Peshawar