Daily Times

Rashid Rehman’s brutal assassination is a grim reminder of the ugliest reality around us. The reality is not merely of religious intolerance and extremism; it is the reality of a much deeper ailment in society, an ailment that will keep shedding blood and spreading wrath even beyond religious extremism. It is the reality of a society that can turn to any level of violence and cruelty for some of its core beliefs where the level of intolerance is so grave that the masses can be exploited to achieve any ends in the name of core beliefs. What we see around us in the name of religious extremism is only a symptom of this much deeper ailment. Unless the causes of the ailment are tackled, the fiasco is here to stay.

The reality is that we are a society, which has yet to learn to settle its social, political and economic power plays without violence. From the street to the highest echelons of powers, scores are settled through violence. And it is the creation of society sans violence that we need to focus on. If we succeed in creating such a society, the issue of religious, ethnic, sectarian and all other extremisms will cease to be bothersome. For any civility to be restored to this land of the pure, the free pass for violence will have to be revoked.

The US, probably, has more divergent and extreme opinions than we have. You will find the top capitalists there and the top socialists. It is the hub of a strong Zionist lobby and of very strong anti-Semitic voices. It has strong anti-Muslim voices and pretty vocal Muslim organisations. It is home to the world’s biggest oil lobby and world’s biggest environmental lobby. It has the strongest God movement and the strongest atheist movement. And yet none of this extremism and divergence causes any threat to US society. The reason is simple: in the US, you are allowed to harbour any views no matter how extreme but the moment you resort to violence, code Zen will be activated and violence will be quelled in a manner that serves as a warning for the rest. For instance, abortion remains a very divisive issue in US society. Right-wingers are anti-abortion yet, under President George W Bush, a strong anti-abortionist, when the clinics of doctors who performed abortions were attacked, the administration under anti-abortion George W Bush showed a strong reaction and went after the attackers. Social consensus is firm on one thing there: it is in everybody’s paramount interest that the only entity with monopoly over violence has to be the state itself.

And restoring the state’s monopoly over violence is the only way forward for peace and sanity to be restored in this part of the world. However, this is easier said than done and to assert the state’s monopoly over violence, we will have to go against the social and historical tide. We live in a region that saw a massacre during partition where thousands and thousands of people were blindly murdered with sheer animalistic instinct. In society, people from top to bottom give their tacit approval to violence and this love for violence gets reflected every day around us. This display will continue till the state asserts itself to quell this.

Why cry over the murder of Rashid Rehman in a society where Salmaan Taseer was framed by a bunch of politicians and journalists for a crime he never committed, creating euphoria that led to his assassination? Why cry when a leading television anchor provokes the Taliban to kill captives (Khalid Khawaja and Colonel Imam) in their custody? And why be shocked when the leading television channels blame Benazir for the October 2007 blast in her convoy, terming it the obvious consequence of her position on Lal Masjid? Why should a journalist be surprised at being labelled a traitor and getting shot, when he himself has framed others in a similar fashion? From Rashid Rehman to Salmaan Taseer, from Benazir to Hamid Mir, all that happened is wrong, unacceptable, unfair but hardly shocking.

So when Rashid Rehman sacrificed his life for the principle of right to trial, which he held so dear, he forgot that the prerequisite of a free trial is a functioning state and the cornerstone of a functioning state is the state’s monopoly over violence to protect its denizens. The Taliban, religious extremism, people getting flared up at blasphemy and taking the law into their own hands, are all problems. However, these problems will not go away until the state restores what is its fundamental duty and right: absolute monopoly over violence, the monopoly to ensure that no one in its ambit resorts to violence for belief, faith, ideology or vested interest. Without this monopoly, we can neither restore the supremacy of rule of law nor can we have peace and sanity. Let us focus on restoring with the state this monopoly and, in the process, making the state more accountable in the use of this monopoly. This is the clearest way forward to tackle these issues. Once we start with this clear focus, we will know who are the friends of the state and who are the enemies.

The writer is a freelance columnist and may be contacted at aalimalik@gmail.com