Two press reports, two different events, and two different subjects covered in the reports appeared to have had no obvious relationship with each other: one talked of the universities’ heads who discussed ways to end intolerance and radicalisation in higher education institutes and the other report covered a statement of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief wherein he suggested to shun the Western culture in our society. Do these reports really have no link with each other? Let’s review both the reports.
Triggered by the unprecedented lynching incident of a student, Mashal Khan, at Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) organised a daylong seminar in Islamabad that was attended by 60 vice chancellors of the universities to discuss growing cases of violence and intolerance in the country’s universities. All attendees had a consensus that the higher education institutes be made relevant to the needs of society and the extremism be curbed through curriculum. Among them were more than a dozen VCs who were critical of the social media abuses and its disastrous effects on the lives of the youth. “We are losing our morals, values and basic principles with the invasion of new technology,” commented a VC from Lahore.
Two days before this seminar, JI chief Sirajul Haq had also talked about the onslaught of the Western culture on our society and using the opportunity he had even criticised the PM Nawaz Sharif for referring to “Bhagwan” as God. For JI chief, it was “ideological terrorism” and the premier’s remarks, in his opinion, were meant to appease the West.
What these two reports reflect is a combination of divide and harmony the society has on a most crucial issue called “terrorism”. It wasn’t a simple case of different opinions between politicians and educationists. While the HEC seminar was a result of a most barbaric incident of lynching in the name of religion, the attendees appeared to be divided on the causes of it. Those who had just recovered from a nightmarish experience of barbarism on false charges of objectionable postings on social media, still considered social media abuses as a reason for social decay and other problems. The abuses and misuses of a law that had resulted in horrific murder of Mashal Khan were of least concern to them. Interesting to note is that five persons are currently facing trials for being suspected of having posted blasphemous texts on social media, one of them is the famous social activist, Jibran Nasir. Keeping this background in mind, one can relate the comment of a VC from Lahore to the remark of JI chief that he had expressed on “ideological terrorism.”
With such a basic diversity in explanation and understanding of “terrorism”, there is no way for the university managements to draw a plan that can help them eradicate the menace of violence and intolerance from the country’s universities. When the PM of the country is accused of having committed terrorism, when such allegation is made by a religious party, whose former chief Maulana Munawwar Hassan had called Hakeemullah Mehsud, ex-TTP chief a martyr, the very basic concept of terrorism becomes unexplainable.
In a country that is marred by all kinds of violence, the incidents of human killing by taking the law into one’s hand has added new dimension to the criminalisation of the society. Unlike other forms of violence, this crime in the name of religion is committed not by the criminals or militants but by the common people and the list of victims goes from the common people to the people belonging to religious clergy, judiciary, and teaching profession. During the last four months, two persons have been extra-judicially murdered on blasphemy charges while three persons were beaten severely by the mob on similar reasons. The extrajudicial killing of two persons was unprecedented as one of them, Mashal Khan, was brutally murdered by a mob of university students and the other, Raza Abbas, was killed by three sisters in Sialkot. Since the promulgation of Blasphemy Laws in 1927, there is no record of extrajudicial killing of a blasphemy accused in a university by the students and no record of any female to have ever indulged into extrajudicial murder of a blasphemy suspect.
Unless the practice of taking the law into one’s hand is punished and condemned as a crime, the extrajudicial killings will continue occurring in the country and the range of victims and perpetrators will continue growing no matter how many vice chancellors sit together and ponder over the challenge of intolerance and extremism in the universities. All they need is to have a consensus as to what they consider as the real cause of this problem – the misuse of a law for extrajudicial killing or the use of social media? Some religious parties and former parliamentarians have already started lobbying for declaring the killers of Mashal Khan innocent, true Muslims, and compliant of their religious duties. To accept extrajudicial killing of Mashal Khan as a right step will raise a new challenge for the society as to how the practices of extremism could be curtailed when a licence to kill is available. Would our alma-maters be able to guide the society on this highly sensitive issue?
The writer is a freelance journalist and senior research fellow at the Centre for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad