Daily Times

Lahore: Pakistan is 70-years young today. Alongside honouring national heroes, there is a need for introspection to access today’s Pakistan in view of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s principles, say young civil society activists Daily Times spoke to about their work and vision for the country.

These activists are working on multiple fronts with varying approaches but for a unitary cause: to realise a Pakistan that recognises and cherishes its diversity.

The activists highlight that space for dissent is fast shrinking with the state showing an increasing intolerance for difference of opinion. They note that political rivals and their followers are busy declaring one another foreign agents. We have lost countless lives to extremism and growing intolerance. Bigotry and misogyny have become an integral part of our politics. But despite all this negativity, they say, hope is not completely lost. Though, the task ahead is not easy either.

Youth activist Ali Abbas Zaidi has recently launched a Dil Se Pakistan campaign to engage communities across the country for promotion of diversity, interfaith harmony, education and technological advancement.

Famous patriotic song Dil Se Menay Dekha Pakistan was remade under the campaign. Its video featured Muniba Mazari, famous for being the world’s first wheelchair-bound model, and a survivor of the APS attack. The video showed people from different faiths to give a message of religious harmony.

Zaidi believes that despite all that’s wrong with the country ‘Pakistan remains good at heart and our campaign aims at showing just that’. “We have countless positive stories. Unfortunately, mainstream media fail to highlight these success stories and all we see is negativity,” he says.

Zaidi says his campaign is also promoting community interaction for reclaiming public spaces for dialogue and debate. However, he says, an element of fear exists in the country given the state’s intolerance towards dissenting views. He is hopeful that things will start getting better once democracy gets strengthened.

Another campaigner for recognition of diversity in Pakistani society is Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) based peace activist Gulalai Ismael. She is part of a team that’s conducting workshops for students in KP and FATA to ‘make them unlearn the anti-diversity narrative’.

“We took the initiative in 2009 at a time when people were not ready to speak out against Taliban. But things are different now. We get a very positive response from youngsters every time we call on them to register for our anti-extremism workshops. This is because they now know the importance of standing up against terrorism and extremism,” she tells Daily Times.

Ismael says that the motivation behind her work is the fact that she is a product of the anti-diversity education system that now affects students participating in her trainings. She shares that she was mentored by prominent woman politicians of KP after her father, himself a peace activist, saw extremist tendencies in his children. “Now it’s my duty to mentor other young people from my community who have been brainwashed by an education system that breeds on denial of social diversity,” she says.

She adds that once we’re able to provide a counter-narrative to the extremist mindset, we will see a progressive Pakistan.

Social activist Jibran Nasir believes that solutions to problem faced by Pakistan will need more than mere provision of a counter-narrative. He says extremism has affected our society to its very core. “It isn’t enough to just have an opinion against extremism. You need to express your opinion at all available platforms,” he says.

He is deeply critical of mainstream politicians for he sees them as setting poor examples for the youth to follow. But he insists that the loopholes in the political system need to be fixed. There are laws and constitutional articles like those concerning qualifications and disqualifications of Parliamentarians that are effectively weakening democracy rather than strengthening it in their current form. Among other reforms, he advocates provisions for security of five-year terms of democratically elected governments.

Nasir says countless examples of tolerance and coexistence can be found in regional traditions and literature. These should be referred to for promotion of coexistence.

Published in Daily Times, August 14^th 2017.