Daily Times

There is no doubt we have a surfeit of poison within ourselves. The question is whether we want to remove it. Like all pre-industrial democracies struggling to find their democratic moorings, we are a nation weaned on a heavy diet of superstitions, fake spiritualism, overt religiosity, and a belief in the supernatural as a solution to all our ills.

From superstitions to spirituality it is a small leap forward to a fatalism that justifies most of the seven deadly sins; sloth, greed, gluttony, wrath, lust and pride. Injustice and exploitation is tolerated through concepts deifying divinely sanctioned social stratification whereas an attitude of fatalism is fostered through a sedulously crafted narrative of saintly servitude to the dynastic overlords, both in politics and spirituality. Whatever hopes the country had of exorcising our demons of extremism have been laid low by the spectacle of our political leaders as well as the state bowing and scraping to win the sympathies of both the religious right and faith healers.

You do not win the fight against extremism by mainstreaming it. You do not mainstream extremism; you mainstream the extremists and that too after they have renounced extremism. While the former is a patient, the latter is the disease. By mainstreaming the diseased patient you are mainstreaming the disease itself. The Army Public School (APS) tragedy was the watershed moment when the nation was jolted out of its ambivalence to combat the menace of extremism and its insidious manifestation, the grisly phenomenon of terrorism. Political expediencies seem to have trumped whatever Pakistanis learnt that day.

Overt religiosity has been our national leadership’s favourite ploy to keep the unthinking and illiterate masses in line while the elite played ducks and drakes with national politics and the economy, unmistakably for personal gains. Instead of political and economic rights, the masses were fed on empty promises while the clergy and the state leadership colluded in an unholy partnership to amass power for themselves. After Zia’s use of religion as an instrument of state policy to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan, the ghosts of religious militancy could never be effectively exorcised.

You do not win the fight against extremism by mainstreaming it. You do not mainstream extremism; you mainstream the extremists and that too after they have renounced extremism. While the former is a patient, the latter is the disease

Soon, each religious party with ambitions made a militant wing that provided muscle to propagate and enforce its brand of religious politics. Sectarian parties were nurtured and mainstreamed under the watch of Ziaul Haq, who fearful of Iranian export of revolution promoted anti-Shia parties like Sipah-e-Sahaba. It was a matter of time until these parties grew too virulent and dangerous for the state itself.

Ever since the Soviet-Afghan War ended in 1989, the power of the religious and sectarian parties grew steadily, until religious militancy was given a new fillip by the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The Afghan conflict after the US invasion created a refugee situation and the cross border movement of militants that kept FATA and the Baloch tribal belt destabilised, forcing Pakistan to commit Army and paramilitary forces to counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas. Despite Pakistan’s best efforts to cooperate with the US in its counter terrorism efforts, the relationship withered on the wines of mutual suspicions. The Indo-US strategic convergence ultimately forced Pakistan to adopt an independent line. After much bloodshed and lost political opportunities, the US has probably realised the limitations of its strategic convergence with India. It however is still confused whether to adopt Pakistan as a full time ally or to keep her as a transactional partner. There are certain realities that we need to countenance candidly.

The first reality is that Pakistan is still in the cross fire of Indo-US strategic alliance with China as a cautious ally keen more on economic cooperation than geopolitical wrangling. The second reality is that our social, political, and religious fault lines are being gleefully exploited by RAW, NDS, and other external actors to keep us destabilised. At the time of our greatest international isolation, the economic squeeze is also being applied on us. Our Army is tied up on our Eastern as well as Western borders while the cost of counter insurgency and counter-terrorism operations are rising due to dwindling international aid. Under these trying times, a temptation to enlist the support of the religious right becomes tempting because of strategic expediencies. The third ubiquitous reality however is that capitulation to religious extremism almost always renews the extremist’s appetite for violence.

Care should be taken that we do not mainstream extremism while allowing unreformed and unrepentant extremists to contest elections and spread their message of hate. The vast majority of the population is still vulnerable to the crafty and emotive narratives of these purveyors of hate who present their message wrapped in religious covers. If we as a nation are serious about ridding ourselves of this poison of religious extremism within us, we need to take some urgent steps. The first step would be an unqualified denunciation of extremism in all its shades and hues at the state level. The second step would be a ban on the extremist narratives and their glorification. The mainstreaming of all extremist organisations and their reincarnations under different names should be avoided to deny space for their insidious narrative.

What we should pursue instead is the promotion of alternate narratives. Religious scholars with a balanced outlook and education should be allowed to take centre-stage in mosques and the media to present the true message of a rational, tolerant, pluralist, and syncretic Islam. The state should seize control of all mosques and appoint the Imams itself. Friday sermons should be scrutinised by the state and all sectarian hate speeches should be discouraged strongly. Sectarian cultism and hate speeches should be banned to make way for a civilised and sober religious discourse and debate under the tutelage of genuine religious scholars.

If we wish to survive as a rational, pluralist, and peaceful nation we will have to remove the poison of extremism lying within our religious discourses, traditions, practices, and even methods of proselytisation. We owe it to the blood of our Mastung martyrs.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; email rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, July 16^th 2018.