Daily Times

Not for the first time have Mufti Popalzai and his team sighted moon to time Eid with the parts of the world that do not fall in their time zone. We have a long history of multiple Eids every Eid – one for the Popalzai followers, the other for the rest. To be fair, the practice predates Popalzai and has its roots in entirely practical considerations. Not reality though, which appears to be irrelevant to the matrix of power and prominence.

But never has a government surrendered to the team the way it has come about this year. No, this does not mean that Popalzai’s populism has prevailed all of a sudden. Opportunistic governments see everything – development, economy, society, religion – through a particular lens. Elections are scheduled for the provincial assembly constituencies that fall in what used to be the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Popalzai has a large constituency in many parts of these areas. The Pakistan Tahreek-i-Insaf government is going through the worst of its credibility crisis. Voters are perturbed by the unprecedented inflation they blame the government for. The devaluation of rupee against the dollar has broken the back of the businesspeople. Hit with frequent raises in prices of petroleum products, all that the masses hear from the government is a daily dose of false sermons on how they are all tax evaders and why they should be taxed more.

The government has nothing real to give out to the masses. It believes it can arrange the moon sighting shows to detract public attention from the real issues. This government has long been trying to exploit religion for political gain. One of its ministers has brazenly written to an oil exporting country to finance a number of facilities including an Islamic university for women in his constituency. However, its attempt to use the religion card by putting its seal of approval on the Popalzai moon, appears to have backfired. Rather, it has exposed the Popalzai phenomenon. Having thrown its weight behind Popalzai, the PTI government failed to have one Eid, even in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, not to speak of the country.

The minister for science and technology has meanwhile issued an application that enables its users to see the exact location of moon on their mobile phones. The software aims at denying the clerics a say in when people should celebrate Eid. It has made it harder for the government(s) to harness the Popalzai populism to milk tribal votes by officially adopting his Eid. *