Daily Times

It is the same old story in our theocratic state. The Islamabad Bar Association has now made it mandatory for its Muslim members to abuse Ahmadis’ founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in order to get bar membership. It is amazing that in this day and age such bigotry finds official sanction. Obviously the action itself is illegal and against the basic law governing the practice of law in the country. This would be the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act. Furthermore it violates Article 18 of the Constitution by putting an unfair restraint on trade and profession.

One can recount the stellar contributions of the Ahmadis to Pakistan’s making and its progress. One can recount that the founder of this nation had promised them their status both as equal citizens and Muslims. However these things have become meaningless in modern day Pakistan. Also meaningless are now the finer points of constitutional law that one thinks should carry weight. These things are too fine for the philistines.

What we face is naked majoritarianism and a new class of self styled lawyers who know nothing of law or constitution. These lawyers encroach public and private land in F-8 and then have the audacity to speak of Islam. These lawyers attack hospitals and then want to be known as guardians of the law and constitution. These lawyers are liars and hypocrites – there is no other way of putting it. They are a mafia more than a group of lawyers committed to the idea of rule of law.

Indians protesting the CAA often raise the slogan that India must not become a Hindu Pakistan. This is not enough to stir us Pakistanis. They do not even pause to consider what this means

Meanwhile the other lawyers – the foreign educated types with sexy but entirely useless degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and LSE in the UK and Harvard, Yale and Berkeley in the US – sit silently on the side, condemning these lawyers in private but doing nothing about it. This is what makes these degrees from world-class institutions meaningless because these lawyers have no passion for fundamental rights and the rights of marginalized communities. They have learnt nothing from them. They are more interested in their corporate practice. They are happy to let their country slide because it does not affect them or so they think. This second group thinks they are above such nonsense. When confronted these gentlemen pretend that they are part of some global elite, who are content to make money but no nothing of honour or dignity that is to be the hallmark of this once noble profession that is now divided into two groups – those who are religious fanatics and those who make money. Jinnah who they ask, Pakistan what they say. Indeed the second group makes it a point of denigrating lawyers like this writer for speaking on these issues, for harping on about Jinnah’s Pakistan and for speaking for religious minorities. There is no spirit of selflessness, sacrifice and public service amongst them. They scoff at the idea of public interest litigation or taking up unpopular causes. Meanwhile the country slips out of our hands. Pakistan is not just the sick man of South Asia. It is the sick man of the entire world. Yet they do not care. They are happy to let it sink and even die. They stand to the side and watch and wait to see which way the wind blows. Most of them will happily sign these new forms, throwing the minorities under the bus.

It is however this theocratic state, which has existed since 1973, that enables the Muslim majority to right roughshod over the rights of minorities in Pakistan. In 1993 the Supreme Court of Pakistan abolished religious freedom in Pakistan through its decision in Zaheeruddin v. State. It is no surprise then that the lawyers follow suit. After all it was the Oxford and Berkeley educated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who laid the foundations for this fanaticism in the country. General Zia merely took it to the next level. We then have the gall to condemn India for its Citizenship Amendment Act. Our case is infinitely worse and no one is willing to face up to it. Indians protesting the CAA often raise the slogan that India must not become a Hindu Pakistan. This is not enough to stir us Pakistanis. They do not even pause to consider what this means.

This state of affairs cannot continue. It is a road leading to sure shot disaster. The country is not going to survive this fanaticism. The money will dry out. We will go back to the stone age. For this unconcerned and callous lot that calls itself lawyers, there would be no more lands to encroach upon and no more corporate clients to mint money from. A regime of religious fanatics might abolish the profession of law altogether as under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lawyers in this theocratic state will be the biggest losers. You have been warned.

The writer is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan