Daily Times

Oh, hey it’s you, the reader; give me a minute as I have some condemning to do online. You see last week I condemned the Turkish Airport blasts, a few days ago it was Dhaka I was standing with, and by the time this piece goes into publication, God forbid, there would be more attacks to outrage over. I have learned the art of condemnation from my politicians, and from the celebrities around the world. Occasionally, we even attend candle light vigils to prove our “cool” and then brag about it to our peers. In reality these mean nothing, as things have only worsened over time, because we quickly move on to the next issue at hand, disengaging ourselves from the previous one.

“Islam is a religion of peace” is a beautiful phrase to repeat but far from my reality. “My brand” of Islam, the one Pakistanis practice all over has always been about objection (aitraaz) and living divisively. “Good Islam” to many mean keeping the daughter and wife in control, and letting the sons get away with murder. The religion on our streets has always been preoccupied with females and their attire, spewing hatred against other sects, and the perfect recitation of Quranic verses, irrespective of whether we understand them or not.

One of my earliest memories of my skirmish with the Pakistani Islam is celebrating my Bismillah (the act of beginning to learn to read the Quran) as an eight-year-old by distributing sweets to children my age in the locality. The responsibility of teaching me fell upon a neighborhood auntie who moved her class from the drawing room to the kitchen every day. In between frying shami kebabs for her family, she would terrorise the neighbourhood children about pronouncing the Qaf sound correctly. “The sound comes from the depth of your throat,” she would instruct with a ruler in one hand. My tongue would play acrobatics inside the mouth, but was unable to catch this Qaf. A week later, I found myself running away from her clutches, using the excuse of forgetting my alphabet learner (qaida with a Qaf again), and promising to return in five minutes with it. I never went back.

I was then handed over to a maulvi (religious teacher) who agreed to come home, but with him too I ended up sending him away from the gate many a time. “There has been a death in the family Maulvi sahib,” I would fib. And if the mortality card was overused there was always a wedding we were attending. “Who was at the door?” one or the other elder of the family would later inquire. “Oh, don’t worry about it, just some sabziwala (vegetable-seller),” was my standard reply.

During my childhood I went though six sessions of Bismillah, driving most of the religious teachers away. In essence, I was resisting learning to read the Holy Quran in a language I didn’t comprehend. I would offer to read it in Urdu or English, but that is not how it goes in Pakistan.

Religion is thrust upon us, and we are made to gulp it down without ever questioning anything. The scholars and Islamiyat teachers are also obsessed with the idea of maghfirat (asking for forgiveness from God); there’s a guilt tag attached to everything fun in life. One is made to feel like jailed inmates out on parole. I felt like a murderer always bowing my head in shame, fearing God and His wrath.

So then where is the peace that everyone associates with Islam? The discourses on TV are mostly about menstruation, black magic and haraam (forbidden) things. Our esteemed practitioners of this version of Islam have kept us neatly away from any divine connection, keeping the discourse hooked onto life after death. Incidentally, all that is considered bad for life on earth such as alcohol, sex and gluttony would be easily attainable for good souls in paradise. No wonder then blowing one’s self up for all these pleasures would tempt the youth in some obscure part of the country, luring them to take up enrollment in some “school” of terrorism.

With Islamophobia on the rise, the world is quickly sorting itself into two groups: with Islam or against Islam. Pakistan has contributed not only in producing terrorists but also Islamophobes. Later in life, I completed the Quran in English, not out of compulsion but curiosity. The Quran In many places mentions ancient groups of people who strayed from the path of God, and as punishment God rained stones on them. And what I think: heavy-duty bricks must be in the clay oven, and on their way for Pakistanis as a gift from heaven.

With Bangladesh on its way to becoming another Pakistan, it is no surprise then that the perpetrators of the Dhaka attacks asked the hostages to recite from the Quran to prove their allegiance to Allah and only freed the ones who could. For them, just like us, being a Muslim merely meant possessing the ability to read a foreign language.

The writer is a freelance columnist with a degree in Cultural Studies and a passion for social observation, especially all things South Asian. She tweets @chainacoffeemug