Daily Times

February 22 marked the day when Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founder of the infamous Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), and the ideological godfather of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) — the radical group that has accepted responsibility for the recent killings of the Hazara Shiite minorities in Quetta — was assassinated by suspected Shiite militants in 1990. As the nation mourned the sad events of February 16, 2013, when the Hazaras were attacked yet again in Quetta and more than 90 innocent lives were lost, a twitter post stated, “Ghar ghar Jhangvi utthe ga, Tum jitne Jhangvi maro gay” (A [Haq Nawaz] Jhangvi will emerge from every home, how many Jhangvis will you assassinate?). The twitter message further stated that February 22 was to be remembered as ‘a grand event of the martyrdom’ of Maulana Jhangvi. The message clearly showed that Pakistan’s problem of religious intolerance, now getting increasingly militant, is here to stay. This article in the Sociology of Religion seeks to firstly analyse the takfiri, exclusivist views of the LeJ and then present a review of the Qur’anic scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamidi’s position on the issue, comparing it to the stance of the Islamist outfit Tanzeem-e-Islami (TI).

Based on a strict Deobandi interpretation of Sunni Islam, the discourse of the LeJ, i.e. ‘the army of [Maulana] Jhangvi’, revolves largely around the themes of purity and purgation, being especially critical of Shiite views. A central aspect of it is takfir, i.e. declaring members of any Muslim group to be infidels, casting them outside the fold of Islam, and at times, going up to the extent of pronouncing them ‘wajib-ul-qatl’ (deserving of death). This then gets connected to the concept of jihad having become obligatory to put the specific group to death. In June 2011, the LeJ issued a pamphlet against the Hazaras in Balochistan in which all these themes were vividly visible. Words like ‘kafir’ (infidel), ‘naapak’ (impure, unclean) and ‘Pakistan is the land of the pure [only]’ clearly showed the worldview of the LeJ vis-à-vis the Hazara Shiites. The pamphlet announced that the Hazaras would be targeted and killed by the LeJ.

While many of the prominent religious scholars in Pakistan have given diplomatic or muted responses to the crisis at hand, perhaps some of the most clear and powerful views against religious intolerance and terrorism have come from the contemporary Qur’anic scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. Ghamidi is a Sunni scholar but with a unique hermeneutic approach to Qur’anic exegesis that makes his views about Islam, Muslim history and interfaith relations quite different than the conventional Deobandi, Barelvi or Ahl-e-Hadith positions. He views the present crisis to be based on an intolerant ideology that has hijacked our society. Pakistan is therefore witnessing an ideological war according to Ghamidi, with such radical elements as the LeJ seeking to enforce their exclusivist interpretation of Islam on all. In saying so, he has been quite vocal against the concept of takfir used blatantly by such outfits. “The army can fight with guns [to win conventional battles], but ideological wars are fought by intellectuals. Our country has a large number of religious scholars including Deobandi, Barelvi and Ahl-e-Hadith scholars…the big question is why don’t these people step forward and [clearly] state that Shiites are Muslims, they are part of the Muslim community and are our brethren. If anyone knowingly and willingly kills them, he commits an action for which the Qur’an has declared the punishment of eternal hellfire,” stated the Qur’anic scholar who was forced to leave Pakistan by extremist elements some time ago.

While Ghamidi focuses more on the inner, subjective elements of religious extremism, contextualising this as an ideological conflict, the Islamist outfit TI defines the current situation as one involving serious geopolitical conspiracies against Pakistan. For the TI, which is a Sunni religious group, events like the February 16 bomb attack are part of a scheme by ‘foreign powers who want to destabilise Pakistan’; the ‘Great Game’ is underway. An article about the latest bombings in Quetta published in TI’s Nida-e-Khilafat magazine shows how the organisation considers that there is a ‘trinity of Pakistan’s enemies’ including the US, India and Israel that are busy at work to create instability in Pakistan, exploiting this country’s people in their strategies. Their intelligence agencies, the CIA, RAW and Mossad respectively, are active players in this process. India is Pakistan’s ‘eternal enemy’ that has never accepted Pakistan as a separate, independent country while Israel is an ‘ideological enemy’ that feels ‘unsafe’ with Pakistan’s existence as an Islamic nation with nuclear capability, states the TI.

The TI article goes on to say that the events of 9/11 were part of a ‘drama’ planned by this trinity to destabilise Pakistan and weaken it internally, possibly breaking it into pieces. After blaming the Musharraf government for participating in the War on Terror of the US and the Zardari government for continuing policies that support US interests, the article commends the steps taken by the present government to hand over Gwadar port’s operations to China and signing the gas pipeline deal with Iran, both mega-projects that are related to Balochistan. Ultimately, the article questions why the Hazara Shiite minority is being targeted in Balochistan specifically and presents a possible answer: Balochistan has to be destabilised so that such projects that can strengthen Pakistan end in failure. This is, therefore, a purely geopolitical explanation of the Hazara issue.

The latter, geopolitical interpretation happens to be a more popular narrative in our society today. However, when one analyses the rampant anti-Shiite literature published by organisations like the LeJ, it becomes clear that any holistic analysis of the current crisis of Pakistan vis-à-vis religious militancy cannot be carried out without the ideological dimension being taken into account comprehensively.

An interesting, and much revealing couplet in a poetic tribute to an anti-Shiite activist published by Sipah-e-Sahaba reads, “He became a devotee of the Companions [of the Prophet (PBUH)], and took a ticket to paradise.” In a complex struggle involving religion, history, territory, identity and politics, Pakistan battles against her Frankenstein’s monster of religious intolerance and militancy through largely superficial, negligent and hypocritical measures. Sadly, in a society where tickets to heaven, and hell, are easily available, innocent people will keep on dying at the hands of the violent, self-appointed, soldiers of God. It seems that the monster is here to stay.

The writer teaches Sociology at the University College Lahore (UCL). He can be reached at naqibhamid@gmail.com