Daily Times

While Pakistan is sadly a
country marred by cynicism and corruption, where the rich do not hesitate in stealing from the poor and where calamities like earthquakes and floods can bring about limitless human misery, it is certainly not a land of extremists where the majority favours the use of violence to impose its will.

Yes, there have been anti-west protests whenever some insane person has made unscrupulous use of freedom of expression, which is allowed there and, yes, television screens in the west have shown images of thousands of people protesting in the marches arranged by pseudo religious parties. What they forget to tell is that in a country of 180 million people assembling a few thousand from the seminaries, who, as per a recent report, have on their rolls approximately 1.8 million children (nearly a 10th of all enrolled students in Pakistan) is not a problem. What is also not told is that the poor in Pakistan have no other option. With a high birth rate and the state not incentivising the enrollment of the children of the poor into public schools, the parents have no option but to send their children to these seminaries known as madrassas in Pakistan where free lodging and meals are provided.

People are told that the country has seminaries in the thousands but the sheer number of these seminaries does not reflect the desire or will of the people of Pakistan. What the people are not told is that the country had a modest number of seminaries from 1947 to 1974 and that the number grew only after the rise of Saudi influence thereafter. It is forgotten that the failure of the US in preventing India from going nuclear in 1974 and its position on a Pakistani response made the country susceptible to Saudi influence. The contribution of the so-called Afghan jihad in the exponential increase in the number of seminaries is also conveniently forgotten. Their increase was necessitated by the recruitment for fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. Fighting inside Afghanistan was not the desire of the people of Pakistan but the country’s military dictator of the time so as to make Pakistan a frontline state to perpetuate his tenure.

While the mushrooming of extremists as the natural fallout from this policy suited the dictator who himself used religion as a political bogie, it is surprising how the US could fail in foreseeing its implications for the region and the world. Pakistan has since paid the heaviest of prices in the shape of extremist groups formed then; though being a fraction of the populace, they make their voices heard and have tried to influence the policies of all successive governments. These groups held hostage successive governments and had a web of laws knit in the name of Islam, which are essentially un-Islamic as they are either anti-women or anti-freedom of expression. The anti-Ahmedi Ordinance of 1984 that took away from them their religious freedom is an example in kind. These groups were to later provide feedstock to terrorists who have hit Pakistan hard. Between 2003 and 2015, more than 20,700 civilians and more than 6,300 security personnel have lost their lives to terror. The loss to the country’s economy between 2001 and 2015 has been around $ 107 billion.

In 1431, Joan of Arc was burnt to death for the charge of being a witch by The Anglo-Burgundians. Would this be possible today? No. The enlightened population would simply not allow it. The clerics of her time were able to have their way only because, till then, Europe had not been enlightened as a result of mass education. With a literacy rate of 58 percent (a person of 10 plus age is literate if he/she “can read a newspaper and write a simple letter, in any language) literally millions in Pakistan are at the mercy of pseudo religious elements to be brainwashed. That they have not been able to do so in any significant number is because God has created in each soul the basic mechanism to pick between right and wrong. However, any soul that is lost due to the social injustice of being denied a decent education is the collective responsibility of society.

In the past, the US has, for its strategic interests, directly or indirectly helped outfits and individuals that have used religion for politics and have been able to create a sphere of negative influence in Pakistan. This negative influence can only be reversed through mass education of an acceptable standard. The US has a moral obligation to generously assist the people of Pakistan in achieving this. The children of Pakistan deserve to be schooled properly and not forced to go to a madrassa out of sheer poverty. If the US could somehow help the people of Pakistan in making this possible it would always remember it as a good friend.

All human beings sympathise with aspirations of liberty. The extremists in Pakistan have used Indian repression in Jammu and Kashmir as a tool to gather popular support. The US could take away this opportunity from these extremists by using its influence to make both India and Pakistan settle the issue in a manner that reflects the will of the people of the state. This would be real service not just to the people of Pakistan but also to the more than one billion in South Asia who are living in poverty due to unnecessary security expenditure necessitated by this dispute. The text quoted from the US Declaration of Independence could act as a guide: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government”

The US is a powerful nation. With great power comes great responsibility. The people of South Asia hope it rises to the challenge.

The writer can be reached at thelogicalguy@yahoo.com