Cloakedvessel
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Recently I stumbled upon three interesting articles about the meaning of a liberal in Pakistani context and setting.
I’m a liberal, deal with it! – The Express Tribune Blog
I’m a liberal, deal with it!
November 7, 2012
It’s time for liberals to come out of the closet and organise into a real force so we may have at least some semblance of balance in our political system.
Our political arena is strictly a battleground between the hard conservatives and the centrists. On the other end of the field, amidst rolling tumbleweeds and sprawling spider webs, stand a grand total of four liberals, one of whom almost got shot a few days ago.
Déjà vu, anyone?
When we suggest that the “liberal extremists are as bad as the right-wing fundamentalists”, we assert a symmetrical distribution of lunatics and miscreants. This proposition is entirely ludicrous. I cannot recall the last time an outspoken liberal like Hoodbhoy garlanded a killer, or if Asma Jahangir placed a bounty on someone’s head. I wonder how many girls’ schools have been burnt down thus far in Darwin’s honour, or whoever they assume is the liberals’ messiah.
“Ludicrous”, I say, because I cannot imagine a rational citizen saying,
“Well, one side’s extremists have been indulging in honour-killing, acid-throwing, school-burning, suicide-bombing and minority-hunting, but the other extreme has been cheering Veena Malik, so I suppose they’re both equally reprehensible!”
The term “liberal” itself, by deliberate design, has been transformed into an epithet, a dirty word. It’s a taunt always accompanied by an unflattering word like “pseudo”, “wannabe”, or our favourite, “fascist”. I’ve rarely heard anyone being referred to as just “liberal” sans denigrating adjective.
Essentially anyone who has had the audacity to not go genuflecting at Imran Khan’s altar can, by conventional wisdom, be categorised as a liberal fascist. To call it a “stigma”would be an awful understatement. By labelling oneself a liberal, one is not announcing his political orientation as much as he’s inviting a bullet to the head. This isn’t just me being characteristically histrionic. This is excruciatingly evident from the death threats that begin pouring down on anyone straying even an inch to the left of the political median. We know from successful assassinations in the past that these threats are anything but hollow.
Ostensibly, anyone wishing to stand up as a liberal politician or activist would be well-served having “Matrix-level bullet dodging” as a legitimate skill on his resume. What’s worse is our inability to establish a ground rule that the unpopularity of a person’s political perspective is not a rationale for murder. Regardless of how much we may disagree with Marvi Sirmed or any other activist, it is improper to articulate statements that go something like,
“I condemn this attack but (insert excuse why the victim may have deserved this).”
Stop trying to make sense of what is clearly nonsensical. The liberal side is an empty prairie field with random individuals poking their heads out of the ground, and getting immediately whacked back in by the right-wing mallet. It’s time for liberals to come out of the closet and organise into a real force so we may have at least some semblance of balance in our political system.
The Pakistani liberal – The Express Tribune
The Pakistani liberal
Reading the comments on any opinion piece of The Express Tribune or watching news channels in Pakistan, one enters the fascinating world of the ‘Pakistani liberal’. A Pakistani liberal is a multifaceted animal. He, and I believe, also she, likes their T-shirt and jeans one size too small; likes to go around in big cars; eats at expensive restaurants; drinks alcohol like a fish; spends their holidays abroad; are variously in the pay of the United States, India, or Israel; keep quoting Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech; are responsible for Pakistan being dragged into the war on terror; are responsible for the continuation of drone attacks; support and pray for Malala Yousufzai but not people killed in drone attacks; supports (and does not support) the Great Khan; and, lest the erstwhile general gets annoyed, likes dogs. Obviously, this list of remarkable accomplishments can go on.
From the above, the Pakistani liberal sounds like a very powerful person and no wonder he is held responsible for so many things. After all, he is in control of almost every facet of Pakistani life and so should be held accountable for his actions. And while we are at it, let us also call to task the Pakistani liberal for the budget deficit (they keep up the spending and lower the tax collection due to nefarious plots) and the 2005 earthquake (they can alter the movement of tectonic plates).
However, I have one tiny problem with the description above. None of the characteristics above (and others usually used) describe a liberal in the classical or modern sense of the word. In brief, classical liberalism is rooted in individual freedom, equality, free markets and private property. To these concepts, modern liberalism has added the development of the welfare state and concern for social justice and civil rights. A liberal democracy is then a republic, which espouses and promotes such values.
The incongruence between what a liberal and a Pakistani liberal is cannot be starker. None of the descriptions above signify that the liberal believes in equality and civic rights, for example. Just imagine a rich Pakistani giving his/her ‘servants’ a fair wage and good employment conditions. Unthinkable. Or else we would not have horror stories of domestic help abuse and tenant abuse. Just imagine if the Pakistani liberal believed in social justice and the welfare state, then he would have to pay all his taxes and logically, the gap between the rich and the poor would not be that great. And just envision a Pakistani liberal allowing for individual freedom — the fun-loving, jeans-wearing, modern youth of Pakistan cannot simply allow you not to support the Great Khan. In short, the Pakistani liberal is the antithesis of what a liberal is actually meant to be.
So, who are these liberals that the Right (religious and others) decries and the Western media lauds? Hardly a week goes by without a vomit of words on either side. Opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine lionise the ‘Pakistani liberals’, while pieces in the daily Jang and others blast the scheming Pakistani liberals. The impression given is that there is a war, existential and otherwise, going on between the liberals and the conservatives for the soul of the country and that both are numerous and powerful.
The sad truth is that perhaps, there are no real liberals in Pakistan. The ‘Pakistani liberal’ is a monolith, which is a remarkable feat of our collective imagination, with no discernible features or groupings. For the Right, a ‘Pakistani liberal’ is someone they do not like or agree with. Being called a ‘liberal’ is a pejorative term for them and encompasses a wide variety of people, who mostly have nothing else in common. For the Western (and other) champions of Pakistani liberals, they are living in the hope that there must be some actual liberals in Pakistan. Westerners lament the paucity of liberal voices in Pakistan simply because they hardly exist, not because they are present in large numbers and are simply beleaguered.
With the amount of airtime and importance given to the Pakistani liberal, all I can say in the end is, ‘All hail, my imaginary Pakistani liberal, friend and foe!’
Where labelling has taken us – The Express Tribune Blog
I hate it when people become judgmental. More, so, when they pounce to those judgements listening to only a singular opinion of yours and conjecturing the rest. It has happened many a times. I criticise the Taliban – I’m an American lackey. I defend Taliban – I’m a fundo. Similarly, if I attack women for crying too much about nothing, I become a misogynist. If I defend them, there would certainly emerge at least one person who would label me a western agent.
It is not so much about these arguments and them being right or wrong, but rather the fact that even the most educated amongst us are willing to jump to conclusions which upsets me.
Perhaps that Aristotelian notion of ‘education enabling a person to entertain a thought without accepting it’ is lost on many associates of mine.
Perhaps our education is to be blamed for that too.
Hardly ever are we taught to analyse here in Pakistan. Rote learning is the rule of the day. More importantly, we are made to learn to espouse the opinions of others. Respect we must, but what good is an opinion if we agree with it just because one of our elders is a propagator of such. A society beset with lack of debates and curiosity is bound to create extremists.
We think upon bipolar lines. Our thought pattern has become binary. If one doesn’t agree with me he must have a hidden agenda. He must be the other kind. There is no idea of modernity. There is no place for the central path. Islam may state; “We have made you the bearers of the middle path, so that you may witness the truth of others”, we are adamant on showing to the world the ‘truth’ ourselves.
I’m anguished by how people believe you have to be on the either end of the spectrum. Tell them you believe drones are counter-productive but that America is not so bad either and they’d blame you for shying away from stating your opinion and perhaps even of being confused.
Well, that’s me.
I’d learnt to hate the crime and not the criminal. I do not believe people are incorrigible. I do not think some of us are better dead, because I’m nobody to be making those decisions.
Whether we talk of the holy war or the latest debate on blasphemy, the idea of conspiracy has made us paranoid. And in that paranoia we look for the devils where there are none. Anybody stating a contrary opinion has to be prosecuted. And what would a trial be without some magnificence. Let us show the world what we do to ‘their’ agents and ‘their’ spies!
So it should not come as a surprise if a certain somebody is lynched in such a country because he refused to be a part of a rally against blasphemy, a rally that was more detrimental to our interests than any western conspiracy could ever be.
It all stems from that labelling.
One day you create a class of people, the next you’re threatened by them. And thus pursues the internecine battle. The difference of opinion is the essence of democracy. We, however, have become so distrustful that anybody who questions one’s wisdom has to be quietened. The prospect of a discourse to find the solution to such conflicts of ideologues has become out of question. Raise a voice against the popular notions and be certain of becoming history.
We desperately need to change this narrative. Let us learn to respect others opinions; let us realise there is a path that lies in between the extremes and let us agree to disagree. Only then will we be able to contain this tide of extremism. That is our only solace, for the Frankensteinian monster that has been unleashed would consume us all otherwise.
I’m a liberal, deal with it! – The Express Tribune Blog
I’m a liberal, deal with it!
November 7, 2012
It’s time for liberals to come out of the closet and organise into a real force so we may have at least some semblance of balance in our political system.
Our political arena is strictly a battleground between the hard conservatives and the centrists. On the other end of the field, amidst rolling tumbleweeds and sprawling spider webs, stand a grand total of four liberals, one of whom almost got shot a few days ago.
Déjà vu, anyone?
When we suggest that the “liberal extremists are as bad as the right-wing fundamentalists”, we assert a symmetrical distribution of lunatics and miscreants. This proposition is entirely ludicrous. I cannot recall the last time an outspoken liberal like Hoodbhoy garlanded a killer, or if Asma Jahangir placed a bounty on someone’s head. I wonder how many girls’ schools have been burnt down thus far in Darwin’s honour, or whoever they assume is the liberals’ messiah.
“Ludicrous”, I say, because I cannot imagine a rational citizen saying,
“Well, one side’s extremists have been indulging in honour-killing, acid-throwing, school-burning, suicide-bombing and minority-hunting, but the other extreme has been cheering Veena Malik, so I suppose they’re both equally reprehensible!”
The term “liberal” itself, by deliberate design, has been transformed into an epithet, a dirty word. It’s a taunt always accompanied by an unflattering word like “pseudo”, “wannabe”, or our favourite, “fascist”. I’ve rarely heard anyone being referred to as just “liberal” sans denigrating adjective.
Essentially anyone who has had the audacity to not go genuflecting at Imran Khan’s altar can, by conventional wisdom, be categorised as a liberal fascist. To call it a “stigma”would be an awful understatement. By labelling oneself a liberal, one is not announcing his political orientation as much as he’s inviting a bullet to the head. This isn’t just me being characteristically histrionic. This is excruciatingly evident from the death threats that begin pouring down on anyone straying even an inch to the left of the political median. We know from successful assassinations in the past that these threats are anything but hollow.
Ostensibly, anyone wishing to stand up as a liberal politician or activist would be well-served having “Matrix-level bullet dodging” as a legitimate skill on his resume. What’s worse is our inability to establish a ground rule that the unpopularity of a person’s political perspective is not a rationale for murder. Regardless of how much we may disagree with Marvi Sirmed or any other activist, it is improper to articulate statements that go something like,
“I condemn this attack but (insert excuse why the victim may have deserved this).”
Stop trying to make sense of what is clearly nonsensical. The liberal side is an empty prairie field with random individuals poking their heads out of the ground, and getting immediately whacked back in by the right-wing mallet. It’s time for liberals to come out of the closet and organise into a real force so we may have at least some semblance of balance in our political system.
The Pakistani liberal – The Express Tribune
The Pakistani liberal
Reading the comments on any opinion piece of The Express Tribune or watching news channels in Pakistan, one enters the fascinating world of the ‘Pakistani liberal’. A Pakistani liberal is a multifaceted animal. He, and I believe, also she, likes their T-shirt and jeans one size too small; likes to go around in big cars; eats at expensive restaurants; drinks alcohol like a fish; spends their holidays abroad; are variously in the pay of the United States, India, or Israel; keep quoting Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech; are responsible for Pakistan being dragged into the war on terror; are responsible for the continuation of drone attacks; support and pray for Malala Yousufzai but not people killed in drone attacks; supports (and does not support) the Great Khan; and, lest the erstwhile general gets annoyed, likes dogs. Obviously, this list of remarkable accomplishments can go on.
From the above, the Pakistani liberal sounds like a very powerful person and no wonder he is held responsible for so many things. After all, he is in control of almost every facet of Pakistani life and so should be held accountable for his actions. And while we are at it, let us also call to task the Pakistani liberal for the budget deficit (they keep up the spending and lower the tax collection due to nefarious plots) and the 2005 earthquake (they can alter the movement of tectonic plates).
However, I have one tiny problem with the description above. None of the characteristics above (and others usually used) describe a liberal in the classical or modern sense of the word. In brief, classical liberalism is rooted in individual freedom, equality, free markets and private property. To these concepts, modern liberalism has added the development of the welfare state and concern for social justice and civil rights. A liberal democracy is then a republic, which espouses and promotes such values.
The incongruence between what a liberal and a Pakistani liberal is cannot be starker. None of the descriptions above signify that the liberal believes in equality and civic rights, for example. Just imagine a rich Pakistani giving his/her ‘servants’ a fair wage and good employment conditions. Unthinkable. Or else we would not have horror stories of domestic help abuse and tenant abuse. Just imagine if the Pakistani liberal believed in social justice and the welfare state, then he would have to pay all his taxes and logically, the gap between the rich and the poor would not be that great. And just envision a Pakistani liberal allowing for individual freedom — the fun-loving, jeans-wearing, modern youth of Pakistan cannot simply allow you not to support the Great Khan. In short, the Pakistani liberal is the antithesis of what a liberal is actually meant to be.
So, who are these liberals that the Right (religious and others) decries and the Western media lauds? Hardly a week goes by without a vomit of words on either side. Opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine lionise the ‘Pakistani liberals’, while pieces in the daily Jang and others blast the scheming Pakistani liberals. The impression given is that there is a war, existential and otherwise, going on between the liberals and the conservatives for the soul of the country and that both are numerous and powerful.
The sad truth is that perhaps, there are no real liberals in Pakistan. The ‘Pakistani liberal’ is a monolith, which is a remarkable feat of our collective imagination, with no discernible features or groupings. For the Right, a ‘Pakistani liberal’ is someone they do not like or agree with. Being called a ‘liberal’ is a pejorative term for them and encompasses a wide variety of people, who mostly have nothing else in common. For the Western (and other) champions of Pakistani liberals, they are living in the hope that there must be some actual liberals in Pakistan. Westerners lament the paucity of liberal voices in Pakistan simply because they hardly exist, not because they are present in large numbers and are simply beleaguered.
With the amount of airtime and importance given to the Pakistani liberal, all I can say in the end is, ‘All hail, my imaginary Pakistani liberal, friend and foe!’
Where labelling has taken us – The Express Tribune Blog
I hate it when people become judgmental. More, so, when they pounce to those judgements listening to only a singular opinion of yours and conjecturing the rest. It has happened many a times. I criticise the Taliban – I’m an American lackey. I defend Taliban – I’m a fundo. Similarly, if I attack women for crying too much about nothing, I become a misogynist. If I defend them, there would certainly emerge at least one person who would label me a western agent.
It is not so much about these arguments and them being right or wrong, but rather the fact that even the most educated amongst us are willing to jump to conclusions which upsets me.
Perhaps that Aristotelian notion of ‘education enabling a person to entertain a thought without accepting it’ is lost on many associates of mine.
Perhaps our education is to be blamed for that too.
Hardly ever are we taught to analyse here in Pakistan. Rote learning is the rule of the day. More importantly, we are made to learn to espouse the opinions of others. Respect we must, but what good is an opinion if we agree with it just because one of our elders is a propagator of such. A society beset with lack of debates and curiosity is bound to create extremists.
We think upon bipolar lines. Our thought pattern has become binary. If one doesn’t agree with me he must have a hidden agenda. He must be the other kind. There is no idea of modernity. There is no place for the central path. Islam may state; “We have made you the bearers of the middle path, so that you may witness the truth of others”, we are adamant on showing to the world the ‘truth’ ourselves.
I’m anguished by how people believe you have to be on the either end of the spectrum. Tell them you believe drones are counter-productive but that America is not so bad either and they’d blame you for shying away from stating your opinion and perhaps even of being confused.
Well, that’s me.
I’d learnt to hate the crime and not the criminal. I do not believe people are incorrigible. I do not think some of us are better dead, because I’m nobody to be making those decisions.
Whether we talk of the holy war or the latest debate on blasphemy, the idea of conspiracy has made us paranoid. And in that paranoia we look for the devils where there are none. Anybody stating a contrary opinion has to be prosecuted. And what would a trial be without some magnificence. Let us show the world what we do to ‘their’ agents and ‘their’ spies!
So it should not come as a surprise if a certain somebody is lynched in such a country because he refused to be a part of a rally against blasphemy, a rally that was more detrimental to our interests than any western conspiracy could ever be.
It all stems from that labelling.
One day you create a class of people, the next you’re threatened by them. And thus pursues the internecine battle. The difference of opinion is the essence of democracy. We, however, have become so distrustful that anybody who questions one’s wisdom has to be quietened. The prospect of a discourse to find the solution to such conflicts of ideologues has become out of question. Raise a voice against the popular notions and be certain of becoming history.
We desperately need to change this narrative. Let us learn to respect others opinions; let us realise there is a path that lies in between the extremes and let us agree to disagree. Only then will we be able to contain this tide of extremism. That is our only solace, for the Frankensteinian monster that has been unleashed would consume us all otherwise.
