sparklingway
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As I stated, I have a problem with using cheap-shots to make arguments. If something is indeed the right decision, you can back that up with logical reasoning, reasonable arguments, scientific evidence and experimental evidence. Using "Islam" time and again and "this is Islamic country" does not make any point since it's firstly pointless to assume a religious dictation without reasoning and secondly because a large number of countries with predominant muslim populations do not illegalize alcohol keeping in mind the negative effects of such bans.
I hope you'll ignore the **** comments and take the real value of the op-ed.
Giving in to temptation
By Irfan HusainSaturday, 17 Jul, 2010
The only difference alcohol prohibition has made is that the substantial revenue the state once earned by taxing alcohol now goes to smugglers and bootleggers. Photo by AFP
Being human and fallible, we are all prey to temptation, and in this, I rather tend to be with Oscar Wilde when he said: I can resist everything except temptation.
It would seem that our DNA is programmed to lust after whatever is prohibited, and what is supposed to be bad for us. Thus, we smoke, drink, gamble, eat and indulge in sex to excess whenever we get a chance. Pious individuals, holy texts and interfering governments have tried their best to restrain our baser drives, but we are determined to find our own way to an early grave, and possible perdition.
In a recent special section on gambling, the Economist estimated the total amount spent on this vice at around $335bn per year. Nearly 10 per cent of this sum is wagered online, and you can bet your bottom dollar that a fair share of this comes from Muslims for whom gambling is supposed to be haram.
When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned gambling, nightclubs and drinking in Pakistan in 1977 in an attempt to appease his rightwing opposition, he could not have known how much hypocrisy he was unleashing in the Land of the Pure. In a tract called If I Am Assassinated written during his last days in prison, Bhutto expressed his regret for imposing prohibition.
Since then, the drinking class has ruined its collective liver by ingesting a huge volume of illicit liquor that is distilled on farms, or smuggled in from India and the Gulf. The only difference prohibition has made is that the substantial revenue the state once earned by taxing alcohol now goes to smugglers and bootleggers.
Ditto for gambling. While horseracing is legal, no betting is permitted. Whenever I have gone to the racetrack in Lahore, it is business as usual for the bookies, except that they no longer have to pay any tax on the wagers they collect. Of course, there is no protection for the punters, but it would be a foolish bookmaker who does not pay out on a winning bet.
Despite the overwhelming evidence linking smoking to lung cancer, millions of people around the world continue puffing away. Kids sneak a fag whenever they can as young people experiment compulsively with the forbidden. Many of them are then hooked to nicotine. Luckily, I kicked the habit over 20 years ago, and have little doubt that I would not be alive today had I not.
The point is that people are going to do whats bad for them whether the state tries to stop them or not. If religious or social edicts prohibit natural behaviour, individuals will go on enjoying the forbidden under a burden of guilt.
In Pakistan, where a cloud of hypocritical religiosity hovers permanently over the landscape, we loudly proclaim our laws that prohibit a wide range of normal human pleasures. Unfortunately, we are not better human beings as a result. What these laws have done is to drive these activities underground, and allowed criminals to make fortunes.
Several readers have sent me a recent story from Fox News that illustrates the kind of hypocrisy that now permeates our society. Titled No 1 nation in sexy web searches? Call it Pornistan, the report informs us of the findings of Google Trends, a site that monitors searches on its search engine by country. Apparently, Pakistan tops the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.
The report goes on to remind us that Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook for carrying one blasphemous page (out of millions), as well as content from a number of other popular websites. Fox News quotes Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame: The countrys punishment for those charged with blasphemy is execution, but the question remains what if anything can be done about people who search for **** on the Web.
When a society is segregated by gender as most Muslim countries are normal interest in the other sex is replaced by obsessive curiosity. This results in the kind of secretive Internet searches of deviant websites in Pakistan that Google Trends has reported. It also results in a high incidence of rape, as well as child molestation. When normal human urges are suppressed, they all too often express themselves in violent acts.
States tend to act like the morality police, legislating on modes of behaviour they considers harmful to their citizens. Thus, the United States passed a law prohibiting the manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol on its soil in the 1920s. This led to illegal distilling, smuggling and bootlegging on a huge scale. Finally recognising that its attempts to change the behaviour of its population had failed, and that trying to enforce prohibition was too costly in manpower, its legislators repealed the law.
Given the environment in the country politicians and military rulers such as Musharraf regardless of their personal practices obviously didnt want to legislate.
The problem with having laws that are blatantly ignored is that the state loses credibility when it connives in widespread rule-breaking. Cops know better than to take a drunken legislator to jail. A tipsy businessman whose car is flagged down at night simply hands across a few hundred rupees to a policeman, and is soon free to weave his way home.
Of course anything taken to excess is bad, but the state has no means to enforce its writ in the living room or the bedroom, and just as well. It would be far better if legislators recognise the reality of human behaviour, and while enacting laws that curb excess, take care not to drive simple pleasures underground.
