There are basically two themes that seem to be animating Pakistani thinkers about relations with Arabia -- I choose to use the word Arabia because it makes it seem that we are dealing with a country and the prefix "Saudi" makes it seem that it's not a country but the possession of a tyrannical family (even though that is what it is)
These ideas are :
1. That the relationship is one based on security concerns - Pakistan must offer Arabia and by extension the Wahabi princes, a security cover, not only to protect the possession of the Wahabi princes but to maintain order in the international markets. Most of our readers have not taken into account the implications of offering the Arbi, Pakistani armaments -- if the Arbi takes this offer whole, it will require the Arbi to make a strategic shift, in my opinion this is something that the Wahabi princes and their American masters will not allow.
2. The second concern for Pakistani thinkers is the other side of the coin, namely, given that the relationship with Arabia, has produced for Pakistan, among other things, Sectarianism, terrorism, social schism and ruinous relations with our dear brother, Iran, they ask whether it is worth having strategic relations with Arabia and suggest that if it is then these relations must change in substance. These thinkers are most concerned about conscience, about the state claiming the content and direction of the conscience of Muslims - In Arabia, this has already been done, and to some extent it is happening in Pakistan - Should Pakistan strive to be what it was envisioned as, a country of Free Muslims or a country where the state tell us what the content and direction of our conscience is to be in accordance with policies of the state. Again this raises even more fundamental questions, whereas the religious tyranny in Arabia claims "Duties and Obligations and adjudication of Sin, the Islamic Republic that is Pakistan, must be concerned with "Rights, Responsibilities, and the adjudication of Crimes - how Pakistan negotiates these issues will decide whether we are Free Muslims and Citizens or Subjects of a political religion based tyranny - ultimately, of course we seek Justice and Dignity as foundations of Liberty and therefore, of conscience :
Outsourcing conscience
Rafia Zakaria
(17 hours ago) Today
PASSED in 1981, the Ehteram-i-Ramazan Ordinance bans public eating and drinking, making it far harder for Pakistani Muslims to evade the religious duty of fasting during the month.
Undoubtedly, fasting is a trying task in the long, hot and powerless hours of summer; still, from the state’s point of view, some like the 25 arrested in Faisalabad need a push in the right direction. For those not conquered into compliance by the fear of punishment in the hereafter, the possibility of arrest and six months in jail in the here and now can save from temptation and deliver from sin.
Further assistance in matters of the conscience has been provided by the Federal Shariat Court which deemed the punishment of 40 lashes for the consumption of alcohol un-Islamic. According to the decision, there was no support in either the Holy Quran or Sunnah for the hadd punishment of 40 lashes for those found consuming alcohol. The law, the court declared, must be amended and a more lenient 40 sticks, instead of lashes, could be applied instead.
These prescriptions would seem onerous to proponents of the individual conscience and moral management who would like the state to stop assisting struggling believers seeking guidance from the government in matters of faith. But in Pakistan, the concept of choice, whether it involves conscience or convention, has never enjoyed much popularity.
If you’re poor, you can choose between slogging it out as a construction worker or a rickshaw driver; if middle-class, you can opt to either slaving at a chaotic hospital or in a stuffy cubicle, marry the slightly fat cousin or the too-talkative one, live in the house with the leaky roof or the one with the crumbling stairs. Choosing between these options requires the careful evaluation of competing miseries, a task in which Pakistanis have expertise.
Given these sordid encounters with choice, it is little wonder that in matters of the conscience, outsourcing is the desire of many Pakistanis.
If choices are so limited and meaningless in matters of life, why insist on retaining them in matters of moral or religious conscience? Enter, the state, whose thoughtfully added obstacles — the danger of arrest if you scarf down a sandwich in Ramazan, or the prospect of being stoned to death if you run away with your neighbour’s wife — can make moral selection so much simpler.
If the government of a poor country cannot deliver much in this world, it should at least promise something in the hereafter; for if all that is immoral is illegal and you break no law, you become morally perfect.
Taken from the Saudis, this idea of outsourcing the conscience to the state is quite tempting for exhausted populations tired of making independent moral decisions. But, like so many other good ideas, the export of moral management to foreign lands runs into the problem of being not quite indigenous or suitable for local climes.
When the Saudis mandated the Holy Quran and Sunnah as their constitution, and charged state-appointed clerics to decide what could and could not be done, and sent around helpful bands of vice squads to thwart even determined sinners, they were pursuing quite the opposite of what plagues Pakistan.
Faced with the heavy burden of sudden largesse piping up unstoppable streams of wealth from the midst of their sandy homeland, the Saudis like most of the wealthy were beset not by our very Pakistani paltriness of limited options but the hedonistic potential of too much choice. Theirs were not the burden of choosing between equally dismal options but the fears engendered by suddenly being able to buy both the mansion in France and the villa in Italy, of marrying the cousin and the Ukrainian actress.
They outsourced individual conscience to the Saudi state not because of their frustrations at the limits of their choices or inescapable circumstances, but because as the blessed peddlers of the world’s oil they had no limits.
Hence the problem of importing a system conjured up by rich Saudis to a poor country like Pakistan where choice means little. The unsurprising result: moral guarantees provided by a poor government to save the souls of a poor populace are just as shaky and erratic and piecemeal as the promises to provide food, security or electricity.
You may get some help with fasting with one act passed by parliament, but not much on the issue of, say, money laundering or trash disposal. Oblivious, you could go around doing all sorts of immoral things because they are not yet illegal, because there is yet no law to prohibit them and thus land yourself in hell for the mistake of followed mismanaged or unmarked routes to paradise. Morals like titles to property and applications for identity cards can get lost in the government bureaucracy.
The Saudis have faced the opposite problem. So thorough has been their government’s management of morals that the individual conscience has become obsolete and cannot be counted on for moral calculations that go beyond technically following the law.
One indication has been a recent report aired on French channel France24 about the proliferation of sex tourism in certain Muslim countries. Enacted between Muslims are short-term ‘marriages’ considered legal under Saudi law. Any person with a working conscience could tell you that such technical shortcuts around the idea of marriage are not moral. Unfortunately, a number of Saudis, unwitting casualties of the outsourced conscience, are no longer able to make such independent deductions
The Saudi experience suggests that the project of outsourcing conscience suffers from problematic glitches causing either the inadvertent death of individual conscience or the government mismanagement of morals. Neither scenario can be tolerated by believers searching for a solid, certain route to salvation on which there is simply no room for mistakes.
The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
