The public and the sacred

[pak-marine]

The public and the sacred


BY NADEEM F. PARACHA



One of the most bothersome statements to a person claiming to be a (self-appointed) representative of faith in Pakistan is this: ‘To me religion is a personal matter.’

I experienced this firsthand during a talk-show I was a part of on DawnNews recently (‘Kab Tak’).

Hosted by Sofia Rehman, the guests included Athar Minallah (a prominent lawyer), Hajji Hanif (of the Sunni Ittehad Council) and Fareed Paracha (a veteran member of the Jamat-i-Islami).

The topic of that particular day’s show was the reported self-exile of the judge who sentenced Mumtaz Qadri for murdering former Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer (for ‘committing blasphemy’).

As Athar Minallah tried to advocate reason and condemn Qadri’s act using examples from those hadiths (reported sayings of and about the Prophet) that speak of the Prophet’s forgiving disposition, I’m sure the well-meaning lawyer would not have been unaware of what follows when anyone quotes from a hadith: He or she is then bound to be responded by another hadith that tries to counter the one used by him or her.

This, to me, constitutes a problem in debates on topics that are largely worldly in nature but are discoursed with the help of material that, again, to me, is almost entirely spiritual in context and to do with personal interpretations of the scriptures.

In all this, what gets sacrificed are arguments backed by that concept of history that depends on tangible physical evidence.

Of course, being a Muslim, I am aware that a majority of my fellow believers would at once accuse me of trying to search the early history of our faith with the help of so-called ‘secular models of historical investigation.’

But is this model not a valid way to have a dialogue on matters associated with faith without using ones favorite sayings of the Prophet or ones cherry-picked verses from the holy book just to negate someone else’s cherry-pickings in this context?

And anyway, where does all this war of hadiths leads to?

The answer to the above question has been awkwardly quivering right in front of our eyes for the last many (destructive) years.

Such debates (augmented with cherry-picked hadiths and verses) do not generate any constructive synthesis or consensus as such; instead, they generate divisions and an almost irrevocable polarisation that in turn have been instrumental in creating sects and then sub-sects in Islam.

All this has caused nothing but heartbreak, or worse, bloodshed and eventually a meaningless war of fatwas and murders between sects and sub-sects.

This kind of cherry-picking has also armed brutes to self-justify, what can at best be called socio-political and moral tyrannies and acts of both mass and individual murder.

And yet we are baffled by how disconcertingly and at times, insensitively much of the non-Muslim world has begun to gauge our faith and people?

Some may argue that the ‘secular west’ and secular ideologies have been responsible of terrible genocides and wars as well.

True, but then my question would be, is causing death, fear and tyrannical moral mindsets in the name of God and religion the only way left for us to assert our identities and accelerate our status to the levels achieved by these so-called violent secular ideologies?

Where these ideologies, from Marxism to democracy to capitalism and ‘social Darwinism,’ fumbled and ended up causing great bloodshed and cynicism, they also rose to shape a more aware, educated, empowered and scientifically advanced world.

We are not alone. We are all well versed and justifiably proud about the history of the tremendous achievements in philosophy and the sciences made by a number of Muslim scholars and men of genius in the first two centuries of Islam.

These achievements were materialising within Muslim empires and royal regimes that were at the same time indulging in violent military conquests and bloody internal tussles.

So like any secular ideology or power, we too have had a history in which mass-scale shedding of blood ran parallel to breathtaking achievements in philosophy, politics and the sciences.

Not anymore. Because in the last few centuries we have only managed to import products of ‘Western secular sciences’ and culture (without even trying to understand the technology and philosophy that is behind these products and concepts).

But we have been more than willing though to invest our resources and energies into acquiring the knowledge behind the darker tendencies of these ‘Western sciences’ and ideologies – such as in building expensive nuclear weaponry and developing a taste for exercising brute force such as modern warfare, and adopting aspects of classical 20th century European Fascism to impose our nationalistic and religious identities.

Coming back to the TV talk show now, Athar Minallah’s hadith-heavy appeal to reason was, of course, responded by another set of hadiths by Hajji Hanif, who tried to prove that early too Muslims were active against blasphemers.

Then the ever animated Fareed Paracha jumped in to pour into the mix some of his own understanding of what life was like during the Prophet’s time and shortly after.

Here were three men, all older and wiser than me, all using different sets of hadiths and interpretations of Islamic Law and history.

So whose set of hadiths or interpretation of ‘Islamic history’ was I to believe?

Being an advocate of political secularism and someone who is proud to call himself a progressive Muslim, my sympathies naturally lay with Athar Minallah’s views.

But just before the host of the show was about to turn to me for my comments, I thought, here we have a topic that required someone to explain the dynamics of the country’s justice system that empowered a judge to sentence a murderer for killing in the name of faith.

This topic also deserved an entirely rational and dispassionate analysis of a society caught up in a spell of self-destructive and irrational behavior justified as an outcome of their love for Islam.

So, what on earth were we doing there cherry-picking our way through the scriptures?

Isn’t this what all those we condemn as killers and terrorists do as well? What’s the difference, really, in someone using a particular hadith or verse to advocate peace and someone who does the same thing to justify the opposite?

Such debates lead to nowhere, and this is what I decided to say on the show. My point was that (to me), society is confused about whom to call a victim and whom to denounce a culprit (in the context of the Qadri event).

I say this because I believe religion is a very personal thing. It is largely an emotional matter and I am not impressed by those who either go out of their way to ‘prove’ things like God’s existence or on the other hand, disprove it. To me, religion should remain in the minds and (especially) in the hearts of those who believe, and so should the arguments of those who do not.

Public space (apart from places of worship) is a situate teeming with people of all kinds of faiths, sects, sub-sects or no faith at all. So, how is then one justified to bring to this public sphere his or her particular understanding of faith and then try to impose it there.

How can one do this without either alienating or offending those who do not agree with the imposer’s or the propagator’s version of faith?

But then one might ask, why can’t faith be brought out into the public and political space if secular activity can?

Simple answer: Because it’s faith. It’s something extremely close to a believer’s heart. It’s something that one believes to be above the materiality and cynicism of human constructs like politics, economics, et al.

That’s why when what is revered as being something spiritually sacred is forced to pour out from places of worship, it spills across the canvas of amoral constructs like politics on the streets, in the parliament, government, the military and the TV studios.

Consequently, the sacred then becomes the political, interacting with and then ultimately adopting all the cynical and unscrupulous ways of various man-made constructs to find and maintain its own political constituency.

It gets infected, politicised and exploited by those who want to use the sacred to meet some not-very-sacred goals.

As expected, Fareed Paracha – belonging to a political party whose founder, the giant Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, was one of the pioneers of what we now call ‘Political Islam’ – vehemently disagreed with me.

To him I, by saying that faith should remain a personal matter and not be allowed to get tangled in politics, amounted to a rejection of not only those sections of the country’s constitution that declare it to be an Islamic Republic, but also early Islam’s political manoeuvres.

Of course, Mr. Fareed Paracha, far more learned and older than I am, conveniently forgot that the same constitution also gives a common Pakistani like me the freedom of speech.

And like all democratic constitutions, ours too marks and sets certain boundaries around this freedom, especially in the sphere of religion.

My point was made while keeping well within these boundaries. Not only did I speak as a democratic Pakistani, but as a Muslim Pakistani who is distraught at how the faith that I consider to be wholly sacred, is being tossed around sometimes in the name of bagging votes, sometimes in the pursuit of declaring another Muslim (or non-Muslim Pakistani) a ‘kafir’ (infidel); and sometimes to simply score a theological and political point over ones ideological opponent.

What Mr. Fareed Paracha describes as an established Muslim tradition in terms of politics, is, I’m afraid, merely a 20th century construct of Political Islamists.

For example, till the 20yj century, there is no valid and substantiated statement by any well-known Islamic figure and scholar ever describing the Quran to be a political constitution.

This concept was first erected by the likes of Abul Ala Maududi, Syed Qutb, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and many the Political Islamists that followed.

It is a concept that has evolved (or rather de-evolved) from being an Islamist intellectual construct into becoming a demagogic and populist weapon of those violent forces who don’t even believe in the concept of ‘Islamic democracy’ that the likes of Maududi envisioned.

Islam emerged as a social movement in a place stricken with economic conflicts and burdened by a pre-Islamic faith that was using the concept of divine deities to forward cynical economic and political goals.

The Prophet evolved from being a social reformer to a military and political leader in a situation that saw an old, burdensome and exploitative faith going to war with a new one that was preaching justice, equality and an end to exploitation of the poor, the orphaned and the women by the keepers of the old faith.

So why are we hell-bent on propagating (in the name of Islam) what Islam itself struck down?

More than 90 per cent of Pakistanis are Muslim. So what is that fear that keeps making us so raucously exhibit our faith?

What is that fear due to which we are ready to kill a fellow Pakistani or a fellow Muslim, or a non-Muslim foreigner just because we think he is a ‘kafir’ or a heretic?

From successfully making more and more Muslims to attend mosques, and make more and more women to wear the burqa; from making everything ‘Islamic’ (banking, politics, attire, even toothpaste), to explaining some clear-cut acts of heartless violence as acts of liberation and love of faith, have we turned Pakistan into becoming a just, peaceful and equitable society and nation?

Our faith is well intact. It is in no danger. We just need to exercise our intellectual and emotional faculties to learn from it and take guidance.

But the moment we go running out, all excited that we alone have the right answer and the might to impose it on others (especially through politics), that is when personal enlightenment in matters of faith turns into a cynical ambition to bag for oneself all the material and amoral fruits this self-claimed enlightenment can get from a venerable and gullible mass of faithful people that much of Pakistan is made of.

Questioning can be a liberating experience. Much of the Quran is in the form of the answers given by God. Answers to the questions asked from the Prophet by the people.

But the answers we are getting today from those who claim to be the guardians of our faith are attempting to padlock our minds once again, making us mistreat faith, and allowing it to be exploited for reasons that are anything but spiritual or sacred.

 

[pak-marine]

true that , we are stuck in war of Ahadith ..