OPINION: Something is Rotten in the State of Pakistan

(The following article was published in the Dominion Post in Wellington New Zealand a few days after the July 2007 storming of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) by Pakistani security forces in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.)

For the past month until early last week, over 1,000 theology students and theirinstructors turned a mosque and adjoining religious colleges into a heavily armed fortress. They kidnapped foreign nationals and enforced their own vigilante brand of sharia law. They smuggled heavy weapons and took over

adjoining state-owned buildings, including a library. Burqa-clad female students pledged martyrdom before international media
 

And all this in the centre of Islamabad, within minutes of the National Assembly and within a block of the headquarters of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). When Muslim militants can show such utter disregard to the rule of law, something must surely be rotten in the state of Pakistan.

The leaders of the rebellion, Maulana’s Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi (‘Maulana’ is an honorific title commonly given to religious scholars in the Indian subcontinent), openly called for the introduction of hudood (capital punishment for select crimes). Whilst holding mock criminal trials for rape cases, they also defiled their mosque with threats of suicide bombing attacks. They sought to inject their demented version of “Islamic” back into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the country’s official title.
 

The siege ended when Pakistani troops stormed the complex at 4:30am on Tuesday 10 July 2007 in what was labelled Operation Sunrise. Reports vary on the number of persons killed.The government puts the figure at less than 150, while the opposition religious Jamaat-i-Islami party puts the figure in the thousands. Already nationwide protests are being led by religious and other opposition
parties.

That a mosque could be turned into a fortress of lawless militancy raises issues going to the heart of Pakistan ’s identity crisis. Just how Islamic is Pakistan meant to be? Or rather, why kind of Islam do Pakistanis want to see in their homeland? The Lal Masjid (literally ‘Red Mosque’) rebellion and its bloody end reflect the deep ideological divide that has plagued the country since independence.

Pakistan is a nation founded on the basis of ethno-religious identity, on a presumption that Indian Muslims were somehow a separate nation from the rest of India. Yet in his speech to Pakistan’s first parliament on 11 August 1947, Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah declared:

You are free … to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State … [I]n course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.

Yet in the years leading upto Partition, the Pakistan cause had little support from Muslim religious figures. The Indian Muslim League was led by the very secular elitist Jinnah, a Bombay barrister who spent much of his working life practising law in English courts. Although involved in Indian secular politics since 1913, it was only in 1940 that Jinnah publicly announced his support for a separate Muslim state.

Indian Muslim historian Asghar Ali Engineer sums up Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan : 

Thus politics, not religion was responsible for partition … It is true that Mr Jinnah spearheaded

the movement and he articulated the aspirations of the Muslim elite, especially of the Muslim minority areas.

Jinnah’s secular modernist vision of Pakistan very much resembled that of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey . However, Ataturk was able to successfully control religious orders and mosques due to Ottoman Turkey’s historic tradition of ensuring religious bodies remained subservient to the state.

Unlike Turkey, South Asian Muslim religious institutions and figures have always fiercely guarded their independence from any governmental authority. Prominent religious leaders with close links to the impoverished Muslim masses opposed the Creation of Pakistan. These included a prominent Indian religious scholar Syed Hussein Ahmed Madani, known among Indian Muslims by the title of “Sheik al-Hind” orspiritual elder of India .

Madni and his colleagues in the Deobandi sect regarded Muslim separatism as forbidden in Islam. Another prominent Islamic scholar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was close to Gandhi and became India’s first education minister. The founder of Pakistan’s largest religious party, Abul Ala Maududi, was himself opposed to Partition at first.

Indeed, only one major Deobandi scholar was known to have supported the creation of Pakistan. It’s little wonder that more Muslims remained in India than move to the new Muslim state.

Despite the elitism of the secular vision for Pakistan, secular politics has done surprisingly well. Pakistan’s religious parties have, until recently, performed poorly at the polls. Secular politics has thrived for a variety of reasons. Firstly, Pakistan’s Muslim identity couldn’t overcome pre-existing tribal, linguistic and other non-religious identities.

Secondly, Pakistan is still an overwhelmingly rural society. The main secular parties are dominated by powerful rural (almost feudal) landed families such as the Bhutto and Zardari clans.

Soviet intervention in Afghanistan helped undermine secular parties. Pakistan was a key ally of the United States, and was at the forefront of supporting militant Afghan rebel groups. Pakistan also played host to Arab mujahideen leaders supported by the United States, including a prominent member
of the Saudi bin-Ladin family.

For decades, the most radical religious groups and parties have had the support of the army, ISI and state and provincial governments. This cosy relationship worked well when supporting religious radicals suited Pakistan ’s foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir. However, supporting radicalism abroad eventually had adverse consequences back home.

The Lal Masjid is not the first mosque to be sympathetic to more radical versions of religion. So why did the army wait so long before acting against the militants? And why were preliminary steps (such as cutting off water and electricity to the mosque) not tried before the attack and its consequential loss of life? Some Pakistani observers believe President Musharraf acted deliberately so as to convince the West that he is the only person able to stop Pakistan descending into a full-blown theocracy.

Opposition figure and former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan wrote in the Canberra Times on 13 July that Musharraf should keep in mind. "Indira Gandhi’s order for troops to attack the [Sikh] Golden Temple”. Yet the Red Mosque hardly plays an equivalent role to the holiest shrine of Sikhism.

Still, even those opposed to the theocratic politics of militant religious parties will be upset by the desecration of a mosque. The real test for Musharraf and for Pakistan will be seen in the coming months. Pakistan’s former Chief Justice, sacked by Musharraf, has become a key symbol for more secular-minded forces in the opposition. Should they join forces with the better-resourced and organised theocratic parties, Musharraf’s stated plans of ridding Pakistan of Muslim extremism may come to naught. Ironically, this may strengthen Musharraf’s support in the West. Yet again, a Muslim dictator might just survive with Western backing. In the long run, such a development will only strengthen the appeal of theocratic trends in Pakistan.

(First published in the Dominion Post on 24 July 2007)