Dear all,
One of my colleagues here in London recounts a fascinating anecdote about a visit to his home by relatives who have lived in the UK for decades. He himself moved here from Karachi about a decade ago. During their visit, his aunt refused to sit on the leather sofa in his house claiming "the sofa was not halal".
Slightly bemused, my colleague pointed out she was not obliged to eat the sofa, merely sit on it. But this provoked some angry words from the self-righteous lady, who clearly lacked a sense of humour or any sort of common sense.
Meanwhile, a relative who lives in a prestigious residential area of Lahore was told by neighbours that her family was going to burn in hell because they kept several dogs. The neighbours are still trying to pressurise the family to get rid of the dogs since keeping them was ‘anti-Islam’….
A shop in Pakistan sells razor blades with a printed disclaimer on its receipts saying that shaving off one’s beard is anti-Islam, while another sells kurtas insisting they must be worn with dupattas…
A listener writes in to a radio programme chiding the presenter for airing a letter in which another listener complained that five mosques near his house blast the azaan on loudspeakers all at the same time, creating an unpleasant din. The complaining listener remarked "can any Muslim ever complain about hearing the sound of the azaan?"
Unfortunately the presenter became all defensive and hastily clarified that the problem was actually the use of loudspeakers….
Marx may have defined religion as the opiate of the people but now religion has become the sledgehammer of some people. Anyone from any class can pick it up to intimidate and threaten everyone else. This has taken the shape of total bullying: people are harassed and bullied on the basis of being ant-religion (not having beards, women not covering their heads etc. etc.). An immense power trip, it is all about control and intimidation.
The recent directive by Pakistan’s Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) that all TV channels broadcast the azaan during their transmission (because that is what our erstwhile legislators resolved in no less a forum than the National Assembly) evokes a sense of déjà vu.
Three decades ago, General Zia ul Haq brought his own version of Islam to Pakistan and tried to make us all into sanctimonious Muslims. Apart from public floggings and questionable utterances, he also made sure that TV was made to look ‘Islamic’: lots of naats, much use of Arabic language and pronunciation, and with the women instructed to cover their heads -- or not appear on the screen.
To those who think Pemra’s directive is no big deal and that our parochial, apologist legislators are doing the right thing by spending their time passing resolutions about such non-issues, I say: do not allow yourselves to be hurtled backwards into the darkness of the Zia era.
The next step might be neighbourhood goons knocking on your door, summoning you to prayer as General Zia’s nazims of salaat were to do in the system he set up. After that you’ll probably have ‘morality committees’ and it will all lead to a situation of witchhunts, hysterical accusation and the prevalence of a lynch mob mentality.
We Pakistanis really need to get a grip on things and use a bit of common sense. We have become so obsessed with a Neo-fascist version of our religion and so brainwashed by the Arab nature of it that we have completely lost all perspective. Even our traditional form of saying goodbye -- Khuda hafiz -- is somehow regarded as anti-religion. The sanctimonious types spend an inordinate amount of time trying to correct people on this: their aim being to somehow erase Khuda hafiz from our collective memory.
Because, of course, that is really the greatest challenge the country faces….
Best wishes