Marching forward, looking back

Some ideas and modes of thinking have to change with the times. This may seem unpalatable, but it is the reality we have to accept and live with. We seem to have fewer and fewer choices left.

Yes, Muhammad Ali Jinnah – a man we have distorted to fit in with the caricature we would like to see – may have envisaged a secular, civilised country with freedoms for all to practice their belief. But we have slipped so far away from Jinnah’s ideology that it seems impossible to recover his vision. We need to compromise.

So where do we compromise? On what and how? Did the prime minister move in the right direction by visiting the Jamia Naeemia in Garhi Shahu in Lahore and appealing for help from the ulema against extremism? Senior cleric and respected scholar Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi had been murdered at the seminary in a 2009 suicide bombing after delivering an edict against the Taliban and their activities. Other moderate clerics have either been driven away from the country or dare not speak. Would their words make a difference?

There is no harm in testing their degree of influence, even though ‘moderate’ is a relative word which can be interpreted in many different ways and from many different dimensions. The government will also need to do more than visiting religious centres and appealing to clerics. It needs to demonstrate far greater will and commitment by acting to promote such clerics and creating space for them in the media and on other platforms. It must also implement clauses against hate speech – which is already covered under NAP – and do more to enforce the other elements of this largely sidelined plan. The blueprint agreed upon in 2015 seems to have already been folded away and stored on a dark shelf.

The first question is that of will. Does our government – and the agencies that work under it – truly possess the commitment to make a difference? There are doubts about this, and we have little faith in those who govern us. These rulers have done little to prevent the forces of hatred ruining lives, culture and traditions. More than two years after Operation Zarb-e-Azb was initiated, we had to launch Operation Raddul Fasaad after conceding that militants remained in our midst. The problem is that they have also remained within our mindsets.

They first entered this mindset during those violent days after 1977 and particularly during the early 1980s when General Ziaul Haq established his hold over the country. It is important not to forget those days. It is difficult to forget the public floggings which were shown live on television and the images of young men who were led to the gallows or hanged in public along roads in Lahore as crowds of hundreds looked on. These images, which were broadcasted to millions on the government-controlled PTV, created a sense of terror.

But Zia’s policies did something worse. They acted to alter the manner in which people thought and change a country where religion had traditionally existed as a form of spiritual philosophy – wrapped in the spirit of tolerance passed on from generation to generation by the Sufi mystics who brought Islam to the Subcontinent – into something far more sinister. The deliberate import of hard-line forms of religion from other places also had its impact – as did the onslaught against minorities and particular sects of Islam.

We have never been able to reverse the tide. It lives with us today and is the main reason why we still fear the bombs of terrorists. To take away this fear, we must march forward but, at the same time, look back into our history so that we can pull out the roots from where extremism stems.

This is, admittedly, not an easy task. Turning around a garden strewn with weeds is far more difficult than planting a new one. But we have no choice. Alongside moderate clerics and scholars who must be brought into the process of dialogue, we also need to reach out into the mosques and re-educate the imams and lower-level clerics who deliver sermons and also act as tutors to millions of children across the country. Using these men as master-trainers to inculcate a less diabolical version of religion in the minds of people and to emphasise its sense of empathy and equity could achieve a great deal. Even the most educated amongst us sometimes forget that this is what religion is all about.

We may never be able to reclaim the kind of country Jinnah had sought to create. Too many events have taken place since his death in 1948. His words have been forgotten and there were few who spoke the same language as he did. One leader after the other chose to make Faustian pacts with the religious right in order to protect them – even if this meant damning others. The same practice continues today.

What we can attempt to do is reclaim our country one metre at a time – perhaps even one inch at a time. The process cannot be based on military action alone. While the use of force against terrorist groups may be necessary, it must be backed by other steps centred on the thrust of what we teach at schools and what is conveyed through the media and other forums. The superstitions and myths about religion that are being spread through television programmes needs to be curtailed. Doing so will not be simple. It also cannot be achieved in a year, or two, or even a decade. But the process of rolling back history and removing from it the rot that we have allowed to grow has to begin in any case.

From time to time, leaders make statements which suggest that they understand this. They will, however, need to do more to convince us they are truly committed to a situation in which they no longer strike deals with killers but instead aim to set up a country in which every individual is safe, regardless of his or her beliefs.

We are nowhere near this goal. In some ways, we have moved further away from it than ever before, with new threats being heard of restricting basic freedoms by controlling social media. Such actions will never work. A more pragmatic and more determined approach needs to be taken and the question is whether we possess the people who will be able to put this in place.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com