A state of delusion

The events we see around us week after week are frightening. We see periodic carnage, with Shias targeted again and again, we hear accounts of the harassment and kidnapping of Hindu girls and we read shocking accounts of attitudes at a state-of-the art university in Islamabad, established and funded by the Saudis, where chemistry and other science is taught as a mix of magic and physical fact, female students encouraged to join Al-Huda and hard-line Islam promoted.
But most terrifying of all is the delusionary state we appear to live in. A new survey by Gallup Pakistan, released in early February, days after the massacre at a Shikarpur Imambargah that killed 61 Shias, states that 87 percent of Pakistanis believe minority groups in the country have equal rights to freedom of belief and expression.
While Shias are, technically speaking at least, not a minority they rank as such in the eyes of more and more people. Websites tell us why it is ‘all right’ to kill them. These sites seem to have escaped the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority ban on multiple sites, including YouTube. Disturbingly, despite the flood of evidence directly to the contrary, the number of people who believe minority groups enjoy ‘equal’ rights has grown steadily since 2011.
So, why do so many believe there is no discrimination and no inequality directed against minorities? Why do they ignore the mass of incidents that say just the opposite? It appears that we are increasingly unwilling to acknowledge the truth or accept the ugliness that has become a part of our society. Why this is the way it is is difficult to say. Do we simply live in a fantasy world where nothing is real and fool ourselves into believing everything is painted in bright colours, or is it something deeper that lies within the psyche of a nation brainwashed in so many different ways? This would require a full analysis to establish. But the fact is that the beliefs that exist mean we will be less able to turn things around.
Until what is wrong is recognised, it becomes impossible to change. From the survey results, it seems we simply do not see the wrong. We walk around in blinkers that blind us to reality.
We do this in other ways as well. Whereas the terrible Chapel Hill in North Carolina brought forward a rage of protest on social media in our country, there appears to be less negative reaction to the killing of Shias in Peshawar, the rape of a minor Hazara child, the news of the abduction of a teenage Hindu girl or other such accounts of violence. We seem to pick and choose what we react to and what we ignore. This selectivity is obviously based on bias and the particular world view that we have adopted. And this view has grown stronger and stronger in recent years.
At some levels, we have evidence that our state may be willing to correct its blurred vision. In response to a statement by the Saudi embassy in Islamabad that said that it directed all funds given to Pakistan through official channels, the government said that private funding from charities was coming into the country from Saudi Arabia.
As we all know, this funding goes directly to the many seminaries and other institutions operating across all four provinces and in other territories. The contradiction of the Saudi stance by the Pakistan government is something new. It is a daring move, and suggests a readiness to change, at least as far as words go. But the same willingness has to be spread far further among the people and their curiously warped vision of things altered. This is the hardest thing of all to achieve.
The views of people are built in many layers. It is difficult to remove all of these in one go, or simply sweep them away through governmental action or other means. We had hoped that the terrible happenings at a school in Peshawar on December 16 would break about this change; that the image of children being massacred in their own school would force people to rethink the situation they live in. But some two months after that event, we do not really see this happening.
In too many ways, we appear to have slipped back into our state of deliberate oblivion, denying that we have turned into a society driven forward by hatred and entrapped in a series of views that are not based on logic and to a great extent fed by influence from abroad which began to pour in through more open channels during the 1980s.
Altering this is going to be difficult. It will obviously not happen overnight. But, to be slightly more optimistic in difficult times, we should remember that changes in views and thinking have been brought about very quickly in other nations by providing a different goal, a different target and a degree of hope to people.
We saw how this has happened in Greece, where a left-wing party that in 2004 captured barely four percent of the popular vote in 2015 assumed power, becoming the first communist government to be elected in a European country. The manner in which the leaders of Syriza, and notably the charismatic Alexis Tsipras, brought about this change is something worth studying.
Their success was achieved by persuading right-wing farmers and others caught up in an economic downslide that they could save themselves only by altering how they thought and how they acted. Food distribution, based not on charitably lines but support for each other within communities, promises of alterations in the way the economy was set up and other direct actions helped in this. We need to move along a road not too different to this. Other examples exist around the world.
The mindset we see now was created very rapidly in the 1980s under Gen Ziaul Haq. Since this, it has become more and more firmly set in the mould. Only a small number of people appear to have remained completely outside its hold. These include the eight percent who, in the recent survey, said that there was indeed a lack of equality for minorities.
By following tactics similar to those used by Zia, we can change things around. This will happen only if the government is able to use the media, educational curricula, the mosques and all other means to spread a different way of looking at the world. The task is not an easy one. It is especially difficult in a situation where superstition and ignorance continue to grow. Even the most highly educated, unexpected people talk of illness caused by black magic, or other supernatural means rather than physical means. The remedies they adopt are then supernatural too, with pseudo-religious overtures.
We need to bring true enlightenment into the lives of people, and education and the increasingly powerful media are the ways to achieve this. There is now very little time left. We have dug ourselves into a deep, black hole. To climb out will take extraordinary effort – but most of all, commitment on the part of government to attain what has to be attained. Social organisations of all kinds have to step in too – before all hope slips away.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com