Qadri’s challenge

Like the annual urs of a saint, there is a predictable seasonality to the politics of Allama Tahirul Qadri. We are still awaiting, with bated breath, to find out what he has brought for us this season. Five years ago, he was the last hurdle to the milestone of the 2013 election in the snakes and ladders game of Pakistan’s politics. He has again decided to be the last element of suspense before our democratic system muddles its way to the 2018 elections.

Allama Qadri is the founder of Pakistan’s dharna technology which has dominated the country’s agitation scene since 2013. Unfortunately, like most inventors, he has benefitted the least from his own invention. Can the next dharna correct the injustice?

A lot of water has flown under the bridges since Qadri’s first dharna, which he named the Million March. Qadri made the most spectacular display of his technology during his second and Imran Khan’s first dharna which resulted from the surprising amalgamation of the PTI’s Azadi March and the PAT’s Inqilab March. Both were supposedly two different events taking place without any coordination. As we will learn in this column, the invisible world works in mysterious ways.

Qadri proved an unreliable partner when he left Imran Khan alone on D- Chowk and ended his part of dharna. He refused to join Khan’s second dharna, which the PTI’s tigers could not handle alone. We know how Justice Khosa and his bench have dealt with the Sicilian mafia ever since – brandishing freshly minted jurisprudence and second-rate literature at the nation’s criminals.

If Allama Qadri had thought that he was irreplaceable, he should have learnt his lesson by now. A very common maulvi, raised at small-time madressahs, and having lived a life of anonymity for half a century, has been able to outperform Allama Qadri. Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi, also a Barelvi scholar, has made an impressive performance in recent by-elections and has forced the resignation of a federal minister. What is worse, the new Allama hurls abuses at our original Allama Sahib, even while making best use of the latter’s technology. Ever seen someone cursing Edison while working under a light bulb?

Those who blame Allama Qadri of being mercurial or unreliable do not know his status or how he makes decisions. It is hard to understand him because there is no one like him in the whole country. Perhaps, there is no one like him in the whole world. You can appreciate his life properly only if you are one of those who often go to shrines and, alongside flowers and sweets, buy books that chronicle the lives of saints. Everything that has happened to him and every action he has taken was preordained, decided at the highest spiritual realm. His birth was foretold and he was named by the most holy person of Islam.

His organisation, Minhajul Quran, came from the heavens and he himself was taught for 15 years by Imam Abu Hanifa – founder of the Sunni Hanafi school of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) who lived in the 8th century – in the alam-e-roya (the world of dreams). Through his dreams, he remains constantly in touch with the parallel spiritual world that exists side by side with the material universe. Like his worldly existence, Sheikhul Islam holds a prestigious position in the other world. Almost all his decisions are made in the other universe.

Allama Qadri reached the pinnacle of his political career in September 1999, when he was made head of the Pakistan Awami Ittehad, an alliance of 19 opposition parties, including the PPP. Benazir Bhutto even filled up a life-membership form of Qadri’s Minhajul Qauran to affirm the partnership.

But soon after Musharraf’s coup, he received a basharat, a sacred tiding in a dream, that he would soon be the prime minister of Pakistan. He left the alliance to support Musharraf and his referendum. Qadri Sahib stated that “Hazrat Usman was elected through a similar process”. Another leader who left the alliance to support Musharraf was Imran Khan. We know from Musharraf’s interviews that Imran Khan also hoped to be made the prime minister under Musharraf. Incidentally, both Imran Khan and Qadri had only seat each in the 2002-2008 parliament.

Fast forward 17 years and many hundred dreams, Imran Khan is a credible prime ministerial candidate while Qadri Sahib has not shared his latest dream with us. The 24th Amendment and the COAS’ briefing to the Senate have cleared a lot of dust. The amendment has resolved the legal ambiguities emerging out of the census this close to the end of the election cycle. These ambiguities might have thrown the ball again into the Supreme Court. The amendment also shows the resolve of all major political parties to hold the next election on time.

Why then are both the PTI and the PPP encouraging Qadri to go ahead with his dharna? Because any humiliation to the ruling party so close to the elections suits them. During his 2013 dharna, Qadri was unable to pull down the PPP government, but he can be counted among one of the many factors that resulted in the PPP’s electoral defeat.

The PPP is in search of new partners in Punjab. It needs some sort of alliance in the province to avoid results that can decimate it from Pakistan’s largest province. Qadri is a sworn enemy of the Sharifs and estranged from Imran Khan. He is a liberal face of Islam, an excellent orator who can pull crowds and can deliver at least a few thousand votes in many constituencies of the province. He can certainly be a suitable ally for the PPP.

It is fashionable in the media to sympathise with Qadri for death of ‘his men’ (though the list included a woman) in the Model Town incident. The case against the Punjab government is in the court and I do not have anything to add to the list of blunders made by the rulers of Punjab. However, in my opinion, Qadri should also be put in the dock for using his spiritual followers so ruthlessly for his political ends.

He prepared his workers to sacrifice their lives before the 2014 dharna, promising them the ultimate revolution. He made them confront the Punjab Police only to protect some useless barricades in front of his house. What were he and his son doing through the whole night? Why did they not ask his workers to end the deadly confrontation with a brutal police force? Was protection of those barricades some sort of holy war?

Qadris’ men also committed atrocities and violence during the 2014 dharna. His Sufi Islam is no different from the Sufi Islam of Khadim Hussain Rizvi. It is only his language that is more sophisticated – though equally venomous. He remains off the hook and returns for another dhrana only because non-state actors enjoy parity with the state in Pakistan.

Allama Qadri may not become prime minister in this world, but no one can doubt his status in the other universe. Many decades from now, a young reader, while buying flowers and sweets at his shrine, may also pick a book describing the Allama’s miracles. On the title, he may find my name as the author. I may, by that time, be the information minister in Allama Sahib’s cabinet, in a different universe.

The writer is an anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan