Dealing with the devil

We had drawn the image of a beast in our minds. Let’s admit it: we are shocked that Imran Ali does not conform to that image. Child protection experts warn us that most parents make a similar mistake.

In this case, the whole neighbourhood was fooled by his professed religiosity and his ordinariness. They paid a huge price for their mistake – at least eight young girls became his victims, six of whom were brutally murdered.

The unparalleled attention received by the Kasur incident provides us an opportunity to understand the nature of the beast and the crime of violence against children, and find ways and means to protect our children. We may be losing that opportunity by treating this case as a one-off crime or pairing it with a similar case from Mardan. Instead of listening seriously to the individuals who have dedicated their lives to the cause of protecting children, we have handed the floor to gossipmongers and the peddlers of false news.

The last thing we need in this painful situation is the ilm-e-najoom of our television anchors and the superior courts that are massaging their egos and boosting their ratings rather than making them accountable for interfering in the process of justice. Even Sherlock Holmes could not have done what one television anchor was able to achieve in two days. He unearthed an international conspiracy and an international racket, and even identified 37 foreign currency accounts operated by the accused. He did not stop there and went on to link the international crime to an unnamed federal minister.

What is even more fantastical is the way he was believed by many important people and millions of citizens. Like always, Imran Khan was the first to buy the false news. Through one tweet, he turned it into an article of faith for millions of his faithful followers. It appears to me that our great hero first dupes himself and then dupes others. He has distinguished himself as the most avid consumer and producer of false news.

Many of us are so willing to believe such news because we want to deny the presence of evil within our own communities and society. It is a tricky issue. But such crimes and the culprits can neither be normalised nor projected on another community to ease the burden of guilt upon ourselves.

The editor of a Pakistani franchise of an international publication earned international disrepute by trying to portray child abuse as something normal. Crimes, like deviance, have always been a part of society and will be probably there for a long time to come. However, accepting such heinous crimes means the end of a human society that stands on the pillars of norms and ethical values.

What our learned medical doctor turned television anchor did was a successful effort at projection – ie, projecting our own dark side at someone else. He was not alone. Many liberal types, members of my own community, almost celebrated the fact that Imran Ali was a religious person, a naat khwan and the member of one religio-political party or the other.

Imran Ali makes us uncomfortable because his crime is demonic in scale. This is what Carl Jung called the archetypal evil – the kind of evil that is more than a human can take and belongs to the devil, the dark side of humanity. Imran Ali himself hinted at it when he mentioned that a jinn had overpowered him and made him commit those crimes.

The devil, unfortunately, is found in actions, not in identity. No amount of profiling can help us pin him down. Any stereotyping only results in the victimisation of the innocent. This is the lesson we have learnt from terrorism as well. The devil is hard to grapple because he is so elusive; he can take different shapes and forms; and he can defy all stereotypes.

All societies make elaborate mechanisms to protect themselves from deviance and the dark pre-human, anti-human dark forces that can overpower an individual, a social group or the whole society. Religion, the mechanism of formal and informal education and rule of law play a significant role in protecting us. All social mechanisms can come under a lot of stress during the times of change when the whole society goes through abrupt change. This challenge becomes daunting when institutional mechanisms fail to keep pace with the change in society.

We must see Zainab as a symbol for millions of our vulnerable children who suffer in silence and become prey to criminals because we, as a society and as a state, have not done enough to protect them. We must ask specific questions related to her case and link them with the larger policy issues that can lead to the protection of children.

Unfortunately, many of the best and brightest among us appear so pathetic when dealing with the case. I have the picture of Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan in my mind. Is he the same man I had admired for decades? Perhaps he should leave us with his good image from the past and focus on making money through his legal practice. It appears that he has been overpowered by the jinn of hatred that is turning him into a caricature of his earlier self.

What we are losing in this noise is the opportunity to make the state in general and the Punjab government in particular accountable for the issue of child protection. We need answers about the inefficiencies of the Punjab police; their failure to investigate earlier cases; their failure to resolve the pornography case emanating from the same district; and the lack of citizen policing – any mechanism of the police working in close coordination with citizens. All these questions boil down to one big question: what has the khadim-e-ala done to reform the Punjab police – the most resilient colonial legacy in South Asia?

Then there are questions about the inefficient system of justice that works against all vulnerable sections of society. There is enough hard news that should interest our lords. The honourable chief justice of the Lahore High Court has instituted a separate court to hear cases of crimes against children in Lahore. But is this effort enough to deal with the scale of crime?. What have provincial parliaments done to reform the system? What actions have been taken by the national and provincial government to reform the justice system?

Most children who become prey to abuse are vulnerable to begin with. We cannot protect our children unless we make a concerted effort to deal with their vulnerability. The vulnerability of these children is often rooted in the socioeconomic marginality of their families. There are so many things that should concern us, our leaders and our lords.

The writer is an anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan