Liberalism under attack

In a recent speech, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that his government is committed to making Pakistan a liberal country. The PM’s remark has agitated the clergy, who argue that Islam and liberalism are mutually exclusive. Why are the clergy so allergic to the notion of a liberal Pakistan?
Liberalism has multiple meanings. An economy is liberal if state intervention in commercial affairs is minimum and the market forces are at liberty to operate. This is what is commonly referred to as a market or capitalist economy. A political system is liberal if the powers of the government are limited and people have the right to choose their governors, who in turn are accountable to the electorate. This is what we commonly call democracy.
A society is liberal if the social order is based on the notion of individual freedom and pluralism. The latter implies that state and religion are kept separate and that the government does not prescribe or promote a particular creed. In this sense, liberalism is the antithesis of both conservatism and monism.
The economic, political and social dimensions of liberalism may not fit into each other. A country may have a market or capitalist economy but a dictatorial government. Several states in East Asia have had such a setup.
Conversely, a country may be a democracy but may have a largely socialist economy. India until the early 1980s and Pakistan during the 1970s under ZA Bhutto presented a blend of a popularly elected government presiding over a socialist economy. Likewise, a conservative society may have both a democratic political system and a market economy.
Not only states but entities like political parties as well may embrace, or for that matter shun, one or all meaning of liberalism. All the three major political parties of Pakistan – the PML-N, the PPP and the PTI – profess liberalism in both the political and economic senses. But whereas the PML-N and the PTI are traditionally the parties of the right (conservative), the PPP has been a party of the centre-left (liberal).
In India, socially the Congress and the BJP are liberal and conservative parties respectively. In the UK, until quite recently, the Labour Party largely rejected the economics of liberalism but professed full faith in the philosophy’s other two meaning.
All the religio-political parties of Pakistan are conservative, though by and large they accept liberalism in its political and economic meaning. They take part in the democratic political process and have at times been part of the ruling coalition. None of them is particularly critical of capitalism either, except of course the interest-based banking system.
At the moment, there is little serious debate in Pakistan on the political and economic meaning of liberalism – all the key political players seem to have accepted both democracy and the market economy. The only debate of note is on the social connotations of liberalism. The conservatives believe that social or cultural liberalism will westernise and vulgarise society and thus strike at the very foundation of the social order.
Liberalism, in all its three meanings outlined above, is a concept that is western in origin. Its rise as a coherent philosophy goes back to the late 18th century Europe. Therefore, accepting political and economic liberalism but denouncing social liberalism, on the ground that its genesis lies in the west, involves a contradiction.
In fact, at present when the country is facing an existential threat in the form of extremism, adhering to social liberalism is more important than accepting the two other varieties of the liberal philosophy. The country may survive without democracy or market economy – it may even be better off. But it would disregard social liberalism only at its own peril.
At the bottom of the clergy’s opposition to liberalism lies their opposition to pluralism. Thus the question of whether a pluralistic society is incompatible with Islam. Extremists and their apologists would have us believe that Islam provides only for a monolithic society in which different cultures or sub-cultures cannot coexist; rather they have to be merged with the ‘Islamic’ culture. If preaching cannot effect that merger, force can be, and must be, employed.
If such an interpretation of Islam were to be accepted, then the use of force to remove cultural diversity would become legitimate, and freedom of conscience – which underlies all moral freedom – would become meaningless. There would be only one creed and one moral code, not by choice but by force.
Such an interpretation of Islam would not only divest society of all ethical freedom but also breed mayhem and chaos.
In a monolithic society, different creeds cannot coexist peacefully. All diversity has to be forced into a unity. It is only in a pluralistic society that different creeds can coexist peacefully. The foremost condition for establishing a pluralistic society is to accept diversity of beliefs, practices and codes without trying to reduce the diversity to uniformity.
Coming back to Pakistan, the country was created in the name of Islam. However, the purpose was not to create a theocratic, monolithic state but to safeguard the social, economic and political rights of Indian Muslims. And once Pakistan was created, the rights of even non-Muslims were to be protected as equal citizens.
That is what the founder of Pakistan, the late Muhammad Ali Jinnah, emphasised in his historic address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947.
The vision of Pakistan outlined by its founder in that speech was that of a pluralistic society in which full religious freedom would be granted to all communities, where the state would not discriminate on the basis of caste or creed and where cultural diversity would be reconciled with national unity. And that is what a liberal society is.
The establishment of a multicultural, liberal society, as envisioned by Jinnah, necessitated above all that religion should not be used for political purposes, because this invariably promotes one community at the expense of others. Unfortunately, starting from the 1949 Objectives Resolution, religion has been strongly injected into the body politic. Rulers have used it to consolidate their position, and power seekers to satisfy their ambitions.
It is easier to accept people like us than people different from us. But that does not mean that a society should shun all diversity and consist of only one race, creed or ethnicity. Rather all diversity has to be appreciated, affirmed and accepted. This is the only sound approach in a multiethnic society like Pakistan. And this is the approach that both government and civil society should promote. The view propagated by successive governments and even today by religious parties that Pakistan was meant to be a theocratic, monolithic state needs to be corrected. Instead we need to repose trust in social liberalism.
The writer is a graduate from a western European university.
Email: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com