Nadeem Farooq Paracha puts it all simply and right on the head.
SMOKERS CORNER: Boot Point -DAWN Magazine; September 21, 2008
SMOKERS CORNER: Boot Point
By Nadeem F. Paracha
It was inevitable. Former minister and host of a religious TV show, Dr Aamir Liaquat, who is also known for delivering highly animated and dramatically choreographed numbers, was recently thrown out by his party, the Mutahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM).
Party chief Altaf Hussain and the MQM Rabita Committee cancelled his membership after accusing him of spreading religious hatred through his TV shows and going against party policies. The same day an English-language daily blamed an unnamed religious talk show of inciting the murder of two Ahmadis in Lahore. Many believe the show in question was the one hosted by Dr Liaquat. If so, then his firing too was inevitable.
Now imagine, in this Land of the Pure, where men have been known to have gone psychotic by killing Christians, Hindus and members of different Muslim sects at a provocative call given by a fanatic, what effect such religious talk shows are having on the collective psyche of society? A society whirling helplessly inside a dangerous socio-political flux in which even the most sensible men and women are looking at everyone but themselves to put the blame on whatever that has gone wrong in the spheres of economics, politics and religion in Pakistan on someone else.
Just as there is a serious lack of objectivity, responsibility or sometimes simple decency in most political TV talk shows, religious shows too are riddled with a warped display of what could best be described as narcissist anarchy. It is a reckless exhibition of love-for-the-self and loathing-for-the-other that overwhelms any realisation associated with the notion of consequences. Thus, some so-called religious talk shows, too, are adding to the already hysterical, self-righteous and dangerously paranoid concepts of morality and faith doing the rounds these days.
There was already a feeling in the MQM that Dr Liaquat had become too big for his boots, even though the MQM also suggests that it was due to the party’s influence that he got the chance to bag his own show on a TV channel. The show began as an attempt to bring together scholars from various Islamic sects that exist in Pakistan and rescue the religion from factionalism and misinterpretation.
However, soon he too started to experience the same kind of careless celebrity complex his political talk show peers got afflicted with, leaving him to toe a hard line that his more hard-edged televangelist contemporaries like Dr Israr Ahmed and Zaid Hamid are known for. Interestingly, some of Liaquat’s more moderate sympathisers suggest that though most of his political and religious talk show contemporaries who suffer from the same celebrity complex that blinds them about the repercussions their sophomoric brand of sensationalism triggers, unlike Liaquat they come in with hardboiled political and social agendas to push. Supposedly, Dr Liaquat’s complex does not come attached with a personal agenda other than mere self-glorification.
This makes sense, because whereas most political talk show hosts and Islamic televangelists on various channels have off and on been accused of using their new celebrity status to push forward certain right-wing and reactionary strains of politics and religion, Dr Liaquat does not have any such agenda. Instead, and as the MQM believes, he is over-smitten by his celebrity, but so much so that he is now ready to become a mouthpiece for even the most sectarian line of thought if this would sustain his popularity.
Along with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Awami National Party (ANP), the MQM has evolved into a prominent secular party. But it has been more demonstrative of its credentials as compared with the PPP and the ANP, both of which are being seriously challenged not only by extremists in Swat and Waziristan, but also by large chunks of an urban middle class that is rapidly being plagued by a highly schizophrenic streak. It is from this class that most of the TV talk show hosts and televangelists are emerging.
This leads to a rather potent point: many of the political and religious TV shows anchored by hosts who hold masqueraded sympathies for Islamists and TV shows in which televangelists passionately give western countries a convoluted verbal bashing, some even calling them economic terrorists. Ever noticed how each one of these shows are punctuated by a gazillion commercial breaks, most stuffed with commercials of products made by western multinationals?
I mean, if, say, the likes of Hamid Mir are always so incensed by western interference in, and influence over, our affairs and they are so sympathetic towards those fighting a war against the West, how can they allow their shows to be sponsored by western multinationals? The truth is that if there are no multinationals sponsoring their shows there will perhaps be no show at all.
A piece of advice to these brave souls and revolutionary media mujahids is to rise and be the first to set an example by boycotting the multinationals and their sponsorships. They should tell their seths that their shows will not accept advertising money from the economic lackeys of western imperialism perpetrating economic terrorism. Do the show free of cost in the larger interests of Islam and Pakistan!