Re: Secular Pakistan: ‘Pakistanis should know Quaid’s Aug 11 speech by heart’
Faris, your objection is a semantic one. That Zia was not an official clergyman does not detract from my point that he imposed his wahabi ideologies on the Constitution and the people. He was as good as a mullah in army fatigues. His regime fostered the rise and normalization of fundamentalism. He sought to create a hard-line Sunni Islamist state. His Islamization project transformed the social and political landscape for decades to come. He criminalized dissent, flogged religious and political dissenters in public squares, destroyed parliamentary politics, trashed arts and culture, and reversed the status of women. All in the name of a return to Islamic values. I responded to Diwana’s clownish claim that godless secularists are to be blamed exclusively for Pakistan’s problems. Never mind that the PPP represents the closest we’ve come to secular politics, if you agree with him your sense of history is curiously selective, if not warped.
Your hijacking comment is another strawman. You say you see bigots ‘on all sides’ - name the secular bigots. The bigotry and intolerance enshrined in the Constitution can be credited to religious leaders or leaders appeasing religious groups. If anything is being hijacked, it’s religion. Secularism is being shot to death in broad daylight. Not only is education needed, it needs to be reformed. The Saudi-American apparatus of the Cold War - madrassas - need to be dismantled. The military and ISI need to be gutted and de-radicalized. The political will to stop appeasing and subsidizing the fanatic minority needs to be found. You call this ‘secularization,’ I call it normalization. The onus is on you to build your case against secular reform and/or explain how secularism has has been ‘hijacked’ to date. The country dabbled in Islamization and the results are being reaped for generations to come. It’s time to move away from politicized religion, and this requires removing religion from politics.
Any lawmaker will find this comical. “It ain’t easy” cannot become the basis for an independent judiciary and parliament. You’re deliberately ignoring Ghost’s point. If it ain’t easy, why make it difficult? As a non-theocracy Pakistan is already at the mercy of religious fringes. Are you suggesting it introduce even more religion into the mix? For those dreaming of an Islamic Utopia, don’t hold your breath. There are too many interpretations of Islam and too many schools of thought to create and sustain a homogeneous state non-violently. If a Sunni wants to be able to (peacefully) dissent from a Shia, a Hanafi from a Maliki, and so on, it’s in their interest to promote a secular democracy where everyone gets the right to opine but not to impose. How much violence and instability do people need to experience before they beat this reflex to support religious politics, regardless of its demerits and what it has done to Pakistan. Pity the nation that insists on its own downfall.