The sigh of relief that greeted Nawaz Sharif’s Shariat Bill became a shocked exhalation of breath when a draft of the obscenity bill found its way into the press. The man who prefaced his Shariat Bill with the claim that he was not a fundamentalist had just formulated a bill that could not be faulted even to a comma by those he seemed to be dissociating himself from. It shouldn’t have surprised us.
The initial sense of relief came from a belief that Nawaz Sharif intended to find — and would be able to find — a broad consensus on Islamisation beyond the narrow vision of the ultra-orthodox. The pre-eminent position of the National Assembly under his bill seemed a guarantee of his good intention. This belief, however, was a triumph of optimism over reason. For no such consensus exists.
Scour the newspapers for informed analysis of Islamisation and you will find none. Visit the universities in search of incisive debate on the relationship between Islam and the modern state, and your visit will be in vain. The tradition of Islamic modernism upheld by the founders of Pakistan has also but died out here. The forces of progressive Islam are weak and scattered. Only the fundamentalists, rigid and unyielding in their barren orthodoxy, remain on the battlefield.
And just as fools go where angels fear to treat, Nawaz Sharif has stepped onto that battlefield under the banner of a new consensus, a banner so threadbare that his IJI could not even manage a qourum in the National Assembly on the first day of the session dedicated to the discussion of his bill.
The bill itself, as a vehicle for Islamisation, is a finely crafted piece of legislation. It provides the framework within which a coherent legislative programme can be prepared and launched. Sharing many of the features of an enabling bill, it permits the government wide discretion in the application of administrative action, bypassing the National Assembly in the interests of speed and efficiency.
Backed by a national consensus, the bill would be a powerful tool for the legislative expression of the people’s will. Without such a consensus it becomes like a loose canon, crushing all those who fall in its way. With wide discretionary powers, a brute majority in the House, and cry of Islam on his lips, Nawaz Sharif under this bill would be dangerously powerful. For without a perception shared across the nation, as to the discretion of Islamisation, Nawaz Sharif’s power would be brute strength based on a deep insecurity; it would be power without legitimacy.
And within the context of Islamisation, with the modernists mute, only the fundamentalists can offer Nawaz Sharif a cloak of legitimacy. So he tries on their clothes. A draft obscenity bill, recently disowned, which denies any right t privacy and imposes a morality held only by a minority on the majority. Wild statements by his law minister on the role of woman in politics, or the lack of it, under Shariah.
As if he feared being ridiculed in these ill-fitting clothes, Nawaz Sharif’s government hints darkly that the press will have to be brought under stricter control. The declaration, or permission, to publish may again become a tool of government in its dealing with the press as it was during the days of Zia. Under Article 17 of the Shariat Bill itself, the state shall take measures against character assassination and false imputation, a wording so loose that the law minister occasionally seems to feel that he can outlaw the use of unnamed sources. This, in effect, throws the press back onto government sources.
When this bill was presented in the House, over three weeks ago, this paper welcomed Nawaz Sharif’s recognition of the need for a new consensus, but warned against the possibility that while protecting the legislative role of the National Assembly, he might let the rest of society fall into the hands of the fundamentalists. Over the intervening three weeks, we have seen this latter possibility loom ever closer. Meanwhile, we have failed to see any consensus emerge.
Without a broad consensus, the bill is a monster. The government should do the honest thing and admit that there has been no convergence of views over the Shariat, and remove the bill from the House. And let the legislation that it wishes to introduce to the House to meet with the difficulties faced by the country be judged on its own merits, not as some part of a divine plan.