The crunch is upon us. If he doesn’t already know it, Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif will soon discover the veritable bed of thorns he has inherited in Islamabad.
It is all very well to talk, during an election campaign, about ‘Islamisation’ and that sort of thing. But when he gets to the nitty gritty implications of the various ‘Islamic’ Bills, he will find it altogether a different business. It wasn’t without good reason that both his mentor Gen Zia ul Haq and his ally ex-premier Mohammad Khan Junejo were wary of pushing their case for ‘Islamisation’ beyond carefully defined limits.
Now a group of obscurantists have again determined to rush a Shariat Bill and other ill-conceived, so-called ‘Islamic’ laws through Parliament. Where Mian Sahib dreams of a vigorous, modern welfare state in Pakistan, at par with the dragons of Asia, a few of his belligerent allies are bent upon dragging us into the dark ages.
The transporters’ strike, which paralysed the country, was merely the tip of the iceberg of public opposition to unrealistic demands by religious fundamentalists. At the very least, these gentlemen know next to noting about how the modern economy works and couldn’t care less if their unthinking provisions wrecked it irreparably. Shorn of the detailed, rational system of criminal codes and financial procedures which has thus far governed Pakistan, and fearful of irresponsible, arbitrary reprisals parading under the guise of so-called ‘Islamic’ justice, every modern profession and vocation in society is threatened with chaos. Today it is the public transport system which is protesting the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, tomorrow these laws could as unexpectedly provoke the health, education, banking, finance, foreign investment and assorted sectors. Thereafter, the independent press, judiciary and legislature will become helpless. They might find that they have no prerogatives left to review, report, adjudge or legislate upon. And so on. Until confusion is absolute and breakdown imminent.
In effect, a tiny minority of religious extremists are trying to blackmail the rest of us Muslims to validate their sectarian views of Islamic law and justice. In truth, senseless ritual has become such an integral part of their mistaken religiosity that it has robbed Islam of its liberating spirit of equality and freedom. And we, the majority of Muslims, are being forced to meekly acquiesce to their hollow interpretations of a religion and way of life we have practised and cherished for centuries.
Indeed, we should ask why, instead of mouthing muddled pieties and branding everyone who disagrees with them as ‘un-Islamic’, the fundamentalists have never demanded positive, remedial measures to alleviate the everyday sufferings of tens of millions of ordinary Muslims in this country. Measures like land reform, health care, free education, cheap transport, electricity, roads, subsidised housing, sanitation, clean water, universal literacy, population control, maternity welfare, minimum wages, etc somehow never seem to figure in their inventory of urgent societal requisites.
Instead of concrete approaches to create a just social order, upon which Islam positively insists, we are enjoined by them “not to do this and not to do that.” It is precisely this sort of negativism which has brought us to this pass.We are no good at laying foundations, building institutions, creating consensus and stolidly getting on. But we are peerless at quibbling, obstructing and dismantling everything in sight.
Mian Nawaz Sharif has a stunning mandate, as he forcefully acknowledged last week, to guide Pakistan into the 21st century. But he cannot make his first move in that direction without extricating himself from the clutches of these desperados.
For too long, governments in Islamabad have been pushed on to the defensive by the outpourings of a tiny, unrepresentative section from the fringes of society. The weight we give them is totally out of proportion to their numerical strength in parliament. It is time we told them where to get off.
Mian Sahib has reiterated time and again that he is a modernist and not a mullah or a fundamentalist. Excellent. But then he must quickly shake off his, and our, detractors and confidently lead the way forward.