Do we need solutions?

According to many Pakistani analysts, the answer to our fiscal and political problems is to emulate the models of Far Eastern Muslim countries, such as Malaysia and Indonesia. With reference to the civil-military relationship, we are often urged to take the cue from Turkey. With regard to religious sentiment and cultural aspirations, we are encouraged to selectively sympathise with the sufferings of Arab Muslims, not at the hands of their own rulers but due to Israeli occupation and US policy. However, with regard to occupied Kashmir, we have been outraged at the treatment of Muslim subjects by the Indian government and not at the result of our own infiltration policies in the region.
The issue remains that such ideal recommendations have not helped us to shape a cohesive foreign or domestic policy. Yet, commentators continue to bandy about such references out of an intellectual laziness that is not committed towards actually developing an independent model of economics, culture, religion, development, democracy or education that could serve the people of Pakistan without looking to fit into, or borrow wholesale, other models. The only investment that our state has actively engaged in this regard and often, with contention, has been in the search for an appropriate and “authentic” Islamic identity.
A considerable amount of recent scholarly and literary interest on Islam has thrown up new theories and debates on the relationship of religion with politics, development, secularism, modernity and, in our case, a redefining of Pakistani nationalism. However, the attempt to extend and apply analyses of religion and politics in the Middle East to Pakistan has often been a forced and erroneous effort on the part of such scholarship. Discussed below is why the “secular oppression” of Islamists, the support for de-privatisation of religion across all public spaces, and the imposition of limitless, ‘westernised’ women’s rights for Muslim women, are misplaced fears in the case of Pakistan.
The first two recommendations – that is, removing secular obstructions to enable the practice of faith in all public discourse and, the right to engage in politics – are based on a severe criticism of the denial of this due by liberal secularists to Islamists. The defenders of these rights have pointed to the violent (secular) prevention of religious parties, such as, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, from pursuing their legitimate right to politick on the basis of religion. However, in Pakistan, mainstream Islamic parties have not been denied such rights. In fact, they have had unprecedented (albeit, often non-democratic) access to state discourse and policy in the Gen Zia period, and, from 2002-2008 under Gen Musharraf’s regime, governed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with a dominant majority and decimating results.
Further, even non-mainstream, pietist organisations, such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba, have been actively cultivated and funded (as in the case of the IJI) by the state. They have also informed a significant portion of the state’s strategic-depth foreign policy all through the 1980s and 1990s. According to some, such selective patronage continues today. However, the role and specific policies of Islamists in Pakistan and the influence these have gained in the aftermath of their engagement in the body politic, is something that is conveniently not discussed or analysed by the same scholars.
On the third point, the notion of freedoms as something desirable to all women, especially Muslim women, has been challenged in such scholarship. Further, the argument is that all women may not aspire to feminist notions of freedoms. Equality between the sexes, freedom of expression, work, mobility, reproductive control – are all desires that may be consciously rejected or differently expressed, rather than due to false consciousness on the part of Muslim women. Women may prefer to serve through piety rather than productive work or, choose domesticity over public service. Of course, the ban on the veil has been posited as a human rights violation and as an attempt to “disrobe” veiled Muslim women in European contexts.
On this point too, these scholars should rest assured that in the case of Pakistan, the state has made no such offence so as to promote the feminist view of freedoms-abortion is illegal (except under exceptional circumstances) and unsafe, maternal mortality one of the highest in the world, while the female workforce is one of the lowest, and so on. Clearly, there is no remote danger of Pakistani women running wild with their state-sponsored, rampant, Western, liberal, feminist freedoms any time soon. At the moment, Pakistani women have full legal rights to practice domesticity-including the right to receive violent treatment in the privacy of their homes – without state interference.
All in all, Pakistan is an ideal defender of the above calls of conscience, prompted by the critics of Western, liberal-secular ideologies. Our state works hard to prosecute corrupt politicians but often doesn’t even arraign alleged militants for lack of evidence (a liberal, humanist juridical principle). It allows religious parties the equal right to bear and use arms so that they may defend religious sentiment from insult, in accordance with their different, faith-based rationality. It sponsors the legal defence of accused terrorists undergoing trials in foreign courts, even if they may be dual citizens or of Pakistani origin only. It is keen to absolve men who kill in defence of honour and religion but is reluctant to defend those accused of adultery and blasphemy.
The state also refuses to reform religious laws passed by dictators and which have not gone through parliamentary reviews due to the pressures of unelected religious groups. At the same time, it respects the minority rights of religious parties in civilian parliaments to reject any perceived “liberal” laws, but does not pass protective laws for religious minorities. It sponsors bans on theatre and social media that may be suspected of mocking pietist symbols or injuring religious sentiment, but not of militant groups or individuals who advocate violent jihad against perceived enemies. Proselytisation in any public space and forum (including cricket dressing rooms) is unhindered as far as state policy is concerned. The only danger that may be posed is from competing religious sects, in which case the state is in a quandary as to whose right to protect-those of the proselytisers or the morally injured religious sentiments of the opposing sect? The educational curriculum at all levels and all schools (including private ones) defies any separation of religious content from the natural or social sciences.
As seen, the state supports those critics of secularism who insist that faith should be recognised in all public discourse in Pakistan. All state institutions observe and encourage strict adherence to religious expression and many religious policies are influenced by male ulema in place of (the liberal notion of) elected representatives.
When we follow so many of the prescriptions of such anti-secular, anti-liberal, anti-Western, post-modern, culturally specific and traditional customs...why then, are we still looking for solutions?

The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi. She has a background in women’s studies and has authored and edited several books on women’s issues Email: afiyazia@yahoo.com