Faith-based failure

In the wake of the mass murder of Christian worshippers in Peshawar, there will follow the predictable confusion over the unresolved challenges to Pakistan’s ‘national security’. One of the solutions proposed will be the futile and self-defeating policy of faith-based and intra-faith ‘peace’ measures to deal with religious conflict.
Logically, the inherent contradiction in countering religious conflict through faith-based channels should be self-evident. However, in post-colonial Pakistan, the retreat of religion is seen as a threat because apparently, the concession of any secular space will unseam us as a nation and erase our very existence. This invites the proposal that all non-religious or lay laws, politics and cultural expressions are inadequate and inappropriate for us and Muslims are culture-bound, sentimental and sensitive religious subjects only.
Those who defend what they call ‘Islamic culture’ argue that it would be more authentic and ‘pure’ if purged of western influence. Such a view reifies past, pre-colonial societies as permanently peaceful, conflict-free and harmonious. This is simply untrue. Religious harmony is contested today with a different kind of aggression, yet the rejection of the ‘westernised’ classes, universalist laws or secular principles will not automatically dissolve all the sources of religious conflict. Nor will their replacement with ‘Islamic’ alternatives convert these societies into authentic, traditionally pure or peaceful entities. Religion is a political resource that may serve many ends.
Most of us know the potential of religious politics to fuel conflict rather than encourage diversity and peace. This difference mostly organises, splinters and franchises itself further, leading to sectarian and communal violence. Yet, there is this continued insistence that the solution lies in appealing for more religion, the good kind, the peaceful potential for brokering harmony, love and justice. Although this potential has borne no realistic or political fruition, still it is the principles of secularism, human rights and indivisible equality that are considered to be unrealistic and ‘failed’ notions. More misleading than saying that the Pakistani state is a failed secular one is the pretence that it was, by any definition or practice, secular at any point in history.
The reason that interfaith dialogue, counter-fatwas and appeals for tolerance are not working is that they are all metaphysical processes, not concrete or structural policies or solutions. Original fatwas are effective because they promote an ideological plan, are supported by pragmatic action, exonerate the executor (even if he has committed a crime) and are result-oriented. In contrast, the strategy of convincing a freewheeling, vague, unaccountable and non-representative body called ‘The Ulema’, to issue condemnations against faith-based crimes and terrorism, is incredibly short-sighted. Implicit in the hollow disclaimer that it is un-Islamic to attack places of worship is the suggestion that bombing minority communities and neighbourhoods may have been less sacrilegious.
When the government engages in such tactics it concedes its own and the state’s writ on two counts; first, it is admitting that it does not have the legal or moral authority to make policy or, issue statements as elected representatives of the people on religious politics. Secondly, the division of good, bad and non-Muslims creates a crisis of righteousness whereby every actor is involved in proving his school as representative of the good side and advocates the punishment of the bad. More than the liberals who are accused of ‘dehumanising’ the militants, it is the religious leaders who keep insisting that faith-based terrorists (and rapists, criminals and the corrupt) are ‘non-Muslims’. Therefore, by religious logic, Muslims do not commit crimes and non-Muslims are worthy of lesser rights and more punishment.
The more concessions the state makes over religious contestation, the more likely both the non-state and privatised religious actors become empowered. They are able to hold the state hostage by claiming moral authority on matters of religion. On the other hand, since the state has had a historic record of wielding Islam as a tool of repression, division and patriarchal abuse, no one trusts it. This is true on most issues including, health and education – but particularly on matters of religion. A ‘state’ of crisis, certainly.
Neither is the state the only one floundering in the sea of confusion over the issue of monopoly over faith. International donor agencies, in the post-9/11 period have been engaged aggressively in what I call, donor-driven Islam. Heavily funded religions and development research projects, madressah reforms, Muslim women’s leadership, Islamic relief and interfaith programmes have reduced us to singularly religious subjects. And there is no evidence that such an approach has been any more successful or useful in comparison to ‘secular’ development.
Finally, while the state and funding agencies are most influential in terms of policies and matters of governance, civil society and NGOs are complicit in instrumentalising Islam when they accept funds to use religion as an entry into communities for their development work. How is this different from Islamic charities? This practice reduces the worth of secular strategies and logic.
Meanwhile, regular citizens are far more committed to the cause of religion and the afterlife than in contributing to solutions that may be pragmatic, real and immediate. By deflecting all matters to faith, paradise and fate and pooling energies in dars, prayers and charity for heavenly rewards, most Pakistanis have become escapists who privilege faith-based approaches to human development and only act as religious agents committed to spiritual ends. All this faith-based preoccupation and competitiveness has done nothing to diminish, but has in fact, added to, the escalation of religious conflict in the country today.
The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi. Email: afiyazia@yahoo.com