The faithful and the sinful

It was one of the bigger PIA aircrafts that took us to Karachi from Islamabad but the haul seemed longer than usual due to an absence of a good tailwind and air pockets of turbulence all along. Travelling with toddlers helps you get good seats and more leg space at times. We were sitting in front of the plane where there was a much wider gangway as well.
People moved about and chatted with each other whenever the flight became a little smooth. Poet Kishwar Naheed and educationist Nasreen Iqbal sat in front of me; they were also travelling to attend the Karachi Literature Festival. Most other seats around were taken by a family of young, old, adults and children of different ages. Their distinct Mancunian accents when speaking to each other in English and a pronounced inflection at the end of each word when speaking to the PIA staff and other passengers around them in Urdu revealed both their current residence in the UK for many years and one of the plateaus in our country to which their ancestors belonged.
The children in our cabin were not rowdy but certainly were fidgety and the parents among us needed to talk them out into sitting still or move about with them to regulate their actions. In the midst of all this, an old man with a long but properly shaped white beard, clad in a brilliant white kurta shalwar, cream coloured waistcoat and white turban, resting his arm on a walking stick, occupied one of the aisle seats.
The man sitting next to the old and pious-looking gentleman belonged to the family from the Pakistani diaspora that I have just described. Both were sitting across the gangway so one didn’t need to be eavesdropping in order to clearly overhear the conversation on Islam and Muslims between the man from the diaspora, in his early middle-age, and the old man, whose mere looks lend a representative authority for many among us on faith and matters of faith.
After an exchange of pleasantries, the diaspora man asked the pious man, “So what in your view is the reason for us Muslims to be suffering so much in the world and being ruled by others?” The answer was simple and well-known. “We are suffering because we have become distant from our faith.” The diaspora man nodded in full agreement and asked again, “Why is that so? When will we begin to rise again as Muslims? Look at Pakistan Maulana Sahib. We have so much potential but we are divided into sects. We are also divided by provincial thinking. How can we all become good Muslims and good Pakistanis only?”
The old man, I must say, was not as talkative and fiery as many religious people of that age are found to be. But he said what anyone would expect him to say. “Muslims can only rise again if they start living according to the tenets of Islam and follow the Shariah. People are not saying their namaz properly, not paying Zakat, not paying attention to what is prohibited or forbidden. Our lives are full of sins. Unless we do not shed our rotten ways of living, we will never progress.
“Gentleman, you seem to be living abroad. But I am so happy to see Pakistani families abroad so mindful of their faith and culture. I really feel sorry when I look at the way Muslim women behave with men including strangers in Pakistan and the way girls are dressed these days.”
We reached Karachi and landed at our brother’s place – a simple, middleclass household with three children. The parents would be considered liberal by some as the girls participate in drama, music, sports, etc. But when we arrived, my sister-in-law was saying her prayers and in less than an hour of our arrival, a Qari Sahib arrived to teach the children how to read our Holy Book with the right pronunciation. One good thing, though, is that he is also asked to teach them the meanings in Urdu.
When I popped out of the house later for a post-dinner meeting, the driver we had wanted to say his prayers before leaving. In the literary festival, for three days, many people were not seen praying but many disappeared at the time of prayers. So one can easily conclude that some prayed and some didn’t. In a normal household in Pakistan, religion is practised much more than a normal household in most other countries.
And not only religious channels and magazines, the mainstream media – newspapers, radio, TV channels – is also completely taken over by religious sentiment. For one full month of Ramazan, there is no other talk, day in and day out, except religion, its rituals, its tenets, its values, its history, its politics, its greatness. For ten full days of Muharram, there is no other talk. For all occasions around the year, religious festivals and commemorative days, our living rooms are full of religion and its various discourses.
Mostly work, and occasionally leisure, has taken me to different countries in the world, some being Muslim-majority – from Turkey to Bangladesh – but some also being seen as practising Christian societies, from Poland to Philippines. Many of us have seen the liberal, not-so-liberal, conservative, orthodox, plural and multi-faith societies and states across North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Far East. I have not seen any other society or state wearing their faith this much on their sleeves the way many of us do here in Pakistan.
I want to challenge this assertion of us being behind the rest of the world and being oppressed and ruled by other peoples because we have grown distant from our faith. In terms of performing rituals and imposing the orthodox interpretation of Islam on our women and the weak in society, no one can beat us in religiosity. I agree with the downfall in social values professed by the religion of Islam, not only in terms of helping the poor and the needy but in the struggle for their equal rights, egalitarianism, justice and seeking knowledge of this world.
But this is not what the self-styled custodians of Islam around us stand for. For them, it is all about diligently observing routine rituals and staying away from petty personal offences. Personal sin is more of a problem for them than social crime.
When our self-styled custodians of Islam take a high moral ground and try to convince us that we are behind the rest of the world in material terms but we can prevail upon them, both materially and spiritually, if we become more devoutly religious and conservative in our ways of living when it comes to women, they either forget completely or deliberately misguide us about those they wish to prevail upon.
It is the year 2014 and the Pakistani Muslim clergy cannot agree on the sighting of the moon in Peshawar and Lahore to celebrate Eidul Fitr on the same day – and it wishes to dominate the world of those who landed on the moon 45 years ago.
It is not about us being distant from our faith, it is about us not being close to the idea – at all – of acquiring new knowledge, engaging with modern ideas, delving into philosophy and sciences, seriously learning and participating in developing technology (not just using it), making art and literature a major part of our social lives, etc that keeps us behind and we remain dominated by the powerful nations of the world. Those nations are far more sinful than us in ways our self-styled custodians of faith think of us as sinful.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com