Author: Sushant Sareen
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 8, 2008
Recently in Pakistan, explains the onward march
of radical Islam in this first of a series of despatches
If Pakistan is an Islamic country, what is your
objection to imposing shari'ah as is being demanded by the mullahs? As a believer,
why are you afraid of shari'ah law?" I asked a former editor of an Urdu
daily and currently the host of a TV programme. His answer: "As an Indian,
you obviously would like to see Pakistan go into the Stone Age". I persisted:
"Isn't the ideal concept of state in Islam the city state established by
the Prophet in which Islamic law was the basic law?" He replied: "That
would mean going back into the stone age". I pushed a little further and
asked: "Are you willing to say this outside the confines of your office,
and stand up in public for what you believe". He looked horrified and said:
"Do you think I am mad? I won't be alive an hour after I say this in public".
Clearly, the Islamists are winning the ideological debate on the role of Islam
in Pakistan. The liberal, and moderate, sections of Pakistani society are unable
to present any convincing argument against the Islamists. Partly because of
this, and partly as a result of the persecution complex that Muslims around
the world have developed, Pakistani society is getting more and more Islamised
and radicalised.
The signs are everywhere. There are more women
in hijab, more bearded men in the streets, more people going to mosques for
Friday prayers than ever before. Young people, even those educated in the West,
are more religiously inclined than their parents. It is not longer advisable
to shoo away a tablighi (someone who comes to your house to preach), because
he just might belong to some jihadi outfit and could place a mark outside the
house, labelling the residents as non-believers, or worse, apostates.
Many middle-class families, including military
and civilian officers, no longer think twice before sending the children for
a few years to madarsas. For instance, many of the girls in Jamia Hafsa, the
madarsa for women attached to the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, were Army officers'
daughters, who were spending a year there for becoming alima (learned one),
a prestigious degree that qualifies them to give dars (sermons). Parents feel
that giving such education to their children will earn rewards for them in the
afterlife.
But a friend, whose two younger brothers were
educated in a madarsa in their formative years, said that children come out
brutalised, dehumanised and traumatised from these institutions. They are total
misfits in a modern society and even if they are subsequently given the best
of modern education, it takes years to bring some semblance of normality in
their attitude towards women, including their own mothers and sisters. The madarsa
network, however, continues to spread it tentacles all over Pakistan. In Islamabad
alone there are reported to be over 100,000 students in madarsas that are so
strategically located that some journalist friends have expressed the fear that
the day these students want, they can simply take control of the city.
Education minister and former ISI chief, Lt
Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi (not to be mistaken with his predecessor, Javed Nasir,
the jihadi General who brought Pakistan perilously close to being declared a
terrorist state in the early-1990s) is on the frontline of the battle to 'rescue
the soul of Pakistan' from the extremists. Gen Qazi admits that it is a huge
task trying to undo the pernicious trend of mindless Islamisation initiated
by Gen Zia. He accepts that the mushrooming growth of madarsas is partly the
result of the failure of the state to provide quality education.
Gen Qazi has been trying hard to bring about
the much needed reform in the education sector and has brought in an entirely
new school curriculum, one that teaches students about Pakistan's pre-Islamic
past.
Gen Qazi is quite clear that Pakistan has no
choice but to take on the extremists, otherwise he says all will be lost. He
dismissed all talk of Gen Musharraf playing a double-game in the war against
radical Islamists, but admitted that the President was often misled by the politicians
surrounding him, many of whom are reputed to be closet jihadis. He claimed that
every time Gen Musharraf would make up his mind to move against the extremists,
for instance in the Lal Masjid case, politicians would ask him to try and solve
the problem through negotiation and dialogue.
