The clerics and the warped reactionary mindset empowered by the Zia dictatorship never did go away. The truth is, things in this respect, actually got worse after Zia’s demise in August 1988.
What he left behind was a society, polity, state and governments that discovered how exploiting religion in Pakistan (even in the most cynical and hypocritical manner) can be the harbinger of quick political, social and, on a personal level, economic benefits.
Nobody was interested in the more spiritual aspects of faith.
So, the ‘Ziaist’ legacy lingered on in one shape or the other across the so-called democratic governments of the PPP and the PML-N and even during the Musharraf dictatorship, which posed as ‘moderate’ and ‘enlightened.’
Sometimes, I get exhausted mentioning this over and over again in my columns, so much so that at times, I just want to start writing fiction novels about other beings on other planets.
But I’ve never been a huge fiction fan. As a kid, yes, I enjoyed the usual stuff, but as an adult, apart from Gabriel García Márquez and a few others, not much has interested me. But I remain to be a big science-fiction buff, and still manage to go through a sci-fi novel or two.
As to when did I know I wanted to be a writer, well, I think at school because there were just three things I enjoyed doing there: Sports, a bit of painting and lots of writing. Writing was and still is a rather cathartic experience for me.
My journalist father was the prime influence. Who else?
Hunter S. Thompson, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs when I was in my 20s. Ibn-e-Safi, of course. Also Arthur C. Clarke and Gabriel García Márquez.
But the real inspiration has come from scholars and writers whose writings have helped shape my understanding of history, politics and religion. People like Ayesha Jalal, Dr. Mubarek Ali, Patricia Crone, K K Aziz and a few others.
And no, I’ve never been much of a Chomsky fan.
From being a political reporter and then a music critic in the 1990s, I have evolved into becoming - what Dawn newspaper (my main base of operations for a decade now) - labelled (for me) - a ‘cultural critic’ and a satirist too.
I enjoy being both, even though satire comes more easily to me than doing those lengthy socio-political pieces that I bombard poor Dawn.com with because the latter requires a lot of painstaking work.
I say this because there are always many sides and versions of what are peddled as history in Pakistan. So one has to be careful about putting down something and then explain that something to be fact.
Writing historical pieces is tricky business in a country like Pakistan where whole generations have grown up stuffed with myths and distortions.
Writing satire is easier because many popular folk in Pakistan eventually end up becoming and sounding like unintentional parodies of themselves.
But I do not satirise them by putting myself on some higher moral or intellectual ground, because I also satirise myself. When I’m doing a satirical piece, I feel I am also satirising myself as a writer, or an image of myself that some readers have cultivated in their minds.
In 2012, I was invited by the Pakistani student body to SOAS (London) for a talk. During the talk I was constantly blitzed by questions about why my generation of ‘revolutionaries’ could not topple Zia and uproot his influence in the 1980s.
I asked one angry lad there that whether he wanted me to answer this question as a cultural critic or a satirist? The student had the sense of humour to laugh and consequently calm down a bit.
Then there was that ultimate question that keeps popping up till even today: Am I still a Marxist?
Yes, in a way, I still consider myself to be a Marxist, but only on an academic level. What I mean to say is that I still use certain academic Marxian tools to analyse social and political events and issues. But I think more than anything, I’ve always been a social democrat. Or a Muslim Nationalist inspired by the likes of Jinnah. And I haven’t changed much, really. Surprised?
I'm talking about modern Muslim Nationalism that once attempted to trigger a renaissance in the Muslim world by updating and unearthing the rich political, intellectual and artistic traditions of the Muslims. This nationalism also got into a battle with religious obscurantism that was not only backed by decadent Muslim political and economic elites, but by their colonial backers as well.
I was a PPP voter between 1988 and 2008, but not to the extent of undermining the importance of political players and parties that are playing an equally important role in keeping Pakistan on the right sides of history.
To me, parties like the PPP, ANP and MQM, with all their flaws and idiosyncrasies, are still vital to keep the core of the Pakistani state and society from being completely overwhelmed by reactionary forces.
And, by the way, I’m also a big fan of the current COAS, General Raheel Sharif! A thinking man’s soldier. A decisive man and the main engine behind Pakistan’s latest urge and action to save itself from falling completely into the laps of the anarchic and extremist ogres that we have been breeding and tolerating for decades.
What has stung the most is our failure to understand how the state’s experiments in the context of a concocted and non-organic ideology has contributed the most in whatever that has gone down in this country in terms of faith-based violence and the ever increasing episodes of bigotry.
It will throw Pakistan further on the wrong side of history. This must stop.
It’s amazing that even in the 21st Century, many Pakistanis still think progressive ideals to mean what the religious parties have told them. For example, many people look at me oddly when I explain myself to be a progressive Muslim. They ask, how can that be? How can a Muslim be progressive? My question is, how can he not?
What became to be known as Political Islam is a recent phenomenon. It’s a 20th Century construct that turned faith into a political ideology. Politics is amoral, faith is not. How can the two be mixed? The mind boggles.
The Muslim Holy Book is a moral guide. It’s not a political manifesto. It gives one pointers and advice on how to live a righteous life, how to use the intellect (aqal) to progress as a human being, as well as a society, and to also appreciate the creations of the Almighty through gaining knowledge about these surroundings.
I have read the Book over and over and over again, in Urdu and English, and I have my own understanding of it. I trust this understanding. But I just cannot suggest that my interpretation and understanding of it is better than someone else’s (and vice versa).
The problem in Pakistan, ever since the Zia years, has been that anyone who does not wear his or her faith on their sleeve, or for that matter, across their faces and on their heads, is automatically judged as being irreligious.
Isn’t the Almighty the final judge of that?
I've never been good at ritualism. To me, giving charity in the name of the Almighty is the greatest form of worship.
I did not discover God through the sermons of a mullah or through the rhetoric of some religious party. My understanding of Him is an ongoing process. I've continued to discover Him through reading and rereading the Muslim Holy Scriptures and through the various commentaries on the book authored by humanists and not ideologues.
And, here lies the key, I believe.
The Almighty is a perfect entity who created a fluent universe because an evolving universe encourages humans to use their intellect and intuition to advance as both rational and spiritual beings. Muslims were once very good at doing this.
To revive this tradition we need a scientific, intellectual, artistic and spiritual revolution. Not a political one. Politics is inherently amoral.
But, you see, that’s my understanding of my faith as a Muslim and of God. I cannot and refuse to impose it on any other person.
But this is personal stuff, right? What about the other more public musings of a cultural critic?
The past ended for me with the death of my father in 2009 with whom I was very close. The future began with the birth of my nephews and nieces.
What kind of a Pakistan would I like to see them grow up in? What kind of a Pakistan should develop for a whole generation of young Pakistanis who are growing up in an environment of fear and blood-soaked madness?
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Being a ‘progressive Muslim nationalist’ the answer to such questions for me goes back to the man who created Pakistan: Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Ever since Jinnah’s death in 1948, we have been gazing intensely at our navels to figure out what the founder of Pakistan said and/or didn’t say. Many of us have our own set of quotes of a man who passed away just one year after the creation of this country.
For years I have been going through Jinnah’s numerous speeches that he delivered from 1946 until his unfortunate death in 1948.
It seems Jinnah was everything to everyone — a progressive nationalist to the liberals; a faithful religionist to the religious right; a middle-of-the-road Muslim statesman to the moderates.
But the truth, to me, is that first and foremost he was a sharp politician. And like all good politicians, Jinnah was a pragmatist, adjusting his words according to his immediate surroundings.
Also read: The deleted bits from Fatima Jinnah's 'My Brother'
For example, in multicultural Karachi he would insist that the state of Pakistan was to be progressive and democratic.
In Lahore, the scene of vicious Hindu-Muslim riots, and where many clerics had accused him of being a ‘fake Muslim leader’ in 1946, he would take a moderate view, suggesting that the South Asian Muslims had a rich cultural and political history that Pakistan ought to match.
In Peshawar, where Jinnah’s Muslim League had struggled to remain afloat in the face of the challenge posed by the left-leaning Pashtun nationalists, Jinnah appealed to the sensibilities of the conservative tribes and clerics, opposed to the nationalists.
While talking to the Western press he reminded the world that Pakistan was not to be a theological state, but a democratic Muslim-majority state where all citizens, no matter what their religion or ethnicity, would be given equal rights.
Ever since Pakistan’s inception more than six decades ago, its politicians, military dictators and intellectuals from all sides of the ideological divide have talked about working towards building a ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’.
The liberals and even many moderates have continued to present Jinnah as a progressive Muslim and an unbending democrat. The mainstream religious right and the conservative lot have been hailing him as a champion of ‘Muslim democracy’ and a modern interpreter of an Islamic state.
Left-leaning parties like the populist PPP, and other such groups have been vowing to create a Pakistan based on the progressive vision of Jinnah.
Religious parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), on the other hand, want a Pakistan based on Jinnah’s desire and commitment of creating a country that would become a bastion and fortress of Islam.
Populist conservative parties such as PML-N, and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), interpret Jinnah’s vision as something to do with Pakistan being an ‘Islamic Welfare State’.
Then, there have been military dictators as well, all of whom claimed to be following the course laid down by Jinnah.
The secular Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69) understood Jinnah as a progressive Muslim statesman.
The Ziaul Haq dictatorship (1977-88) claimed Jinnah to be a fearless Islamic figurehead.
The Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008) re-figured Jinnah’s image and made him to be a ‘moderate’ again.
But, what exactly was Jinnah’s Pakistan?
This question usually bags numerous differing answers.
No party, military dictator, historian or intellectual trying to address this question has been able to come up with an answer that has enjoyed widespread acceptance.
Jinnah died just too soon after the country’s creation for one to convincingly judge exactly what sort of a Pakistan he really wanted.
Also read: If Jinnah had lived
Between Pakistan’s creation in August 1947 until his death one year later, Jinnah usually spoke according to the nature of his audiences.
He was still in the process of testing the waters and formulating a cohesive idea about Pakistani nationhood when he died. That’s why all that emerged after his demise are just angled interpretations, claims and counter-claims by politicians, ideologues and historians about who Jinnah was and what he wanted.
There is nothing wrong in studying history and, especially, learning from it. But on most occasions than not, this is not really what we have been doing.
We only highlight things about our collective past that are according to what we like and imagine, while shunning, repressing and even decrying those bits that contradict our current stances.
That’s how Jinnah has been seen as well.
Liberals will mark out the progressive views of Jinnah, whereas the conservatives will loudly quote from books that only mention quotes of Jinnah in which he comes across as a faithful conservative.
Today’s existentialist battles in Pakistan are being fought with what the founders of Pakistan said or didn’t say many years ago; a battle of existence that is threatening our future like never before. But it is a battle lacking the desire to construct a vision or a discourse of what is to be done today and tomorrow.
Even while discussing possible future courses, we keep slipping backwards, quoting who said what in the past to supplement our view of Pakistan so it can dominate over the views of our ideological opponents. We seem to be stuck in our own imagined views of history.
With so many Jinnahs floating around, the time has come to create a Jinnah of the future.
By this, I mean a well thought-out, debated and consensual vision of a Pakistan based on today’s realities.
Also read: Refiguring Jinnah
Jinnah should be accepted as a pragmatist who, today, would have addressed issues like extremist violence and acts of bigotry not as an ideologue, but as a pragmatic statesman who would know that such issues were retarding the country’s economic, cultural and political evolution.
He would have understood that the rapid proliferation of conflicting ideas in Pakistan in the last three decades or so have made the bulk of the society increasingly reactive.
The pragmatic Jinnah would not sit on the fence like most of today’s ‘moderates’, and call it a middle-ground.
He would assertively create a real middle-ground between religious conservatism and liberalism, for which he would not hesitate to alter, modify and reform a number of things.
Jinnah would not do this out of any ideological compulsion.
He would do so for the survival of Pakistan — a country torn and plagued by religious and ethnic strife that is bringing its economics and society to a standstill.
The pragmatic Jinnah would try to find unity in diversity and draw from each ethnic culture, as well as from Muslim sects and sub-sects and minority religious groups in the country, choosing the best that they have to offer to Pakistan in developing its economy, its arts, its sports and its reputation as a modern, thriving and vibrant Muslim nation-state.
It’s about time we stop studying and propagating Jinnah as an ideologue. He was an astute and enlightened pragmatist, and pragmatism demands we begin to see him in this light and do today what any enlightened and astute pragmatist would do for the country that he so painstakingly created.