In a recent well-attended convention, the Ulema and Mashaikh were urged by President of Pakistan to help the society get rid of the religious extremism.
It is generally believed by some that it is a small minority of extremists that gives rise to "misperceptions" about extremism in the country.
Even if the extremists comprise only a small percentage of the population, their impact on the country's society, economy, and polity remains huge.
So, even though the extremists may comprise a minority, whether extremism is a matter of perceptions or reality is not even moot. The death toll from the sectarian violence alone runs in hundreds in addition to extreme actions against other religious minorities and terror attacks.
This uncalled for violence that the state authorities are unable to preempt or prevent has a dampening effect on the society's morale, efficiency, and productivity in general and on the investment climate in particular.
Two of Pakistan's provinces would be moving back in time as the sectarian extremism grows in one and attention is displaced in both from serious and substantive policy issues to issues of form that are impacting activity and dissipating productive energy there already.
This over-emphasis on form is an outgrowth of extremist thought now being translated into action per force if not by violence alone. The expediency-driven American silence on some of these developments is no certification of an absence of extremist thought gaining ground in the country.
Since the country's economy is actually affected, it is important for the government to study the socio-economic and political factors that together give rise to domestic extremist elements that could be networking with the transnational extremist forces for financial as well as organizational resources.
And, even though the transnational extremist forces may have been an outcome of the injustices in Palestine and Kashmir, the domestic extremists are creating an actual impact on the ground in the country which cannot be dismissed as imperceptible.
In order to study this reality, the mutual causation between economic factors and domestic extremism requires a closer look as this is more an issue of domestic supply of extremist forces rather than the demand for the same that emanates from the global injustices. For, domestic extremism impacts the domestic socio-economic scene adversely.
So, a review of the trend of sectarian/religious killings and the law and order situation with their resultant impact on the country's economy and investment climate is a study more in the supply of extremist forces rather than in a demand for the same.
For as long as the informal "armies" provide alternative remunerative engagement to the deprived and the unemployed, these will continue to swell thus exacerbating sectarian and religious intolerance in the country.
It is a growing trend amongst the poor with large families that they tend to pass on a son or two to religious seminaries. The twin driving force comprises financial and religious gains that primarily impel the poor parents in the above direction.
This is in addition to the positive fallout of education that the off springs hope to benefit from as well. Parents believe that the son/s is now headed towards respectable gainful employment as a mosque Imam.
While the financial gain may be gaining primacy in some cases, some others are driven primarily by religious "spiritual" considerations that are not devoid of financial gain, either.
Jessica Stern (2000) supports the latter view in her well-researched paper, "Pakistan's Jihad Culture." She writes that in addition to the celebrity status acquired by a "martyred" young man's family, immense financial assistance also flows in.
According to Stern, millions of rupees have been dispensed to the families of martyrs in addition to paying off their loans, setting them up in businesses, helping them with housing, and providing service to families through the foundations.
Stern writes, "In poor families with large numbers of children, a mother can assume that some of her children will die of disease if not in war. This apparently makes it easier to donate a son to what she feels is a just and holy cause."
However, even if the underlying motive is "spiritual," one would like to know if spiritual considerations by themselves are compelling enough to "donate" a son unless these are coupled with financial inducements. The very offering of substantial financial reward displays an interaction of the two considerations-financial and spiritual in making this key decision.
The financial factor remains dominant as, ala Stern, wealthy Pakistani families would much rather donate money rather than sons to the "cause." This is the predominant factor behind the microeconomic supply curve of potential extremists which supply cannot possibly be extracted if the Pakistanis are prosperous enough to want to retain their sons within the families. Their spiritualism would then find vent mainly in the form of monetary donations for the "causes" they may choose to support alternatively.
It, therefore, needs to be ascertained whether madressahs' reform is all there is to reining in extremism or a broader effort is required to check the supply of potential extremists to the centres which the government now almost accepts as avenues for the deprived of the society who cannot be channelized into the formal economy due to its inherent weaknesses and its lack of capacity to absorb the country's talented youth.
This approach towards the resolution of the issue of extremism requires a transformational change in the extreme world view of some to curb extremism when it is their extreme outlook that remains at the heart of their extremist belief system they keep passing on to the various generations of students.
How this transformation can be brought about in the absence of inter-faith and intra-faith dialogues is not known for it is certainly not a function of merely teaching mathematics and sciences either to the students or to those who coach in these madressahs as it is the core faculty there who will be developing the values of the students irrespective of the curricula.
Some of the most hard-hitting extremists of the world have been to the centres of learning in the West which did not change their core values at all. While efforts to have the extremist outlook moderated somehow would still be welcome, it is on the socio-economic front that a frontal attack is required if the country is to be rid of extremist sentiment and actions that feed back into the country's socio-economic system thus adding to and intensifying the various factors that keep the society and the economy hemmed in already.
"Reform" of madressahs may, therefore, be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for moderating the extremist forces. For, moderation first begins from the household which entity needs to be developed towards respectable mutual interdependence with other elements of the society that alone can provide them with the independence and freedom they need to make their choices.
This freedom would also entail freedom from compulsions to send their male children to seminaries that provide them with board and lodge along with religious education and a stipend.
Unless the opportunity cost of this avenue is raised, the supply towards such training grounds will be on the rise that will feed into extremism that the policy makers think they can check by simply making a case for moderation.
The madressahs have attracted such large numbers by now that their growth is promotional in itself to the extent that even some middle classes with a religious orientation have started tapping into their services for some of their wards.
The sources of the above extremist trend can, therefore, be traced directly to poverty and deprivation experienced by a large segment of the population. Currently proposed solutions include education, microfinance, and investment growth. Each one of these alternatives requires a brief recapitulation.
In the case of education, emphasis is on supplying the same when the deprived do not throw up commensurate demand for it due to their high opportunity cost associated with education.
Their children would much rather generate income for the family than sit in a school and that too in an underfed undernourished state which by itself would adversely affect their learning capacity rendering their school attendance counterproductive.
Even if they respond and go past the primary school level, they could not be equipped enough to dilute the extremist thought due to the lack of adequately remunerative employment opportunities which situation would keep them entangled in an extremist social web.
To believe that the micro finance would help them extricate from this social web is also overly optimistic. For, the micro finance would barely help them get by without raising their incomes to a level that would breach the threshold beyond which the opportunity cost of madressahs education is raised enough to discourage the supply to seminaries.
The finance ministry is perennially optimistic about their growth-and investment-oriented polices that cannot possibly generate employment at a rate faster than the labour force growth rate due to their high capital-and technology-intensity which is labour-saving.
Clearly, fundamental land and agricultural reforms are required to productively engage the poor in their place of residence which, through tractive effort, will lead to both agricultural and industrial development that will also be inclusive.
Re distributive policy measures and appropriate engagement of asset owners to unleash their creative enterprise as well can together bring distributive justice enjoined by religion.
Along with the issue of asset concentration, the issue of religious monopoly too, therefore, needs to be addressed for not only reining in extremism but to actually bring about economic prosperity entirely possible if religion is followed more in substance and less in form.
Deconcentration of religion is, therefore, imperative by encouraging people to learn and know about what religion enjoins and what is meant by a just and equitous socio-economic order that alone is a hallmark of an Islamic society.
For those who emphasize language barriers towards a true understanding of Islam are actually erecting barriers to change and in support of status quo as religion is entirely possible to understand through those who not only are multilingual but through the lives of those who lived religion.
Unless this deconcentration of religion is brought about, world views will be promoted that we will keep calling "extremist" when the actual extreme view is a true Kingdom of God whose hallmark is justice, equity, fair play, and a musaawat-based socio-economic order for the benefit of all alike and not one for the rich and another one for the poor.
It is, therefore, very important to turn the meaning of "extremism" on the head by moving towards that extreme socio-economic order whose revolutionary introduction was the privilege of Islam but was lost on the Ummah over time.
By imbibing these lofty principles of Islam can we not only attain economic prosperity but can also get rid of the violence we so erroneously call "extremism."
These principles we will, however, not know if we keep religion confined to madressahs to be interpreted by a few for the many who need to strive to know, learn, and act upon it themselves in addition to impelling action on these lines on all fronts social, economic, and political. The issues we call "extremism," that have displaced the real socio-economic issues, will then fall by the wayside like shattered idols.
