| 14 March 2004 | Sunday | 22 Muharram 1425 |
A fresh look at the federation
I cannot think of any American president or, for that matter, any head of state or government in western Europe, who sent out messages to his people on Christmas day, applauding the birth of Jesus and affirming what a great blessing for humanity his words and deeds had been. Nor do I remember when it was that a president of Egypt or the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan proclaimed the blissfulness of the month of Ramazan or the glory of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son in the way of the Lord.
Heads of government in Pakistan like to do their own thing in this regard. They want to cause the impression that they are deeply dedicated to the faith in its popular as well as exclusivist versions. They will send out enthusiastic messages to the people on Islamic holidays.
Some of them go to pay homage at the mausoleums of Data Ganj Bakhsh in Lahore and Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan, among other places, and, as a show of reverence, place heavily decorated, and needless to say expensive, coverings on their graves (probably at the public expense). They go repeatedly to perform "Umra," again at the public expense, not so much to get their present slate of sins wiped clean as in the vain hope of rising in popular esteem.
The professional spokesmen for Islam, the ulema, tend to dismiss the ruling politicians' professions of dedication as mere pretence. Their role in the country's politics, for the most part, has been that of the government's critics and opponents. But it so happens that their own ranks include pragmatists many of whom are on the government's payroll, working as "imams" and "khateebs" in mosques that are under its control.
In other words, the government can assemble its own team of the ulema to counter its critics in the Islamic establishment. It was probably to this end that the ministry of religious affairs hosted a convention of the ulema and "mashaikh" in Islamabad on February 18. It paid their travel expenses and installed them in high-class hotels in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The affair is said to have cost several million rupees.
But these gentlemen do not appear to have earned their keep. The convention met at 10.00 in the morning. The first hour was given to introductory and welcoming remarks. Speeches from the floor were allowed for the next two hours during which the speakers asked for improvements in the "zakat" distribution system and a few other matters of minor detail.
No major theological questions, or issues of great moment confronting the Muslim world, were addressed. The participants then heard General Pervez Musharraf, the "guest of honour," who as usual condemned extremism and commended moderation. At 2.00 p.m. the participants headed for lunch and the convention ended.
One may wonder why this convention was held at all. Three possibilities come to mind. It may have been called to provide the general an opportunity to reach the men who lead prayers, address Friday sermons, and presumably have influence with their respective congregations. But judging by the massacres of Shia mourners on the tenth of Muharram, one may say that either these men do not have the influence attributed to them, or that they reject the general's advocacy of moderation and tolerance.
The convention may have been held to show activity on the part of the ministry of religious affairs that, otherwise, does not have much to do. Or, it may have been intended to send the message abroad that quite a few of the ulema in Pakistan support General Musharraf and his pro-American policies. The trouble with this tactic is that its flimsiness is apparent to foreign observers as much as it is to many of us.
It may not be inappropriate at this point to ask who the so-called "mashaikh" are. They did not figure in our political discourse until Ziaul Haq started going out to recruit persons, apart from the professional ulema, who might have some kind of a religious bearing. Among them were the custodians of the shrines and mausoleums of Sufi saints and other Muslim divines. These men, if I am not mistaken, have come to be known as "mashaikh."
They are, for the most part, in the business of profiting from the ordinary people's naiveness; preservers and spreaders of superstition and obscurantism. If General Musharraf is serious about making Pakistan a modern and progressive state, he should quit having truck with them.
Frivolous use of Islam can sometimes be hazardous for a politician's career. Such may have been General Musharraf's action in issuing his Ashura message. It consisted of two incongruous parts. There is first his important but routine exhortation: "Let us pledge to turn Pakistan into an enlightened and moderate Islamic state, which conforms to the modern times and provides an opportunity for all to live on the basis of equality and justice in accordance with the teachings of Islam."
There is nothing here to which anyone can object. The general's objectives are all laudable, assuming that they can be made mutually compatible. Any day of the week would be appropriate for exhorting the people to adopt them. But they have no special connection with the horrendous event that took place at Karbala in 680, AD.
Referring to the day of the great Imam's martyrdom, the general said it was a significant day because on this day the beloved grandson of the Prophet had given his life for the glory of Islam, pointed the way to righteousness, established foundational principles, and set standards essential to the success of any ideology.
What exactly did Husain strive to uphold? There are several versions of the considerations that moved him, some of them designed to diminish his act of supreme sacrifice. Let us leave them alone and focus on the one over which there is no dispute. We take first the Imam's own explanations quoted by Abu Jafar Jarir-al-Tabri in his celebrated "Tarikh" (vol. 4).
In a letter to the people of Kufa, he observed that none could be entitled to lead the community except one who acted according to the Quran, established justice, supported righteousness, and relied on God." In a message to the notables of Basra he wrote: "I call you to the word of God and the Prophet's sunnah, which (under the current ruler) has been set aside, and instead heresy ("bid'at") brought into vogue. If you will listen to me, and follow me, I shall put you on the right path."
In the course of a sermon at a place called Baiza, the noble Imam quoted the Prophet to the effect that the man who does not oppose, by deed or word, a ruler who is cruel, who considers permissible that which God has forbidden, breaks his covenants, violates the Prophet's sunnah, and treats the people arbitrarily, that man would be deemed by God as a doer of the same evil deeds. He went on to say that the current rulers had repudiated God and taken Satan as their guide, and that it was his province, more than that of others, to object to them and their style of rule.
The story of Karbala is not the story of a struggle for power. Whatever some of the earlier considerations may have been, the issue in the final reckoning had been reduced to a simple one: Imam Husain was being forced to declare his acceptance of, and profess allegiance to, an unrighteous ruler. This he declined to do, preferring death to submission. The campaign to coerce him had begun immediately after Yazid's succession to the Umayyad throne. In a letter to Walid bin Atba, the governor of Madina, he instructed the latter to be severe with Husain to obtain his affirmation of allegiance.
An editorial in this newspaper (March 2) states very succinctly the Imam's reasons for refusing allegiance: Yazid had taken power without election by the community's elders; he was unrighteous and profligate. The Prophet's grandson resisted superior force, and died fighting, to establish that the ruler of a Muslim state must be one who had the community's approval and, in addition, the virtues Islam expected of him. The editorial went on to say that "Imam Husain's glorious example must be revived as a guiding motivation for action at this critical hour."
Thanks to Dawn for making this splendid statement. But why is General Musharraf beckoning us to the principles the Imam established and the standards of political propriety he set? The general is evidently unaware that he is inviting trouble for himself by issuing such calls. He came to power, and he retains it, by means that were not in the Constitution's contemplation. Nor can it be claimed that his ruling style and decisions meet the various requirements of Islam.
It may be said that General Musharraf has not forced anyone to profess allegiance to him. Those who did not wish to vote for him in the referendum he had called (by some accounts the vast majority) stayed home unmolested. Members of the Electoral College who did not want to vote confidence in him were left free to abstain. True, but recall that ministers, legislators, and judges, among others, were required to pledge allegiance to the system of governance he had devised and which, by his own fiat, provided for his assumption and retention of the highest offices in the land.
In sending out his Ashura message it was surely not the general's intention to invite opposition to himself. Nor did he mean to affirm that the ARD politicians were justified in demanding his ouster from office. But that is what his message could be interpreted to have implied. It may then be best for him to leave Islam alone. There are occasions when taciturnity on the part of a ruler is much more commendable than loquaciousness.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.
E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net
A fresh look at the federation
In the background of sordid stories of sale of secrets by nuclear technologists, Pakistan has witnessed all kinds of crime known to man committed on its soil in a short span of time. It makes a long catalogue of death and gloom.
The president was lucky to escape two murderous attempts on his life but not that lucky were nine others in his motorcade or passers-by, nor were the Malir parliamentarian Abdullah Murad and four more killed on his funeral day. Then a young jeweller who was shot dead by the bandits in the throbbing heart of commercial Karachi.
Unprecedented in magnitude even for recurring sectarian violence was the massacre of mourners at Quetta. The dead belonged to a minority sect, a minority ethnic group and were poor and peaceful. The suspicion is that the police and para-military force accompanying the procession did not save but kill more of them. With the dead remaining uncounted, some unidentified and belonging to a tribe decimated and made refugee by the Afghan civil war, the poignant wait of their mothers and children to return home may prove endless.
The grief of murder after rape of two girls in rural Karachi, both below 10, may soon fade away but the shame of it will remain etched in the conscience of the people for a long time to come.
This sad litany can go on yet the government keeps assuring that the law and order is normal and improving and the political leaders, in their safety and affluence, keep proclaiming that Pakistan is a fortress of Islam and its ideology, that is the dogma and not the lives of the people, must be protected. The killers, if at all caught, do not live to tell the tale. Suicides and encounters silence them.
In this environment of crime and duplicity, helplessness and uncertainty, pessimism and forebodings, the old sentiments have come up with renewed force for change in the system and its custodians not in government alone but in the society as a whole, not in politics alone but also in the religious order, not just in the institutions of the state but in the structure of the state itself.
The demands cover a wide and radical range. Most are old-standing but articulated more loudly now. Here is a sampling of the extremes of this gamut.
Altaf Husain whose party, the MQM, is a part of the government at the centre and in Sindh wants to change over to the presidential system for only that would safeguard the rights of the provinces and empower the middle class too.
Wali Khan's ANP wants the federal parliament to be supreme and yet holds that for Pakistan to be strong, most powers must vest in the provinces and not in the centre.
Mumtaz Bhutto's Sindh National Front harks back to the Lahore Resolution of 1940 which, amid public roar, declared that the constituent units of the new state would be autonomous and sovereign. The subsequent close-door and restricted deliberations could not have altered that position.
Sardar Ataullah Mengal, breaking a long sullen silence of Baloch chiefs, asks for (Dawn, March 5) a new constituent assembly directly elected by the people in which all provinces are equally represented to make a new constitution in which they all share power equally. He would let the present parliament, assemblies and other organs of the state keep functioning till his proposed assembly adopts a new constitution and goes into dissolution.
All these demands can be ignored, as they have been till now, for they arise from the smaller provinces and that too from the smaller parties. The grievance embodied in all these demands is against the larger political parties which dominate the parliament and against the larger province - Punjab - which dominates the civil and military bureaucracy. The devolution plan has given a sharper edge to this grievance.
The larger, or mainstream, parties despite their competing interests and ambitions of their leaders do not ask for, in fact resist, any basic change in the form of government, nor in the present distribution of powers and subjects between the centre and the provinces. It is equally true of Punjab which being larger than the other three provinces put together, in any case, gets its voice heard.
The nationalist leaders like Ataullah Mengal and Mumtaz Bhutto, thus, cannot be faulted for their lament that in an arrangement where regional demands or aspirations find no chance of expression and fulfilment either at the national plane or even in the provinces cannot be called a true federation. Equal representation of the provinces in the Senate is of no consequence as it only reflects the numerical strength of the parties and the provinces in the National Assembly and, further, the legislative powers of the Senate are limited and it has no say at all in the executive functions.
It will be imprudent to continue to ignore the demand of the regional parties for greater influence in the affairs of their own provinces and larger representation in the federation on the ground that the majority view prevails at both levels. East Pakistan may have been a distant and altogether a different problem but general and seething disgruntlement in Sindh - both rural and urban - in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan has been erupting into minor insurgencies in the past. The regional environment and foreign intervention can now blow them up or drive them underground.
A repeat of the mistake or cavalier fire-display of the kind which caused the death of eleven tribesmen in South Waziristan can trigger it all off. The trouble may be caused by a few but the sentiment behind it would be shared by many.
The Musharraf government needs to pay heed to what the nationalist leaders and clan chiefs of Balochistan, Frontier and Sindh have to say for a more pressing and selfish reason. Unlike the religious parties they would truly help the government in keeping the Taliban and their allied fanatics at bay which the US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz's latest statement suggests the MMA religious alliance isn't doing despite its high stake in the current power arrangement.
The nationalist groups would also lend greater support to President Musharraf's Kashmir, India and economic policies than is lent by most elements and individuals in the coalition he has put together to rule. He should cherish it.
If going out to seek the support of the nationalist leaders is too long a first jump, the president could open a window on the political and economic imperatives outside his charmed circle by hearing what the come-together PPP founders (Mustafa Jatoi, Hafeez Pirzada, Mubashir Hasan, Mustafa Khar and others) or the like-minded veterans of the middle road, the former Speaker Illahi Bakhsh Soomro recently assembled, have to say on his internal politics and external relations. Their own political career having all but ended they are expected to possess the necessary gravitas to advise him on how best the diverse political forces can be balanced to manage the country.
Those riding his powerwagon already or tempted to jump onto it along the way wish and ask for no change because for most of them it is the last ride.
The chief of the Q-League who has balanced his political career on the military and Islam of Ziaul Haq's brand and is now Musharraf's political anchor best represents this dogged resistance to change. He opposes even a review of the repressive and discriminatory laws Zia enacted, for it would open a Pandora's box and harm Islam too. That leaves us where we are.