“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” —Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

MUCH is said almost every day about the origins of extremism. In my thinking it is a state of mind in which a person feels that opinions other than his own are not only wrong but wicked, and that they deserve to be eliminated. It is my intention today to look at extremism and the related resort to coercion in mediaeval Europe sponsored by the Church of Rome.

The ruling elite in most places have generally tended to regard uniformity of opinion on important issues as a promoter, and diversity as a disrupter, of unity and cohesion in both the community of believers and the state. Yet, uniformity was exceedingly short-lived, if ever it was attained, and differences over the meaning and implementation of a doctrine arose soon after the passing away of its authors. The contention between the proponents of uniformity and those of the right to have one’s own mind has thus been inescapable. Secular as well as ecclesiastical authorities have at times moved to suppress dissidents, and the two have often acted in unison; the Church turning the deviant over to the state for administering punishment.

Departure from the official version of dogma, and offerings of its innovative interpretations, were called heresy that invited penalties the severity of which varied according to its graveness. During the first three centuries of the Christian era, heretics were excommunicated and were re-admitted to the Church only after they had publicly recanted their wrong opinions to the satisfaction of its high officials. Having embraced Christianity, Constantine I enforced the Pope’s decisions on doctrinal issues and banished dissident bishops and laity. Theodosius adopted Christianity as the empire’s official religion, and heresy began to be treated as a crime against the state. In 385, during the reign of Emperor Maximus, a dissenter named Priscillien and six of his followers were executed.

It may be appropriate to say a word or two about some of the more notable heresies that in the Church’s view deserved to be punished. There were, for instance, the Cathars who believed in two creators: the pure God who had created the heavens and the spiritual realm, and then the evil god who had created things that were physical and temporal. God of the Old Testament, they said, was the evil god. They maintained that Jesus had been all spirit, not a human of flesh and blood. The rejected the notion of his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection. They also accepted the idea of reincarnation. They advocated a life of asceticism and celibacy.

The Waldensians lived the life of a medicant. They claimed to be following Jesus who had told a wealthy man, seeking his guidance to “go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.” They rejected several Catholic tenets, such as priesthood, indulgences, purgatory, transubstantiation (act of changing into another substance), and praying to saints.

Knights Templar, founded in 1119 to protect and aid Christian pilgrims to holy places in Palestine, were warrior monks more than 20,000 of whom were killed in the crusades. They held themselves answerable to the Pope but denied the authority of all other ecclesiastical offices. Many of them became bankers. King Philip IV of France, heavily in debt to their temple in Paris, accused them of heresy (denying Christ, insulting the cross, worshipping a monster head) in the early 13th century. Their Grand Master, Jaques de Moley, was burned at the stake in 1314.

The Fraticelli, who preached poverty as a way to human perfection, held that Jesus and the Apostles owned no property. Some of them were burned at the stake in 1318, and in 1426, 31 villages in southern France that harboured them were wiped out.

Jews and Muslims as such, and “Conversos” and “Moriscos” (Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity) in Spain were accused of secretly keeping their original faith, and many of then were imprisoned, banished, or killed. We will say more about them shortly.

Certain eminent individuals, accused of heresy and punished, may be mentioned in passing. John Huss (1369-1415), a Bohemian reformer and founder of the Moravian church, questioned the notions of papal infallibility, purgatory, transubstantiation, and the efficacy of confession. He believed that Christ, not the Pope, was head of the Church, and that the Bible was the ultimate spiritual authority. He was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake.

Joan of Arc (1412-1431) saw visions of Archangel Michael and Saints Catherine and Margaret, who instructed her to liberate France from English dominion. She raised a small army with the encouragement of Charles VII, defeated the English in several battles, and liberated Orleans and a number of other towns. In 1430, some Burgundians captured her and sold her to the English, who prevailed upon the French Inquisition to try her for heresy and sorcery. She was burned at the stake.

Following the Copernican system, and contrary to the Christian doctrine, Galileo held that the sun was the centre of the universe. A committee of consultants appointed by the Inquisition reported that his theory was a heresy. Under instructions from Pope Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine warned him to stop discussing it. In 1624 the Pope allowed Galileo to write about his theory but only as a mathematical proposition. He did not adhere to this limitation. Upon the appearance of his major work, ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’, in which he further elaborated his theories, he was summoned to face the Inquisition in Rome in 1633. He was found guilty and sentenced to confinement in his home near Florence where he died in 1642.

Persecutors of the heretics found authority for their pursuit in the scriptures. They pointed to an edict in the Old Testament, which said that if a person claiming to be a prophet invited the people to follow “other gods,” he must be put to death even if he were one’s son, brother, or a close friend. If a whole town had become heretic, it too should be destroyed and its people put to the sword. In his celebrated work, ‘Summa Theologica’, Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) endorsed extermination of heretics if they held on to their wrong opinions even after an admonition or two.

Pope Lucius III formally created the Inquisition as an ongoing operation towards the end of the twelfth century to identify and try heretics. Tribunals, each consisting of two or more inquisitors (usually accomplished theologians or jurists), aided by secretarial and investigative staff, were set up in larger towns in several European kingdoms. They visited smaller places on “circuit duty,” as it were. Upon arrival they allowed the townsfolk a grace period of 30 days during which persons holding dubious beliefs could come up and confess, whereupon they would be forgiven after a mild reprimand. The tribunal also invited the residents to report the names of known or suspected heretics under the cover of secrecy. (This procedure generated distrust and fear of relatives, friends, and neighbours.)

Those so accused were summoned, investigated, interrogated, and judged. They were put in prison immediately following the tribunal’s determination that the accusations against them merited investigation. They remained there during the currency of their trial, which in some cases extended to several years. Their properties were sequestered and the proceeds used to pay for their food while in prison and to meet the tribunal’s operating expenses. No wonder then that in the great majority of cases they were wealthy.

The names of their accusers, and often even the specifics of the accusation, were not revealed to the accused. It was not normal practice to allow them to produce witnesses in their own behalf. In some jurisdictions they were allowed to be represented by counsel, but if convicted the counsel got the same punishment as the accused on the ground that he had assisted a heretic. In many cases, confessions were obtained by putting the accused through severe torture. Convictions were the norm. acquittals were extremely rare, and punishment ranged from public recanting to excommunication, imprisonment, confiscation of property, flogging, or burning to death at the stake. (The first known burnings were ordered by Robert the Pious, king of France, in 1022.)

Several anti-heresy campaigns were initiated at various times after 1184, the most notorious of them being the Spanish Inquisition, which King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Castile set up in 1478 with the approval of Pope Sixtus IV. It was aimed at Jews and the “conversos” (referred to above). But note that a wave of hostility towards the Jews had begun in Spain even earlier. Hundreds of them were killed in Seville, Cardoba, Valencia, and Barcelona in 1391 and their temples were destroyed. Between 1480 and 1539 about 2,000 “conversos” were executed. On March 31, 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella issued a decree asking the Jews either to convert to Christianity or leave the country within six months. They could not sell their land or take gold and silver coins with them. Estimates of the number who left or converted vary greatly.

During a period of four years (1558-1562), approximately 100 Protestants (mostly Lutherans) were executed. Persecution (deportations and executions) of the “Moriscos” became severe after 1570. According to one estimate, 82 per cent of the trials before the tribunal in Granada targeted them. On April 4, 1609 Philip III ordered the expulsion of several hundred thousand “Moriscos” from the country.

Between 1560 and 1700 more than 49,000 inquisition trials were held. The more notable of the groups involved were as follows: “Conversos” (Jewish): 5,007; Moriscos (Muslim): 11,311; Lutherans: 3,499; “Superstitious” (those accused of witchcraft): 3,750; other heretics: 14,319; Bigamists: 2,790’ opponents of the Inquisition: 3,954, among others.

The above survey shows that extremism and the accompanying violence against dissidents went on in western societies for many centuries, beginning soon after the advent of Christianity. These dispositions are by no means exclusively characteristic of any particular group in the Muslim world.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US. Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

WHEREVER in the world violence and insurrection are endemic — and it is mostly in Muslim communities be it the Kashmiris, Palestinians, Chechens or the Moros of the Philippines — Pakistan’s plea to the governments concerned is to address the root cause and not use force to quell the unrest.

Tragically, Pakistan itself did not follow the same principle in its eastern wing before the debacle of 1971, nor is it doing so now in Balochistan.

A comparison of the current situation in Balochistan with that of East Pakistan in the 1970s is, indeed, inappropriate and infuriates our military strategists and Islamic ideologists. But such a comparison is hard to resist and is being made every day. The people who make this comparison may not matter very much but they should not be dismissed as alarmists either. The last to be dismissed should be Nawab Khair Bux Marri, the most senior and venerable of the Baloch sardars. He has broken his long silence only to declare that Balochistan is an independent territory; it never was nor is now a part of Pakistan.

The Marri sardar’s statement should cause greater worry to the generals and ideologists than the revolt of the Bugtis and the death of their leader in the mountains while fighting against the troops and gunships. It was a mistake to assume that the oppressed Bugti folk would celebrate the Nawab’s death and that people elsewhere would initially protest but then acquiesce. It would be a bigger mistake if the authorities were to treat the Marri leader’s denunciation of Pakistan as the ravings of a senile man. That he may be, but if there was no movement for an independent Balochistan previously, Akbar Bugti’s death and Khair Bux Marri’s declaration have now given birth to it.

The simmering discontent in Balochistan has been erupting often enough into trouble that has caused the army to intervene. But it has never been as ominous as now. Leaving aside the justification for the intensity of the current military — or call it paramilitary — campaign and reactions to it, the central fact that must not be overlooked is that although Balochistan has economic grievances its aspirations are political. The national campaign should be to limit them to autonomy.

But trust our rulers to trivialise the reality in the midst of a grave crisis. According to General Shaukat Sultan, who speaks both for the president and the army, autonomy to the Baloch signifies little more than an expeditious and fair implementation of the National Finance Commission award decreed this time round by the president as the provinces themselves could not agree upon it. He, thus, seems to be suggesting that the trouble wouldn’t have arisen, or having arisen should die down, if Balochistan’s share in the central pool of divisible taxes were to be raised by a percentage point or two. One hopes that this is Shaukat Sultan’s personal opinion and not a statement of official policy. It is naive to the extreme.

The government agreeing to abolish the Constitution’s Concurrent List (a commitment fulfilled 23 years too late) may give some additional income to the larger provinces but none to Balochistan. The subjects proposed to be transferred to the provinces are inconsequential from the viewpoint of autonomy. It is a proverbial case of too little too late. Put in a nutshell what the Baloch nationalist youth and tribal chiefs equally resent is the total control of the central authority — be it elective, bureaucratic or military — over their politics and gas fields.

In the existing set-up the chief minister is hardly considered a Baloch and the governor is not only not a Baloch but a political non-entity even in his home province. Neither appears to have played a part in preventing the current trouble or dealing with it once it arose and intensified. Below them, the non-Baloch legislators and clerics dominate the scene.

Then, when Gen Musharraf decided to choose his first prime minister from Balochistan why did it have to be Zafarullah Jamali and not, say, Ataullah Mengal? Jamali’s only claim to that office could be what he himself never fails to mention — that he had acted as Mr Jinnah’s bodyguard when he visited Balochistan. A Baloch prime minister of higher standing in the tribal hierarchy would have taken timely measures to avert the disaster that has now overtaken the province.

In addition, he would have placed the office of the prime minister on a footing where its incumbent in the new system would feel accountable more to parliament than to the president. But President Musharraf wanted to remain the boss. Jamali and his short-term successor Chaudhry Shujaat thought of him as one. Others who could have handled the crisis without calling out the army, perhaps, wouldn’t have.

When it comes to constitutional changes for fiscal autonomy, Balochistan’s interest lies primarily in just one amendment and that is to bring natural gas under provincial control and recognise the tribal and land-owning rights in the income it generates. This expectation doesn’t amount to treason. It is a practice in many countries. Sindh should be supporting it because it now produces more gas than Balochistan does. Punjab and the NWFP would be wary — their industries and households are run by the gas flowing from the two provinces.

If transferring the control of oil and gas to the provinces is economically not feasible, the present arrangement in which exploration, production, distribution and marketing of these resources are under federal control is politically untenable. A compromise between the two extremes can be found through dialogue, and not by sabotage by the sardars or bombings by the government. Gas deposits in the Marri area, much larger than those in Sui, are waiting for such a compromise if they are to be tapped. The hypocrites in government and romantic dreamers among the Baloch must not stand in the way of this compromise.

But this talk about the writ of the state is ludicrous. Does it run in Karachi or in Thar or in Tirah (bordering Peshawar) or in Gujrat that it should run in the rugged Marri-Bugti mountains? The writ that prevails all over is of persons and factions. To single out the secular Baloch for punishment is to strengthen the extremists. That is not what Gen Musharraf wants, but, ironically, that is what he has been doing all along.