INDIVIDUALS can be wise and foolish, good and bad, in different respects and in varying measure. They can likewise be rational, non-rational, and even irrational in certain situations.

The same holds, I think, for nations. We in Pakistan have an inclination that may not be quite as common in most other countries. That is prejudice rooted in extremist versions of religious persuasions. Translating into militancy and violence, it is wrecking law and order, peace and stability in this country and beyond.

I do not deny that certain types of prejudice may work as energising and constructive forces in individual and societal development. Let us take the case of a wealthy man who thinks his late mother was the greatest woman that ever lived, and he builds a hospital to honour her memory, where the poor are provided free medical care. He was evidently prejudiced in favour of his mother. But this was a prejudice that did his community a lot of good and it did nobody any harm. The same may be said of certain non-rational motivations. Passion, as distinguished from reason, has often wrought radical change that improved the human condition and made lives more fulfilling.

But then there are prejudices and non-rational motivations that lead persons to hate others and seek to destroy them. It is this frame of mind that produces militancy and violence and uproots the social order.

The distinction between ‘we’ and ‘they’ has worked in different ways. Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics did not intermarry and many of them still don’t. They and some other ethnic groups — the Irish and the Italians, Latinos, persons of Chinese and Japanese origins — lived in their separate and almost exclusive neighbourhoods in American cities. Hindus and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent did the same and most of them did not even eat food coming out of each others’ kitchens. They discriminated against one another in areas of employment, housing and distribution of various social amenities.

It was not their normal practice to kill persons of groups other than their own. There were, however, state-sponsored killings of Jews in Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany; in our own time, Israel does the same with the Palestinians, and some of the state governments in India (Gujarat and Maharashtra) have encouraged the killings of their Muslim citizens.

Fanaticism, extremism, and intolerance of the dissident have existed, more or less, in all societies in all ages. The problem in the case of Pakistan is that all of these states of mind exist here in such a large measure and with such great intensity as to rip its society apart. They arise from ethnic, linguistic and religious differences.

Conflict between distinct groups may in many cases be traced to the desire of one group’s managers to drive members of another group out of the job market and exclude them from access to the social infrastructure. Some kind of a justification has to be found for these exclusions and denials. The argument is made that ‘they’ are not the same as ‘we’, and that their presence in our midst is unwholesome because it generates frictions. Being different, they are not entitled to any part of the resources available in the territory that is rightfully ours.

During the last 40 years or so, thousands of men, women, and children — all of them Pakistanis — have been killed in riots between Sindhis and Mohajirs over the language issue and between Mohajirs and Pashtuns in Karachi over issues of space and access to jobs and social amenities. Sunni and Shia Muslims have periodically bombed each others’ places of worship, funeral processions, and other congregations.

Rivalry for economic benefits does not explain sectarian conflict such as the one between the Sunni and the Shia. Here the prejudice derives from differing readings and interpretations of early Islamic history. Involving abstract distinctions of right and wrong, the issues between these two groups are not amenable to negotiation, compromise and resolution. The prejudice is intense enough in some cases to border upon hatred. Those possessed regard members of the other group as heretics and quite often as infidels. These attitudes persist in spite of the fact that the major points at issues between them (such as, for instance, the identity of the person who should have been the caliph following the Prophet’s (PBUH) death) have no bearing on the course of events in the Muslim world today.

A group has emerged within Sunni Islam whose members are extremists in their orthodoxy. They are the ones who want to deny education to women and confine them to their homes. They want to banish from our lives all those interests and pursuits which are fun and give us joy. They are convinced that their version of Islam is the only right one and all others are heresies or perversions that deserve to be eradicated along with their followers. They are waging war against the state and society of Pakistan in the course of which they are not only destroying public property and killing government functionaries, they are bombing and murdering non-combatant innocent citizens.

I used to think that they are a small minority, the proverbial lunatic fringe, in our society. I am having second thoughts. I see that our Islamic parties, such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam, do not condemn the Taliban and their murderous campaigns. Nor do I see the prayer leaders and khatibs in our mosques speaking against them. Many of the opinion-makers in this country — editorial writers and columnists in the Urdu press, hosts on TV talk shows — tend to focus on the Taliban’s anti-American campaigns and ignore their anti-Pakistan activities. Considering those who are sympathetic to them and those who are tolerant of them, it may be said that the Taliban exercise power and influence out of all proportion to their own actual number.

All of this leads me to think that a substantial proportion of our population may have become, for all practical purposes, well-disposed towards extremism and militancy. If that indeed is the case, we as a state and society are in a great deal of trouble. Nor should it then be surprising that the international community is beginning to view Pakistan with considerable apprehension and shun it, and that the country is getting to be isolated. Pakistan is being seen as the epicentre of terrorism, a source of threat to international peace and good order.

The writer, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

ALL great people carry the infection of inherent contradiction. It makes them more engaging, more compelling. Like her father before her, Benazir’s personality was a constant interplay of light and shade. Such a life could not be ordered into supine routine.

History’s greatest triumphs are followed by tragedy. Her death has enshrined her and will remain a fixing moment in all our lives. We will always remember where we were and who we were with when he heard news of her death.

She gave the outer appearance of being strong and stringent but she was immensely sensitive and vulnerable. Her very essence, her core, was defined by the suffering she had undergone. Though she came across as a strong-willed and confident politician, the trauma and trial of her father had left her with a shaky inner core. Her inherent sadness and pain connected her instantly to the poor.

Benazir was never unidimensional, she was intrinsically versatile. From Madonna to markets, she could converse with ease. She had an inherent fondness for life and continually questioned and examined all its aspects. All things in the universe fascinated her.

She was remarkable in how easily she could mingle and mix with those who represented the sorrow of this land. Like her father, she could easily blend into their world. Like her father, she connected with the constituency of the rejected. For the Pakistani youth, she was the zeitgeist queen.

Her fearless and rampant soul remained a prisoner to her legacy and the overpowering but self-imposed sense of duty. She was a people’s person and spent endless hours with them, even when those hours were duty without dividend. She fulfilled her duties to her children, her husband and her family. She remained loyal to her friends through her highs and her lows.

Her laugh was infectious as was her warmth. The girlie giggle, the mischievous wisecracks and, above all, the sympathy and solicitude carried in a tender heart were her hallmarks. Though bruised by reality, she never stopped dreaming those dreams. She was supremely unique, sublimely human.

Though always comfortable among the poor and supremely confident amongst intellectuals and dignitaries, she remained strangely insecure and shy whenever she had to make an appearance before the chattering classes, the social elite. She felt that they were peering at her through a magnifying glass and were judgemental.

She was alert to the fact that her life had often been invaded by predators and parasites, creating the smoke and saga till the truth lay in tatters. The Bhuttos were considered the nation’s best-known soap opera, and she knew it.

Benazir was many, many things. She was a volume with multiple chapters, each with a different theme. She was, among those many things, Don Quixote’s fantasy adventurer who was the slayer of all the dragons met on a tortuous journey. And she spent much of her life tilting at windmills. Ironically, the dragons in her life were not delusional.

In the summer of 2007, we were having dinner one evening at her flat and the discussion led to books and poetry. She asked me if I had read the poet Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poetess who together with her son and husband had suffered horrible persecution during the Stalinist pogrom.

I had not, but made it a point to buy her book of poems. I did not get around to opening its pages in any seriousness until after her assassination. When I started flipping through the pages, I stopped. I was startled when my eyes fell on the following passage:

“How terribly the body has changed/ How withered the tormented mouth/ I didn’t want a death like this/ I didn’t set the date./ It seemed to me that storm-cloud with storm-cloud/ Collided with something on high/ And a flying flash of lightning/ Descended like angels, upon me.”

Was this death foretold?

She was determined to return home and all our imploring and protests did not deter her. She came back even though knowing the dangers that awaited her — she came hugging the delusive phantom of hope.

When she had arrived back from exile on Oct 18, I stood alongside her on the fatal truck journey; she turned to me while waving to the crowds and said, “Isn’t this great … I can feel their love.” And after a pause, “I can never let them down.” The change had already begun to manifest itself.

Moments later, a deadly and devastating bomb blast tore out the soul of a nation. One moment there was a sea of cheering, clapping, dancing humanity and in another there was the gruesome spectacle of smouldering embers, the odour of burnt flesh and charred bodies. The tunes of love had died in the din of the dying. The terrorists had come out singing their hymn of hate.

This was the time she could have cut and run. If she now wished to retreat to the safety of Dubai, the doors were open. But bravery was bred in the marrow. She would stand and fight, she would fight till the last breath in her body.

On subsequent visits to her at Bilawal House, where a very few of us would be around her in the wee hours of the night as she tried to unwind and reflect on the day’s happenings, she talked but her talk was soliloquy. She was seeing a vision. The look in her eyes, the beat of her pulse, the song of her soul, all conveyed a different message.

She had travelled a great distance to reach here. The traveller had transformed during the journey. She was clearing her decks, reiterating her belief in the higher things of life. And as though in recognition of its consequences, she was bidding farewell to all of us.

She knew that from the moment she landed at Karachi, notwithstanding her deal with the general and the powers that be, the entire dynamics of the political power balance had changed. She was recalling her father’s message in that famous letter when he had told her that there is much merit in pragmatism, but to never forget that the “paradise of politics lies at the feet of the people.” She knew too that there was deception in the air; the dice had been rolled, so let the chips fall where they may.

One year and one day ago from this very December day, she left for Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh, not far from the site of her father’s hanging 28 years ago. She looked royal and radiant as she smiled and waved at the euphoric crowds. But tragedy was blowing in on the tail of a treacherous wind. An assassin was lying in wait.

Benazir on that day left the stage she never wanted. Circumstances threw her into the dirty, murky world of politics where she had to deal with the sleaze that breeds in the political ghettos and gutters of Pakistan.

She had been trained to walk the corridors of power and fame, mingle with kings and queens. Her life took her into the backyards of an unpleasant world where she had to deal with carpetbaggers and kerb-crawlers. She was forced to learn about their ways and deal with factors that were external to her ethos.

It was repellent to her nature but she accepted the challenge. She had to deal with troublesome ‘uncles’, men who lurked in the shadows and elements from the country’s ubiquitous security apparatus. She vanquished them all along her tortured journey but laid her life gallantly before treachery’s final bugle.

Her assassination may yet prove to be the catalyst of the change she predicted. But more importantly, her blood has mingled with the soil of this land and nourished a legend more powerful than the legend of Marvi whom she recalled in a poem she wrote to mark her 50th birthday.

How would she like to be remembered? She would be the warrior princess who battled dictators and overcame them. She would be the great reformer and emancipator. She would be the redeemer with the healing touch. She would be the poet who wrote stirring verses. She would be the Joan of Arc who raised her party’s standard against oppression. She would be the flower whose fragrance never faded.

She was all these things. But above all, she was what she most wanted to be. She was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter. To us, her family, she was the giant oak whose shade we have been shorn of.

When the tide of time washes ashore, people will remember her for her kindness, they will remember her with affection. She died before she was meant to. She was a song half-sung, a verse half-written, an incomplete life, a story half-told.

This then is the story of Benazir, Pakistan’s princess.

Concluded

IT has rent apart the social fabric of Pakistani society — Talibanisation. The country is in the grip of militancy, political cataclysm aside it is the vulnerable lot that needs immediate attention — women and children. The message of the Taliban is abundantly clear: anything that is synonymous with modernity has to go. The even clearer message is that women and children have to be cast out of public life.

This is being manifested in the form of the torching and bombing of girls’ schools. In other instances they are simply being closed down due to the volatile security situation in the strife-torn northern areas. The dictatorial fiats of the Taliban are unending. The previous successes have only emboldened the Taliban: reports suggest that the Swat Taliban have announced a ban on female education from Jan 15. They have threatened to blow up all schools violating the ban and forcing schools to close down if they would not abide by their commands. Regardless of the threats actions speak louder than words, 125 schools have been burnt and bombed by militants during the last 10 months.

These actions are reminiscent of the advent of Talibanisation in Afghanistan where women were rendered non-citizens. What is a citizen without fundamental human rights and what is a country without an educated citizenry? Pakistan is the latest victim of this phenomenon. Militancy has compounded the historical problem of low female literacy in the area.

According to a report in the The Christian Science Monitor, Pakistan has one of the highest rates of female illiteracy in South Asia, at about 60 per cent, and the lowest rate of primary school enrolment for girls, at somewhere between 42 and 48 per cent. This deficiency is striking in the NWFP, which, as of 2004, had the lowest ratio of female enrolment of any province in Pakistan, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). In areas like the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), where the government’s presence has historically been weakest, only one per cent of women and girls are literate.

So in a region where female education has made scant progress and women are barely holding on to a small ledge of hope, retrogressive forces are rolling back the little progress that has been made. In addition there are lingering fears that the population of the area is averse to female education and this problem is being compounded by militants. The unbridled, fall-of-dominoes style destruction of girls’ schools not only has a far-reaching impact on the lives of those directly affected by it but on Pakistani society as a whole as it has an adverse impact on the literacy rate of the entire country.

Women have the potential of being one of the most potent forces of moderation. According to Farzana Bari, who heads the gender studies department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, “Because girls are the ones suffering from these oppressive ideas, if they are educated they will be a better ally in the promotion of liberal ideas and secularism.” According to a report “as female education improves, infant mortality rates tend to decrease, family health improves, national incomes rise, and female citizens become more politically active and aware of their rights”. Under prevalent conditions Pakistan is not reaping the benefits of female education.

Women comprise half the population of Pakistan and they live in a state of perpetual fear. This trend is a cyclical process where retrogressive forces prevail. By setting in place a cycle where girls are deprived of education not only is the present generation affected but so is the next. Ignorance breeds ignorance. The literacy rate in the country is already abysmal and this problem is being exacerbated and this trend is going to lead to long-term disenfranchisement of women.

Pakistan may be a patriarchal society but women comprise half the population. Thus the empowerment of women would mean strengthening the position of this significant percentage of the population — surely the welfare of such a large proportion of society cannot be ignored. The government needs to establish the writ of the state despite the ongoing battle in the northern areas. It needs to make female education a top priority to ensure a prosperous and bright future for the country. The ideas and trends which are symptomatic of an extreme interpretation of Islam need to be countered to safeguard the fundamental human rights of all Pakistanis.