So much is said and written about Islamophobia. It’s a tendency found in some non-Muslims, especially in the West, who question and discriminate against ‘Muslim attire’ (whatever that means) and beliefs. But those who speak the loudest against Islamophobia have little or nothing to say on another social illness that is haunting their own societies: extremism, and an obsessive-compulsive urge to drag religion into everything.

An unhealthy obsession with religion is used to not only inflict bodily harm on those considered infidels or bad Muslims, but also as an excuse to rob, lie, cheat and attempt to maintain a false moral ground and dominance over those considered flawed and inferior. It is also used to describe one’s own professional, social and political shortcomings as something that is due to the intrigues of those who are against Muslims.

This kind of mania constitutes a myopic fixation on preaching, and is found among the generic maulvis, those belonging to large outfits like the Tableeghi Jamat and Dawat-i-Islami, an ever-growing number of televangelists, and all the way to those who just can’t help but roll out numerous emails and text messages on the subject on a daily basis. Growing up in an era in which the whole post-18th century myth about Islam being in danger has reached a new, unprecedented peak, many Pakistanis’ fixation with religion has at times seen this obsession turn into a rather disruptive condition. It sees even the most educated men and women suddenly become allergic to some obvious truths about what we as a nation and polity have ended up doing in the name of faith and morality. We will wail, moan and whine about Islamophobia in the West, but keep mum about the discrimination and hatred that takes place among Muslims against other religions and even amongst themselves, one sect against the other.

Our mania has generated a childlike stubbornness in which all avenues of reason and rationality are purposefully blocked. By doing this we are convinced that we are supposedly defending our faith, even if this means becoming apologists and defenders of the most destructive and inhuman expressions of extremism, an extremism of our own making.

This mania also includes wearing one’s religion on one’s sleeves, as if, otherwise, God won’t be able to judge our religiosity. Take the recent example of the way many Pakistanis reacted to the niqab ban in France. Some women who use burqa or hijab say they feel liberated. In our media we hear their voices loud and clear, but never of the other side who suggests that a woman who observes hijab/ burqa/ niqab may as well be submitting to the historical tribal, male-driven tradition of claiming control over women.

Various Muslim women authors and thinkers believe that the observance of veil remains a dictate of Muslim men. They say that the practice is an outcome of laws and social mores constructed over the last many centuries by judges, ulema and lawmakers who were all men. Scholars like Javed Ghamdi, Ziauddin Sardar and Muhammad Arkhun, believe that Muslim women enjoyed greater autonomy in public and private life during the time of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) — an autonomy that later Muslim rulers and ulema took away.

Muslim women who do not use the veil are right to demand that if some of their sisters in France are so agitated by the veil ban, then they should be equally agitated by the forced veiling practised in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s only fair, if this really is a matter of the freedom of expression.

While we busy ourselves in discussing the niqab issue in France (where only the niqab or the covering of the face is banned, hijab is not), bemoaning the discrimination faced by Muslim women there who observe the niqab, we conveniently forget that in many Muslim countries women who believe that modesty is a state of mind and can be demonstrated without veiling are coming under increasing pressure.

My only hope is that we now allow ourselves the necessity to hold open debates about issues that till now we have cowardly avoided and in the process let them grow into political and social ogres of intolerance and myopia. It should also be noted that whenever we do let such debates take place in public, counter-arguments to the traditionalist ones too are given a platform and are accepted — not as thoughts coming from ‘misguided minds’ or wayward souls, but from those who are equally concerned about their country and society.