KARACHI: There was consensus among the panelists gathered at T2F on Sunday evening that the state was part of the problem of rising religious violence in the country. They were there to take part in a programme organised by the Herald to address the question ‘Rising religious violence: is the state part of the problem?’

The event was moderated by media person and former federal minister of information Javed Jabbar, and the panelists included Ali Usman Qasmi, a professor of history at LUMS; Asad Jamal, a legal researcher, senior researcher Ayesha Khan, journalist Babar Ayaz and director of Karachi University’s Pakistan Study Centre Syed Jaffer Ahmed.

Setting the tone for the discussion, Mr Jabbar said incidents of religious violence had become far too frequent and a pattern was emerging. He raised the query, keeping with the theme of the programme, whether the role of the state was rooted in the genesis of Pakistan, in a belief-based system, but also mentioned countries such as Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka where religious minorities were not treated well. He said the state consisted of the legislature, executive and judiciary adding two more pillars to it: media and military. He also touched upon a constitutional fact that no non-Muslim could become president of prime minister of the country.

Ayesha Khan said a whole generation of Pakistanis had grown up thinking that the exclusionary kind of Islam taught in school was the only kind that there was. She said the curriculum taught in schools was based on the Saudi Arabia model and mentioned Genera Ziaul Haq who colluded with the Saudi government to Islamise the system in the country. The anti-Soviet campaign in the past, in which the US funded jihadi groups, helped Gen Zia pursue his domestic agenda. She told the audience that the first amendment made to the blasphemy laws was done in 1980; before that there were only eight such cases. The Zia amendments made the laws more severe, and when Zia left the scene and a democratic government took charge, attitude had become internalised, she added.

Mr Qasmi (who with Mr Jamal joined from Lahore via Skype) put things in a historical perspective. He said in the 1940s the Muslim League used religious tactics to attract attention. In the post-1947 period efforts were made to have equal rights for the religious minorities, but the ‘40s tenor remained dominant. Then came the Objectives Resolution followed by the idea espoused by our leaders that Islam could act as a unifying force to create national cohesion in the country.

He termed 1970-71 the ‘watershed’ period where a large chunk of minority went away and there was a sense of defeat with the feeling that we lost the war because we were not ‘good Muslims’.

Mr Jamal subscribed to Mr Qasmi’s views, adding with reference to the 1971 situation that if we had significant religious minorities, we might not have gone the way we went.

He argued that not just religious violence but there were all kinds of violence that the country was witnessing because according to the constitution there were two levels of citizenship; one for Muslims and the other for non-Muslims.

At that point Mr Jabbar interjected that India, the largest democracy in the world, had a secular constitution but there was a virulent spread of religion-based extremism in that country. To which Mr Jamal replied that while there might be negative elements in the Indian state, the state itself did not discriminate among citizens whereas the Pakistani state played an active role in discriminating against religious minorities.

Jaffer Ahmed started off his argument by drawing the attention of the audience towards a recent statement made by the previous ameer of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Munawwar Hasan, in which he had called for qitaal claiming democracy was not a sufficient route to establishing the Islamic system. He gave a few other examples, including that of Dr Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, who had said that there were two traditions in Islam, one of orthodoxy and the other of heterodoxy, and he (Qureshi) favoured orthodoxy.

He said more problems started after 1970 when Mr Bhutto began relying on religious leaders, coupled with Pakistan’s new relations with the Arab world which paved the way for the Arabisation of Pakistani culture.

Mr Ayaz said the two-nation theory adopted a communal path and a ‘dynamic’ was set for the country. He remarked that the ends did not justify the means and the means led to another end. He pointed out that religion was used by the state and the first lashkar was formed in 1948 to enter Kashmir. Lashkars were formed in the name of jihad as the state kept cultivating non-state actors as a force multiplier and as part of its foreign policy. He said in the early 1970s the Ahmedis were declared non-Muslims and in 1979 Pakistan created jihadis for the Afghan war which changed the whole world.

After the discussion, the floor was opened for a question-answer session.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2014