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SINCE its earliest days, Pakistan has been a prize to be claimed by those who wish to turn it into a religious state. The Objectives Resolution was the first victory in this battle. A slow, steady, incremental path of reform was adopted to keep inserting clauses in the Constitution and organs in the body of the state to subordinate the functions of the state to edicts passed down by the ulema. The process acquired great momentum during the years of Gen Zia’s dictatorship, because this was the first time that this process found ownership at the highest levels of the state.
The Council of Islamic Ideology, for instance, gave its first and historic decision to convert the financial system along Islamic lines, and had ownership from the top leadership at the State Bank, the deputy governor at the time. The Federal Shariat Courts were created to supervise the operation of the judiciary, and also intercept the authority of parliament, by empowering the religious lobby to shoot down any laws they didn’t like. And of course the blasphemy law empowered the religious lobby to declare anyone an accused irrespective of the veracity of the evidence.
This was the slow and incremental path towards converting Pakistan into a type of a state more akin to a caliphate than a modern-day republic. The operation of the state and economy had to be made subservient to edicts of religious scholars, rather than the will of the people. Of course, it was not easy to implement, clear proof of which lies in the fact that these words can still be written more than six decades after the effort was launched.
Secularism is actually about rescuing the fundamental truths of religion from the fires of sectarianism.
The effort encountered deep opposition from within the society in some places, and ran aground on purely pragmatic concerns in others. The political parties, both the avowedly secular ones like the PPP and the more opportunistic ones that sought to ride this force without granting it full sway over the operation of state and economy, like the IJI and later the PML-N, all opposed the vision even when granting its wishes from time to time. Proof of this is in Nawaz Sharif’s first government, that passed an Enforcement of Sharia Act 1991, but also stalled the Islamic banking directive issued by the courts. The IJI government granted the wishes of the religious lobby in word, but stymied them in deed.
The Islamic world is burgeoning with groups demanding the imposition of their strict version of religious law. Some advocate the path of steady reform that slowly converts the existing modern state into a caliphate, whereas others take a more insurrectionary route, like the so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram. Pakistan is one country where a powerful civil society, mobilised primarily through political parties, has consistently opposed this vision. Every election in our country has marginalised the religious parties. This is the main reason why democracy continuously comes under such vicious and unrestrained assault in our public discourse, because it is the exercise of democracy and its principal stakeholders, the political parties, that have stymied the ambitions to convert Pakistan into a theocracy.
As part of this constant stream of attacks against democracy, terming it a Western construct, the discourse has swivelled to also attacking secularism. As part of these attacks, we are told that secularism is about removing religion from all spheres of life. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Secularism is actually about rescuing the fundamental truths of religion from the fires of sectarianism. It arose in the aftermath of the most intense sectarian war ever fought in human history – the Thirty Years War in the European mainland. In the depths of this conflict, the first philosophical searches began for a foundation for politics that would not grow out of religion to avoid the problem of sectarianism. Thomas Hobbes was the most successful amongst those searching for an alternative in these times, and his system of philosophy is grounded in values that mirror those preached by the main monotheistic religions.
“Faith has no relation to, nor dependence at all upon, compulsion and commandment,” he wrote. No value is more important than the maintenance of peace, he said, and any ruler must supervise his realm to ensure opinions inimical to peace were not being propagated by any group. In fact, Hobbes went so far as to advocate a national church, a state sanctioned denomination, where religious figures would be appointed by the government, and would be made to adhere to doctrinal teachings in line with state sanctioned dogma.
This was not separation of church and state, nor a banishment of religion from public life. It was a subordination of religious authority to the state, to make the clergy subservient to the ruler rather than giving them a position where they can issue directives to the ruler.
We need to find our way back to a philosophic ground that reclaims the authority of the state. The fight for the soul of Pakistan will not be won until there is clarity of purpose. In the long run, this fight cannot be left to the pragmatists or the deviousness of the opportunists, who have perfected the art of granting a wish in form but not in substance. That path has kept the fortress of the state from falling before the forces of disorder that are vying to claim it, but it has also spread confusion about the real purposes of the rulers, and opened the window to their endless vilification.
The unity that the political parties have forged in the moment is the best and most potent weapon in their hands. They must not be afraid to wield it. This is a long war, and can only be won if there is clarity of mind about the kind of Pakistan we are fighting to save.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2014
