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IT was good to see parliamentarians coming out of the National Assembly on to the road outside to protest against the ‘blasphemous Charlie Hebdo cartoons’ published in Paris, France.
Shortly before the MNAs marched out, they unanimously approved a resolution condemning the magazine moved by PML-N minister Saad ‘Mard Bun’ Rafique. The minister earned himself the middle name after boldly advising the former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf to ‘be man enough to face the treason trial’.
Also read: NA adopts resolution against blasphemous Charlie Hebdo cartoons
The protest was heartwarming because it demonstrated once again that in matters of faith, our parliamentarians make no compromises. It was equally good to see Saad Rafique, being a man and leading from the front, after weeks of inexplicable silence. It would be ‘unmanly’ to speculate why he has been so quiet.
We have been too scared or too conveniently indifferent to a snowballing ideology of toxic hate, of murder and mayhem.
But the one thing which bothers me, and I wonder if it does anyone else, is that these public representatives belong to a land that has suffered so much, so much at the hands of the terrorist, bled endlessly by gun-toting, murderous-suicidal madmen (and the occasional woman) and yet they made not a gesture of disapproval and didn’t utter a word of condemnation for the Paris gunmen.
Yes, if they’d looked closely enough they would have found so much in common between the murderous Paris brothers and those who attack our innocent women, men and children everyday as they both share a warped sense of religious responsibility and a distorted view of a religion that says it has the dignity of humanity at its core.
For long, we have looked away; for long we have been too scared or too conveniently indifferent to this snowballing ideology of toxic hate, of murder and mayhem and not called a spade a spade. If even the mass murder of our children, of our future, does not serve up a reality check what will? Whose ideology is it? Is it yours? I know it isn’t mine.
The Charlie Hebdo attackers seemed to think their murderous spree somehow had divine sanction because the magazine had published blasphemous images; it isn’t clear what the man who held up the ‘kosher’ supermarket in a different part of Paris and killed unarmed shoppers used as his justification but you can be sure he had one too. But does Islam sanction such acts and behaviour?
In fact, like those three men, even the butchers who slaughtered our children just last month advanced some justification for taking the life of innocent children; their handlers who despatched them on their evil mission tried to rationalise their crime. But how can anyone in their right mind even attempt to have a justification for the evil they wreaked on the school?
Leaders are supposed to lead. Sadly, our leaders have been content to reflect the traits of society, or at least society’s opinion makers, in responding to this existential threat via inertia, by doing nothing, probably in the hope the roaring avalanche would change course and go elsewhere. But will it? Has it? You know the answer, as well as I do.
We approved more or less in a day some of the most fundamental changes in our Constitution without debate because the parliamentarians felt the ‘existential threat’ coming from the military, an institution perhaps on the right side of history for the first time in decades and that too to wash its own past sins.
Having approved the 21st Amendment, inter alia, allowing for the setting up of military courts, to try cases of terror, for a period of two years, one would have hoped that the government and opposition would be huddled together to restore civilian supremacy and glory through extensive judicial, administrative reform and poverty alleviation measures.
But, having secured themselves, the parliamentarians are doing nothing to thwart the existential threat to society, to the values so many of us hold so dear: justice, fair play but most of all tolerance and plurality. Shouldn’t they legislate and move to their constituencies for a huge mass contact effort in order to combat the toxic influences that have brought us here? No. They follow their leaders.
The prime minister has deemed it fit to head to Saudi Arabia, a country that is said to have poured over $100 billion over the recent decades to facilitate the spread of the ideology that threatens our existence today. One only hopes he can get himself to ask his hosts to turn off the funding tap at source, if he wishes to have something positive to emerge from the trip.
Of the two main opposition leaders, one, with a wedding behind him that enraged some of the Peshawar parents as it came too soon following their momentous, tragic loss, has reverted to his ‘char halqe khol do’ (open up four constituencies for electoral scrutiny) mantra, while the less said the better about the second.
If our elected representatives are so slothful, or worse still unmindful, towards the demands of their own institution’s long-term future and well-being, who can we turn to for starting a movement to snatch religion back from the hands of the bigoted, semi-literate preacher and the utterly misguided, brainwashed terrorist and restore it to its glory where the murder of one individual is seen as the murder of humanity?
As these lines are being written on a Friday, two different significant events have happened. First, all the religious parties in Pakistan have brought thousands of people out onto the streets to protest against the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
If the protesters are peaceful, it is the right of every free citizen of the country to protest. However, one needs to be reassured that this outrage is just to protest the blasphemous cartoons and not to flex muscle in the wake of the 21st Amendment which calls for scrutiny of institutions run by many of these parties to ascertain and ensure they conform to the law.
The second event fills me with gratitude that I can still write and discuss ideas without too much fear of recrimination. Yes, Pakistan still allows it. Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger whose blog was shut down in 2012, was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000, yes 1000, lashes for disagreeing with the cleric’s view of his religion.
Last Friday he received 50 of those lashes in public, though Saudi Arabia has postponed the next round on medical grounds. With 950 to go, I have no idea of his pain. All I can say is that we, in Pakistan, are used to more freedoms than Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies or even adversary Iran, would ever allow, what to talk of the IS. Are we prepared to defend this freedom?
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2015
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