PAKISTANIS are not the only modern people that tend to think of themselves in much more lofty terms than their everyday behaviour merits. Americans are renowned for their conviction that they are God’s gift to the ‘free’ world, even while their knowledge of — let alone conduct in — what goes on beyond their borders is sometimes laughable, other times obscene. These days Germans are trumpeting their own generosity vis-à-vis Syrian refugees, hot on the heels of their economic strangulation of the Greek people.

We Pakistanis are, however, second to none. Socialised to believe that the religious badge we wear somehow makes us ‘better’ people than others, we like to show off just how pious we are, even while we sustain many practices that directly impinge on the collective good.

Take the ‘spirit of sacrifice’ that is supposed to be what motivates our behaviour on Eidul Azha. Those with the means go out of our way to proclaim their ‘sacrifice’ (read: spend tonnes of money to purchase animals) while actually giving up none of their daily pleasures. In fact, one could easily argue that the meat-fest that follows the ‘sacrifice’ is indulgence of the highest order.

Many would retort that what goes on at this time every year is largely symbolic, and should be treated as such. But I mention this only as an example of the general trend in this society to triumphantly parade our (religious) morality, while simultaneously engaging in behaviour that could generally be considered amoral.

We like to show off just how pious we are.

Consider the everyday practice of greasing palms for personal gain. This is a deeply rooted social practice and those who often decry ‘corruption’ are as prone to indulging in it as anyone else. Like everything else in Pakistan, this phenomenon reflects class and other hierarchies, so the poor do it to save themselves from being victimised, while the rich do it to further enhance their wealth and social standing. Whatever the permutation, it is a well-entrenched social fact.

The press, generals and judges would have us believe that graft and corruption are fringe phenomena in which only politicians and a handful of other social actors are implicated. This is the same opinion of the many middle-class families who sit in their drawing rooms after dinner every night lamenting how ‘corrupt’ politicians are pillaging the country. With exception, all these presumably incorruptible constituencies consider their everyday behaviour to be motivated by immutable Islamic principles, and regularly remind the world about their commitment to these principles.

But these do-gooders hardly invoke religion when they are dodging taxes on their own hefty paycheques, constructing Defence Housing Authorities and fudging their bank accounts. Indeed, the truth is that ‘law’ and ‘faith’ — and sometimes the combination of both in the shape of ‘Sharia’ — are hardly relevant in most everyday exchanges at the level of both state and market.

This gap between what we project about ourselves and what we actually do is, in my reckoning, a legacy of the Zia years, during which we were ‘convinced’ by the regime in power that invoking Islam and engaging in rituals could be easily reconciled with cynical exchanges in the political and economic spheres that were based on the principle of private gain — or at most to benefit some parochial grouping such as a biraderi, caste or sect.

We now live in a society in which there is apparently nothing inappropriate whatsoever about amassing wealth and power through any means necessary on the one hand, and claiming to act only in accordance with the water-tight morality of the Pakistani brand of Islam on the other.

So when confronted with some free time this Eid in between the many sessions when we remind one another of the great sacrifices we have made to honour the occasion, read a primer on Max Weber’s modern classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Writing about Protestant communities in early modern Western Europe, Weber argued that Protestant ideas provided the major impetus for an emergent ‘spirit of capitalism’ — in short religion encouraged the accumulation of wealth for personal gain.

I am not suggesting that Weber’s hypothesis can be unproblematically applied to our very unique social context. It is nevertheless instructive insofar as it clarifies that a symbiotic relationship can exist between religious ideology and the pursuit of profit — and, most significantly, that this relationship need not be camouflaged by delusions of righteousness.

I am not one to make any claims about religion but I do know that acknowledging who we are and our real motivations and intentions should be at the heart of confessional morality. More importantly, identifying actually existing social mores and relations is the prerequisite to transforming them.

Then again, maybe we would rather just harp on about our unshakeable ‘spirit of sacrifice’ while making a buck on the side.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2015

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