RECENTLY, a news item under the headline, “Islamists protest ‘religion-less’ passport,” was widely discussed by the international media. Many countries may have thought that the people of Pakistan are a prosperous lot as they frequently travel abroad for business or pleasure trips. That is why they are so fussy about different columns mentioned in their travel documents. Little do they know, the people of Pakistan are among “the poorest, most uneducated, most powerless and the most disunited in the world”.
To our religious right, a man having a passport with ‘unstamped religion’ is a sinner. The Muslims never had such a bad identity crisis in their lives before. The machine-readable passports, which now have a standardized presentation worldwide, are being printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition. The government is only trying to introduce global standards for travel documents in line with the efforts of the International Civil Aviation Organization. The format of the new passports, without the religion column, was borrowed directly from that organization. In October 2004, Pakistan issued new electronic passports that omitted the religion column, introduced in the ‘80s by Gen Mohammad Ziaul Haq. This shows how the clerics seek a value-oriented society where the content can overtake the character of an entity.
In our part of the world the state of affairs can be compared to the 17th century Europe which was once parochial in matters of creed. It was torn by witch-hunts and religious wars. Protestants and Catholics denounced each other as the followers of Satan and people could be imprisoned for attending the wrong church, or for not attending any. The church insisted that it was the only source of truth and all who lived outside its bounds were damned, while it was apparent to any reasonable person that most human beings were not and had never been Christians, yet they had built great civilizations.
Enlightenment does not come cheap. In this regard, a glorious effort through an intellectual movement was made in the 18th century by the West, led by men such as Voltaire and Rousseau in France, John Locke in England, and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine in America, bringing the much-needed transformation. Values and institutions were nurtured; they never cropped up on their own. Intellectual leadership led to scientific advancement. The same happened in Europe. Technological achievements took place in a tolerant and cosmopolitan intellectual atmosphere, quite independent of religious authorities. But, unfortunately, in Bernard Lewis’s phrasing, “The Renaissance, Reformation, even the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, passed unnoticed in the Muslim world.”
Moderation has been blatantly neglected for many a year in our country. As a result, the gap was filled by extremist elements who believed in opportunism, ritualism and obscurantism. They are not the true representative of Islam. They are always looking to stop the growth of society that can lead to big achievements. No one can favour an obscurantist agenda affecting innocent people. Religious groups’ stubbornness with regard to non-issues while the masses lead their lives in poverty and illiteracy is baffling. These elements seek power by virtue of explosives, not scriptures.
Ignorant obscurantism can be really harmful. Bomb blasts, targeted killings, and indiscriminate firing at places of worship speak of the poison of hatred injected into the body of our society by extremist elements. Not long ago, the escalating sectarian violence deplored by the UN secretary-general painfully underscored society’s failure to tackle extremists. In this respect it would be apt to mention what Voltaire once warned: “Beware of a man who says, believe in God as I do otherwise God will punish you. He would say tomorrow, believe in God as I do otherwise I will kill you.”
Our inability to deconstruct the intellectual and ideological foundation of religious extremism and sectarianism is taking its toll on the masses. No socio-economic uplift is possible without shunning militancy and eliminating terrorism.
Enlightenment comes from education alone. Rigid indoctrination through misguided education leads to intolerance and fanaticism. We need to take care of our educational system that has been obsessed with ideology, devoid of reason and objectivity. Professionalism, intellectual honesty, and academic freedom are alien concepts to the ‘ideologically’ motivated class of teachers. They do not permit to have a rational debate on religious and national issues. Some half measures to revamp the educational system and revise the textbooks have so far failed to put things on the right track. The religious right has effectively foiled the attempted reforms. During the recent controversy on revision of the textbooks, the government was pathetically put on the defensive by an aggressive media campaign. The educational system that stagnates most seminaries remains unregistered, their finances unregulated, and we are yet to remove the jihadi and sectarian content in their curricula.
Both enlightenment and moderation are prime virtues of Islam, which is actually a message of peace. The Holy Prophet said: “Seek education from cradle to grave.”
Enlightened moderation is the need of the hour and it requires a resolute effort. Here, Deng Xiaoping’s dictum ‘to seek truth from the facts’ is quite pertinent; otherwise, the mantra of moderation might be lost somewhere the inside enigma of enlightenment.
