The reactions to the Swat girl’s flogging video were at best mixed. On the first two days of its transmission on TV channels, we heard a number of enraged voices emerging from across the print and electronic media, but predictably from the third day onwards the usual political and journalistic purveyors of sweaty reactionary hobnobbing recovered their spilled bearings and launched a loud counter-attack.

It was apparent that the sudden appearance of the video had left the moralising hobnobs suffering a rude and shocking sense of panic.

For years — especially with the indulgent help of the electronic media — these hobnobs, mostly in the shape of right-wing journalists, politicians and ‘scholars’, had carefully concocted a long-winded narrative that cleverly defended and explained religious extremism as an expression against ‘American imperialism’, ‘Zionist conspiracies’, ‘Hindu infiltration’, ‘economic inequality’, and ‘injustice’.

But this narrative started to display all of its loopholes the moment the TV channels exhibited an about-turn and started running the video.

I have never seen the advocates of the above-mentioned narrative panic and jostle like they did on the day of the video’s airing. From conservative politico-religious parties like the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and JUI, to the rhetorical televangelists and some leading TV and print journalists, all got into high gear to attack the video as if its airing by mainstream TV channels was akin to blasphemy!

Setting aside the awkwardly political stance of the Awami National Party (ANP), whose criticism of the airing was linked to the desperate situation it finds itself in the NWFP, many of the counter-reactions were extremely ironic (if not downright hilarious).

Take for example the reaction of a well-heeled TV and print reporter who made his name during the Lal Masjid debacle and the Faranaz Dogar case. The gentleman at once started to lambaste on air a (female) TV news anchor for ‘sensationalising’ the news of the flogging.

The irony of it all is that the same reporter has, on record, ridiculed politicians and ‘secular intellectuals’ who had criticised the TV channels of sensationalising the Lal Masjid episode and overtly highlighting the Faranaz Dogar case. He had also accused such critics of trying to curb freedom of the media.

However, he was quick to describe the video’s airing as an ‘irresponsible’ and ‘sensationalist’ act, whereas before this he had joyfully found the exhibition of all the blood, gore and the revengeful swearing of the (albeit armed) ‘victims’ of the Lal Masjid by the channels as perfectly justified? How convenient.

A number of personnel representing the middle-class politico-religious sections in urban Pakistan have over the years been highly successful in infiltrating crucial corners of the mainstream media. Many of them who were leading the battle cry for a free media — when they had found the overall policies of the TV channels and large sections of the Urdu press suited to their kind of ‘missionary’ journalism — suddenly became its biggest critics the day the video appeared.

Such turnaround sentiments also came from the newly elected chief of the Jamat-i-Islami, Munawer Hassan. When asked to comment on the video by a TV channel, Munawer flew off the handle uttering not a single word on the video but instead concentrating all his energy and wrath at the TV channel, and ... the American drone attacks!
When asked what the drone attacks had to do with the flogging, Munawer replied by asking why the channels don’t react to drone attacks the way they were reacting to the flogging?

I believe it was a rather a ridiculous slip on Mr Munawer’s agitated part because it is more than obvious that our channels and audiences spend more time condemning drone attacks than they do suicide bombings.

Then there was this ever-present televangelist who, though condemned the act of flogging, suddenly short-circuited half-way through his spiel and started to blame ‘enemies of Islam’ for the act and ‘enlightened people who are ridiculing Islam’.

First of all those barbarians seen in the video looked and acted anything but enlightened, so I suppose he meant the NGOs and the people who released the video. But what exactly was his message? Was it that it is okay to be myopic and close-minded (as opposed to being enlightened), but not okay to be close-minded enough to be a barbarian? What’s the difference, really?

The reaction to the widespread condemnation that the flogging incident triggered is an indication of how the exposed reality of even a small example of the barbarism that is being practiced in the name of faith in Pakistan can so easily puncture the cleverly constructed narrative about Islam and Pakistan concocted by its gung-ho architects in politics, madressas and the media.

These men were sure that they had all the bases covered and had finally converted much of Pakistan to their version of religion, politics and society. But, alas, this is not so. As the wake of the video and the many demonstrations that it triggered proved that their narration of Islam and ‘justice’ is nothing but a farcical and fanciful attempt to upstage and replace Pakistan’s inherently dynamic and pluralistic milieu with a creeping malaise smacking of nothing but sheer fascism.