Spread of bigotry: who is to blame?

Dawn, April 7, 2005
Spread of bigotry: who is to blame?
By Omar R. Quraishi


The violent attack last Sunday by some 800 armed activists of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal to disrupt a mini-marathon in Gujranwala because women were participating in it is disturbing proof of the increasing level of intolerance among the extremist/ obscurantist elements in the country.

Nineteen vehicles, including those of a provincial minister and a senior police official were burnt by the protesters, who were armed with home-made petrol bombs, clubs and stones.

According to the Punjab government, firearms were 'freely used'. A government press note also said that the MMA men entered Jinnah stadium, where the women's race was to end, and attacked the participants who were "pulled down from their seats, beaten and dragged on the ground". The attackers also tried to burn some petrol pumps around the stadium and hurled petrol bombs, the government said.

This violent reaction was in response to the fact that the Gujranwala administration had decided to hold a series of races on Sunday, including one which was for female participants.

Given that the starting point was the local divisional public school, it would be safe to say that most if not all of the female participants would have been school or college students.

Worst of all, the attackers were led by the local MNA who was elected on the MMA ticket and his son. After the attack, the member of parliament told a TV channel in rather an innocent tone that the protesters merely wanted to register their protest against the women's race by staging a 'dharna' or sit-in outside the stadium.

Without any apparent provocation, he went on to say, the police attacked the MMA activists as a result of which several people, including himself and his son, were "seriously injured".

The MNA said that the MMA had asked the local administration to call off the race but since the latter failed to do that, the alliance and its activists had no choice but to register their protest on the day itself of the race.

One of its local leaders who was among the attackers told a foreign radio channel that the MMA could not sit idly by as the "nation's daughters, wives and daughters-in-law" took part in a road race wearing "t-shirts and knickers".

This was the same objection raised, at that time by Jamaat-I-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed, when the Lahore marathon was held a couple of months ago. Police and independent eyewitness reports however suggest that this is not what happened, and that the MMA activists came well-armed and in large numbers with the intention of disrupting the race in a violent manner.

Of course, this isn't the first time that religious extremists in Pakistan have used violence to shove their narrow and dogmatist version of religion down everyone else's throat. In fact, in Gujranwala itself a circus was attacked and burnt down last year by MMA activists who deemed it un-Islamic and decided to take matters in their own hands.

The Punjab government has said that it will try some of the attackers who have been arrested in anti-terrorism courts. However, the fact remains that flip-flops by the federal government on various issues has continuously emboldened the MMA and its supporters.

The recent U-turn on the religion column in the new machine readable passports came after the government had already said publicly that the column would not be re-inserted after the religious parties made a fuss in and outside of parliament.

According to some reports, one reason for the reversal of the earlier stand on this issue had to do with an unwritten understanding between PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and JUI and MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman. When the decision to re-insert the column was made public recently, the maulana was quick to claim a victory for the religious alliance.

So who is to blame for this increasing spread of religious bigotry in Pakistan? Is it the government, which speaks ad nauseum of "enlightened moderation" and of building a "soft image" (whatever that means) of Pakistan and then does nothing (but retreat) to put into practice its self-professed progressive and liberal worldview or to support or provide a level playing field to mainstream political parties.

Or is it the religious parties, whose adherence to a narrow and retrogressive version of religion and archaic worldview have caused much heartburn and anger among some Pakistanis who see the world from a completely different perspective.

Are Pakistan's mainstream political parties to be blamed for not raising a voice against such bigotry and zealotry, save the odd press statements which find their way into newspapers from time to time.

One can understand their predicament because they - and here one is speaking of the PPP and PML-N specifically - are hamstrung by the current political dispensation but then how many of their members in parliament have actually taken part in rallies (as opposed to an air conditioned television studio in Dubai) to register their protest and outrage against acts like the attack in Gujranwala?

Perhaps, in all of this the greatest blame lies on civil society, especially those who hold progressive and forward-looking views. This includes intellectuals but the only problem with this variety of arm-chair critics is that apart from holding forth in air conditioned drawing rooms, or television studios or writing verbose articles in (mostly English) newspapers, they do nothing really to try and mould public opinion against rising intolerance and obscurantism in this country.

After all, it is the middle class and the intellectuals that are the driving force for modernity and progressive values in most developing countries, a good example being the activist role played by such forces in Latin American countries and even to quite a large extent closer at home in places like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why intellectuals here have so far played no roles worth mentioning in the fight against increasing fanaticism and narrow-mindedness, but one link could be made to the (more or less) complete absence of a civilized culture of debate and dissent among the educated Pakistanis.

The many years of military rule have obviously created a suppressive political and social environment in which the issues and concerns of ordinary Pakistanis, or their views and opinions, hardly ever play a role in the policy/decision-making process.

In any civilized and suitably democratized country, where public opinion is respected, the norm would be for a government to first assess what the public thinks on a given issue and then formulate and finally implement a certain policy.

But in the case of Pakistan, the opposite always happens, with government policies often at odds with public demands and expectation. The recent religion column controversy is a case in point where public opinion, barring that of the MMA's constituent parties and their supporters, was by and large in favour of the initial decision to leave the religion column out of passports because it was wholly unnecessary.

However, to please a minority political grouping not even part of the ruling coalition, the government reversed its own policy outlined a few weeks earlier and restored the column.

Ironically, the U-turn seemed to go against the personal views if not wishes of the president, the prime minister and several members of the cabinet (including the interior minister who publicly had said that the column would not be re-inserted).

Little did those who acquiesced in this realize that making such a concession to the religious parties on this, which the government will deny, will only embolden them further and the result, a la Gujranwala, is all before us.

Unfortunately, apart from issuing a press statement or two and writing an article or a letter to the editor in some English-language newspapers (a case of preaching to the already converted), not a single civil society organization, NGO or any of the so-called intellectuals took their protest to the street.

Herein lies the difference between these people and activists of religious parties who often have no qualms about using violence to thrust their views on the rest of society, blackening billboards, harassing musicians and actors, damaging public property and preventing women from taking part in an athletics event. After all, why shouldn't they?

In almost all such incidents, except perhaps the one that took place last Sunday in Gujranwala, no action was ever taken against them, no convictions, no fines, no jail sentences.

E-mail: omarq@cyber.net.pk.