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COVER STORY: PAKISTAN
Reclaiming The Faith
Musharraf's decision to tackle terrorism is being seen
as a counter-coup by the moderates against the religious extremists
By Sahar Ali in Karachi
It was a shock Nida
Mujahid, barely in her 20s, found hard to recover from. On a trip from
Islamabad to Lahore to celebrate Basant, the festival that marks the advent
of spring in the Punjab plains, she was aghast at the hedonistic revelry
of the city's elite. "I saw things that I never knew happened in
Pakistan. I asked myself if I wanted to be a part of this crowd or wanted
to stand apart, and if I couldn't identify with them then who was I?"
Mujahid diffidently explains her dilemma. The events eventually led to
her religious transformation evident in the hijab (veil) that is now a
permanent feature of her attire.
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HIDDEN TRUTH: Embracing or abandoning the veil is a reaction
to permissive western lifestyle or extremist interpretation of Islam
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Before the Lahore visit, Mujahid "didn't
wear hijab, didn't pray and only recited the Quran, never reading with
a need to know what it said". From a way of life in which religion
played an insignificant role-an occasional prayer and fasting-Mujahid
found herself in the midst of a spiritual crisis brought on by her exposure
to a permissive society that even her reasonably modern upbringing recoiled
from. Away from home and confused, she turned to religion. And religious
gatherings.
In cities like Karachi and Lahore, religious
conferences for women are fast replacing coffee mornings and kitty parties.
At these dars, or religious lectures, Islam is defined and the Quran translated
and interpreted. "Understanding the Quran has become very important,"
says Tasnim Saghir, a teacher at a Karachi school who regularly attends
a weekly lecture on Quranic translation. To begin with, her group had
25 people. Now there are more than 200 and the garden of the private residence
where the lectures are held can barely accommodate them. That hasn't stopped
more and more affluent residents from offering their homes to help spread
religious awareness and demystify Islam.
The newfound religious fervour, believes Saghir,
is a reaction to the interpretations offered by the extremist and narrow-minded
mullahs. "They have been misleading us and the educated section of
the society has now rejected these interpretations," she affirms.
Journalist and political commentator Ghazi Salahuddin
defines it as a "battle for the soul of Islam being waged in the
country and the rest of the world". Till the September 11 terrorist
attacks in the US, the extremists were winning. But the assaults, as Hafeez
Shaikh, the finance minister of Sindh province, says, "have triggered
a soul-searching in Pakistan. People are asking themselves what kind of
society they want". The Pakistani Muslims are a religious people,
he affirms, yet they have never voted a religious political party to power.
In a recent issue of Time magazine, religious
historian Karen Armstrong says, "The vast majority of Muslims who
are horrified by the atrocity of September 11 must reclaim their faith
from those who have so violently hijacked it."
September 19, therefore, signifies a turning
point for Pakistan. That was the day a beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf
succumbed to sustained US pressure and announced his decision to act as
a frontline state in the global war against terrorism. It was a difficult
choice but it reflected the wishes of a silent majority in Pakistan that
had been alarmed at the turn of events. It was seen as a counter-coup
by the moderate lobby against the militant and extremely vocal religious
extremists.
Ironically, in acknowledging and supporting
the moderate viewpoints, Musharraf-an unelected military ruler-has done
for Pakistan what successive elected governments failed to achieve. As
Musharraf said in BBC's Hardtalk on October 1, "I know that a vast
majority of Pakistanis have a moderate view of religion ... We need to
rein in religious extremism."
Often, the extremist views that do exist are
tempered by tolerance. Take Farzan Saeed, who works in an international
fast-food chain. He firmly believes women should not work except in case
of dire economic need. He espouses strict enforcement of purdah, which
means a woman must not come in contact with any man except her husband
or a direct blood relation. Yet, he readily accepts that the country's
economic crisis demands that women step out of purdah to work.
Saeed's co-worker Tania Khan does not need the
money; she works because she wants to. "I ignored opposition from
my Pathan family because I didn't want to end up like my cousin who did
not study beyond Class X and was married off soon after," she says.
Saeed and Khan may have radically opposing views but their verbal banter
speaks of the friendly relationship the two share. So while Pakistan may
be seen as hurtling towards a head-on collision between religious extremism
and modernity, people like Saeed and Khan represent the ability of divergent
beliefs to coexist amicably.
There is no doubt, however, that the country
is facing an upsurge in "Talibanisation"-in its literal sense.
"Taliban" is plural for "talib" (student) which is
derived from the root word "talab" meaning quest or search.
A talib, therefore, is one in search of something; in this case, religious
knowledge to counter the Taliban brand of extremism. The fresh interpretations
of Islam and definitions of Islam are, however, open to immense diversity.
Ayesha Muhammed, unlike her friend Mujahid,
has recently forsaken the hijab-and with it the school of thought-that
she had embraced upon enrolling in an academy for religious education.
"I used hijab because I believed that's what my religion says. I
no longer think that covering my head makes me a better Muslim. All that
it advocates is that women become submissive and subservient," she
says.
Raihana Ashhad Hasan knows the feeling. A middle-aged,
retired employee of the Pakistan International Airlines and a liberal
opposed to chadar and purdah, Hasan rebelled against a directive issued
by Zia-ul Haq's Islamist government barring women from wearing saris in
government and semi-government institutions. "Extreme interpretations
of Islam and Quran are on the rise as a reaction against the acute permissiveness
displayed in the western and Indian media," says Hasan who too finds
the western epicurean culture distasteful.
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