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COVER STORY: PAKISTAN
In Search Of True Islam
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BLATANT BIAS: A religious meeting attended by Jamiat-ul-Islam
chief Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman (second from right) at Quetta pledged
support to the Taliban. While such events are sensationalised, the
moderate face of Pakistan is conveniently ignored.
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Then again, the
search for true Islam could have stemmed from the autocratic ambitions
of the extremists within the country. When a group of students from an
art college in Karachi set out to make a documentary on religious attitudes
towards art, they discovered the precise nature of these ambitions. The
mufti of a mosque in Binori town-believed to be the largest seminary in
Pakistan for the Deoband school of religious thought-handed them a fatwa
(edict) declaring all representations in art of living things unislamic.
"Not only that, they said they would eradicate
all forms of art and media from Pakistan when-not if- an Islamic fundamentalist
government assumed control of the country," recalls Saifullah Saif,
a second year architecture student. The group was also given pamphlets
that called for the banning of television. The literature declared TV
a corrupting influence that incited incest and child molestation in homes.
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PERVEZ
MUSHARRAF: How expediency is shaping the rhetoric of Pakistan's
ruler
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 "Once
the reality changes and the situation on the ground changes, you
have to re-evaluate policies and reformulate them. There has been
a change of reality, so we have reformulated our policy."
Interview to BBC, October 1, 2001
"Those who
are against whatever my Government and I am doing are a very small
minority. These are generally religious extremists."
Interview to CNN, September
30, 2001
"Any madarsa
that is preaching terrorism or militancy ... we would like to move
against them."
Interview to CNN, September
30, 2001
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The radicals may not have succeeded in having
the television banned but other restrictions in the name of "Islamisation"
have been enforced from time to time. However, far from being repressed,
the moderate majority has stood up to such decrees. As one US-based Pakistani
quipped, "The only way Talibanisation has impacted social life in
Pakistan is that there are no New Year parties in hotels."
Which too is not strictly true. Pakistan's middle
classes have neither stopped celebrating the new year nor Valentine's
Day. Last year, New Year eve in Karachi saw hundreds of private parties
organised by the city's elite, while young men from the middle-class neighbourhoods
celebrated by playing raucous music and racing motorbikes along the Seaview
Avenue.
However, these are the images that the world
rarely gets to view. When a Taliban-style uprising rears its head, people
across the globe sit up and take notice. When throngs of bearded maulvis
chanting rabid anti-West slogans pledge their support to the Taliban,
the images are flashed across the world. Little wonder Pakistanis complain
they are being viciously stereotyped. The West, they say, has blanked
out moderate Pakistanis whose peaceful pursuit of pleasure is tempered
with a quest for religious enlightenment. It is either the Taliban or
mindless promiscuity.
That, of course, is not true. There are many
shades of Muslim conduct and most of them have little in common with the
boisterous demonstrations like the one seen in Quetta last week. After
an initial bout of western xenophobia, the world's leaders are bending
over backwards to say the war isn't against Islam or even the Afghan people.
This has, perhaps, been possible because moderate Muslims have stood up
to be counted. In Pakistan, a country many feared was hurtling towards
religious extremism, there has been a consolidation of moderates around
Musharraf. Against a determined vocal minority the resistance is still
fledgling and unstructured. But at least there is another side.
— with Riju D. Mehta
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