It has been reported from Bangladesh that Hasina Wajid’s government has started monitoring weekly Friday prayer sermons to ensure imams are abiding by the given guidelines to highlight the dangers of extremism (read religious militancy). Guidelines on anti-militancy sermons were sent to around 200,000 mosques all across the country. Guidelines require clerics to not only speak against religious militancy but also take this topic in day-to-day interaction with people attending 5-time a day prayers at mosques.
Bomb blasts by Islamic militants in 2004-2005 prompted the government not to take any chance and start crackdown on religious and sectarian outfits. Bangladesh learned the lesson from the chaos wherein in last two decades several countries in the region such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia etc have plunged into, only because of their inability to confront the militants on ideological and material fronts.
Can Pakistan learn anything from Bangladesh? A lot —-in Pakistan mosques and madrasas (religious seminaries) are in full control of religious/sectarian parties and their respective outfits. They take their party line in daily interaction with general public and weekly sermons which are either open pro-militants or offer concealed/disguised support to them. They will never ever condemn the militant attacks; instead will try to boost them as war between Islam and infidels. Pakistani governments whether of Benazir, Nawaz Sharif, Musharaf, or the present setup, all have miserably failed to bring the madrasas under any administrative control. Moves to get the seminaries registered and to audit their funds receiving/ spending activities were a non-starter from the onset.
Our only hope lies with interior minister Rehman Malik’ bi-weekly declarations to start crackdown against banned sectarian outfits and not to allow them to collect Zakat, Fitra and other Ramadan related alums. I wonder if Rehman Malik needs some special glasses to see the huge banners erected all across Karachi by Jamat Dawa/ LeT for collection of funds this Ramadan. Perhaps we can never learn from Bangladesh; we might have crossed the age to learn anything tangible.
