Questioning religious credentials is a dangerous precedent
Surely something has gone amiss with the election campaigning if one of the leading candidates, Imran Khan, is having to declare he is a Muslim in public gathering. The value of the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) early warning to political parties, later withdrawn under pressure from religious political parties, is now coming to the forth as the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Fazlur Rehman has turned to declare voting for the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) ‘haram’. The last ditch measure by the JUI-F chief reminds one of the fatwa issued against voting for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) before the 1970 election. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s response against the allegations by religious fundamentalists was famously to declare, “I may drink some drops of alcohol, but I do not drink blood.”
But so much has Pakistan changed from those times, in a downfall created in part by Bhutto, that the populist Imran Khan has to recite the first kalma at his rallies and deny suggestions that he was an “Ahmadi agent”. In doing so, Khan has raised serious questions over his will to take a strong stance against religious fundamentalists and alienated a strong pocket of the religious minorities in the country that looked forward to real change in their lives and status in society. Whatever the purpose behind Fazl’s unnecessary rant, it has managed to turn the PTI chief to shift his line from Sharif-bashing in Punjab, to bashing the man popularly known as ‘Maulana Diesel’, referring to him by popular refrain in rallies at Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi and Buner. While Imran Khan is right to point out that “the Maulana had always politicised Islam to serve his own interests”, it would be worthwhile if Khan understood the lesson himself and stuck to his political programme, rather than promoting his own religious credentials.
While it is understood that the language of politics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan would inevitably be couched in some form of religious metaphor, surely there needs to be a considered limit to using the “religion card”. By calling opponents foreign agents or – more dangerously – Qadiani agents, politicians achieve no purpose, nor does it make sense to return those accusations with accusations of one’s own. The spat over Imran Khan’s religiousity or the Maulana’s ‘love for America’ would barely translate into any serious consequences on the ground with respect to votes; these only constitute good headlines for newspapers. This spout reminds us that the ECP warning was in ‘good faith’ and no good could come of using religion in politics. There is a need for the ECP to take action against this sloganeering. More generally, candidates would do well to project their party manifestoes, rather indulging in negative propaganda and personal attacks on other candidates and political parties.
