Awkward viewing, Geo’s Khabarnaak was, on the 16th of October. Though the episode had looked good on paper. The guest was Hamid Mir. And Khabarnaak is one of the country’s leading political humour programs, fuelled by the irrepressible Pride of Performance-winning Muhammad Ali Mir. The readers of this column would know that I am a fan of both. What could have gone wrong?
Well, plenty did, apparently.
First of all, Hamir Mir didn’t play along well. Not at all, in fact. He was in a bad mood throughout. Which is odd, given how the man is known to have a sense of humour himself and — proof of the pudding — he has been a guest on the show several times earlier as well. This time round, he was a perpetual buzzkill.
Though it certainly wasn’t appropriate behaviour and he taking himself a little too seriously, one can understand where Hamid Mir was coming from. You see, the other Mir was essaying the JUI-F’s Fazlur Rehman, a thoroughly misunderstood politician. He lends himself to some rather easy and predictable caricatures. How many halwa and Diesel jokes can you cram in a performance anyway? So what, you might ask? Aren’t the satire shows all swiping at the low-hanging comedic fruits and making “broad” and lazy jokes when it comes to the caricatures of all political figures, not just Fazl-ur-Rehman?
Well, yes. But the problem with Fazl-ur-Rehman is that misrepresentation isn’t limited to the comedy shows but political punditry in general. In the minds of the columnist and TV talking heads, the Maulana’s JUI-F is treated interchangeably with the Jamat-e-Islami.
From the commentariat, it would be difficult to discern, for instance, that the JUI-F is now one of the nation’s more vocal anti-Taliban parties, a big feat, considering how it is from their affiliate madrassas where the student militia does a lot of its recruiting. The Maulana has survived several suicide bombings in recent years. Few would know that the party’s Maulana Sheerani — yes, the CII misogynist you are thinking of — is more fearless in expressing his views against the Good Taliban/Bad Taliban policy of the establishment than, say, the secular PPP.
Coming back to the program, Hamid Mir said that the “dummy” and the host hadn’t done their research. When asked about Fazl-ur-Rehman’s statement in India about how the partition had divided Muslims, Mir asked to be shown proof. On another point about how the Maulana had said that a woman cannot govern the country, Mir again countered that the Maulana himself had never said that, even though some seniors from his party might have.
Within the heated debate, the host, asks Hamid Mir the bizzare question of why Fazl-ur-Rehman doesn’t “accept the nation-state”!
“But he DOES accept it,” replied Mir, who then continued on to talk about how much the party is invested in constitutionalism. This rant segued into reading ethnic prejudices into this unfair targeting of the Maulana. “You do this to him because he is a Pashtun,” which, in my personal opinion was a bit unfair. The inability to see different shades within the religious political parties is an issue completely distinct from that of racial prejudice.
On the flipside, Mir’s objection to making fun of Fazl-ur-Rehman because he has “sunnat-e-Rusool” on his face was completely unfair and humourless. To say that a parody of anyone with a beard isn’t kosher is something the Maulana himself wouldn’t approve of.
