- Hope for tolerance our greatest desire
In an environment where intolerance and injustice prevails, even a small step towards moderation seems like a breath of fresh air. And while the moderate gesture asks for more, it also keeps reminding of learning from the past, of both liberal and bigoted times.
Generally speaking, naïve residents mostly belonging to the majority Sunni Muslim sect in Pakistan believe that their country is the most tolerant nation of all and an example of the most intolerant would easily be given with that of our neighbour, India, where fellow Muslims are increasingly persecuted, after years of relative secularism. Any harshness, strong action in the name of religion, taken in Pakistan or other brethren nation is hailed as necessary, but elsewhere, unjust. Such is our state of mind nowadays, numbed from years of conditioning through propagandas, targeted advocacy and even mainstream education.
So it was a rather pleasant surprise and a feeble ray of hope, when the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) recently rejected the issuance of fatwa (edict) for murdering someone and declaring people as Kafir (non-believer), urging the government to increase punishment for such acts. Another development in a similar direction was the setting up of a council for the protection of minorities. Its aim is to “facilitate the federal and provincial governments to make progress on constitutional guarantees, in particular, the articles related to religious freedom, rights and interests of minorities, removing backwardness, international obligations”. Although critics claim that these rhetorics are merely on paper, the much delayed emergence of the institution can at least, be a source of expectation.
Why may such initiatives be important? Firstly, gone are the days when any man, or nation for that matter, could impose its will or belief of superiority on others. The British can not now openly claim that they tame an uncivilised nation, like they did during the Raj in the subcontinent. There can be no Adolf Hitler now to horridly proclaim that his race is superior and others deserve death. However, this itself is a debatable notion, for such attitudes are surely still displayed, but in subtle manners, through economic, strategic or sometimes social tactics, for outrageous pronouncements are now denounced as human rights violations.
That minorities in a country which was founded on the principle of a Two Nation Theory should be given equivocal rights lest history may repeat itself, is yet another reason for such initiatives. Sadly, this practice with the complete essence has remained controversial in our country.
In her book Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s religious minorities, scholar, journalist and former member of the Pakistani parliament, Farahnaz Ispahani writes an apolitical, scholarly account of the political machinations of Pakistan’s military and civil bureaucracy and its religious and political leaders, which “tracks the markedly rightward trajectory of the Pakistani polity from its inception”. Ispahani notes that in Pakistan, the first instance when Right winged Islamisation was enforced over secular policy was the suppression of the founding father’s August 11, 1947 speech to the first Constituent Assembly. This address was Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s “clearest possible pronouncement of his conception of a secular and religiously inclusive Pakistan”.
While in his lifetime, Jinnah set up a diverse cabinet, where the law minister was a Hindu (Jogindarnath Mandal) and the foreign minister an Ahmadi (Sir Zafarullah Khan). But within months of his demise, the 1949 Objectives Resolution was tabled and approved, which as argued by Farhanaz Ispahani, “was effectively an Islamist Manifesto and the exact antithesis of the August 11 speech”.
Has a believer belonging to the true faith ever wondered how it feels to be labelled an apostate? What life is spent when with each hour of the day
When your country is a place where a liberal minded, outspoken university student is heartlessly and brutally lynched to death on a rumour of committing blasphemy, how can you call it tolerant? When after the shocking and tragic incident, it is proved that no such sin was committed and yet the perpetrators are either free or fail to get punished, how can you believe that your country is just?
Where a powerful sitting governor of the largest province is assassinated by his official guard in broad daylight, merely for standing up for the legal defense of a poor Christian woman, how can you consider yourself – a commoner, to be safe and sound? And when after languishing in prison for almost a decade, it is proved in the country’s highest court that the woman, in fact is innocent and there is no proof of any wrongdoing, a certain faction erupts in protests, threatening to block all roads and thwart a chance of progress in an already development starved nation. How can you then believe that your society is sane? Where the people call both the slain governor and the bodyguard a martyr in the same breath, how can you not blame that nation of bigotry?
Has a believer belonging to the true faith ever wondered how it feels to be labelled an apostate? What life is spent when with each hour of the day, fear looms of a stray bullet, abruptly taking away life for belonging to the ‘wrong’ faith? What pride can remain, when one of International Monetary Fund’s 25 brightest young economists is appointed as a member of the country’s Economic Advisory Council, but is shortly forced to resign, as the majority does not approve of his faith?
When these instances become a norm in your society, developments such as declaring fatwas at will and deeming just anybody worthy to be killed as punishable, become a bleak source of anticipation. When it is announced that steps would be taken to ensure the freedom and rights of all faiths, at least in theory, a sense of justice and burden off the chest is felt. To be able to live in times where tolerance and moderation prevail and bigotry and extremism are bygone practices, is one’s greatest hope.
In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country’s honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom’s shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed—
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head! – To Hope, John Keats
