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| Kettle calling the pot black | | Politics in Pakistan with strongly religous overtones | |
B L KAK
NEW DELHI NOV 24
Politics in Pakistan and politicians of diferent hues continue to draw a good deal of attention within and outside Pakistan. Even as the country's much-talked-about President, Gen. Parvez Musharraf, is counted as a liberal, he does not fight shy while making use of religion for his longevity in the office he has been accupying since 1999. It is a diferent matter that Chaudhry Shujaat, chief of the ruling PML (Q), has advised the MMA to refrain from using religion for political purposes.
It is a typical case of the kettle calling the pot black. Is it not a fact that Chaudhry Shujaat himself has turned to religion to promote his political ambitions? It has already been established that politics in Pakistan has been given a strongly religious overtone and politicians of different hues have relied heavily on religion to give credibility to what they say. There is no doubt that the Objectives Resolution was moved by the first Prime Minister of Pakistan basically to appease the religious parties, but he discreetly kept it in the preamble to the then constitution to avoid its indiscriminate use.
Religion was brought into practical politics for the first time in the seventies. ZA Bhutto's concern, as rightly explained by Pakistan's influential English daily, Dawn, was to ensure that the religious elements were not alienated by his populist politics. He, therefore, coined the slogan of Islamic socialism and declared the Qadianis non-Muslim. It was Gen. Zia-ul-Haq who brought in the trend of Islamisation of governance and politics in a big way. And there has been no turning back since then.
This induction of Islam into politics has had a negative impact. There is no doubt about Pakistanis being proud of their Islamic faith and heritage. One would not question the wisdom of encouraging people to order their personal lives in accordance with the moral principles of Islam. But to try to empower the state to enforce Islamic laws and systems drawn up by the disciples of one school of thought or another has a divisive tilt to it.
It is hazardous since it can lead to discord, given the large number of sects that exist in Pakistan and that hold conflicting views on, and interpretations of, the Sharia and the Quran. This also explains why no Islamic model of government has been developed in 1400 years.
An attempt at this stage to devise a system for prescribing the framework for government, economy and a corpus of laws has its pitfalls. It would, therefore, be wiser to adopt the option of upholding the principles that Islam stands for and striving to work within the broad framework of these norms.
On the other hand, the system Pakistan has adopted is one in which there is an exaggerated stress on ritualistic correctness and rectitude of form rather than substance. This approach allows plenty of room for politicians to use religion for their own ends as has been happening in Pakistan. The main reason why the Hasba Bill was resisted by the opposition parties in the NWFP Assembly is because they fear that it will provide the MMA an instrument to use against its opponents.
The two-month long drama in Islamabad that preceded the enactment of the protection of women's bill could have been avoided if the ruling party had not succumbed initially to the MMA's pressure directed at weakening the bill on the pretext of bringing it into line with the Sharia. It is shocking that the political parties that are most vocal about Islamising society are also the ones which do not raise a voice against all the social evils, economic corruption and other ills that plague Pakistan and make the life of an average citizen nasty and brutish and which take place in gross violation of Islam. Is it because there is no political mileage to be gained from opposing these ills?
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