Role of religion

Amin Valliani

July 12, 2019

 NOT too long ago, the events at Christchurch (New Zealand) mosques and Sri Lankan churches once again highlighted the crucial need for interfaith harmony. This means that followers of all religions, though they belong to different parts of the world, speak different languages, and profess different interpretations of their faiths, should live together peacefully as good neighbours.

The world is a family of religions. Like in a family, its members contribute and strengthen to make the family unit stronger. Similarly, all religions provide inspiration to build a better world.

In order to create interfaith harmony at the global level, it is also necessary that the contribution of all religions to the development of a common humanity must be recognised, highlighted and be made part of the school curriculum internationally. All religions have made notable contributions in the areas of spiritual enlightenment, moral inspiration and social cohesion.

{This column has been annotated for the students of Nova CSS Academy.}

Religion has been with us since time immemorial and most people spontaneously adhere to the religion of their forefathers. Every religion has changed the course of history and uplifted societies. It has demonstrated its relevance and usefulness throughout history, and the modern age is no exception.  

There are certain areas where the contribution of religion is above board. The first such area is that it has instilled faith in a Higher Power. Every individual is regarded as a manifestation of divine will. We are born for a purpose and achieving the same gives us a sense of fulfilment. Religion connects individuals and communities to their Creator informing them about the purpose and meaning of life.

There are countless different faiths, religions and schools of thought; all of them provide an answer for how we got here, where we go when we die and why we are here. Islam, in particular, says that humans have been created with a mission of ibadat [worship]. Allah says “I created not the jinn and humans except they should perform [ibadat] (51:56)”. The word ‘ibadat’ is literally translated in English as worship but in Islamic parlance [common language] it means submission to the will of Allah. This implies acceptance of conditions in which humans are born.

The second area where religions’ contribution is noteworthy is highlighting the transitory nature of physical life. The latter is limited in time but religion encourages human beings to become immortal by contributing to their societies. Some are lucky enough that they make contributions in uplifting their societies. In this way, they live in the hearts and minds of people even after their physical death. When a person dies, his actions come to an end. But religion gives him an opportunity to earn a reward even after death for the actions done during earthly life. Islam calls it ‘sadaqah jariyah’ which means continuous reward for an action that someone does in his or her life.

Similarly, life and death are major topics of all religions. No human is born through his own volition [the faculty of using one's own will]or at his own behest but his life is gifted by the Divine to perform righteous actions. All religions encourage their adherents to do good deeds in this field of action for onward transmission to eternity; good actions are the only ‘assets’ to be sent forth for eternal bliss. This helps change the course of peoples’ lives by changing the shape of their character.

This life involves ups and downs and religion provides consolation and relief to individuals who pass through these ups and downs. It encourages and inculcates values of patience, tolerance and striving for self-improvement.

Most religions reject self-aggrandisement [increase of one's own benefits, power] and warn humanity against over-involvement in material pursuits. In other words, humans should not be living in a world of increasing material plenty by forgetting or forsaking the spiritual side of their existence. They have an obligation to uplift their spirit by devoting themselves more to the cause of spirituality.

Normally, all religions state that life on earth is noble; therefore, it should not be wasted in meaningless wrangling[fights, clashes]. Religion points out that there is an inflated personal ego everywhere — in politics and art, in economics and business — which needs to be subdued. Religion encourages people to strive for peace within and peace across the earth.

These are the basics inherent in the teachings of most religions. Diversity in all aspects of life is a natural phenomenon, therefore, it is incumbent upon all of us to be broadminded and open-hearted. Governments should accord equal status and protection to all people no matter what faith they belong to. In this way we would make our world a citadel of peace and tranquillity. 

The writer is an educationist with an interest in religion.
valianiamin@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2019

Do-or-Die measures

Asha’ar Rehman

Updated July 12, 2019

 THE government seems to have decided how it wants to be hailed at the completion of its first year in power. It wants to be known as your infamous headmaster who was happy to declare all suspects equally guilty and who did not discriminate while punishing them. Worse still, Prime Minister Imran Khan looks to be increasingly enslaved by his own logic that leaves him in a perfect situation to fuel adversarial relationships.

As the anniversary fast approaches, the PTI team is making frantic [distraught with fear, anxiety, or other emotion]efforts to add as many grimaces[an ugly, twisted expression on a person's face] as possible to the expression for maximum effect. The image that emerges is far from the benevolent face some in this nation might still have claimed they deserved. It is the image of a disciplinarian prime minister who doesn’t mind being taunted as a dictator while following his own accountability map.

There was news in Tuesday’s papers about the impending media ban on those who have been convicted as well as the ones who are under trial (read: opposition politicians). At first it, appeared as if this was a joke by someone in the middle of all the fake news flying around. But quickly, there was a realisation that the sentiment expressed therein did not militate [be a powerful or conclusive factor in preventing something] against the general thrust of the direction set by the prime minister, most consistently in a series of statements which can easily be titled as ‘No NRO to anyone’. Only recently, channels were taken off air for running an interview of Mr Asif Ali Zardari. A ban on media appearance by him and other suspect politicians looked logical.

What is the source of the insecurity the PTI is faced with, which forces it to frequently take out its gagging equipment?

The most striking aspect about this possible next measure to gag undesirable voices was the certainty with which the subjects of the ban were selected. It does obviously target the convicts who must not be heard by the people after they have been condemned by the court. And then, in one sweep, it includes in the list of people who must be barred from using the media to air their views those who might still only be undergoing trial for ‘alleged’ involvement in corruption, those who are yet to be proven guilty by a court.

Read: Media ban on convicted and under-trial politicians: At best presumptuous and at worst draconian

This latest horror in the PTI’s campaign to try and black out the messages of the opposition leaders entails the inevitable questions the government cannot quite escape. What is the source of the insecurity the PTI is faced with, which forces it to frequently take out its gagging equipment against those it doesn’t want to hear, or doesn’t want heard, generally? It is staggering the pure force with which the PTI is trying to deal with the opposition parties and the media which dares to broadcast views of people so universally infamous as Asif Ali Zardari.

This is quite a mystery, unless we were to believe that Mr Khan was actually perturbed[disturbed] by the likelihood or the mere thought of the opposition leaders managing to win a reprieve [getting freedom from a punishment] here. There’s always been this theory which says that an NRO or amnesty was not entirely impossible from those, we are told, who have the powers to grant the pleaders this favour. 

And it is just not the prime minister’s camp that is moving with utmost care, mindful of the unseen. There are players in the opposition as well who are ready to stake their critical assets in an effort to upset and upstage the still young government. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s stance for the removal of the Senate chairman is one example of the desperate opposition moves to unsettle Prime Minister Khan, that could ultimately place the PPP and its allies in an awkward position.

The Senate chairman was elected in a visibly engineered election in which the PPP acted as a willing tool. No one should know it better than the Zardaris operating in the power politics of Pakistan that if it were possible for the ‘hidden hand’ to present the post of chairman of the Senate to a favourite then the power brokers are quite capable of pulling the strings to get some shocking results. If Mr Asif Zardari is willingly or unwillingly prepared to launch an offensive on the strength of the opposition’s numbers in the upper house, there must be solid reasons for his actions.

Perhaps for the opposition this is not at all the riddle [پہیلی] some others, including journalists, make it out to be. It could well be that the top opposition politicians recognise the danger inherent in Mr Imran Khan’s daily declarations. Most disturbingly for them, they appear to realise that this is not a short burst at trying to malign [الزام تراشی کرنا] the opposition leadership. They seem to know that their trial is going to be much more intense in the coming times and their best bet is to try and somehow force the government to return to the past routine where the two sides — the opposition and the government — recognised the worth of giving each other some breathing to space in order to not jeopardise [خطرے میں ڈالنا] the system.

This fear of worse in store, manifest in signs such as the arrest of Rana Sanaullah, could well have been the clinching factor which forced Ms Maryam Nawaz to come out with what the PML-N calls clear evidence of the government’s prejudice and witch-hunt. This was critical capital, the judge who had ruled against Mian Nawaz Sharif ‘allegedly’ confessing that he was under pressure to convict the former prime minister.

This could perhaps have fetched the PML-N greater points if it had been made public at some later stage. Ms Nawaz, it seems, thought otherwise and true to her reputation as a politician wanting to live in the present moment instead of following a more patient line, she came out with it, convincing herself, and more importantly PML-N veterans, that holding on to this ammunition in the face of an Imran Khan poised to suppress the media and politicians and everyone else in his wake amounted to dying. It could well be that we have already reached the most crucial part of this decisive battle.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2019

Fatima's election

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

July 12, 2019

 THERE is an election happening in this country in a few short days, and an extremely historic one at that. The people of the region formerly known as Fata will go to the polls for the very first time since formal integration into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. After more than seven decades, the more than three million people of the tribal regions are finally being given a modicum [a small quantity] of democratic rights, the barely disguised colonial statute known as the Frontier Crimes Regulation, or FCR, finally being thrown into the dustbin of history.  

There is no direct link but the impending electoral exercise in the ex-Fata districts takes me back to the 1965 presidential election, which, in many ways, was similarly historic. In recent days, many people have commemorated [remember and show respect to something] the death anniversary of one of the participants in the 1965 contest, Fatima Jinnah (July 9). Effusive [بہت زیادہ داد و تحسین دینا] praise for the Madar-i-Millat has emanated [originate from a source] from the highest quarters of Pakistani officialdom too, an irony of history that surely cannot go unnoticed.

After all, back in 1965, Ms Jinnah was hardly a darling of the establishment or mainstream intellectual and media circles. Her opponent in the election, incumbent ruler Gen Ayub Khan — who preferred to go by the far more lofty title of ‘Field Marshal’ — pilloried [کڑکی میں کس دینا] Ms Jinnah no end. The latter had been a political nonentity since soon after her brother’s death, but after seven years of dictatorship the seeds of popular discontent were brewing, encouraging Ms Jinnah to try her hand at dislodging the dictator.

What I want to call attention to is the language used by Gen Ayub Khan and his propagandists against Fatima Jinnah. In one pamphlet that I recently came across, Ms Jinnah was accused of conspiring against Pakistan alongside Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan by trying to establish Pashtunistan. Perhaps the tone and tenor of Ayub Khan’s vitriol [شدید تنقید] indicated how panicked the regime was by Fatima Jinnah’s election campaign. She did not mince her words about the underhanded tactics being used by the government and also made clear that parliamentary democracy had to be restored for Pakistan and its people to survive and prosper.

Ayub Khan was of course at the time trumpeting his so-called Basic Democracies scheme, a blatant initiative to instal loyalists willing to vote for him in an indirect presidential election. Eighty thousand Basic Democrats constituted the electoral college for the election; most had been bought over long before the actual voting exercise took place. Yet Ms Jinnah generated massive crowds during her campaign, particularly in East Pakistan, and some historians argue that she actually won the election in the country’s two biggest cities of Karachi and Dhaka despite all the pre-poll rigging.

Today, a region and its people who have suffered from decades of war and intrigue [سازش], and whose rights and welfare have been denied in the name of the state’s strategic interests should be enjoying their moment in history. But they too, like Fatima Jinnah and the countless millions to whom she tried to give voice in 1965, are having to accede to a charade بناوٹی باتیں اور عمل instead.

To date, most of us ordinary Pakistanis are unaware of what is happening in the ex-Fata districts. Media coverage of electoral campaigning — to whatever extent it is actually happening — is virtually non-existent. The Electoral Commission at least announced a few days ago that Section 144 was being lifted in all districts in which elections are set to take place, but by most accounts it appears as if there is anything but a level playing ground for all candidates.

It has been said before but it merits repetition: the establishment does not learn from its mistakes. It appears, in fact, as if the preferred option is to doctor history and pretend as if figures like Fatima Jinnah were always revered, whereas in fact they were subject to the same character assassinations and accusations of conspiracy that progressive and democratic forces continue to be subjected to today.

It is worth bearing in mind that the bourgeois democratic project that has been so enfeebled in Pakistan since the very beginning is far from a cherished ideal. Our mainstream political parties are anything but paragons of political virtue and defenders of citizens’ basic freedoms. But this fact is overemphasised in prototypical analyses of our dire status quo.

Just like her brother, Fatima Jinnah was exposed to a tradition of politics that was anything but democratic. Theirs was a colonial inheritance, and the messiness of democratic political processes rankled [کسی تنگ کرنے والی چیز کا چمٹا رہنا] with them. Yet by 1965, Ms Jinnah clearly recognised that name-calling, manipulation and coercion by the unelected apparatus of the state would lead Pakistan to a dead end. More than 50 years later, little has changed. And little will change until the people of this country are recognised as the genuine fountainhead of power.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2019