By Aijaz Zaka Syed,
From what little one has read and heard about Salman Taseer, he lived life king size with an irrepressible, in-your-face contempt for everything that ordinary Pakistanis – and Muslims everywhere – love and hold close to heart. The slain governor of Pakistan’s Punjab was both a successful politician and a successful businessman, building a nice, little media empire of his own.
Taseer certainly knew how to work his way up the slippery pole of power in the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics, having been close to both the powers that be – President Asif Zardari — and powers that were – Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He even had an Indian connection, having married journalist Tavleen Singh and fathered a son, Aatish Taseer, with her during his brief stay in India.
A slick operator and maverick to the core, Taseer had developed a taste for “good things of life” and lived dangerously in every sense of the term. But did Salman Taseer deserve to be killed, as he has been? That too in the sweet name of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and the blessed faith that he brought?
I know we have been here before but how much more infamy and disgrace Muslims will inflict on their faith in the name of protecting it? Every time we target someone in the name of Islam we add a blot to the long history of tolerance, kindness and generosity of the great faith. And where’s all this going to end, if we start settling our political or ideological differences? As Mahatma Gandhi would warn, an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind. We aren’t living in the middle ages for God’s sake!
More important, we do ultimate injustice to the Last Messenger, the noblest and kindest of men, who granted amnesty to the worst of his enemies including those who persecuted and tried to assassinate him when the whole of Arabia was at his feet.
I am no religious scholar. But with the limited understanding I have of my faith, I have to ask these so-called defenders of faith: Would the Prophet approve of this murder and mayhem in his name and in the name of a religion that is totally based on reason, truth and justice? But whoever said this had anything to do with religion or faith? This is more like the politics of religion, something we in South Asia have evolved into a science.
From Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic to the gunning down of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh guards, religion has gone hand in hand with politics. As the BJP realized to its glee, after it was transformed from a 2-member party in Parliament into a “natural party of governance” after the Ayodhya campaign, it pays to mix politics with religion, or the other way round.
Across the border in Pakistan, our cousins seem to have turned this to another level with deadly effect and consequences. Even as I am a great believer in Allama Iqbal’s philosophy that “juda ho deen siasat se toe rah jaati hai changezi”(divorced from religion, politics is nothing but barbarity), I dare say what’s going on in Pakistan right now has got nothing to do with religion, nor with politics.
Pakistan was supposed to have been the citadel of Islam, a model state based on the celebrated Islamic principles of equality and accountability before God and justice and security for everyone including its minorities, a utopia that would be a source of inspiration and pride for the believers around the world.
Where does Jinnah’s Pakistan find itself today then? As a country that is so much like my own and is home to some of my closest friends, there’s always been a special place for the “land of the pure” in my heart (no matter what our Sanghi and Sena friends think!)
But would the founding fathers of Pakistan be proud of the state their baby is in today? Is this what Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah had in mind when he envisioned a model Muslim state?
Millions gave up everything they had for the “promised land.” There were hundreds of thousands of others who could never make it past what Qurratulain Haider called Aag ka Darya (The River of Fire). Were all those immense sacrifices meant for the dangerous, lawless land that some are bent on making of Pakistan?
It’s not just the lunatic fringe represented by the Tahreek-e-Taleban and numerous other outfits that are distorting the teachings of Islam and chipping away at the so-called ideal of Pakistan, almost every politician and party, including those in the “secular and liberal” Pakistan People’s Party, is guilty of using or abusing religion for petty political ends.
Same goes for the so-called blasphemy law, a relic of the late President Gen. Zia-ul Haq’s martial law era. Of course, no Muslim will ever tolerate any slur against the Prophet. And one has no reason to question Gen. Zia’s sincerity and intention in bringing in the law.
However, the very fact that it has generated so much heat and dust in and outside Pakistan with genuine concerns and complaints about its abuse to settle personal and political scores, calls for revisiting and reviewing the law. While any assault on the Prophet’s person or the Holy Book will always be intolerable for all believers, more reprehensible is potential victimization of innocents.
This is not just about a controversial law or some fanatics taking law into their hands in Pakistan. I hate to say this but the larger issue at the heart of this whole debate is increasing intolerance in Muslim societies around the world. Whatever the real and imagined causes of this growing extremism – Western conspiracies and interventionist policies, historical injustices or corruption and spinelessness of Muslim leaders – in our midst, it has acquired truly frightening proportions.
From mindless, suicidal violence targeting innocent Muslims to shameless attacks on religious minorities, the cancer of extremism is eating away into the vitals of Muslim societies everywhere and pristine image of Islam. And it’s no longer possible to ignore these extremists as a tiny, lunatic fringe because they have practically hijacked our voices and causes, painting a community of 1.7 billion believers as a dangerous, intolerant lot.
Governments, opinion leaders, intellectuals and religious scholars and leaders in particular have to wake up to this scourge of extremism before it’s too late. The Muslims have their issues and problems, just like any other people or community, and they are capable of taking care of them without help and intervention from the nuts celebrating death, thank you very much! Extremist violence in the name of religion is no longer an issue of idle, drawing room debate.
This is a clear and present danger to all of us. Too many innocents have died and too much innocent blood has been shed in our name. This is not us. Blowing up innocent, unsuspecting folks busy in prayers is the ultimate savagery and crime against the faith, against all faiths. We must act and act now to stop this dance of death. For God will not forgive us if we remain silent in the face of this outrage. Extremism has emerged as the biggest threat to Islam and Muslims everywhere. And the alternative to collective inaction is collective doom.
– Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based commentator who has written extensively on Muslim world affairs. Write to him at [email protected]. This article first appeared in Arab News.