By Umair Javed
MANY people in Pakistan, seething at Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, are rightly upset. In the same vein, those few who point out similar discriminatory practices against the Ahmadi community right here in Pakistan are also rightly upset. When the few were bold enough to make their grievance public, the state apparatus surprisingly took action. They proceeded to remove a hate-filled sticker in a commercial establishment and arrested the person who’d put it up.
In response, the many took to the streets to ‘protect’ their right to discriminate. They’ve now decided to escalate matters by asking the state to distinguish ‘real’ believers from ‘fake’ ones using ID cards (and maybe down the line, they’ll force them to wear hats and badges). They’ve put up a few hundred more stickers and many new banners asking for everyone to discriminate against a particular community. The many say it’s an obligation. This difference in numbers between the few and the many is one of the principle ideological chasms this country struggles with on a regular basis.
Before proceeding any further, let’s be clear about a few basic things: societal bigotry aside, the Pakistani state and its guiding legal structure perpetuate and enshrine discriminatory politics of the kind witnessed in Lahore recently. One can argue endlessly about which way this particular causality runs historically (ie did societal bigotry reflect itself in the legal framework, or did the state’s eagerness to discriminate end up entrenching bigotry in society), but that would be futile. If today is taken as our starting point, both, social actors and the state entrusted to manage affairs on their behalf, are mostly on the same page when it comes to discriminating against a particular community. Whether it’s through the Bhutto-led Second Amendment, the heinous provisions inserted by Zia, and then subsequent governments, or through the everyday practices of religious groups, businessmen, and over-eager clerics and their followers.
Societal bigotry aside, the Pakistani state and its guiding legal structure perpetuate and enshrine discriminatory politics.
The second thing we need to be clear about is that while in our post-APS setting there may exist a tenuous consensus against militant actors, there’s little to no societal consensus on moderation, or on a new definition of tolerance, citizenship, and coexistence. Religion is still considered a public affair, and is thus still used by many as a basis for stratifying society into pure, half-breeds, and mongrels. Although the state has flexed its muscles occasionally under the National Action Plan, the relative freedom accorded to actors like Maulana Abdul Aziz, or those shopkeepers who’ve decided to step up their hate speech campaign in Lahore shows that curbing physical violence is on the agenda, while the soil and fertiliser that allows physical violence to thrive is a distant second or third.
This brings us to the question of what can be done to protect the fundamental, completely human rights of members of the Ahmadi community from a predatory society and a passively complicit state. At the point of logical culmination, for any successful reform to take place, the question has to move away from the Muslim vs non-Muslim dichotomy, and towards a conception of equal citizenship based on shared geographic or national affiliation.
Here’s the problem though — unlike other communities persecuted for religious reasons (the Shias in particular, but also Christians and Hindus), neither the numbers nor social acceptance is on the side of a progressive reform movement that champions anti-discrimination. The Ahmadi community is avowedly apolitical — rightly so for security reasons — and thus cannot function alone as an interest group at the local or national level. Compounding the problem is a society where a sizeable majority ascribes to a discriminatory (if not violent) position, and responds harshly to any attempts by other social actors to assert a different view.
Given a complete inability to initiate mass social action, the only way forward is for the state to feel emboldened enough to take a lead in weeding out violence, discrimination, and hate speech. Theoretically, the state has the organisational apparatus to carry out this task. It has the reach, resources, and has shown in the past that it can take difficult decisions (though of a different nature and magnitude). Practically speaking, mainstream political parties need to arrive at a consensus on the urgency with which this needs to be done. All differences to one side, there needs to be a public declaration by party leaders that no one will utilise any push for an anti-discrimination campaign to garner cheap votes and whip-up right-wing sentiment for short-term gains.
Finally, progressive forces — outnumbered and under-resourced as they are — would have to ensure those that control the state and its accompanying bureaucratic apparatus remain emboldened to undertake this extremely difficult venture.
There is no doubt as to how impossible this appears as a task. For instance, one small action by the state — taking down a hateful sticker in a city plastered with hate — has led to a reaction that will in all likelihood induce paralysis towards other discriminatory instances.
Yet, if momentum is not built, voices are not raised, encouragement is not provided, our self-congratulatory narrative on the ‘consensus’ will remain exactly what it is — hollow and procedural. More than Zarb-i-Azb, more than Lal Masjid, more than our nationalist reaction to terrorism in the wake of Peshawar, history will take the treatment handed out to particular communities — and our response — as the true litmus test in the fight against extremism and intolerance.
http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2015/12/pakistan-few-and-many-predatory-society.html
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