Islam as refuge from failure

By Eqbal Ahmad

The occasion for the celebratory scene is the proposed amendment to the constitution. It is likely to push Pakistan toward totalitarianism and darkness. Whatever happens to Sharif, his yes-men and cheerleaders, the country and its people may not emerge in one piece. Throughout Muslim history the infusion of religion in politics has been a mark of weakness and decline. For his many Islamic measures and his war on Sikh and Hindu chiefs, Aurangzeb (1618-1707) has been revered in the Islamist circles of south Asia. In addition to ignoring his excesses, his killing of brother and imprisonment of father, they disregard a central fact of Aurangzeb's long reign: he inherited a strong state and left behind a tottering one. This enormous failure was due largely to his theocratic disposition.

The admiration for Aurangzeb is a symptom of a deep ailment. It suggests a widespread psychological disposition to throw religion into politics as a reinforcement mechanism. Hence, in Pakistan Islam has been a refuge of troubled and weak leaders. As the country has suffered -- increasingly over five decades -- from a crisis of leadership, the promise of an "Islamic state" has recurred as the core symbol of failure.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah was perhaps the only secure leader in Pakistan. However much his former detractors and new-found followers attempt to distort his views on the issue, Jinnah was a modern Muslim, with a secular outlook, contemporary life style, and a modernist view of Islam's relationship to power and politics. He believed the Islamic values of justice, equality, and tolerance should shape power and politics without the formalistic imposition of structures and strictures of centuries past. His August 1947 speech to the Constituent Assembly was his last testament to his vision for Pakistan. We are witnessing yet again the betrayal of this notion of statehood, and, to avoid becoming accomplices, we must say "No" to Sharif's amendment forcefully and collectively.

Jinnah's successors were less sure of their political roots in the new state. They were also competing with each other. Yet, they were saddled with the task of defining the constitutional dispensation of this diverse and divided nation state that lacked most attributes of nationhood. The Objectives Resolution was a product of their ambivalence, an attempt to apply the cement of Islam to secular purposes. For them, to act according to the Qur'anic injunction to "enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong" was a call to good government, not a prescription for re-inventing the past.

Thus, they deployed the resolution to legitimise governance under the 1935 Act, and eventually to produce the 1956 Constitution of which the only "Islamic" provisions were that the head of state shall be a Muslim and the parliament shall enact no laws repugnant to the Qur'an and sunna. Their constitutional acrobatics disregarded the fact that, given the uneven development of Muslim society and the reveling in past glories so common to people in enfeebled civilizations, this Objectives Resolution and Islam itself shall be subject to distortions and misuse. The riots of 1953 were an early warning sadly ignored. Their formal commitment to "enjoin what is right" did not discourage their squabbling and other indulgences in munkar, or wrong. The drafters and votaries of the Objectives Resolution set the stage for the first military take-over.

Ayub Khan's coup d'état was a welcome change from the misgovernance of Pakistan's Islam-pedaling opportunists. Confident of his ability to govern, Ayub adopted what has been to date the most enlightened posture on the relationship between Islam and politics. He enacted fairly progressive family and marriage laws and removed the adjectival "Islamic" from the Republic of Pakistan, thus honouring Islam by de-linking it from venality, opportunism, and mismanagement -- features which have characterised government and politics in Pakistan.

In his early years in power Ayub Khan had, nevertheless, cared enough about the "reconstruction of religious thought in Islam" to have invited back to Pakistan Dr Fazlur Rahman, by far the finest Pakistani scholar of Islam, to lead an Institute for Islamic Studies. The 1965 war marked the decline of Ayub Khan's power and the end of his enlightened outlook on the relationship between religion and power. Before his government had fallen, the religious parties had hounded Fazlur Rahman into exile. As desperation set in, Ayub Khan, too, made feeble attempts to deploy religion as a political weapon.

Islam rarely figured in Z A Bhutto's anti-Ayub campaign. His focus was on betrayal -- of national security and our valiant armed forces in Tashkent -- on imperialism and America, and on poverty. He was a master rhetorician. His career presents nevertheless a text book case of the Islam-as-a-refuge-of-the-weak-and-scoundrel regime. His first bow to "Islamism" -- declaring Ahmedis a non-Muslim minority -- occurred after he had dismissed the government of Baluchistan, that of the NWFP had resigned in protest, opposition leaders were imprisoned, and an insurgency was ignited. His last bow to Islamism was made as he struggled to hold on to power in the summer of 1977. Bhutto had promised then, much like Sharif today, to introduce the shari'a and turn Pakistan into an Islamic state on the model of Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto's protégé and executioner, gave the country his 'solemn promise' to hold elections in 90 days as the Constitution required. The self-styled "soldier of Islam" lied then and repeatedly thereafter, and never ceased to invoke Islam. He was an isolated dictator aided by right-wing "Islamic" parties. So he proceeded on a programme of "Islamisation" and jihad in Afghanistan. We are still reaping his bitter harvest.

And now, with tragic familiarity and despite the hair-raising models of Sudan and Afghanistan before him, Sharif is proposing to further divide and, possibly, destroy this unfortunate country. Unlike Zia-ul-Haq he is an elected prime minister, not an isolated dictator, and unlike Bhutto he is not facing a do-or-die challenge to his power. He commands an overwhelming majority in parliament while his brother safely rules the Punjab. Then why has he so panicked as to put in jeopardy both the faith and the country?

The answer lies perhaps in a sense of failure and the fear one feels when things appear out of control. Nawaz Sharif was elected with a large parliamentary majority which he interpreted as an unprecedented mandate. He inaugurated his prime ministerial term with a stirring address to the country, full of all the right promises, this amendment not being one of them. He has not fulfilled a single pledge -- and is unlikely to do so. Rather, in every respect the reverse of what he had promised has happened, and the people are suffering from a rising excess of want. So now Prime Minister Sharif wishes to compensate by giving them the gift of God, the shari'a, five enforced prayers a day, and a fully empowered Amir Al-Mu'minin (Prince of the faithful). He must be feeling very feeble indeed.