Summarizing and consolidating the numerous ideas of writers, columnists, TV hosts, military analysts, and drawing-room politicians; the post 9/11 Pakistan is gradually balancing itself between leftist moderates and conservative fundamentalists. Contrary to one’s perceptions, emotional agitators, extremists, and militants exist in both camps and are not exclusive to the later school of thought. Such is the ironic reality of Pakistan, because a balance of this kind is only ripe for further escalation in violence. Pakistan today is in the infancy stages of an impending social division, especially since its citizens haven’t yet decided who is Tutsi and who is Hutu! It’s important to diagnose this cancer before it spreads.
Population segregation can take its form in multiple kinds of cancers: racial in the case of Civil Rights atrocities, biological predisposition in the case of Rwanda and Bangladesh, economic loyalty in the case of Mau Mau, and ethnicity in the case of Hitler’s Germany; unfortunately the lines in Pakistan will once again divide along religious interpretations.
Although it is improbable at this stage in Pakistan’s social history, the events to arise out of a complete bifurcation of its population will be worse than anytime in its 61 year history. The only reason why there would be no hindrance this time for a systematic wipe-out of a particular social stratosphere: is because Pakistani’s are not Pakistanis anymore.
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The Cold War was definitive to the Pakistani experience in the same manner the reconstruction that followed World War II was definitive for Europe. Since WWII was a continuation of WWI, Europe came to realize the political potential of its neighbors and in 1945 – via the establishment of the United Nations – was able to reify the 1919 Treaty of Versailles where nation-states were to acknowledge and respect the sovereignty of their neighbors. However, another more subtle effect this had was that nationalism as displayed by Hitler and Mussolini was looked down upon, while at the same time the idea of a nation-state was perfected and developed into a more sub-conscious entity.
In the same manner, the Cold War demanded that a national enterprise be established in South Asia – and Pakistan in particular, where Zia was able to unite multitudes from all over the world and send them to fight the infidel Communists under the banner of religion. Coincidently, this is the same political tactic utilized by Jinnah and Iqbal which yielded the same results in 1936 as it would do again in 1979 under Zia: the consolidation of a diverse population towards a common goal.
Regardless of what we call it, this kind of nationalism uses religion as a political force, not as a moral force. There is nothing wrong with this especially since with the tantamount task facing Jinnah and the Muslim League, the realization of the Two-Nation Theory was only possible through the politicization of Islam. And it worked perfectly. But, Pakistanis need to realize and acknowledge this political nature of Islam as evident from the events of Partition and the Cold War, because the enemy we are fighting today in the post 9/11 world is not external but internal.
This new face of the enemy is so infused within the very fabric of society that the religious and ethnic affiliation becomes an irrelevant litmus test for this insurgent. To give the name of Islamic terrorism to the bombing in Islamabad, begs the question of religious faith of these terrorists, and therefore automatically questions the priority and faith of not just everyone else, but more importantly questions the entire ideological foundation of the State. In other words, if we call them Islamic Terrorists, we automatically give them membership into Islam and therefore by default: citizenship of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
To prove or disprove the faith of a jihadist, a lawyer, or any citizen is a matter of Usul Al-Fiqh or Legal Jurisprudence. This issue is so complicated and time-consuming given the numerous factions and interpretations involved, that regardless of which way the scholar yields, the verdict will not just decide the official religious interpretation the State but will also make the social and religious divide in Pakistan irreparable. So why put these scholars to such an impossible task that they have to decide the fate of the entire Nation? Is that not the job of the people?
Religion works as an excellent galvanizing force, but only when the enemy is fundamentally different – as in the case of the 1980’s Communists. Political Islam therefore helped create a wedge between Hindus and Muslims in the pre-partition years and then again between Muslims and Communists during the Cold-War. But today, in a global village where mostly every facet of life is so multi-racial and cosmopolitan, Pakistan needs to compartmentalize religion as a faith based psychosis, much like it was in the years before Partition.
Contrary to Jinnah’s strong opposition to religious politics, Islam helped Pakistan become a reality, and now its time for its people to wake up from their dream and realize that they are no longer fighting for a separate homeland based on religion. On his inaugural address to the infant Nation, Jinnah spoke of the future when, “in the course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”
Pakistanis need to understand the above concept with a clear mind if they want to move forward as a people – and this is ever more clear given the incredible paranoia of tribal instability that exists today. Pakistanis need to realize Jinnah’s foresight and cease to be Muslims in a political sense and begin to live as Pakistanis, nothing more. They need a non-religious denominator that binds all peoples of Pakistan together as cohesive whole, and that is the modern definition of nationalism. They need this new kind of nationalism which would bring people together, not to forge a nation out of British India, but for building one this time.
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Nationalism is the precursor agent to any inherent political identity. Just as political Islam helped establish the ideological difference between mujahedeen and the Soviets in the late 1970’s, a new identity is required to differentiate Pakistan with not just the British India of the past, but the entire modern world of today. With this broadened field of vision, Islam can no longer provide a unique political identity to Pakistan simply because it is the shared religion of 51 other nations of the world who all claim it as their official religion.
A nation cannot claim a common belief as its unique national attribute, because the burden of proof to establish Islam as inherently Pakistani is an impossible task to meet, especially when faced with the stark geographical and historical fact that the Qaaba and Medina are located in an Arab nation, not a South Asian one. For a national identity to work there needs to be something so unique with a community that no other group of people can claim it as their own. That is what gives a people a sense of bonding and an idea that they are a nation. Sadly, this does not exist in Pakistan today.
Therefore, there has to be some ideology, some concept, some trend that irrefutably sets Pakistan apart from others nations of the world. Religion is not the answer today, though it was useful in 1947. As long as one keeps relying on religious zeal as a force of national consolidation, especially in the absence of a clearly distinguishable external threat, victims will become killers and tribal Muslims will keep retaliating against the urban Muslims who are adamant to bring their version of modernity to Islam.
There has to be something more to the uniqueness of a nation than just a commonly shared religion. The quest is to find out what makes one a Pakistani because if we don’t, we will continue to see Marriot bombings, Lal-Masjid fiascos, violence over the correct definition of being a Muslim, and brothers killing brothers. It will only become worse over time. The moment we find that globally unique yet indigenously common denominator is when we will truly become Pakistanis as a tribe and as a nation. Because we are certainly not one yet.
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