ANALYSIS: The Jinnah discourse

The Right thrive by making questionable claims about faith and community, but since they go unchallenged by the liberals, who hesitate to enter debates about ethics and morality, they stand true and proliferate at an alarming rate.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Daily Times | Pakistan
By Ahmad Ali Khalid | August 24, 2011

The Right thrive by making questionable claims about faith and community, but since they go unchallenged by the liberals, who hesitate to enter debates about ethics and morality, they stand true and proliferate at an alarming rate

The ‘Jinnah’ argument is the heart and soul for the case of a “secular Pakistan”. It is the very reason why Pakistanis still cling to a vision for a secular state that guarantees a liberal framework of rights and liberties. The liberal discussion is very simply the ‘Jinnah discourse’. But sadly it has not evolved or built up a case that has greater reach and more clout.

Let me be clear — I do not think Pakistanis can ever move towards any form of secularism or liberalism without first negotiating the legacy of Jinnah. Every nation-state has to negotiate the existential legacy of their founding father(s), which act as a compass for any future ideological trajectories. In many ways whether we like it or not, it is the personality of the founding father that gives rise to the nature of the state. But we must build on it instead of parroting the same old tired arguments.


Because, as it stands, this ‘Jinnah discourse’ is incredibly myopic and counter-productive. Are we seriously arguing that the only reason to have a state that provides rights and is secular in nature is because of the whims of one man? Is secularism good just because Jinnah said it was good or because there is something morally commendable about having a secular state? And that is the critique of the Jinnah discourse: it has nothing else to support it — it is a desperate plea for righting a contemporary disaster by appealing to a sense of faint historical memory. What if, for the sake of argument, Jinnah advocated a theocracy? Would we accept it simply because he said it?

It follows that secular liberals in Pakistan are woefully out of touch — the glaring fault is the way liberals construct and present their arguments. Conservatives and those on the right in societies like the US and Pakistan usually claim to be authentic representatives of the dominant culture, tradition, community or faith. The Right claim their arguments appeal to the deeply held set of beliefs and principles of everyday people. The tragedy is that liberals let these questionable claims go undisputed by refusing to take sides in heated moral or religious debates, adhering (mistakenly) to the concept of ‘liberal neutrality’.

And there lies the problem, conservatives and the Right effectively mobilise and popularise notions of community, faith and tradition whilst liberals are left grappling with abstract and theoretical platitudes about ‘rights’ and ‘constitutionalism’. This is a problem that plagues most liberal thinking, especially in the Muslim world, where powerful forces like community illicit potent reactions and evoke strong memories revolving around loyalty, patriotism and identity.

In the debate between liberals and conservatives, there is a powerful alternative that can be offered, or at least this is what Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues in his work. That alternative is “liberal communitarianism”, which is a form of liberalism that does away with the obsession of rights but takes claims of morality, religion and community more seriously. Liberals, by virtue of their political reasoning, leave the powerful reservoirs of faith and community to conservatives. Liberals are marginalised because of their inability to appeal to the basic symbols and narratives of our society. So having said all this, a ‘religious left’ is a viable alternative — something that has not been seriously considered among the liberal intelligentsia.

In Jeffery Stout’s book, Democracy and Tradition, there is a very illuminating passage in his conclusion: “If the religious left does not soon recover its energy and self-confidence, it is unlikely that American democracy will be capable of counteracting either the greed of its business elite or the determination of many whites to define the authentic nation in ethnic, racial, or ecclesiastical terms.”

The Right thrive by making questionable claims about faith and community, but since they go unchallenged by the liberals, who hesitate to enter debates about ethics and morality, they stand true and proliferate at an alarming rate. A similar sort of judgement can be made about Pakistani society: that there needs to be a revival of religious liberalism which characterised much of early 20th century Muslim thought, as documented in Charles Kurzman’s works, Modernist Islam, 1840-1940: A Sourcebook and Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook.

Liberal democracy is fundamentally a moral project and, together with the input of religious and secular liberals, can be conceived of as an alternative to religious radicalism. We should not be ashamed that liberalism speaks of virtue; in the great work Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism, Peter Berkowitz writes:

“Liberalism’s enthusiasm for virtue has been less well documented. The enthusiasm springs from the understanding that liberty, as a way of life, is an achievement. This achievement demands of individuals speci?c virtues or, to speak less formally, certain qualities of mind and character — such as reflective judgement, sympathetic imagination, self-restraint, the ability to cooperate, and toleration — that do not arise spontaneously but require education and cultivation.”

For example, human rights cannot be separated from moral discussion and ethical philosophy. Why should we adopt human rights? What is the justification for human rights? Why not just let the majority legislate laws against minorities? These questions are left unanswered by liberals. The lack of a moral defence for human rights means that in popular mainstream media, ‘human rights’ is seen as a ‘western innovation’ rather than as a moral bedrock for a progressive democracy.

But ultimately what drives citizens, no matter in which country they reside, is a powerful and accessible notion of the ‘common good’ and ‘citizenship’, tinged with a sense of assured identity and security. Liberals need to take these claims seriously rather than push them aside as merely abnormalities and anomalies that can be ironed out. An ethic of autonomy fashioned out of the multiple narratives of faith, culture and history present in society must take root.

In many ways politics is about justice but one needs to realise that notions of justice are inextricably linked with moral and religious beliefs along with the canons of traditional culture and community. Civic renewal is needed in Pakistan, and it has to start from the bottom up.

Jinnah was, is and will continue to remain important. But liberals must have something else to offer and bring to the table. Appealing to historical memory is important but is not nearly enough. Where are the moral, religious, philosophical, economic and social arguments for a secular state? In a religious society there has to be an attempt to create a religious-based desire for a secular state — it has happened in the US with spectacular success, with the theologian Roger Williams its finest exponent.

The writer is a freelance columnist. He tweets at http://twitter.com/AhmadAliKhalid and can be reached at ahmadalikhalid@ymail.com


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