Source/Credit: Daily Dawn | Pakistan
By Huma Yusuf | April 23, 2012
LAST week, like many others, offered reminders of Pakistani society’s increasingly extremist tendencies. In Hyderabad, the leftist Sindh Progressive Committee (SPC) clashed with the Sunni Tehrik (ST) while protesting against the forced conversions of minorities to Islam; the trouble reportedly began when an ST activist denounced the SPC’s views as irreligious.
Meanwhile, the Lahore High Court issued notices to the federal and Punjab governments about security for Jamaatud Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed after the US announced a bounty on him. And in Jamrud, yet another girls’ school was blown up by militants.
These are only the latest incidents in a mounting list that indicate how Pakistani society is becoming more extreme. To clarify, ‘extremism’ here refers to the growing tendency of people — of whatever political or ideological persuasion — to be more fanatical in their views and to hold uncompromising positions. Extremists refuse to acknowledge the plurality of viewpoints, and are increasingly ready to resort to extreme action (boycotts, threats and increasingly violence) to defend their stance.
Recent examples of extremism are well known, and range from the horrifying to the downright absurd: the murder of Salmaan Taseer; nationwide incidents of sectarian violence; attacks against shrines and schools; boycotts of products produced in factories owned by Ahmadis.
As extremism manifests itself in the daily interactions of Pakistanis, the liberal response has seemed inadequate. Civil society appears increasingly out of touch and out of date in its ability to push back against the swing to the right.
In its efforts against human rights violations, religious discrimination and political suppression, civil society has focused energies on improving legislation and demanded more from politicians and leaders of various institutions. For example, civil society worked consistently to ensure that this government passed several new laws to protect women’s rights.
Digital activists recently petitioned the Sindh High Court to put a stay on the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s attempts to build an Internet blocking system. When popular news anchors and talk show hosts perpetuate extremist narratives on air, liberals flood the email inboxes of TV channel owners calling for hosts and producers to be fired.
No doubt, these initiatives are extremely important: they set long-term precedents for more tolerant and inclusive legislation and practices. They also conform with democratic modes of protest, allowing liberals to practise what they preach. But they’re clearly not working in stemming the spread of Pakistani extremism. This is because liberal techniques to push back were honed in the 1980s, when extremism under Gen Ziaul Haq was a top-down phenomenon. At that time, the general and his cronies inflicted extremism on a relatively tolerant society through draconian laws and other diktats. It thus made sense to fight back through political protest aimed at the highest levels and to call for regressive legislation to be rewritten.
But things have changed. Extremism today is a bottom-up phenomenon, emerging from within society, its interactions and beliefs. (Ironically, the pervasiveness of extremist tendencies speaks volumes for the success of Zia’s top-down tactics.) The state, for its part, is liberal compared to its citizens, but no longer effective from the top down. For decades, it has abdicated its responsibilities for governance, service delivery and law and order, and retreated into the bubble of patronage politics from where it cannot enact a top-down liberalism to counter historical trends.
In other words, passing new legislation and calling for better leadership is less effective when the state is in no position to implement laws or liberal policies.
Today, extremism no longer radiates from state propaganda or government curriculum alone. It has been internalised, and is evident in the lectures of university professors, the blogs of urban youth, the sermons of imams, and televised debates of political talk-show panels.
Its spread through Pakistani society is fuelled by the fact that 59 per cent of the population is under the age of 24, and daunted by the prospect of unemployment, resource scarcity and international isolation.
To make a difference, liberals will have to reorient their approach and counter extremism within society, from the bottom up. This is challenging for several reasons.
Liberals cannot simply mimic the methods of their extreme counterparts (proselytizing; mainstreaming narratives about Islam and the victimisation of Muslims; threatening or committing violence) because there is no arguing with religious
justifications and invocations of divine decree that are used to defend extreme positions.
Moreover, given the structure of Pakistani society, religious spaces (madressahs, mosques, drawing-room dars) are rare in their ability to bring together people from diverse biradaris and socioeconomic backgrounds, and thus have a multiplier effect. In secular spaces such as campuses, cafes, press clubs, literary festivals and the blogosphere, liberals often find themselves preaching to the converted.
But the bottom-up approach is not impossible. Working with the World Organisation for Resource Development and Education, Waleed Ziad and Mehreen Farooq recently documented several examples of hyper-local, community-oriented initiatives aimed at countering extremism: young parliamentarians are organising college debates to engage students on terrorism; Minhajul Quran, a religious NGO network, has launched the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum; Jamia Naeemi’s
Dr Raghib Naeemi, son of Dr Sarfraz Naeemi who was killed for speaking out against the Taliban, continues to preach against extremism.
Elsewhere, radio journalists in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata debate the validity of extremist narratives, music teachers move students off campus and underground rather than cancel music classes, and amateur poets write verse in praise of tolerance. In addition, legislative advocacy, civil society must coordinate and amplify these disparate efforts to counter extremism. The hapless state can also support such grass-roots initiatives through funding and protection. Working from the bottom up is the only way to alter extremist trends in Pakistan.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
huma.yusuf@gmail.com
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