The YouTube Baby

There is a video clip on YouTube being circulated these days through e-mail. It shows a young maullana sahib from a famous Karachi mosque (and school of thought), taking on Presisdent Musharraf’s “liberal policies,” as the President sits there smiling in smug resignation, presiding over a dialogue with students and the ulema.

Most probably, the maullana’s admirers loaded the clip onto YouTube, because it is a well-known fact that the religious right in Pakistan tends to have the keenest and most organized clusters of propaganda.

However, it is interesting to note that the video clip seems to be exciting the middle-class liberals the most, especially those to whom there is just one main issue facing the nation: The President’s uniform!

Never mind the more daunting issues that quiver tauntingly right underneath their noses, from simple everyday things like broken roads and lack of water and electricity to the alarming raise in crime, drug addiction and episodes of religious intolerance. Because it seems they believe all shall be honky-dory once the President takes off his uniform. How very convenient.

This brand of “liberalism” sickens me. It smacks of ill informed and naïve pomposity that can actually rival the (albeit more tactful) hypocrisy associated with the religious right.

Because even though the mullahs are infamous for not allowing any chance of a rational discourse on most issues, the problem with these liberals is that they usually end up making equal amounts of hollow noise and hypocritical hoopla. However, unlike the mullahs they have the audacity of calling it a discussion and a well thought out intellectual argument.

Sometimes, (worse than the mullahs), it is the liberals that are giving intellectuality a bad name.

Even more interesting is the state of the mullah confederation in the much changed 9/11 scenario. After the relevant failure of being the all-smoke firebrands, some “Islamic scholars” and mullah-politicians are now deciding to emulate these anti-Musharraf liberals. And here is where our rampant maulvi sahib at the Musharraf-led forum comes in.

Incensed by the General’s speech at the forum in which he praised the taking place of things like the Basant, the Lahore marathon and the recently amended Hudood Ordinance, the young maulvi went on the attack mixing the liberal anti-Musharraf chant of “take off the uniform” with populist right-wing rhetoric.

Now, one must remember that in this day and age much of populist right-wing idiom is nothing more than old leftist chants. The irony of the matter being that it was the religious right in this country that was always at the forefront of playing the West’s bogyman against progressive parties and the Socialist sentiment.

So one is right to be left feeling cynical after listening to a mullah-politician or an “Islamic scholar” now chanting the same slogans, which, during the Cold War years, they had attacked of being part of a global communist conspiracy to indoctrinate the faithful with diabolical atheistic ideas.

Cold War history is full of examples in which free enterprise connived and plotted with the religious right to overthrow “dangerous Socialist regimes.”

So as our young bearded friend played to the gallery full of young men and women, most of whom were in their shorts (or something even shorter), when the Cold War ended some eighteen years ago, he after letting loose old leftist rhetoric proceeded to rather convolutedly attach it all with things like the holding of basant and the Lahore marathon. Very creative, indeed.

It was like old Socialist rhetoric being used to address grievous right-wing concerns. Of course, it did not matter to the young man that his bearded predecessors of whom concerns he was upholding, were once the sworn enemies of the leftists, of whom language he was now speaking. Irony or what.

He accused the President of flying kites (a reference to the General’s thumbs- up for basant), and holding marathons while the “whole country was burning.” I am not sure what he meant by burning, but he did give the impression of being perturbed by the happenings in Waziristan and the worsening law & order situation. The question is I wonder who is doing all the burning, really.

Moreover, what exactly have the young maulvi and the likes done about this terrible “burning,” apart from chasing after female marathon runners with dandas and issuing sweeping fatwas against basant makers?

Is this how they plan to make things better? I’d rather fly a kite.


Burning or turning

Even though it may have seemed an exciting prospect for many watching a young (bearded) man standing up to the most powerful person in the country, yes, but about what was he standing up for?

He sounded as if the holding of basant and marathons (nay, women’s marathons), were the root causes degenerating not only the country’s law & order situation but also its oh-so-brilliant “Islamic culture and traditions.”

Was he talking about the same “Islamic culture” that failed to keep the country’s Eastern wing (East Pakistan) from detaching itself after a violent civil war (weren’t they Muslims too?); the same “Islamic culture” that fails stop a multitude of Pakistani Muslims from killing one another in the name of their “true version/sect of Islam;” the same “Islamic culture” that fails to stop a number of hideous crimes against the minorities and especially women from taking place, most of them partaken proudly in the name of God and honor?

I think these are at least some of the many daunting issues our mullah-politicians and “Islamic scholars” should be talking about instead of (like the drawing-room variety of the anti-Musharraf liberals), crib about the General’s ubiquitous uniform, or (like the religious right), obsess (rather violently) about basant and women’s marathons.

Have they nothing else, or anything a tad substantive with which to attack the General? How about his moustache, for a change. Amounts to the same non-issue status as basant and women’s marathons, really.



Vultures sans culture

As the young maulvi was delivering his “Pakistan is burning” tirade, I was hoping he would suggest solutions based on the religious right’s understanding of economics and politics.

However, as the tirade suddenly derailed and charged head-first like a demented suicide bomber towards “cultural issues” such as basant and women’s marathons, (treating these as grave misdeeds of the Musharraf regime), I wondered when will we stop applauding populist vultures who in the name of Islam and Pakistan proudly eat into and away anything even vaguely resembling positive cultural activity?

The truth is, ever since Zia’s coup in 1977, the religious right has slowly and gradually lost sight of the economic and socio-political reasons that make or break a country’s fortunes.

Instead, they have been reeling away, first fighting cultural and political battles for the West and its favorite dictators during the Cold War, and now always making loud noises theatrically decrying attempts being made to at least start doing some cultural activity that can rid Pakistan’s seemingly unshakable image as a country fat with intolerant losers, or worse, plagued with rampant religious hypocrisy.

Cultural activities are soft targets and tend to gain more attention when and if attacked. Exactly why the MMA government in the NWFP will does more to encourage its workers to blacken billboards, burn “obscene” CDs and DVDs and support the party to build a “Cultural police” (to curb obscenity) through the Hisba Bill, but never do we hear much from them on the more important issues faced by the same province: Unemployment, crime and the frighteningly rising number of drug peddlers and young addicts.

How less “unIslamic” are these than the basant and women’s marathons, I wonder?