Know Your Enemy

Mullah bashing is a popular sport amongst the English-speaking people generally lumped together under the ‘liberal’ banner. For nearly a decade, I too have been one of its staunchest adherents. Writing a fact-based piece on a religious minority? Note to self, highlight the jahil

maulvi’s role in maintaining the status quo. Winging a fluff opinion piece? Do throw in an insult or two for the bearded ones. Kind of pointless, that, especially considering that most mullahs wont be reading it. Who am I writing it for then? Why, my English speaking brethren of course, so that, in the unlikely event that we all recognize a common language does not a common philosophy make, we can huddle together in the warm glow of our hatred for something we do not understand.

As I grow older, I am beginning to learn to reserve my righteous indignation for the things that really matter, like broccoli. Mullahs and hijabis are beginning to bother me less and less, partly because as I grow more comfortable in my own skin I am no longer compelled to flay others who are so different from me. Interestingly, what I am beginning to feel more and more bothered by are the very English speaking Pakistanis I feel most similar to. Like the mullahs, they had little to do with the creation of Pakistan but now keep suggesting they are the best interpreters of its maladies (sorry Ms.Lahiri). Like the mullahs they prefer to float in a sea of rhetoric rather than doggy paddle to the (much tougher) shores of reality and walk a mile or two. Like the mullahs they prefer a multitude of little parties (with carefully vetted guest lists) and cannot seem to put aside their misplaced sense of superiority long enough to gather under any truly awami banner. Like the mullahs, they preach the worth of a woman but continue, through personal and financial practices, to perpetuate the worst kind of misogyny. They shred the bearded for insisting men are entitled to more, but pay male drivers double what they’d pay a female domestic who works the same hours.

Lots of take, very little give.

Those are just the habits in common. There are other beliefs and practices unique to liberals that are not widely seen in mullah circles, though there is always hope that they will cross over and breed with mullah silliness and spawn a new, deadly, super silliness that will prune both ranks. The first, of course, is the constant complaining.

Now complaining isn’t always a bad thing. Properly applied, a focused, insightful complaint can help pinpoint a problem and even lead to a solution that doesn’t require any atom splitting at all. Rhetorical complaining, however, is an entirely different thing. If only they hadn’t, if the government just, here you have to bribe everyone, all these servants are the same, all these politicians are alike, we’ll never have a good leader so lets just settle for the one we have, why do the same idiots keep getting elected…

The thing is, they did. And they got away with it. Our government, top heavy and half addled, is frighteningly similar to most governments in most countries. You don’t HAVE to bribe anyone, you choose to. Servants are simply people with tiny salaries not job requirements with faces attached. And idiots keep getting elected because a democratic government is a representative government. Why don’t we stop reciting the litany of woes and start composing the melodies that will lift us out of our stupor?

If you’re an educated, English speaking Pakistani, you probably wax lyrical about the many limits to personal freedom in the motherland. The rights of the individual, the importance of a strong self, these are all too familiar refrains in gatherings of the deodorized. Not many, however, have any real clue as to what exactly they would do with limitless personal freedom once they got it. Its all very well to want to ‘be yourself’, but surely our selves should be of some worth before we are granted the right to inflict them on others. And while there might be abundant restraints on some physical freedoms, the chains binding the inner life are usually self-imposed. Probe a little deeper into the minds of most of those who claim to champion individualism in this country, and you might just walk away thinking the brain is simply cranial stuffing meant to keep the ears from sticking together. Why don’t we stop shrieking of winds that barely ruffle the leaves on our rose bushes and work on how best to positively impact the workings of our inner lives? Why is personal responsibility something that should only happen to bad people? And if we must insist on the right to shake our booties on some random beach, can we at least figure out a way to convert that energy into something more productive than fat burning?

There is a dazzling array of Ivy League graduates who take well-deserved pride in their scholastic achievements but cannot seem to apply them to practical life. The fruits of their education are apparently ample enough for only a single serving of Russian salad. I know many intelligent young people who spend the hours they’re not at work playing gimp to their paymasters bemoaning the lack of cultural depth, intellectual life, something…anything…to do, yet shy away in horror when I suggest they try and do something about it then. If I had a pimple for every person who has told me they don’t have time to read a book I’d be part of a local circus (freak section, right behind moth eaten eastern European acrobat). Doesn’t anyone go to the bathroom anymore? And if you really don’t have time to read how come you’ve memorized the cliff notes to books that are suddenly ‘hip’? Does preparing for a rave or a ball involve removing chunks of your brain and freezing them in saline solution beforehand? Did your English challenged cook prepare those by mistake?

Mullahs are often accused of hijacking discussions and steering them to non-issues, but liberals are just the same. Although they have lately begun dropping names like Eqbal Ahmed and Edward Said, Khaled Ahmed and Najam Sethi, what most people are really interested in is news and gossip about the same tired faces in the popular music and entertainment world. When I was younger, I thought it was just a phase. People would get tired, evolve, there would be more publications and they’d veer off the mainstream. We’d get tired of jaded fashionistas and demand an English literary quarterly instead. I was so wrong. There are more publications but they’re all variations on a theme, and that theme is Image. Image is everything. Image is power. Articulate women write scholarly essays on fashion trends. Twits spout forth on dancing from dusk to dawn and others fall upon their words like it’s manna from the heavens. Ad men are courted over writers, stylists over filmmakers, and models over musicians. Make up technicians are called artists and artists scrape by as set designers.

When it all comes down to it (one day I’ll figure out what that means exactly), it’s all about desire. Mullahs don’t want us to have any (men can’t handle it and women misuse it). Liberals want nothing but. Thanks to this stark polarization, life for the rest of us has been whittled down to ‘what I want’ or ‘what you cannot have’. And the ubiquitous ‘what’s best for you’ rammed down our throats by our khaki uncles. Faced with the selfishness’ of both the liberal and mullah positions, is it any wonder so many have tolerated that third option for so long? Which is better, believing in something that is wrong or not believing in anything at all?

Well done, my friends, colleagues and peers. No one will ever be able to accuse you of not doing your bit for the status quo. I’ll do my little bit now shall I? Have you heard the one about the mullah and the goat…