Veil for vendetta

Waiting for Allah

For the past four years I have been travelling extensively across Europe. Being a Pakistani post-9/11, this eventually becomes a matter that goes beyond being just a tourist. The moment you utter words like “I’m from Pakistan,” you are at once given a second, more thorough glance. Usually this has nothing to do with racism or any other kind of discriminatory fanfare, but a concerning curiosity. A glance that becomes even more curious when you agree to have a beer with the glancing subject.

One almost wants to burst out laughing when faced with the next logical question: “Do Pakistanis drink alcohol?”

One wants to say “yes, many Pakistanis do, especially after a tough day riding their camels and perfecting their home-made exploding devises!”

But one does end up telling them something far more sinister: “We also have one of the biggest populations of heroin addicts.”

Of course we can always blame our neighbouring Afghans for this (and we rightly do), but the question the Westerners find most pressing is, why does a country so steeped in religion would have millions of people looking for an escape through one of the deadliest and destructive drugs?

This is the question that has been on my mind as well. Back in Pakistan nobody seems to want to answer it, apart from of course, the many urban, middleclass religious folks who always have a Jew-related, blame-America theory for all our follies. This is scary, because most of them are educated as well.

Everything is conveniently simplified. We are a great, pure nation of Muslims under social, cultural and political attack by the Jews and their western allies. And they will not listen at all to the many social and cultural hypocrisies one starts to point out, ultimately banishing you as a part of the great “conspiracy” against Islam and Pakistan.

The minority report

My take on the government’s efforts to better the image of Pakistan beyond being a mass of violent religion touting, exhibitionistic Muslims, is that it is a huge task, in spite the fact that such characters are still in a minority. But ever since General Zia took over thirty years ago, it is this minority that has been shaping the country’s mindset through the media, literature and mosques.

It is not really the archetypical mullah that has done all the damage, because he too is just a pawn. It is that part of the urban, educated middleclass which suddenly rediscovered (or so they claimed), God and Islam. It is members of this class that have been the most active as well in the direct and indirect evangelization of a hotchpotch version of puritanical Islam.

Ever since the 80s these people have managed (or according to the tides of the period), were encouraged to seep deep into institutions that are in the forefront of moulding a nation’s psyche. Institutions like universities, colleges, electronic and print media and evangelical concerns. What’s more, in the last ten years or so, many of them have even made it to multinational organizations and advertising agencies as well, so don’t be surprised if upon entering an agency you find a employee talking about “Islamizing advertising” and, of course, busy firing mass number of evangelical emails to his/her colleagues.

Working class blues

The so-called common Pakistani made mostly of urban working classes and the peasants in the rural areas are just too busy trying to make a living to have the pleasure of having a solid, constant political or religious view and angle.

But when approached by the re-converted version of the middle-class to comment on these, he feels belittled and as if being under the microscope questioning the authenticity of his religious beliefs and level of patriotism. He wriggles out by speaking like a creaking robot what he has heard on the many religious shows on TV and in the mosque. On most occasions these are not his views, because if truth be told, if he ever really starts to follow the sort of nitty-gritty and highly ritualistic versions of Islam peddled to him by these shows and his local tableeghi, he will have no time to do anything about the earning of his next meal.

He is then likely to come out sounding and behaving like a myopic compulsive-obsessive, too concerned about the size of his beard, the correct approximates of his wife/daughter’s veil, the right length of his shalwaar, the appropriate dua (out of the many), for a situation, et al …

It is not the masses the government should be concerned about in this respect. They are pawns to bid for the religious whims (all related to the economic interests) of the re-converting bourgeois.

And this (growing) section of the middle-classes are not hermits. Far from it. They are active in almost all modern spheres of life. In fact they will make a living exactly from the same sources their mostly “non-religious” and “liberal” contemporaries are making, even if these sources and avenues of employment (to them) constitute the “corruption of man and society.”

So how do they tackle that imminent feeling of hypocrisy which cannot be ignored? Simple. Evangelize to “Islamize” the source. Thus do not be surprised to find an advertising copywriter attacking “Jewish capitalism” or a so-called secular and “liberal” business channel or a 24-hr music network deciding to run a parade of naats in Ramadan, or when a capitalist company’s session on how to grab more markets (and make bigger profits), opens with the talawat of the Koran.


Nothing to gain, but chains (and profit)

What this re- converted class of businessmen, politicians, teachers, TV personalities, executives and traders have done is that they have institutionalised religious hypocrisy. Religion in Pakistan has become an excuse to do anything from tormenting a threatening employee to wanting to assassinate the President. Bombing public places come into the equation as well, especially when the common man’s lack of knowledge (or interest) in religion is taunted and his economic problems given a religious reason instead of an economic one. His economic problems apparently stem from what takes place in the Pentagon and “lack of Islam in the society.” How very convenient.

Of course, all those capitalist and feudal institutions in ones own backyards are conveniently forgotten. This is because they are these re-converts’ own source of income and, of course, their owners pray five times a day!

Now that the whole institution of capitalism, feudalism, bourgeois economics and the state have become so intertwined with this growing, intolerant strain of Islam, I do wonder what it will take to wriggle out of it.

The intertwining has become so complex that the moment one even attempts to question the inherent hypocrisies that come with it, he is or she is attacked ruthlessly. It is like questioning and threatening the re-converts’ economic interests. And it is, thanks to the said warped intertwining. After all what do you expect in a country where Islam has become a thriving economic industry?

Sympathy for the devil

Now coming to another starkly contradicting aspect of one of the products of this industry: The institutionalizing of the dreaded veil. It is growingly becoming important for women in Pakistan to wear one, especially if they want to work. It is being given that economic aspect, thus making it much more than just a personal, social issue. But it suddenly goes outside this realm of economics when it is exported to Muslims living in secular countries. Obviously its economic role halts in a country where the intertwining of economics and religion is not so complex. So the veil there becomes a huge social problem.

I was in France when the veil (along with symbols of various other religions were banned), and I was in Holland when recently the veil again became a huge debate sparked off by former British Foreign Minister, Jack Straw’s comments. And all the while I thought why the hue and cry over the banning of (overtly) exhibiting religious symbols at schools?

I think it was mighty intelligent of the French government to extend the ban from the Muslim hijab and across Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh symbols.

France is a secular state. So what’s the big deal? All secular countries should do so. This “religious” fashion show is going beyond the personal self. If countries and society can (and should!) heap scorn at swastika-wearing neo-Nazis, so should they at people trying to make religious statements with hijabs and crosses, especially at schools.

The original idea behind Western secularism and later Marxism was to separate the state and religion completely. Yes, but it’s really a catch-22 situation, really. Because unlike their contemporaries in Pakistan, where they are usually at the heap of prosperous and intertwining economic activity, strict Muslims in western countries are at the other end. Their growing interest in religion (and religious exhibitionism), is a matter of a different phenomenon.

Democracy in the west, driven and influenced by capitalist dictates has (as always) only managed to create cycles of prosperity and sudden economic devastation. These end up generating eventual, widespread disillusionment and distrust of the whole idea of material profiteering, making the human mind and ego strive for a less dog-eat-dog existence.

Thus, capitalism is equally responsible for ironically encouraging religious extremism as an alternative. During the Cold War It spent much of its political energy and recourses to undermine and defeat Socialism, and for this many capitalist democracies did not hesitated in allying themselves with movements of the extreme right to ward off Socialist sentiments.

But suddenly with the end of the Cold-War and little enthusiasm for Socialism, religion (especially Islam), has now become the next best alternative, even though it totally lacks a cohesive social and economic platform.

And as we are learning that now more than ever, democracy run by strict capitalist economics can only offer either numb consumerism on one end or blind religious extremism on the other. The implementation of Secularism as a thought and ideology (and not really a side-kick buzzword for capitalist democracy) is the way to find a balance between aggressive manifestations of ones religious beliefs and a more progressive and democratic one. Thus I believe France’s move in this respect is anything but “undemocratic.”

In fact if western democracies had allowed secularism’s ideological sides to take root more firmly, western societies would not have seemed to look like a bundle of contradictions and nor would their “third-world” counterparts reacted by looking at bygone times as exemplary situations in the face of mad capitalist (and so-called “liberal”) onslaught.

This should suggest the said French law is perhaps the most progressive act emerging from a secular state in a long, long time?

I actually tend to agree.