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EDITORIAL: How can the Pakistani state be happy?

Discussions on local TV channels have finally come around to considering the nature of the state in Pakistan. The good news is that even “fundamental” debates on such topics as the “ideology of Pakistan” are no longer considered “subversive”. Credit must go to the Musharraf regime for allowing a “moderately enlightened” and liberal environment in which such issues can be freely debated. Many intellectuals of the rational school, who had kept silent, are now willing to air their opinions. This was most vividly demonstrated last Sunday when a TV channel asked the following questions: Is the Two-Nation doctrine relevant today? Is there a need for ijtihad (reinterpretation)? What use is ideology when the world is developing a consensus on the need for “democracy” as the ideology of the era? What use is the concept of the ummah? How is it relevant to the prevalent system of nation-states? Why should non-Muslim minorities and women be treated differently from the majority Muslims and why should there be laws that discriminate against them? Should parliament be sovereign as a representative of the people or should it be subservient to Allah, meaning that it cannot legislate any laws that make a departure from what the mullahs think is the edict of God?

The answers intellectuals gave to these questions on TV were different from those offered by the clergy. However at least one Islamic scholar was an exception to this rule and willing to state that the imposition of laws from a source over and above parliament has not worked in practice, indeed that it has actually worked to the disadvantage of the people of Pakistan, who should be sovereign. The Two-Nation doctrine was dismissed out of hand on account of the dismemberment of the nation created in 1947. But one of the discussants proposed that the doctrine should be retained vis-à-vis India with whom a permanent state of hostility is presumed.

It was observed that ijtihad was a theoretical term — at best a defensive bit of public relationing — because practically no one could innovate in the light of modern times without being rejected by the orthodoxy. As to who was to do ijtihad — since parliament was non-sovereign — it was noted that no Muslim would be bound by any law to follow the new interpretation and the effort might lead to the creation of more sects. Coercion was the only way to get agreement.

Unless one decides to succumb to fear, the state of Pakistan is in trouble because of the contradictions in its “modern” constitution. Article 27 says, “No citizen, otherwise qualified for appointment in the service of Pakistan shall be discriminated against in respect of any such appointment on the ground only of race, religion, caste, sex, residence or place of birth.” Yet we know that through the device of “qualification” the constitution disallows a non-Muslim head of state. Similarly, all citizens are equal, but under the law of evidence the testimony of a woman or non-Muslim is not equal to that of a Muslim. In another sense, the state of Pakistan, after half a century, is still undecided about how to end this self-contradiction.

All over the world, Muslims seem to be undecided about how to run the modern nation-state. The state they live in is unstable if it is kept forcibly secular because there is a groundswell of religious opinion clamouring for the pure Islamic state. But if the state is made Islamic, very little agreement exists on its proper lineaments. The result is that an Islamic state has to be dictatorial and totalitarian, which means that it runs the risk of finally being overthrown either as a result of an internal revolt against tyranny or an invasion from other states, who fear its tendency to “export” its “revolution”. Thus no Islamic state can be happy — and would remain “in chrysalis” — till it is run by the clergy itself, which then undertakes to remove all opposition through coercion.

We feel that the greatest danger of living in an “unhappy” state like Pakistan is the level of coercion one is bound to experience in the name of religion. One sees the state constantly retreating in the face of this threat and excusing itself to hundreds of thousands of women and non-Muslims who are being victimised under laws contrary to the spirit of the constitution. The state is Islamic but Muslims still reserve the right to reject it under the principle of amr and nahi — the edict that allows the clergy to “act in approval of that which is good and against that which is bad”. If the clergy thinks that school textbooks containing sacred verses should have the same status as the Quran, the state comes under pressure to abjure its right to prepare new textbooks. If illegal foreign entrants in the religious seminaries are required to leave because of increased incidents of terrorism abroad, the seminaries and provinces run by the religious parties say they have the right to defy the law.

In the ripeness of time, if free discussion is allowed to continue, we will come to the conclusion that parliament indeed should be sovereign. (That is what Allama Iqbal thought in his Lectures.) Since it represents a majority of Muslims there is no danger of it becoming “kafir”. Making laws in the light of modern times that are not in contradiction with the constitution should be left to a democratically elected parliament. And the clergy should be allowed to guard the creed only in the private realm, as pledged by the founder of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. That is the only way the state of Pakistan can aspire to be “content” if not “happy”. *

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