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DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL: An idea whose time has come
If it were not so tragic, the case of a blasphemy-accused doctor would have made for comic reading. Reportedly, Dr Naushad Valiyani threw the business card of a medical representative “which had his full name, Muhammad Faizan”, in a dustbin. Mr Faizan then launched a blasphemy complaint against the doctor. The absurdity of the charges against Dr Valiyani exposes the nature of the draconian Blasphemy Law, which can be misused for any purpose under the sun. General Ziaul Haq left this country with a minefield in the shape of this law, which lends itself to abuse. The case of Dr Valiyani is just one of the many cases where the complainant is crossing all lines of common sense. ‘Muhammad’ is a popular name over the Muslim world. To say that the doctor committed blasphemy just because he threw a business card that had ‘Muhammad’ written on it is ridiculous. The issue was resolved between the parties when the doctor apologised, although not before Faizan and his friends had reportedly roughed up the doctor. However, the intervention of some clerics resulted in a blasphemy charge against the accused, who was then arrested.
Since we are so fond of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), why not invoke PPC 153 A in cases where false accusations are made? According to PPC 153 A (a), whoever “by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or incites, or attempts to promote or incite, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities” shall be fined and punished with imprisonment for a term that may extend to five years. Thus, Muhammad Faizan should be charged with incitement against the innocent doctor.
In another incident, three alleged blasphemers in Karachi — Syed Raheel Masood Wasti, Samreen Masood and Zafar Iqbal — denied desecrating the Holy Quran. As per their statement, they were not in the house when their illiterate maid accidentally threw out some pages of the Quran after cleaning the house. They have expressed fear for their lives and that they can be falsely persecuted under the Blasphemy Law. This is yet another example of the way the mullahs use this law. In almost all the cases under the Blasphemy Law, the accusations are mala fide. The accusations are based on personal vendetta, blackmail, settling scores, property disputes, etc. It is therefore beyond comprehension why the mullah brigade is threatening to launch a movement, Tehreek Namoos-e-Risalat (TNR), in case any amendments are made to the Blasphemy Law, except that it serves their political agenda of keeping the country hostage to their fulminations. This flawed law should be repealed in the first instance, and if that is not possible because our politicians have yet to find the courage to defy the blackmail of the religious groups, at least the amendment bill by Ms Sherry Rehman should be considered seriously. Islam is a religion of peace but the fundamentalists have hijacked our religion and given new interpretations to serve their vested interests. The religious right is committing the greatest blasphemy by distorting the name of Islam. When the British introduced the Blasphemy Law, it was done to maintain harmony between all religious communities in the Indian subcontinent. Ziaul Haq’s Blasphemy Law has done the exact opposite. It has made the religious minorities more insecure in this ‘land of the not-so-pure’. When a state legalises persecution of minorities, it is time to change the laws.
Pakistan can never progress if it chooses to espouse the values of the Dark Ages. Let us not be afraid to challenge the religious extremists just because they threaten us with ‘dire consequences’. We have been held hostage to their absurdities for decades. It is high time we rolled back Zia’s legacy and moved forward towards a progressive, secular and democratic Pakistan.
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Bravo Mehmal Sarfraz! Show the big-talking macho dudes who has real cojones … you’re a national treasure. Stay safe.
Give it some time Pakistan will 100% Muslim – then you won’t need secularism anymore.
@Milestogo: if at 97% Pakistan needs secularism like a blood transfusion, why does that change at 100%? Religiosity – as a perceived virtue – has invaded the political fabric. There follows the disastrous competitive dynamic – wearing your religion on your sleeve – to prove what a good “X” you are.
Abrahamic religion has no place in a modern state. There’s a reason Western democracies struggled for centuries to rid the state of the church.
India is different because it’s not Abrahamic-based. Religion managed to coexist with the state without throttling it. Organized Abrahamic religions – monotheistic monsters – are power-hungry and must be forcibly shoved back into the individual’s domain from the state’s domain.
Go ahead – flame me. But give it some thought. The thesis matches the data.
@libertarian
‘India is different because it’s not Abrahamic-based. Religion managed to coexist with the state without throttling it. Organized Abrahamic religions – monotheistic monsters – are power-hungry and must be forcibly shoved back into the individual’s domain from the state’s domain. ‘
India has RSS and others power hungry Polytheistic monsters. It has an ingrained caste system which refuses to go away despite the 21st century. It also has the worst forms of poverty, hunger and misery – millions below the poverty line and an elite barely concerned for them. Hardly any Abrahamic faith is responsible for this humiliation of humanity. Why don’t you blame the predominant religion of India and its consequences for this?
@Amaar: India has RSS and others power hungry Polytheistic monsters.
The RSS is a joke. The more virulent Bajrang Dal and VHP – not a peep for a while. Shiv Sena – busier chasing (Hindu) biharis and bhayyas back to Bihar and UP – than making monotheists’ lives miserable.
It also has the worst forms of poverty, hunger and misery – millions below the poverty line and an elite barely concerned for them.
The “elites” are in 2 categories: the Pakistan-style feudals who think their crap does not stink, who’s sons and daughters also think their crap doesn’t stink; and then the ones who came out of the middle class. There are thousands of folks with net worth > $10M who are first-generation wealthy. They have a much better defined sense of responsibility to their fellow Indian. How do I know this? I’ve met tens of them. India will fix the hunger /malnutrition issue – it’s incompatible with the way this new generation perceives their country.
Hardly any Abrahamic faith is responsible for this humiliation of humanity.
Hmmm … let’s see – 300 years of Mughal Rule; 90 years of direct British Rule, 200 if you count the East India Company; both steeped in Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition no? Aren’t they the ones that screwed India? It’s not like India (or Pakistan) were shining cities on the hill in 1947.
Under essentially Hindu/Buddhist rule India/China controlled 80% of the world’s GDP as recently as 1830. So no – Hinduism is not the problem. It is a solution. Just so you know, I am a (nominal) monotheist.
Amaar, yes, India has all the problems you mention and more.
Hinduism is not a written religion. What one calls Hinduism (it was called thus by foreigners) is really the social customs and traditions of the people of the subcontinent. There is no book that dictates anything anywhere or talks about punishment for not doing something or the end of the world (Indian concept is of a cycle of expansions and destructions of the universe, again open to argument and discussion) etc. Even epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata are poems written by our old Indian sages immortalizing old historic events, and people try to learn from the moral behavior depicted in this poems. So given this definition, customs and traditions are constantly changing. The caste system is one such tradition, prevalent across the subcontinent, that is changing slower than others. Even Pakistan has castes and tribes, some of them at odds with each other. But it is not part of any religion or any holy book anywhere. As for the poverty and misery, one knows well that the uncertainty that used to be part of Indian life meant that people had lots of babies for insurance. This tradition is just now dying out resulting in a stabilization of the population, but it has left us with a population explosion as death rates went down way earlier and lifespans in India have gone up from 30 in the 1940s to 70! Religion is a bit irrelevant in this – it has a lot more to do with family planning education.
I think what libertarian was getting at was that being more religious appears to be a virtue in itself in Pakistan, while in India it’s irrelevant in the public space. It boils down to a secular constitution and a secular people imo.
@libertarian @Arjun
Well the followers of Abrahmic religions, in your estimation, have been affected by their ‘bad teachings’. But what do you make of the rest of humanity which have followed their own traditions?
@Libertatian: What has India done once the Mughals, the English and their ilk left? Isn’t the screwing up still going on? Why are millions of Indians in the heartlands of Abrahmic religions-USA, Europe and Middle East- having left behind India?
My point is simply that you are blaming the founding fathers of Abrahmic religions for the faults of their so-called followers – Muslims, Jews and Christians many of whom have discarded the Abrahamic teachings for their greedy and perverted desires.
-Peace
@Arjun: being more religious appears to be a virtue in itself in Pakistan, while in India it’s irrelevant in the public space.
Yes thank you. Better and more concisely put.
Doesn’t mean that public figures give up their religion. Far from it. Obama needed to state _very_ clearly that he was Christian to get elected. There’s no way Mitt Romney becomes a US President because he’s Mormon (still Christian). JFK had the hardest time getting over his Catholic background. Netanyahu in Israel is far more religious than he cares to admit. But these leaders must be unswervingly secular when representing the state. If anything, in India the pressure for a public figure to be overtly religious in private life is much less than in the US or Israel.
@Amaar: My point is simply that you are blaming the founding fathers of Abrahmic religions for the faults of their so-called followers – Muslims, Jews and Christians many of whom have discarded the Abrahamic teachings for their greedy and perverted desires.
I’m not blaming the founding fathers, or even the followers. My issue is with the dogma of Abrahamic religions. Think of statecraft as a science. Over hundreds of painful years, Europe developed the basis of secular statecraft to a point that we can use them as best practices. That development is a continuing process being honed empirically through feedback loop (elections, referenda, media). Abrahamic religions provided their versions of statecraft that have not been modified – being sacred – since their founding. All things being equal, the science of secular statecraft _must_ be superior to religion-based statecraft.
“Well the followers of Abrahmic religions, in your estimation, have been affected by their ‘bad teachings’. But what do you make of the rest of humanity which have followed their own traditions?”
@Amaar: I recommend you read Naipaul’s “Among the Believers” and “Beyond Belief”. Very interesting books, though you may or may not agree with his observations.
But regardless, my opinion is that Pakistan’s problems are rooted in its fanaticism about its religion and its paranoia about India. Take those two away, and you will see Pakistan soar to great heights.. (I have a post on my blog about this too)
“Libertatian: What has India done once the Mughals, the English and their ilk left? Isn’t the screwing up still going on? Why are millions of Indians in the heartlands of Abrahmic religions-USA, Europe and Middle East- having left behind India?”
@Amaar: India followed a socialist model of development. It is understandable that in the 50s and 60s, when Soviet Russia had miraculously transformed itself from an agrarian backwater country to one of the leading industrial country in the world using their planned development model, Indian leaders like Nehru and Maulana Azad were enamoured by this model and attempted to follow it. This is where the screwing began. It started to end in ’91 when the license reforms began following the collapse of the Soviet Union and loss of a giant market for Indian goods. These reforms unleashed Indian entrepreneurship which had been bound up in the license raj and state-run enterprise. Today, the situation is honestly becoming better by the day. Migration (for life, not for education) is rapidly slowing down because opportunities within India are enormous and pay much better dividends than going abroad to slow recessionary developed countries. Religion is not a factor in any of this, imho – it’s pure economics.
Wishing you well..
@Arjun, Libertarian
We don’t see eye to eye on the basic issue that the fundamental teachings of Abrahamic religions have been perverted both in letter and in spirit. Hence the consequences of this manifest themselves in the false dogmas of the high churches of these religions – created by their respective high priests. I am sure that Moses, Jesus and Muhamad (peace be on them all) would not be able to recognize the religions which they founded given what their pseudo-followers have done to their pristine original teachings.
To help you understand better, Krishna would not be able to recognize his faith which has been ravaged by the dogma of modern Hindu culture in the shape of caste system and superstitious beliefs. He would abhor the idea of pouring molten copper into the ears of a non-Brahmin if he happened to hear Vedas. Krishna would be horrified if a mob pulls done a place of worship of another faith in the name of Hinduism. He would be displeased by the notions of India being for Hindus only. Surely modern Hindu militancy would be at variance from the original message of Krishna – yet the Hindu fundamentalists speak in the parlance of religion of Krishna to justify their behaviour.
Just imagine RSS (and BJP by consequence) becoming the representatives and protagonists of secularism. You would not want them to speak on your behalf.
I hope you would be able to realize what I am talking about.