Nearly four decades ago, in 1977, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the only Pakistani politician who had the audacity and the eloquence to publicly rebut his detractors on his habit of drinking. In a massive sea of supporters, he arrived at the rostrum and uttered an unforgettable phrase that gradually reached a crescendo, ‘people say I drink; yes I do drink; but at least I don’t drink the blood of my people’.
Bhutto’s chutzpah, however, didn’t have the steam to counter the right-wing club of fundamentalist parties, known as the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). In fact, to the contrary, Bhutto’s words instigated even greater opposition. PNA wanted to establish ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (Prophet Muhammad’s system of governance) and their movement finally seeped through the cracks in Bhutto’s populist approach. This was most apparent in Karachi after Bhutto’s party swept the 1977 National Assembly polls: PNA made allegations of rigging and thousands of protestors attacked and looted bars, nightclubs and liquor stores.
In the backdrop of an unfruitful nationalization policy and rising criticism from opposition parties, Bhutto’s grip on Pakistan was dwindling, and to manufacture support, he made a series of concessions. The holy Friday replaced Sunday as the official weekly holiday. Bars, nightclubs, liquors stores, coffee shops that sold liquor and casinos were all banned. State-owned colleges across Punjab and Sindh became strict and segregated under the sanctimonious Jamat-e-Islami (JI) student wing, Islami Jamiat-e-Taliba (IJT). And ultimately, when Zia-ul-Haq took the reigns of the state he recruited JI to further ‘Islamize’ Pakistan. Subsequently, the ban on alcohol was coupled with 80 lashes.
But it would be naïve to think that Bhutto or Zia-ul-Haq or any of the right wing parties alone were responsible for hijacking the debate on prohibition and viewing it under strictly religious undertones. The seeds of conflict were sowed when a secular liberal, Jinnah, created a nation he did not have the time to steer in the direction of his vision. Essentially, a state made to safeguard the rights of the Muslims of the subcontinent was always going to be vulnerable to competing interpretations of religion. Specifically, in the case of prohibition, when a mere ban turned into a crime, the fundamentalists had inched closer to their vision of Pakistan.
Wittingly, and at times unwittingly, Pakistan’s leadership has attempted to legitimize personal or political action through religion, each time displaying the clash between various interpretations of Islam. Starting with a religious scholar who had an impact on the creation of the state, Allama Iqbal’s interpretation approved drinking with a set of conditions. According to Iqbal, in the early history of Islam, the act of drinking received an incremental ‘cause for restraint’ on two distinct occasions until it was banned (declared haraam) through divine revelation on the third instance. In a nutshell, Iqbal argued that there was a method to the divine revelation that must not be ignored while drafting law. Also, his thinking, which was rich in philosophy, simply concluded, ‘what brings me closer to God cannot be banned by God’. Needless to say, there was no shortage of opposing Ulema who wanted to place a ‘ban’ on Iqbal’s school of thought.
This opposition continued to manifest much after Iqbal and the creation of Pakistan. In 1953, Majlis-e-Ahrar, known for persecuting Ahmedis, attacked coffee houses that served liquor in Lahore. Later, in 1968, Dr. Fazalur Rahman Malik, heading the Central Institute for Islamic Research, declared that beer or any other liquor with less than five percent alcohol content was not ‘haraam’ or unlawful. JI immediately demanded Rahman’s resignation and attacked liquor stores in Karachi, including billboards advertising local beer. Ultimately, Rahman not only resigned but also left Pakistan to teach at the University of Chicago in the United States.
Throughout Pakistan’s history, propagating alternatives to fundamentalist thought have ended on a violent note; and the backlash has invariably derailed the leadership from an objective discussion on prohibition, relegating the socio-economic consequences of banning liquor to an obscure, unclassified area in politics.
It’s a messy subject we would rather not touch. Moreover, it’s often dismissed as a ‘lesser’ issue considering the overwhelming number of problems Pakistan faces today. There are, however, a number of flaws in this line of argument; flaws that can be gleaned from other Islamic countries and their collective experience as they dabbled in the politics of alcohol.
First and foremost, understanding the distribution mechanism of alcohol in Pakistan is fundamental to the debate on prohibition. Globally, no ban on alcohol has ever eliminated its availability. In fact, all it does is promote smuggling. When bootleggers reign, the black market grows, the back channels flourish, consumption is less deterred, unregulated, and the government doesn’t make a dime. Between either locking citizens up or accepting bribes and letting them go, there is little control the state exerts on people. Netherlands, where all kinds of drug intake is legal, the per capita sales of drugs is less than in any other European country and Netherlands uses the tax on drugs towards socially constructive avenues like rehabilitation – a case study Pakistan should certainly look into.
Secondly, lack of regulation on any banned substance also results in heightened vulnerability to dubious products. Every year, people who cannot afford imported liquor, die from ‘moonshine’ – locally brewed spirits or the poor man’s drink. Those who don’t die, end up visually impaired or handicapped in some other way. In any case, the consequences are ugly.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, making concessions to any particular school of Islamic thought is a dangerous and highly divisive game to play. It is practically impossible to keep all the different sects happy and therein lies the logic of separating the state from religion. Why should the people of Pakistan not have the freedom to choose their own brand of Islam or any other religion for that matter? Why must Pakistan be one of seven countries – including Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Kuwait and Iran – where only one particular version of religious thought governs everybody? Why is it that when someone asks Imran Khan about his decision to get married he justifies and explains himself by saying it’s Sunnat-e-Rasool (one of Prophet Muhammad’s ‘deeds’)? Why is it that a random stranger feels compelled to correct you if you say Khuda-hafiz (may you stay in God’s protection) instead of Allah-hafiz (may you stay in Allah’s protection)?
It’s because we continue to make concessions to fundamentalist thought and in the grand scheme of things, prohibition is only one example of that.
The writer is a social entrepreneur based in Lahore.