While we talk about the ‘modern’ perspective in Pakistan we instantly imagine a world where immorality is the high, where modesty doesn’t mean anything and the youth has fled to the gallows of insanity and are on the path of not only self-destruction. But their thought patterns are also seen as damaging the intricate fabric of the Pakistani society which is woven with the ideology of traditions laid down more than 1,400 years ago.
The above sentences may, however, have taken away the attention of many who started reading my blog but I, in my capacity, have in no away sought out to engage in a debate of how wrong our parents are in labeling our (yes, I speak directly to you) time spent with our friends discussing the philosophy of life. Rather today I would be talking about the Pakistani society seen and experienced all my life and how badly we need a sense of direction to steer who we really are.
In the world today where even the traditional economies of the Third World are considered to have many modern cities, with a majority of their populations living below the poverty line, we face the dilemma of not exactly understanding where we stand in the global political economy.
As Pakistanis we want to project the image of a peace-aspiring nation which is religious and at the same time ‘modern’ in certain aspects. Certainly over the years no one in the power hierarchy clearly specified what these certain aspects are while the entire nation passed down this confusion to their later generations. So we came to be known as a rather resilient society but with a lot of cultural baggage. August 14 1947 is touted as the day of Independence in Pakistan, where millions fled from the undivided sub-continent to the majority Muslim regions and created an independent country driven on the religious ideology. I am not a cynic criticizing religion but I am like any other concerned Pakistani utterly confused as to what we have done with this religious ideology over the due course of time.
While certain renowned people have started to believe that the age of ideology is over and that of globalization has begun, I nevertheless have reservations regarding the entire idea of secularism.
I think it is integral for us Pakistanis to stand by our religion Islam. And while I say this I realize that I am among the majority Pakistanis who would not be able to properly integrate themselves in the Sharia driven society of Saudi Arabia. Hence, we come to the conclusion that we are a Muslim majority country founded for the protection of Muslims in the previously undivided sub-continent and we ‘aim’ to thoroughly follow the teachings of our religion.
Modernization was a move to newer better ways of, well, everything. And economically the slow paced economies had to catch up with this change in order to make their goods economically more competitive in the international arena. This had to be accompanied by the ideas of an ‘open economy’; facilitated by better communication networks and commonly held ideals throughout the world which made our country much vulnerable to the ‘foreign’ ideas which quickly started to become the norms of our society as well.
As much as this modernization appealed to the masses, it was criticized by the clergymen arguing it to be against the principles for which Pakistan was gained. And this has been going on for quite a long time now.
But when you look around you’ll realize how our culture has gradually, if not eroded then mixed with the ‘foreign’ ideas and over time we have come to accept the idea that even if the majority of our population holds the religious ideology very dear, not all of us are willing to live in the Islamic center of the world-Saudi Arabia. This is because in Pakistan we enjoy a certain freedom that the true spirit of Islam might not allow. We criticize the Arabs for exercising such laws and label these as ‘irrational’ and ‘illogical’, antagonistic to the time we are living in – negating the fact that religion is based on tradition, and is to be followed as it is. Or that a certain idea of Ijma has to be carried out, but because of its extensive nature, it hasn’t been carried out for a long time.
Hence, we come to a society where people are driven in conflicts of what Islamic Banking truly is and whether or not stock exchanges are halal, negating in totality that our economy runs on interest embedded loans.
I would not go into detail in rightfully criticizing the role of clergy – we already have a lot of that – but I would go on talking about how we believe to be running our country on Islamic laws while at the same time forgetting that we have not inculcated the basic ideals of humanity in our nation when an extensive child abuse case goes unreported and unchecked for over ten years. This was not supposed to happen. Not in a country where we follow the principles of a peaceful religion that goes much deeper than just prayer.
Karl Marx labeled religion as the opium of the poor but now, believe it or not, religion is all but a choice. A fanciful choice which people can make in ways they think best and choose to ignore. The decision of choosing religion leads to the debate of who is better at it, ‘the bigger Muslim’, while choosing to not be religious leaves you roasted on a bus. An economy where 70% of the people starve; the likelihood of them getting high on this opium of hope is rather low and so most resort to instances of moral insanity where by some chemical reaction adrenaline rush of doing something ‘bad’ takes away the hunger inside.