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Pakistan's wonderlands with little
wonder
By Aijazz
Ahmed
 ISLAMABAD - He is in his 64th year, an age
when a man should be extra careful about exposing
himself to extremes of temperature. But Yaqoob's soul is
not at rest, and every morning he sets off for the
neighborhood mosque at four in the morning in the
sub-zero temperatures of Pakistan's winter for the first
of five daily visits.
"I
clean and sweep the mosque
as it is the house of the lord [God]," says Yaqoob,
eyes beaming behind what should be a white beard,
but is dyed coal black. "I can secure a place in
heaven and in the hearts of men in this way."
Yaqoob personifies a dying breed in the country.
He is a volunteer servant at the mosque, but many others
like him have given up such work as a result of the
fundamental changes in the role of mosques in Muslim
society brought about by commercial, communal and
sectarian mullahs injecting violence and intolerance
into the country's social structure.
Wonder,
glory and sanctity are traditionally associated with the
mosque. For a Muslim, building a mosque is a lifetime
priority to book a berth in heaven. But, since the late
1980s, in tandem with mosques losing their role as
teaching facilities for society, mosque-building has
become a lucrative business for many a mullah and
land-grabber with a commercial, rather than a spiritual
bent. Mosques can attract a lot of money through
donations, made every week by pious Muslims in the name
of Allah, and from funding by mentors and foreign
donors.
The role of the mosque in
traditional Muslim society is twofold. The first and primary
one relates to worship, and the other to social
activities, explains Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, the deputy
secretary general of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA),
the alliance of Muslim parties that won unprecedented
gains in the latest parliamentary elections.
"The
mosque was the community center, the place of worship,
the general headquarters of the time of Muslim armies,
it was the center of social gatherings and the solution
of community problems," says Ahmed. "From nikah
ceremonies [sermons of marriage under Islam and the
Koran] to the education of children, everything was done
in the mosque. It was the general headquarters, the
foreign office of the Prophet Mohammed, the government
secretariat of the first Islamic government of the
Prophet Mohammed and the following four governments of
Muslim caliphs," he adds. The Prophet Mohammed performed
all his duties through the Nabvi mosque in Medina, Saudi
Arabia; the first Muslim university was established in
the same mosque, while all official delegations from the
non-Muslim world were received and feted in the same
mosque, says Ahmed.
And there was more: Even the
first state bank and finance ministry of the Islamic
world were established in the Nabvi mosque,
baitulmal (a charity department to help the
poor), the first shoora (parliament) and all
other social activities of the Muslim community were
performed through the Nabvi and other mosques.
This situation endured for the first orthodox
caliphates (the governments of the first four orthodox
caliphs), but after the Ottoman caliphate, the mosque
lost its governmental role and centrality as the caliphs
of the other families started performing government
functions through their palaces. The Muslim monarchs
then used the mosques to strengthen their rule; they
appointed the paish imam (the man who leads
prayers in the mosque) and the moazan (the man
who delivers the azan - call to pray), and the
monarchs bore all expenses in this regard.
Nowadays, says Ahmed, the problems that many
Muslims face all over the world often stem from their
distance from mosques. A mosque should be the center of
their activities, it is a place where all are equal,
whether they are haves or have nots. He firmly believes
that the revival of such a central role for the mosque
could reconcile the current enmity between different
schools of thought in the Muslim world and help bring an
end to the violence that characterizes their
differences: Official figures indicate that in Pakistan
alone, approximately 1,000 mosques have been attacked
and desecrated over the past five years as a result of
communal and sectarian differences.
Mosques
and politics
In the Middle East nowadays, mosques
are widely used by political and jihad movements to
shape the views of people, especially at Jumma
(Friday) prayers, says Abu Abdullah, an Arab activist in
Islamabad. The mosque does have a special political
role, he says, but not the sort of role that the Taliban
gave it in Afghanistan, he stresses.
In Iran
after the Islamic revolution of 1979 the mosque became
the public secretariat of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to
perform his official duties. Nevertheless, it still
retains a particular educational and political role in
Iranian society, in the latter sense to educate people
about the enemies of Iran, but not to oppose the Iranian
government.
This is true, too, in many other
Islamic countries, such as Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine,
Indonesia and Malaysia, where current affairs, political
affairs and jihad are regular topics of discussions in
mosques.
"In Jordan, people are politically
charged, motivated and shaped through mosques," says Abu
Abdullah, adding that even in the national elections of
Jordan in the 1990s the mosque was used with success for
the political campaigns of religious leaders.
In
Kuwait, the mosque also has a political role. Although
the government regulates the mosques, committees running
the day-to-day affairs arrange discussions on political,
diplomatic, social and religious issues to train their
people and to form public opinion, says Mahmood Abu
Saleh, an Arab working in Pakistan in a private
investment organization.
In Indonesia and
Malaysia funding for mosques is the basic responsibility
of the government, but every mosque has a school
(mohed) attached to it to educate and train
children, says a student of the International Islamic
University in Islamabad. "We cannot arrange or hire
people for jihad or agitation activities, the government
keeps a strict vigilance on activities, but even than
the mosque propagates basic duties of the Muslim,
including jihad, he adds.
In Malaysia, the
Islamic Party (PAS) controls two provinces - Tarangano
and Kelarton in the north - and they use the mosque to
influence people in their favor and against the
perceived enemies of Muslims, like the United States and
the West, he adds.
In Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates, all mosque activities other than
educational are banned, says Abu Abdullah. All mosques
have modern madrassas (religious schools)
attached, which is not like the situation in Pakistan
where the madrassas are independent of the
mosques.
"But the situation is entirely
different in Palestine. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad
Organization use mosques as their training and
recruitment centers," says Abu Abdullah, adding, though,
that the mosques are certainly not used as military
training centers. Any call for a jihad against Israel
emanates from the mosque, as do strike calls. Even the
Intifada movement of Palestine in the early 1990s was
announced from a mosque.
Prayers and politics
in Pakistan
There were an estimated 25,000
mosques in united India at the time of partition in
1947, now about 500,000 mosques are registered in
Pakistan with the government, with about the same number
not registered. Out of Pakistan's total population of
142 million, therefore, this means that there is
approximately one mosque for every 142 people.
In Pakistan, the mosque was the center of
communal activities until the 1970s. As was the practice
across the Indian subcontinent, the mosques were run by
local Muslim communities through donations as private
outfits. The day-to-day affairs of a mosque fell under
the jurisdiction of a committee that was elected from
the local populace. Punchayats (local committees
that settled differences and issued decrees in
controversial matters) were responsible for the mosques
and all their activities. Very few mosques fell under
government control through its Department of Auqaf
(endowment).
Then the first government of prime
minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan People's
Party, which came into power in 1971 with the breakup of
the country that led to the creation of Bangladesh,
established a religious ministry and a fully-fledged
department to run the affairs of the mosques. Most came
under the control of the government, which started
regulating their affairs, including paying the salaries
of the imams and moazans, and heavily
subsidized utility bills.
It was Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that first hit upon
the idea of using mosques to play a political role. In
1977, the military, with tacit US support, staged a
coup, throwing Bhutto out of power and installing
General Zia ul-Haq as dictator. In a campaign to soften
public opinion prior to the coup, the ISI persuaded many
imams and religious leaders to use the forum of
the mosque to rail against Bhutto and give their support
to Zia's Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). Many offered
special prayers entreating god to end Bhutto's
government.
A campaign against Benazir Bhutto
(premier from 1988-1990 and 1993-1996) was run from the
mosque where speakers used the Jumma prayers to
speak against the rule of a woman as being un-Islamic.
This sowed the seeds for the sectarianism that
has plagued Pakistan society over the past years. People
started building mosques for their own particular sect
or school of thought, and this course reached its peak
after the Afghan jihad in the late 1980s, when the
government lent its full support (read money) to
mullahs, and the jihadi groups turned the business of
running a mosque into a profitable one.
After
the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the
groups that had exported jihad to Afghanistan and later
to Indian-administered Kashmir began to dominate the
national religious scene, and the mosques as well.
Sectarian tendencies turned violent. Shi'ite and Sunni
mosques were the particular targets of splinter groups
among the two rival factions of Islam, with mosques
being desecrated, or namazies (divine prayers)
disrupted. Thousands of people have lost their lives.
Most of the attacks have taken place in densely
populated and secular cities like Karachi, Lahore,
Multan, Hyderabad and Rawalpindi.
Maulvies (Muslims religious leaders)
started building wanted or unwanted mosques at a rapid
pace. Even Islamabad was their target. Every patch of
green belt or empty place was captured by the
maulvies to build a mosque, as it was a good way
get some financial benefits, better their social status
and live in Islamabad at the cost of the others. And
worse, many spread ignorance and religious intolerance.
The government does not support this practice, but it
cannot clamp down too hard as they are a potential law
and order threat. Many mosques receive substantial
donations from philanthropists keen to appease their
inner soul and conscience, when in fact such donations
are tax deductible.
Dr Manzoor Ahmed, a scholar,
psychologist and researcher on religious issues laments
that religious parties began the trend of using mosques
only for their political gains. "The practice should be
stopped and the glory of the mosque should be restored
if we want to remain on the international scene as a
moderate, literate and sane nation."
Iftikhar
Arif, a renowned poet and researcher, agrees. "The
mosque should be a religious and community center and
not a center for increasing religious intolerance and
sectarianism. Unfortunately, people controlling the
mosques are injecting violence in the people, and this
is the reason for a rapid decline of praying. People are
becoming oblivious to religion and society."
Another concurring voice comes from Talat
Masood, a writer, analyst and anthropologist.
"Intolerance in our society is at an increase and that
is the reason why we are far behind other nations. The
mosque should be taken as an institution, not as a tool
for self gain."
But Aftab Ahmed, a human rights
activists who works on bonded labor, differs somewhat.
"Maulvies in the majority of mosques are
innocent. They are illiterate, not fully trained to meet
day-to-day religious requirements and to match
modern-day challenges. They have been misused by the
politically motivated religious parties and the
political mullahs aligned with the right-wing agencies
since the days of the Afghan jihad. In a situation like
this, how can they activate mosques as community
centers?" asks Ahmed.
Although registered
mosques are under the strict control of the government,
and an ordinance prohibits them from being used for
anti-government or anti-US speeches, and the majority
observes this ban, the situation is such that mosques
continue to be used as political and sectarian pulpits.
This is especially so in private mosques in the
politically vibrant parts of Punjab and Sindh, and
especially in North West Frontier Province and
Balochistan, where the mosques are largely under the
influence of the more radical and militant Islamist
groups.
Further, mosques cannot be closed down,
as this is against the religion, although imams
can be transferred or arrested for violations.
As long as one particular sect cannot even enter
into the mosque of another sect, the mosque cannot play
a useful role in society. This is the tragedy that has
befallen Pakistan.
Next: Pakistan's
political mullahs
(©2003 Asia Times Online
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