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In Pakistan, sermons and
signals
By Aijazz Ahmed
 ISLAMABAD - The reputation of the Muslim world,
especially in Pakistan, faces a serious challenge as an
open-minded, tolerant, democratic and humble religious
community.
"People claim that they are religious
leaders and scholars, but in reality there are very few
such people in backward Pakistani society," said Dr
Inamul Haq Javed, a scholar, teacher and well-known poet
in Pakistan.
"It is the agony that, unlike
Christian priests and educators, the majority of the
500,000 Muslim religious leaders and activists in
Pakistan have limited knowledge and small minds," said
Saqlain Imam, a well known researcher and scholar.
"And while most Christian religious scholars are
non-political, in Pakistan, the situation is the
opposite. Politics is the full-time activity of
religious notables, and the teaching aspect is missing
from their lives. All major religious leaders are
required to be role models in politics, education and
knowledge. But it is unfortunate that the majority of
the maulanas [religious scholars] and religious
political leaders are not up to the mark as far as I am
concerned, " lamented Imam.
According to Hafiz
Hussain Ahmed, a member of the National Assembly and
deputy secretary general of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal
(MMA), an alliance of Muslim parties that won
unprecedented gains in the last year's parliamentary
elections, approximately 70 percent of Pakistan's 1
million-odd mosques have mullahs with political
affiliations.
Political mullahs, though, are not
a new phenomenon in South Asia, tracing their roots to
the fall of the Mughal emperor in united India in the
late 18th century. Education, political training and
shaping of opinion among the masses became a permanent
feature of the early political mullahs.
Maulana
Mohammad Ali Johar, Maulana Shaukat Ali (brothers and
learned personalities of the Caliphat Movement of second
quarter of the 19th century), Maulana Maodudi (founder
of the Jamaat-i-Islami), Mufti Mehmood (father of
Maulana Fazlur Rehman and founder of the Jamiat
Ulma-e-Islam), people from the Jamiat Ulma-e-Hind under
the Deobani school of thought, Maulana Zaffar Ali Khan,
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (former vice president of India,
ancestral leader on the Indian National Congress and a
scholar) and Jamiat Ahrar were the main groups and
individuals who largely influenced the Muslim masses of
the subcontinent before partition in1947. Both Mufti
Mehmood and Maulana Maodudi played vital and central
roles in the politics of Pakistan after partition and
they provided their weight to general Zia ul-Haq's
toppling of a democratically-elected government for a
military coup in 1977.
Recent jihadi activities
can be traced to Shah Wali Ullah and Mauvi Ismail
Shaheed who in 1870 invited Nadir Shah of Afghanistan to
attack India and its non-Muslim population, then under
British rule, but he ended up looting Muslims as well.
Maulvi Ismail waged a jihad against Sikh rule in Punjab
and the northern parts of the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP) in Pakistan (of Ranjeet Singh in the
late 19th century). He practically forced the
all-powerful governments of Britain and the Sikhs to
avoid the mountainous areas of both Punjab and the NWFP.
Maulvi Ismail remains an icon and role model for modern
jihadis
Although the jihadi groups now engaged
in cross-border terrorism in Indian-administered Jammu
and Kashmir state are independent and have no direct
links with the political mullahs, they are indirectly
linked. Firebrand Maulana Fazlur Rehman, for instance,
was a clear-cut supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan
and the jihad against the opposition Northern Alliance.
Mufti Shamzai and his followers were also Taliban and
Osama bin Laden supporters. It was because of their
links that they were sent as official emissaries to
Afghanistan by President General Pervez Musharraf before
the US dropped its bombs on Kabul in early 2002.
Munir Ahmed, an historian and journalist,
explains that while many mullahs play politics, others
in the mosque do not do so. The majority of poor
families send their children to religious seminaries
madrassas to enable them to become a paish
imam (a person who leads prayers at the mosque). The
majority of them study in appalling conditions, with
scant pay and even less respect of their needs - both
physical and spiritual. More than 100,000 paish
imams are scattered throughout community mosques in
the far-flung rural areas of Pakistan, relying on even
their basic meals from the local communities.
Even in big towns and cities, the paish
imams of the smaller mosques do not receive adequate
money, and they are forced to work like personal
servants and secretaries to the members of the executive
committees that run the mosques, said Aftab Ahmed, a
human rights worker in Hyderabad, the fourth-biggest
city in the country. These paish imams are seldom
involved in politics as they are not capable of
understanding the day-to-day requirements of political
life, and they are not armed with the education to be
leaders. They simply perform namaz and other
religious ceremonies that make up a Muslim's life, he
said.
Of those mullahs with political
affiliations, more than half fall under the influence of
Fazlur Rehman and his Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. As a
grouping of religious parties, the MMA also has
significant sway over mullahs. The Shi'ite groups of
Sajid Naqvi and Hamid Musvi of the Tehrik-e-Jaffrai hold
a stranglehold on the 2,323 registered Imam
Bargas (Shi'ite mosques).
Many mullahs,
while not directly involved in the country's political
processes, are active in organizing the masses in
various causes, such as anti-democracy and anti-United
States rallies. They have proved themselves key allies
of the military establishment and the country's
intelligence agencies against moderate and liberal
political leadership in the name of Islam, said Munir
Ahmed. Musharraf kept his eyes closed to the activities
of the mullahs in Kashmir until US pressure last year
forces him to slap bans on some of the organizations
active in that region.
"Instead of playing for
the people," Munir said, "since the inception of
Pakistan, and even before, the mullahs have played with
the people." The have traditionally supported the
extra-political moves of the military establishments
against the political parties, and the mullahs even
opposed Qaid-e-Azam (Mohammad Ali Jinah, the founder of
Pakistan) and termed him Kafir-e-Azam (a man who does
not accepts the authority of god and who prays for some
other power), says Munir. The only example when the
religious element sided with the moderate political
leadership was against the military dictatorship of Ayub
Khan (1958-69), he added. Later, the mullahs played a
part in dislodging premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971-77)
and in bringing General Zia ul-Haq into power.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1983) marked
a turning point in the political role of religious
parities, with the knot between the mullahs and the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) tightened even more
than ever, said Tallat Masood, an analyst, retired
lieutenant general and secretary of defense productions
in Zia's government.
The Afghan war and then the
start of militant Muslim activity in Indian-occupied
Kashmir provided the religious leaders new battlefields
and a platform to getting more financial benefits
(through foreign funds) and in raising their profile, he
adds. Pakistani militants fought at the frontline for
the US against the Soviets and became Washington's ally
until the late 1990s, when the superpower made a u-turn
in its Pakistan and Afghan policy following the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
The post-September 11 US
attacks on Afghanistan further alienated the mullahs and
militants from the US, and also ended relations with
almost half of the Pakistani military establishment,
said lieutenant general (retired) Kamal Matinuddin,
former corps commander Peshawar and a close friend of
Zia.
Political mullahs are a potentially potent
force. Since the education level in the country is very
low, people, especially the downtrodden and the middle
class, can easily be swayed by inflammatory sermons.
Mullahs can fuel a fire or control it as they have their
fingers firmly on the pulses of their impressionable
charges. The mullahs are in a position to raise
volunteers for action in Kashmir, and even further
afield in Palestine, said Kamal.
The current US
focus on Iraq and Saddam Hussein is certainly not a
clash of civilizations, but Pakistan's political
mullahs, with their limited view and hatred of the US,
are in a position to interpret it as such. Which many
are doing through sermons at the mosques and lectures to
students at religious seminaries.
Although the
mullahs are not a formal part of any global Islamic
movement, nor a part of a Muslim brotherhood campaign,
the fact that they have influence over such a vast
number of malleable minds has set alarm bells ringing in
the West.
The heart, like a grape, delivers its
harvest at the very moment that it is crushed.
Pakistan's mullahs, by preaching an onslaught on Islam,
could reap a deadly harvest.
(©2003 Asia Times
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