The Deepest Cut

Amir Zia

November 10, 2014

The News

Do we now stand on hopeless grounds? Is the growing tide of extremism irreversible? The answer to these questions lies on whether our prime minister will be able to match his words with actions and we as a nation are able to rise and unite to save Pakistan and its soul from extremists. The wound of the Kot Radha Kishan tragedy must force us to act.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued a politically correct statement that a responsible state cannot tolerate “mob rule and public lynching with impunity.” The statement came in response to the horrifying act of vigilante violence in which a Christian couple – accused of desecrating the Holy Quran – was severely tortured and then burnt to death in a brick kiln by a mob in Kot Radha Kishan, barely 60 kilometers from Lahore.

The incident has sparked the usual flurry of angry statements from rights groups, some leading Islamic scholars and clerics, political parties and official quarters, which unanimously condemned the brutal double murder and called for stern action against the perpetrators of this heinous crime. The words of Prime Minister Sharif, too, appear to assure – at least on paper – that the state has to proactively act “to protect its minorities from violence and injustice.”

But haven’t we all heard such politically correct statements scores of times in the past as well whenever such brutalities are committed on an individual or collective basis by the religious zealots? Have these statements made any difference in the 21st century Pakistan where religious intolerance and extremism appear to be on the rise? Have the state and its institutions managed to punish those responsible for such barbaric acts?

The November 4 public brutality in Kot Radha Kishan, in which the Christian couple – Shahzad, 35, and his pregnant wife Shama, 31 – lost their lives, is not the first and will certainly not be the last one in our Islamic Republic.

Given the eroding writ of the state and the growing religious bigotry, this dangerous trend is all set to continue. A mere allegation of blasphemy has now become enough to seal the fate of an accused in today’s Pakistan. There is not even any room left to hold the trial of the accused under the country’s blasphemy laws. If the person accused of blasphemy is saved from the mob, he or she can be killed in police custody or in jail.

The state has become too frail and too feeble even to properly prosecute individuals who kill and resort to violence in the name of religion – especially on unproven charges of blasphemy. 

A case in point is that of Joseph Colony, Lahore where rioters torched more than 150 houses and two churches on March 9, 2013 over allegations of blasphemy against a Christian man. The police arrested more than 100 rioters, but all of them were set free as none could be proven guilty.

One can keep counting cases of murders and vigilante violence, from the high-profile assassination of Governor Salmaan Taseer in January 2011 in Islamabad to the burning to death of a mentally disabled person in Bahawalpur in July 2012, in which the state failed to get a single conviction.

Should we expect any different results from the arrests of people accused of the Kot Radha Kishan tragedy? If the past is any witness, then there is hardly any hope.

Most of the recognised Islamic scholars have a broad consensus that vigilante violence and taking the law in one own hands stand against the tenets of Islam. Only the state can punish a person once charges of blasphemy are undisputedly proven. The country’s religious-political parties also have a similar position.

Veteran scholars like Mufti Muhammed Naeem of Jamia Binoria, Karachi and Allama Tahir Ashrafi, Chairman Ullman Board Pakistan, have expressed their angst over the burning to death of the Christian couple and demanded that the government administer swift justice to those responsible for the crime.

They have argued that the inaction of the state and its inability to punish the culprits are the main reason for the surge in such acts of mob and individual violence.

Certainly, the government needs to show zero tolerance when it comes to dealing with such cases, but more importantly and as a long-term measure it has to create an environment where religious diversity and tolerance is celebrated.

That remains a tall order and requires, as a first step, reforms in our mainstream education system as well as seminaries. 

Preventing the misuse of pulpits in many of the mosques for inciting religious or sectarian hatred and fanaticism is also easier said than done. In fact, barring the lip-service to this cause, the government has failed to take any meaningful step in this direction, including framing effective laws or implementing the ones already on the books. 

It is not just the Sharif government, but most of the past governments as well which stand guilty of apathy and paralysis when it comes to taking on the challenge of religious extremism, intolerance and lawlessness in our society.

The failure of successive governments to tackle religiously-motivated violence and extremism sends the message that one can get away even with murder by exploiting the sacred name of Islam.

This has resulted not just in an unending vicious cycle violence against ordinary Pakistanis, mostly Muslims, and sectarian killings, but has also made the religious minorities excessively vulnerable.

Religious minorities – mainly Hindus and Christians – comprise a little over three percent of Pakistan’s population according to the 1998 census. (The figures can be grossly misleading as there has not been an official census in the country for the past 16 years.) 

According to Sadiq Daniel, Bishop of Karachi and Balochistan Diocese, never in the past have Christians and Hindus living in Pakistan felt so threatened, helpless and weak.

“I am saying it for the first time that religious minorities are afraid of living in Pakistan… I never said this before, but today I am forced to say this,” he told the scribe while discussing the Kot Radha Kishan atrocity. “If there is no space for religious minorities in Pakistan, simply tell us.”

Similar sentiment is shared by many other leaders of the country’s religious minorities – perhaps in much stronger words. They say that false allegations of blasphemy are being made against members of the religious minorities to settle personal scores or over disputes on financial matters.

This was apparently the case with Shahzad and Shama who, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had a dispute over wages, or recovery of advance money that the kiln owner had extended to two families of Muslim labourers who had escaped. “The kiln owners had asked Shahzad to repay the amount extended to the escaped families because he had introduced them to the owners”, the HRCP said.

He levelled charges of blasphemy against them following which announcements were made through mosque loudspeakers, provoking hundreds of villagers.

Similarly, the name of religion is exploited for abducting women and even young girls belonging to minority communities and their forced conversions to the Muslim faith. Neither any Islamic scholar nor the constitution of Pakistan allow brutalities and discrimination against religious minorities, but sadly they have become a norm in today’s Pakistan.

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s dream that in this state of Pakistan, “you are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship”, stands trampled.

Reclaiming Jinnah’s Pakistan, freeing it of religious bigotry, extremism, intolerance and violence remain the biggest challenge for our generation. We appear to be losing this fight at the hands of the same mindset from which the country’s founding fathers had once liberated us to create Pakistan.

Do we now stand on hopeless grounds? Is the growing tide of extremism irreversible? The answer to these questions lies on whether our prime minister will be able to match his words with actions and we as a nation are able to rise and unite to save Pakistan and its soul from extremists. The wound of the Kot Radha Kishan tragedy must force us to act.