A version of this article appeared in The Express Tribune on June 1, 2010
The horrific attacks on the Ahmadi community on May 28 exacted nearly 100 lives. These are not random terrorist attacks. They are the outcroppings of Pakistan’s intolerant political structures. As such they morally implicate all Pakistanis.
The horrific attacks on the Ahmadi community on May 28 exacted nearly 100 lives. These are not random terrorist attacks. They are the outcroppings of Pakistan’s intolerant political structures. As such they morally implicate all Pakistanis.
The attacks were the worst incident of organized violence against Ahmadis in nearly six decades. Their pedigree stretches back to the so-called Punjab Disturbances of 1953, when violent mobs organized by a number of Islamic political groups, including the venerable Jama’at-e-Islami, went on a killing and pillaging spree in Lahore and other parts of the Punjab.
The riots resulted in a Court of Inquiry under Justices Muhammad Munir and Muhammad Rustam Kayani. The Justices heard testimony from a number of leading Pakistani ulama, partly to assess the nature of their grievances against the Ahmadi community. The resultant Munir-Kayani Report provided a detailed analysis of the predicament of turning a pluralistic and multi-denominational country like Pakistan into a confessional state. It noted that no two alims the Court questioned agreed upon the exact definition of a Muslim, rendering impossible the task of deciding who falls within, much less outside the definition as a matter of law. The implication was that the government must remain aloof in matters of freedom of conscience. These belong to the realm of theological debate, not of law and the state.
In the years that followed the Report’s obvious wisdom was set aside to leverage the most reactionary elements of Pakistani society for political advantage. Pakistan’s constitutional direction papered over the country’s vast religious diversity to privilege one particular reading of Islam over others. It also declared Ahmadis non-Muslims, forbidding the community from proselytizing or even referring to their houses of worship as mosques. To Pakistan’s shame, few voices opposed this trend. Even now each Pakistani is made complicit in this legalized bigotry; an application for an identity card or a passport requires an oath that the applicant is not an Ahmadi and that Ahmadis are beyond the pale of Islam. Such measures have generally ostracized Ahmadis from the mainstream of public life in Pakistan.
It is against this backdrop of systematic disenfranchisement that we find the present massacre in Lahore. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Punjab and a previously unknown organization, al-Qaeda Al-Jihad Punjab Wing, have claimed the attacks. As fanatical as they are, the Taliban are fundamentally rational political actors, sophisticated both militarily and politically. There is a method to their madness, with elements of a broader political strategy often encoded into acts of immense violence. An appropriate political response to the Taliban makes it vital to decipher such acts rationally rather than writing them off as the products of miscreant minds.
As the Taliban take a drubbing militarily, expending scarce resources on a novel attack on theAhmadi community is designed to retake the political initiative. If the government responds with the provision of extra security for the Ahmadi community or a recognition of its general plight, the Taliban will no doubt take advantage of the backlash by bigoted and anti-Ahmadi sections of the religious establishment and the general population. The risk is that old fissures could re-open and there could be a return of frequent mass violence against the Ahmadi community.
Alternatively, the government may gamble that intolerance against Ahmadis has become so widespread that it can simply weather the current political storm without making any concessions to the community. This would be a mistake. It will not only highlight the government’s disinterest in protecting its citizens, thereby handing the Taliban a propaganda victory, it will also pave the road to further violence against Ahmadis and potentially other vulnerable minorities, including Christians and Hindus, as well as the Shi’a. Thus, both government action and inaction contains seeds of a political crisis, with resultant turmoil benefiting the Taliban and similar groups. In other words, the Taliban are on the cusp of engineering a win-win situation.
To change the Taliban’s political calculus all decent Pakistanis must strongly condemn the attacks on Ahmadis and insist whatever protections are necessary be provided to the community and other minorities. Anything else concedes this battle to the Taliban.
The riots resulted in a Court of Inquiry under Justices Muhammad Munir and Muhammad Rustam Kayani. The Justices heard testimony from a number of leading Pakistani ulama, partly to assess the nature of their grievances against the Ahmadi community. The resultant Munir-Kayani Report provided a detailed analysis of the predicament of turning a pluralistic and multi-denominational country like Pakistan into a confessional state. It noted that no two alims the Court questioned agreed upon the exact definition of a Muslim, rendering impossible the task of deciding who falls within, much less outside the definition as a matter of law. The implication was that the government must remain aloof in matters of freedom of conscience. These belong to the realm of theological debate, not of law and the state.
In the years that followed the Report’s obvious wisdom was set aside to leverage the most reactionary elements of Pakistani society for political advantage. Pakistan’s constitutional direction papered over the country’s vast religious diversity to privilege one particular reading of Islam over others. It also declared Ahmadis non-Muslims, forbidding the community from proselytizing or even referring to their houses of worship as mosques. To Pakistan’s shame, few voices opposed this trend. Even now each Pakistani is made complicit in this legalized bigotry; an application for an identity card or a passport requires an oath that the applicant is not an Ahmadi and that Ahmadis are beyond the pale of Islam. Such measures have generally ostracized Ahmadis from the mainstream of public life in Pakistan.
It is against this backdrop of systematic disenfranchisement that we find the present massacre in Lahore. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Punjab and a previously unknown organization, al-Qaeda Al-Jihad Punjab Wing, have claimed the attacks. As fanatical as they are, the Taliban are fundamentally rational political actors, sophisticated both militarily and politically. There is a method to their madness, with elements of a broader political strategy often encoded into acts of immense violence. An appropriate political response to the Taliban makes it vital to decipher such acts rationally rather than writing them off as the products of miscreant minds.
As the Taliban take a drubbing militarily, expending scarce resources on a novel attack on theAhmadi community is designed to retake the political initiative. If the government responds with the provision of extra security for the Ahmadi community or a recognition of its general plight, the Taliban will no doubt take advantage of the backlash by bigoted and anti-Ahmadi sections of the religious establishment and the general population. The risk is that old fissures could re-open and there could be a return of frequent mass violence against the Ahmadi community.
Alternatively, the government may gamble that intolerance against Ahmadis has become so widespread that it can simply weather the current political storm without making any concessions to the community. This would be a mistake. It will not only highlight the government’s disinterest in protecting its citizens, thereby handing the Taliban a propaganda victory, it will also pave the road to further violence against Ahmadis and potentially other vulnerable minorities, including Christians and Hindus, as well as the Shi’a. Thus, both government action and inaction contains seeds of a political crisis, with resultant turmoil benefiting the Taliban and similar groups. In other words, the Taliban are on the cusp of engineering a win-win situation.
To change the Taliban’s political calculus all decent Pakistanis must strongly condemn the attacks on Ahmadis and insist whatever protections are necessary be provided to the community and other minorities. Anything else concedes this battle to the Taliban.
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