I can pinpoint Benazir Bhutto’s rise as political leader in the wake of her 1986 historic welcome at Lahore Airport, as the time when I started to acquire political consciousness. That was a time of great intellectual ferment in Lahore—I remember witnessing debates among right and left leaning intellectuals at the tea houses in Lahore Anarkali, particularly the famous Pak Tea House on the Lahore Mall.
Educational institutions were themselves arenas for the battle of ideas. A yearning for democracy and representative institutions was pronounced among the young intellectuals of those days. Left leaning intellectuals advocated for a sort of social democracy or people’s democracy as they dubbed it—which in their own words meant direct representative institutions presiding over a classless society. Islamists were focused on Sharia oriented democracy, a political system based on the observance of Islamic Law, with a restrictive arrangement under which political rights were the exclusive privilege of male Sunni citizens of the country.
My political sensibilities developed out of the prevailing fashions in political thoughts—I was under the influence of Islamists because my family background from my father’s side was deeply embedded in Islamic revivalist social and political thought. I used to bunk classes at university and spend most of my time in Quaid-e-Azam and Punjab Public Library. Anarkali used to host old book sellers’ tiny shops by the roadside in those days. I used to spend hours in those shops. There was a bookshop at Mozang Chowk where Soviet literature was cheaply available. You could get Lenin’s State and Revolution for 20 rupees. Engels’ “Origin of Private Property, State and Family” used to cost only 30 rupees. Soviet propaganda material was even cheaper.
2024 Elections Significant For Both Democracy And Progress I rarely come across a politically aware Pakistan urbanite who doesn’t, while debating politics, idealize Islam as source of public policy. Similarly, I never come across an educated Pakistani who doesn’t lament—if you engage them in extended political discussion—the social and economic inequalities that are deeply embedded in our social and political structures.
Even today, my private library has a special shelf where more than 100 books from Progressive Publications, a Soviet organization that published and smuggled books into Third World countries, are stacked. Jamat-e-Islami had its own publishing house where their literature was equally cheaply available. I have another section in my library dedicated to Maulana Maududi’s political tracts. All this was from another world — the Pakistani youth doesn’t idealize its political thought in the light of any of these types of literature, although both these canons have greatly influenced our collective understanding of politics and the way we idealize our political objectives.
For instance, I rarely come across a politically aware Pakistan urbanite who doesn’t, while debating politics, idealize Islam as source of public policy. Similarly, I never come across an educated Pakistani who doesn’t lament—if you engage them in extended political discussion—the social and economic inequalities that are deeply embedded in our social and political structures.
Democracy, or representative institutions, remained embedded in my thought process even after my political thinking attained maturity. In the 1980s, when I was a student in Lahore, I was attracted to democracy as a slogan. Little did I comprehend the ideas, philosophies and implications of a democratic system for a third world society like Pakistan. More than the rituals of electoral processes, the essence of democracy remains the consent of the people being ruled.
The political system itself can take any form. The traditionalist Ulema are of the opinion that Islam doesn’t prescribe any particular form of political system to be adopted for any given state or society—that’s why political theorists and Muftis in Islamic history have ascribed legitimacy to wide variety of political arrangements from monarchic rule, hereditary rule, dictatorship, theocratic rule or parliamentary democracy within a multiparty political system.
Book Review | Under The Gun: Elections, Political Violence and Democracy Of late I have developed disagreements with the Islamist model of democracy, in which the most important role is assigned to the law (sharia law in particular) which is to be upheld by a modern coercive state. Islamists wants to usurp the powers of the modern state and use its machinery for the enforcement of sharia law, which was enforced in traditional Islamic society with the help of moral pressure. In other words, most of the rules of the Sharia are moral ideals, which, under the practice of Anglo-Saxon law currently in place in our society, would not even qualify as law at all. For instance, community elders coaxing the youth for namaz, roza and zakat on the one hand and the local Station House Master (SHO) enforcing these sharia requirements through coercive machinery under his control are two very different ways to enforce Islamic moral codes. Islamists have not made any serious attempt to understand the nature of the state that they want to control to enforce Sharia through. They just want to control the state - that is it.
An ahistorical perspective on religion is a path that leads directly to the land of Talibanization.
There are few Muslim scholars who have expressed the opinion that Islam has been unjustly dubbed as a religion of law. There is much more which is intrinsic to the essence of Islam—like the tradition of cultural diversity and release of creative energies, both of which were inherent to the period immediately after the rise of Islam. Islam grew, expanded and became a world religion in the multicultural and multi-faith environment of the Fertile Crescent.
The political system it gave birth to after learning with its encounters with Byzantine and Persian imperial political culture was all encompassing. Islamist political and socio-cultural models just ignore this rich historical tradition of cultural and intellectual discourse. An ahistorical perspective on religion is a path that leads directly to the land of Talibanization.
Elections In A Hollowed Out Democracy Generally, religion - not any particular religion but religion more broadly — has played a stabilizing role in human societies over the ages. This argument is the obverse side of the, “religion is the opium of the masses” argument put forth by Karl Marx. But in the context of political history of Pakistani society, this argument is hard to comprehend or agree to, as in the course of our short political history, religions have been made to play a divisive and disruptive role.
My argument, however, is related to religion’s role as the enforcer of a certain level of discipline in traditional and pre-modern societies, which were untouched by the rational philosophies of the modern era. We learn some lessons from these traditional societies, especially if we exclude three unpalatable roles that religion has played. Historically, religion has been used to justify economic and social inequalities where these inequalities are deeply entrenched in the structure of society and are ever widening. For instance, in Pakistan, the religious clergy invoke divine sanctions to justify widening economic inequalities by claiming that this is what the divine has ordained.
Economic inequalities are not attributed to an unfair distribution of wealth and incomes, resources and means of production—something which provides the basis to the current economic system. Religions should not be used to justify economic and social inequalities. Instead, the clergy in our society argues that economic inequalities are a consequence of the wish of Allah.
In the Christian West, and more recently in the Muslim East, religion has been used to prevent the culture of free thinking from taking roots in society. Under no circumstances should religion be used as a tool to prevent free thinking.
Where Does Pakistan's Democracy Stand In The Digital World? Historically, religion has been used to justify economic and social inequalities where these inequalities are deeply entrenched in the structure of society and are ever widening. For instance, in Pakistan, the religious clergy invoke divine sanctions to justify widening economic inequalities by claiming that this is what the divine has ordained.
Religious beliefs have been used in Pakistani society to discriminate against marginalized and helpless communities and individuals. The diversity of beliefs is a historical constant, where material culture has flourished since the beginning of human civilization. In fact, the modern history of science and material progress in human civilizations is being written by modern historians as a history of cultural exchange in an environment of a multiplicity of belief systems. Uni-belief societies have never flourished materially in human history.
In Pakistani society, passion, prejudice, emotions and biases define people’s attitude towards politics. Very few people use rational faculties of mind to analyze politics, and even fewer have the mental and intellectual capacity to analyze politics on the basis of latest social science theories which are the product of deep reflection or intensive research.
My university days were spent studying patently ideological tracts of Marxist-Leninist oriented political theory and analysis. I remained focused on Islamists’ political tracts and that too of the revivalist kind. In the spring of 1997, I spent three months in Washington doing a fellowship at the Henry L. Stimson Center, where I used to regularly engage in political debate with the President of the think-tank, Michael Krepon, a famous nuclear non-proliferation activist and security analyst. He introduced me to two authors—Thomas Schelling, who has written extensively on modern day theories of deterrence theory and Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century theorist of the modern state. This was my first encounter with modern western political thought and after that, there was no stopping me. John Locke, Rosseau, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kaplan, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Kopper and countless others have enlightened my political thinking. But I have not parted company with the fundamental ideas of democracy, freedom and civil liberties.
The Elixir of Democracy: Your Voice, Your Choice I advocate for a federal parliamentary democracy as the only political form that can keep Pakistan as an integrated and united state. And this I do for three reasons. Firstly, Pakistan is ethnically, religiously and linguistically, a diverse country and it is absolutely essential that a democratic, representative political system should be in place to accommodate the aspirations of all diverse groups in our society within the political structures of our state. Secondly, Islam plays a fundamental role in the social and political stability of the country. Even traditional ulema insist that the rulers in a Islamic polity should base the system they are presiding over on processes of consultation with the people they are ruling. Of course, religion should not be used as a tool to justify economic inequalities, prevent free thinking from taking root and as a tool to enable the oppression of marginalized or minority communities. Lastly, only democracy and representative institutions can ensure the security of the state, and provide an environment in which all groups and segments of society can participate. In other words, democracy is a security imperative.
But my deep study of western and Islamic political thought and my experience of covering politics in Pakistani society has thoroughly disabused me of the illusion that democracy is a political system which can self-correct. Left to its own devices, Pakistani democracy has the potential to self-destruct. There has to be a mechanism or a force from within the system that should subject the political system to the process of incessant reform.
Democracy cannot flourish in our society without some kind of redistribution of resources. Economic and social inequalities are not only justified with the help of religion, but in our political and social system, we tend to glamorize inequality.
Many historians of political thought and systems have pointed out in recent years that democracy has worked only in societies where a strong and effective administrative system was in place even before democracy was introduced. In Pakistan, we see that even today, in many areas, administrative structures are simply missing or very weak. The Pakistani political elite has engaged in intermittent conflict, and as a consequence, they have to ensure their own survival as their first priority.
Cutting Branches of Democracy: Can Pakistan's Tree Take Root? Reforming the system is something beyond their vision, which is restricted to surviving in the here and now. Either this political elite should be provided enough space so that they can come out of “fighting for survival” mode of politics, and in order to achieve this, they should be provided a kind of breather - so that they can think beyond the mere imperatives of their own survival. Otherwise, some force or some group should come forward to pursue an agenda of reform in our society. We need reforms in every walk of life—the administrative, judicial and military systems we are banking on are rotten to the core.
Most importantly, democracy cannot flourish in our society without some kind of redistribution of resources. Economic and social inequalities are not only justified with the help of religion, but in our political and social system, we tend to glamorize inequality. Political leaders flaunt their wealth and riches and quite condescendingly boast that they have everything now they are in politics. These inequalities are not a product of God’s will. These are the product of a flawed, extractive and exploitative economic and political system. Redistribute resources and make the means of production more equitable, and there will be no winners and losers. For our political system to be healthy, economic exploitation and political oppression must come to an end.
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