The symbol of an Anglican bishop is a crook (a hooked staff); and that of an archbishop is a double cross. Coincidentally, that’s what many of the English used to feel about their clergy. “I never saw, heard nor read that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country”, said Swift. And he should have known – Swift was a high born Anglican priest (& writer).
Our feelings about the clergy are not very different. We too prefer to steer clear of them, except on unavoidable occasions namely, births, marriages and deaths. Even at Friday prayers some prefer to wait outside the mosque till the mullah has finished his sermon and only then rejoin the congregation.
That’s because we know our ‘priests’. We’ve had varieties of maulanas – ‘whisky’ and ‘diesel’ and ‘sandwich’ are just three examples. There have been others, like those who opposed the creation of Pakistan but on which, when it became a fait accompli, they scrambled aboard in search of lucre and office. Of course, there are those who were/are genuinely respected for their contribution to national life. Nevertheless, a straw poll suggests the public far prefers the mullah’s role be confined to leading prayers and performing religious rituals than governing, which is why religious political parties have never obtained more than a small share – 12 percent – of votes in elections and that only happened once.
But times are a changing. So overwhelming are the common man’s difficulties today, so dire his plight and so desperate his desire to find a way out that increasingly he is turning to religion, not only for protection against pain and suffering but also in the efficacy of the unforeseen, the miraculous and the extraordinary. Only God, he feels, can now rescue him. Hence, the mullah finds himself acting as an intercessor between man and God. And, as things go from bad to worse, it is not our politics that is becoming Islamised but Islam which is being politicised – and that’s a bane.
Qadri seeks to benefit from the public’s despair and their craving for a messiah. He avoided reference to religion in his Lahore speech on December 23, because he did not need to; consider he is a Shaikul Islam. Nevertheless, lest anyone forget, he dressed like a cleric even though his peculiar headgear was as foreign to our milieu as his English accent must have been to an Englishman. It looked like the Ottoman relic the Turkish clergy sported till Ataturk arrived on the scene and banished it.
Usually affectation in dress is an indication of a flaw in understanding and taken to the extreme it may be revealing of character and temperament. An aspect that was highlighted in the video shown on TV which revealed Qadri boasting that he had a major role to play in drafting the blasphemy law and persuading Ziaul Haq to accept it. If, indeed, he was proud of being the initiator of that law, as he said on video, why then deny it? Was it a concession to the feelings of his fellow Canadians who would have put him on an ‘extremist watch list’ if it were true? Besides, ‘if you cannot tell the people the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.’
Qadri is hardly the paragon of virtue and rectitude that he is being made out to be. A high court judge of yore, Justice Akhtar Hussain, heading an enquiry commission investigating Qadri’s (false) accusations in 1990 that the Jamaat-e-Islami and IJI had tried to kill him had some damning words for Qadri. Justice Akthar Hussain said Qadri was fond of dreaming and then exploiting such dreams. The judge characterised his mental condition as “ailing”, adding “anything can be expected from such a person” (The News Dec 25, 2012). Considering that in his book Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings, Qadri describes himself as, and I quote: “Shaikhul Islam Dr Muhammed Tahirul Qadri is a scholar and intellectual leader of extraordinary proportions. He is a living model of profound classical knowledge, intellectual enlightenment, practical wisdom, pure spirituality, love, harmony and humanism…”
It might be said of self praise, just as it is said of slander, that something always sticks if we praise ourselves fearlessly, provided the praise is not entirely shameful and ridiculous. But even then, there is no excuse for such lavish self praise. Blowing your own trumpet incessantly is a sickness and left untreated it stinks.
And frankly, phoniness suffused Qadri’s visit. The pre-arrival publicity, the VIP reception at the airport, the multitudes assembled to hear him speak, the military precision of his security guards, and his dress and demeanour seemed wholly contrived. Here was a controversial former politician being accorded a welcome befitting a national hero and with no expense spared.
The multitudes that had gathered to hear Qadri were a strange potpourri of people; among whom were rustic peasants struggling to open Nestle water bottles. One of them was attacking the wrong end of the bottle till someone produced what looked like a sickle and chopped the cap off.
We know our peasants. They are simple God fearing men, and true sons of the soil. Hence, I cannot imagine anything persuading them to come and listen to a lecture by a cleric on the intricacies of the constitution. Or, on second thoughts, I can – a handsome reward, the prodding of the local chaudhry and, who knows, a nod and a wink from the powers that be.
All sorts of theories are being bandied about for the stupefying, nay, miraculously large turnout. The trouble is that nobody readily believes in miracles, hence speculation was rife as to where the money came from and the kind of organisation that was able to paste handbills of his Lahore meeting even on a remote bridge in Karachi.
Those who are fastidious about knowing how money moves ridiculed Qadri’s boast that some of his followers were willing to sell their homes for the privilege of traipsing the world merely to hear him speak. And that Pakistanis even in relatively lowly positions abroad, “like drivers”, were contributing a thousand dollars each towards his cause. Having lived and travelled abroad for the greater part of my working life, I found no ‘drivers’ so well endowed or so willing to part with their hard earned money. Of course, the well off among Pakistanis living abroad do, but obviously not the poor.
We will learn all about that soon enough. And if the Qadri visit turns out to be a ploy to postpone elections then those who have been deceiving others, by denying there is a hidden hand behind it all, will really have only deceived themselves because the consequences could be grave and even fatal for the country’s future stability.
If Qadri is genuinely interested in bringing change in Pakistan and is indeed in favour of the constitutional path, as he claims, not withstanding his talk of revolution, he should renounce his Canadian citizenship, form his own party and get elected.
To stir the political pot at this sensitive juncture of our political calendar, and just when people were wondering whether the government had the strength left to somehow crawl past the finish line and hold peaceful elections, is unwise. To allow a controversial cleric the freedom democracy confers to hurt democracy, notwithstanding his dubious claims to the contrary, is foolish. However, to help and support him in his endeavour is folly. The need of the hour is unity not mutiny.
