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DO you judge a society by how it treats its mighty or its vulnerable? What do you call a state that serves the powerful and not the weak? What distinguishes a civilised society from a jungle if survival of the fittest is the rule in both? What is the purpose of having morals, ethics and law if these codes neither protect the frail nor bind the aggressors? If our state unravels it will be due to obvious answers to these rhetorical questions and not due to our fiscal deficit.
Have our ‘so-called’ progressives become self-loathers? Don’t bad things happen in large countries everywhere? Can a small intolerant and violent minority in the society define the sane majority as well? When disciplined passengers at a foreign airport transform into an unruly mob the moment they descend on Pakistan, isn’t the ‘system’ to blame and not the individuals?
Who is to argue that a state or society is doomed forever? Pakistanis are an industrious lot excelling as expats in developed countries. Can’t Pakistan do well too if it adopts a functional ‘system’? Of course it can. But where will such a ‘system’ come from? Are the agents of change within our state or society today wiser from past mistakes and focused on building institutions as opposed to degrading them further?
Something very sinister is happening in Pakistan. As a society we are losing our moral compass; our ability to distinguish right from wrong in daily life (in a non-maulvi sense). And in this polarised state, self-righteousness, bigotry and vigilantism has come to define not just societal reactions but those of state institutions as well. Consequently, state institutions are undermining not just their own credibility but also state legitimacy.
Dr Mehdi Qamar, a US-based cardiologist visiting Pakistan for a week, was shot 10 times and killed in Rabwah last week. Dr Qamar was Ahmadi. If you are an Ahmadi in Pakistan you are fair game. The majority of us have made peace with the fact that because of your faith, the hard-liners amongst us might kill you. Now that we are running out of Ahmadis, we have moved on to Shias. Dr Faisal Manzoor, a fellow Abdalian, was shot dead outside his clinic in Hasanabdal last month. Everyone says he was a great guy. Tough luck that he was Shia.
Last week, during an exchange with an educated, well-travelled and prosperous relative, the conversation turned to Pakistan’s state as it always does. In the context of growing militancy he volunteered that killing Shias might be a tad extreme, but they are mischief-makers with divided loyalties and do ‘deserve’ some of it. This 70-year old, non-violent, generally likeable man, it turned out, was comfortable, if not happy, with the persecution of Shias in Pakistan.
Last week, Farzana Parveen, the three-month pregnant 25-year-old, was hacked in full public view outside Lahore High Court by her father and brothers. She had married of her own will. Farzana’s husband (a middle-aged man who strangled his first wife to death and was released after serving only a one-year prison term because his son forgave him as his mother’s legal heir) claims that his marriage became a matter of ‘honour’ when Farzana’s family didn’t receive the money it demanded.
Some are outraged that the police didn’t respond in time. Is our police force even designed to respond to ordinary citizens? Saqib Jan, a 22-year-old, was killed on May 9 (his throat slit in a neighbouring house) and FIR No. 168 was registered in Thana Wah Cantt. The distraught mother is running from pillar to post to have the police pay heed and arrest the killers. There has been no progress. How do you tell her that she (or Saqib) isn’t significant enough for the state to care?
Having transpired right outside Aiwan-i-Adl, Farzana’s gruesome murder is mocking our criminal justice system. The irony seems lost only on those who sit in the hallowed chambers of justice. The Lahore High Court had ruled back in the ’90s that women who marry someone of their own choice bring their parents into disrepute and don’t deserve the court’s sympathy. The CII insists that parents can marry off little girls and any law prohibiting child-marriage is un-Islamic.
The view that women are chattel is thus shared by the state and society. When the video of the Taliban flogging a woman in Swat was released, guardians of our moral virtue cried conspiracy. Last week, Noor Hussain, a 75-year-old Pakistani immigrant, was sent to jail for 25-years for beating to death his 66-year-old wife in Brooklyn. She cooked him lentils when he wanted meat. Is it a lie that a majority amongst us is OK with men beating their wives, even if beating them to death is a tad extreme?
There will be no reprisal for the killing of Faisal Manzoor, Mehdi Qamar, Farzana Parveen or the 17-year-old from Muzaffargarh who self-immolated after being gang-raped in March this year. This is not because there isn’t enough outrage. There isn’t enough outrage because our culture and we allow for the vulnerable being slapped around (or killed in the process) and minorities being persecuted (or killed).
Tailpiece: The honorable Supreme Court has sought guarantees from the government that no citizens will be starved under its watch. Who will seek guarantees from the Supreme Court that no citizen will be meted injustice under its watch?
The writer is a lawyer.
Twitter: @babar_sattar
Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2014
