Not Even That

By Chirosree Basu, *DANGEROUS LIAISONS* - The Telegraph - Calcutta, India
Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The relationship between religion and politics has always been troubled in Pakistan

The recent bombing of Data Darbar, a Sufi shrine in Lahore, is no less tragic than the bombing of two Ahmadi mosques in May that killed almost the same number of people in the same city. Yet, it has set nerves on edge.

Nawaz Sharif, whose brother runs the government in Punjab, has asked for a national convention to combat terrorism. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, a descendant of a Sufi saint himself, has readily taken up the gauntlet. There have been mass protests and condemnation from the Sunni ulema — reactions of a kind that has not been seen for a while in Pakistan.

Sufism, both in Pakistan and outside it, is increasingly being looked upon as a possible counter to talibanization. This perhaps explains the attention the Data Darbar bombing has got. Yet Sufism, traditionally associated with social harmony and non-violence, both threatened by the Taliban today, has not always represented this face in Pakistan. In rural Punjab and Sindh, it has long been associated with the brutal force exercised by landlords, often descendants of Sufi pirs, on the dependent population. They wield enormous clout by virtue of their role as spiritual mediators.

Since the birth of Pakistan, the flagbearers of what is seen as ‘folk Islam’ were deliberately co-opted into the political firmament by successive rulers, if only to offset the influence of the conservative ulema. Ayub Khan used them, so did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. They needed the sanction of the sajjida nasheens (guardians of local shrines) to give legitimacy to their political power, given the complicated way in which political authority was conceptualized in Pakistan: a country unable to decide whether it was a nation for Muslims governed by secular laws and institutions or an Islamic state governed by the sharia as interpreted by the clerics.

The rise of Pakistan’s middle classes upset this arrangement. This was evident in the 2008 elections, when many powerful landlords — guardians of Sufi legacy — were booted out or saw their influence diminished. In constituency after constituency, power fell into the hands of a class of people with no landed roots. Many considered this to be a ‘new deal’ in which power seemed to change hands from the feudal elite to the urban middle class. The landed elite, however, stayed, but without a monopolistic control over political power.

The daring of the new power groups was evident from the force with which they pushed through several ‘democratic’ demands — the trial of Pervez Musharraf and the reinstatement of the chief justice of the supreme court, for example. But perhaps it would be unwise to think that they were all of a liberal disposition. If an analyst is to be believed, the political assertion of the newly-monied classes also symbolized the assertion of Salafi Islam that threatened the established power structure by gunning for the syeds or pirs or sajjida nasheens who were its building blocks.

Unlike Sufism, Salafi Islam is more flexible. Salafists do not require the intermediation of pirs for spiritual salvation. Salafi Islam allows believers free communion with god and ensures them an afterlife of infinite bliss through individual martyrdom. The followers of this form of Islam are mainly Sunni Deobandis, who look down upon Shias and Sunni Barelvis, many of whom embrace the free-flowing spirit of Sufism.

The attack on Sufi shrines is an expression of this disgust and subtle power play. This does not mean that all the makers of the new deal are Salafists or that all Salafists are suicide-bombers. But contempt for popular Islam is a palpable reality and no different from the Taliban’s contempt for faiths they consider as falling short of the superior standards of Wahabi Islam.

Public opinion on what constitutes true Islam is no doubt being shaped by the Taliban’s insistence on religious purity. However, there is no reason to believe that it is the Taliban that started Pakistan’s religious quest, which is an old one. Confusion over what is true Islam and who is a true Muslim (and has a natural right to citizenship in Pakistan) consumed the energies of politicians since the birth of the nation.

Pakistan’s tilt towards Wahabi Islam did not start with the Taliban either. It became the natural corollary of the nation’s efforts (starting soon after its defeat in the 1971 war) to turn its back on the more pluralistic South Asian brand of Islam and steer itself towards the Islamic brotherhood of West Asia, where only Wahabi Islam is acceptable.

It is not the Taliban who are responsible for making minority shrines vulnerable to suicide attacks; it is the State itself that is responsible for shaping attitudes in matters of faith.

The State accords primacy to Sunnis and its favouritism has not only fanned resentment against moderate and minority faiths, but has also given licence to anti-minority movements. In countless attacks on minorities, the police have been mere spectators. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws also deny minorities basic freedoms.

The bombing of Data Darbar, from all indications, was carried out not by the Taliban, but by Lahoris, who breathe the air of hatred promoted by religious organizations that do social work for the poor by day and plan to kill them by night for refusing to follow their diktat. Some of these organizations even get State aid.

The government has banned 23 such organizations knowing full well that they will change names and start functioning again. Sufism still has protectors in Gilani and a few of his party colleagues, descendants of some Sufi order or the other. The Ahmadis do not even have that.