Carnage and Casuality

It’s strange how tragic events bring out the best in people you thought the worst of. What’s even more uncanny, though, is how they sometimes bring out the worst in those you thought the best. What follows may not say anything about the general patterns of a society. Then again, it may well do so, and ignoring this possibility may be grossly irresponsible. At any rate, this isolated anecdote is disturbing enough to merit reportage.

Amir, 15, and Tariq, a year older, came over for English tutoring the day following the Quetta imambargah massacre. I had been tutoring Amir for a year before, in June, he asked if his best friend could join in the sessions. Knowing a little of Tariq’s background, I was at first very hesitant. His elder brother, a friend of Amir’s elder, had recently re-found his faith, grown a beard, burned his jeans, replaced his cologne bottles with non-alcoholic eettar vials, and committed himself to watching only the Cartoon Network among "western" channels-- that is, when he wasn’t memorizing word lists for the SAT, which he hopes will help him join his brother living in England.

So you can understand my disenchantment with the idea of tutoring Tariq for free. After all, for him, English proficiency was but a means to an end that was purely economic in nature. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but institutes offering the English language courses he needed are found on almost every street corner of Karachi these days. Amir, on the other hand, has no pretensions to a career yet. Yes, he’d like to ace the board examination, but is equally interested in the intangible fruits of language improvement: greater access to ideas and insight.

Truth be told, Tariq’s background, as described, put me off more than a little too –something I freely admitted to Amir in declining his request on his friend’s behalf. I have never had the highest regard for those who, explicitly or otherwise, deride a culture but are more than willing to milk it, or enter into a parasitical relationship with it.

But was I getting ahead of myself here? Amir came back to remind me of the lesson I preached but apparently was not practicing. Wasn’t I being unfair in judging one person on the basis of his unchosen associations? He was, of course, right. So to make reparation (I was raised Catholic, you see), I decided to overlook the ‘economic’ consideration which would still have been justification enough to reject Tariq. Besides, I could see that having him for the coaching sessions meant a great deal to Amir.

Tariq turned out to be just that I had feared: Polite and unassuming, he carried his 16-year-old self with an enviable maturity. Although devout in his faith, he was suspicious of extremist interpretations, and didn’t appear uncomfortable with diverse opinion. Yes, he did deride the Pathan for "routinely selling his daughters to the highest bidder", but was willing to consider that most arranged marriages are not different in nature, just in degree of bargain. And although he squatted while drinking water when a chair wasn’t available (“Sunnat hai”) and once asked a lazy Amir to change position so as to not have his feet face due East, there was really nothing to sound off any alarm bells of extremism. In fact, he readily agreed with my position when I ridiculed the suave English speaking, three-piece suited aalim on TV who defended Saudi Arabia’s laws against religious conversion on the grounds that “Islam makes it very clear that ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ but once you’re in, you make a deliberate commitment and there should be question of ‘coming and going’ as you please.” Tariq didn’t chide Amir for asking “What about those who are in without actually choosing?”

No, Tariq’s religious persuasions seemed innocuous, and actually very appealing at times.

And then it happened. The Television was on and the Khabarnama newscaster reported something about the search for the perpetrators of the massacre. Someone in the room expressed their continued shock and indignation. Amir turned to Tariq and myself, asking if we had been following the news item. He didn’t try to hide his excitement. I said I did, and put in the expected word of dismay over it. Tariq said he had too, and then, completely nonchalantly, added, “but at least they were Shias”. Not sure if I’d heard him right, I asked him to repeat. He did, with equal indifference. Mustering up my most objective, nonjudgmental demeanour, I asked him what difference it made, since those who lost their lives were innocents. He said that they may not have been criminals but they were kafirs.

“But do kafirs deserve to be killed this way?”

“Well, no, but everything happens as God plans.”

And there you had it: Predestination to the rescue!

Suspending disbelief, and begging the question, I asked if it was okay for true momineen to go about killing any of the kafirs that comprise 60 percent of the world’s population, beginning with the one billion Hindus next door.
“But there’s a distinction. You see, the Hindus and Buddhists etc. are not kafirs! The fight(!!) is against those who claim to be Muslim but are not truly so.”

And who decides who is a true Muslim?

“The Book”. It was that simple. Amir, never comfortable with plurality in Truth, nodded agreeably.

But can’t the book be read and interpreted in different ways by different people?

“Sure, but there are clearly some things that are allowed and some that are prohibited.”

And what is it that the Shias violate in their beliefs or practice?
“For one, they don’t really accept the righteousness of all four caliphs.”
But is this enough cause for their bloodshed?

Perhaps realizing at this point the outrageousness of his suggestion, he retorted, “No, but many of them don’t accept our beloved rasool as the last prophet of God… in fact, they say he, peace be upon him, usurped Hazrat Ali’s place”

How was it that I had never heard any Shia make such outrageous claims?!?
“You think they’d say this in public?”

No, but I’ve had private conversations with many Shia friends on religion, and they’ve never mentioned anything as blasphemous as this. And they’ve really had no reason to fear my knowing.

“Well, catch them in their own gatherings and listen to some of the things they say!”

At this point it was clear that the young man had an answer, unsubstantiated as they come, to any question I had. Moreover, I could see and was alarmed by the realization that, whatever his ideas of Shia theology, he found it quite acceptable that those who profess an Islam different from his own should perish in the bargain. The ultimate determinant of one’s right to life is the faith one professes; not merely having been born—and not even the manner in which one conducts of one’s life. And woe be unto you should you happened to be born on the wrong side of the Shia-Sunni divide!

Post script:
As much as many readers, like myself, would like to believe that opinions and sentiments such as Tariq’s do not represent those of the majority, there is, IMHO, cause to fear that it may, or at least may to an extent greater than assumed. As a schoolteacher in the past, I did on more than one occasion encounter students who offered the same opinions regarding the Shias Muslimhood, quite unsolicited. Eight or so years ago, when a similar carnage occurred in the early hours of a January morning in a Karachi imambargah, 11 year old Nomi, whom I tutored, expressed almost the exact lack of remorse, maybe even a certain relief at a perversely divine justice administered. Of course, it would be difficult, for political reasons, to hear any cleric say such things publicly, although I hear that Friday khutbas in certain parts of the Punjab are replete with such pronouncements.