Towards a shackled society, perhaps

The controversial Hasba bill passed by the NWFP Assembly on July 14 has already forced the federal government to seek the opinion of the Supreme Court regarding its constitutionality. Passed in the face of stiff opposition from the opposition MPAs and after an amendment which exempts all members of the provincial assembly from its applicability, the Hasba bill could well push the province into a process of Talibanization.

A day after its passage, the NWFP senior minister, Sirajul Haq, in his sermon at Peshawar’s Mohabbat Khan mosque, told the audience that the NWFP government had only done what it had promised its voters to do. These sentiments had been repeated a few days earlier by the secretary-general of the MMA, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who had attended the assembly session as a visitor when the bill was initially tabled. Both said that the religio-political alliance was elected precisely on an Islamization platform and that the MMA government in the NWFP was only keeping the promise that it had made at the time of elections.

This line has been used consistently by Akram Durrani’s government, and from a strictly technical point of view, cannot really be challenged. The six-party MMA has a majority in the NWFP assembly and hence it can get any law passed. Passage of such a law would in fact, on the face of it, seem to be a step in line with democracy because the MPAs are the chosen representatives of those who elected them.

Clearly, the passage of any bill by a legislature is supposed to represent the will of the people after which the legislation acquires the force of law. Nobody can take away this right of law-making from them, and certainly not in a democratic dispensation. The problem, however, is that sometimes actions which may be technically faultless can be very retrogressive, even ruinous for society. One cannot find a more telling example of this from history than Adolf Hitler who was put into power by massive electoral majorities, and rose to become the chancellor of Germany.

The point here is not to compare the MMA with the Third Reich but to emphasize that sometimes even elected governments can make terrible mistakes, and the MMA-led one in the NWFP may well be on its way to that. It has made the unfortunate assumption that being elected to public office allows it to make laws that are tantamount to gross interference in the private lives of the people, which is precisely what world happen if the Orwellian Hasba bill is signed into law by the NWFP governor (who, thankfully, has said that he will resist any such move).

Under the law, the governor, in consultation with the chief minister, will appoint a religious scholar as an ombudsman or mohtasib. This official will have powers to “reform society” in accordance with the teachings of Islam and whose main job will be to “discourage vice and encourage virtue”. He will be vested with the power to “reform society” in accordance with the teachings of Islam.

The office of the ombudsman — which will be set up at the district and tehsil levels — will have the power to issue directives to ensure that those living in an area under his jurisdiction adhere to the tenets of Islam and to ensure society is indeed being ‘Islamized’. To discourage vice and encourage virtue and to enforce his directives, the proposed law sanctions a police force to be at the ombudsman’s beck and call.

Even more worryingly, no person will be able to challenge in court any action “taken in good faith” by the ombudsman. Critics — and these include the federal government and the PML which has warned that it will challenge the law once it is passed — have argued that in the presence of the Objectives Resolution in the Constitution there is no need to have a particular law to ensure that people live their lives in accordance with Islamic teachings and that the system proposed under the Hasba law will create a parallel system of justice, dependent on the notions and interpretations of one individual with immense powers to interfere in the people’s private lives. Besides, apart from being a parallel system, of justice, the Hasba bill places the office of the ombudsman above the law.

The powers of the ombudsman include “ensuring Islamic values at public places, discouraging business activities or playing during prayer times, begging, misusing loudspeakers, preventing corruption in government departments, protecting state property, creating a

spirit of public service among government servants and ensuring parents’ obedience by children”.

The vague and ambiguous provision of “ensuring Islamic values at public places” is bound to open a Pandora’s box because it would be safe to assume that the person whom the NWFP government will appoint as ombudsman will share the MMA’s rigid and retrogressive interpretation of religion, and of Islamic values in particular.

A situation can well be imagined in which police will stop and question all men and women walking or driving together to check if the man is ‘mehram’ or not. ‘Ensuring obedience of parents by children’ seems all right and is a worthy goal but a government-appointed official ensuring this is not only absurd but also seems unworkable and far fetched.

Implementation of the Hasba bill could well take the NWFP back to the Dark Ages. Helped by the police — who will assume the role of the dreaded mutawwa or religious police of Saudi Arabia — we could well see business and shops being forcibly shut down at prayer times and people being coerced into going to the mosque. This is quite contrary to the true spirit of Islam which relies on a direct and personal relationship between the believer and the God and emphasizes that there should be no compulsion in religion.

Unfortunately, the religious alliance in power in the NWFP fails to appreciate this precept and its logical corollary, believing that religious, moral and ethical values are in need of being enforced through coercion and threat of coercion. In fact, the MMA government has repeatedly said that enforcing such a system is precisely its goal. Its leaders, and many ministers in the NWFP, have openly expressed their admiration for the Taliban and some of the MMA’s component parties, especially Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s JUI, have had very close links with the Taliban. However, that should be of little comfort to many people residing in the province who will soon face the consequences of the proposed system of Islamization forcing religion down people’s throats.

For instance, under the MMA government, women have been at the receiving end of discrimination and other forms of unjust treatment. Discriminatory policies have been followed by the provincial government such as a ban on male doctors treating women, forced segregation in government colleges, prohibiting male coaches from teaching women and so forth.

Then there have been MMA-backed or affiliated groups, such as the Shabab-i-Milli which have acted as vigilantes and gone about exercising a very misogynist agenda of forcing women out of public life. This they have done by indulging in activities like blackening female faces on advertizing billboards or forcing men to stop women from voting in local and provincial elections.

In fact, in one highly publicized case, one such group in Haripur in Hazara district — known to be traditionally less conservative than the rest of the province — forced the local administration to ban the hiring of women in public call offices. The reason for this ridiculous action was that the presence of women in PCOs was promoting immoral practices when in fact women saw it as a much-needed opportunity for them to augment their family’s income.

Other than women, all creative individuals and groups such as musicians and artists were driven out of the province after their activities were banned.

The situation is bound to get worse because under the proposed new law, the ombudsman will have the power to imprison or fine anyone who listens to music or takes photographic images. The NGOs, too, should prepare themselves for some rough times ahead.

Working in the more backward areas of the NWFP, they have been routinely harassed, criticized and herried and have had to deal with a very hostile environment in the province. This has led to some tragic incidents in which some NGO activists have been physically harmed, and for some cases even killed, as happened recently in the case of a woman, who was working for the Aurat Foundation, and her daughter. One can well imagine what will happen once the Hasba bill begins to be enforced, because senior MMA leaders in the past have repeatedly called most of the NGOs ‘un-Islamic’.

Other than making the NWFP a joyless and shackled society whose residents will probably go through the vigorous process of legally enforcing religion (and

a highly retrogressive interpretation at that) the Hasba bill also has the potential to snowball into a confrontation between the provincial and federal governments, with far-reaching legal and political implications.