No Room for Half-Truths and Quasi-Morals

I have a confession to make. When the grotesque images of the young girl being thrashed by the self proclaimed guardians of virtue and standard bearers of morality appeared I was unable to comprehend the commotion that followed it. And I still wonder why there was an outrage over all this. Was it because a girl was flogged? Or was it because a girl was flogged in public? Or was it because someone made a video of a girl being flogged in public?

Don’t get me wrong. I do not support or condone such actions nor do I root for any marching moral brigade. Personally I am a strong believer in treating all humans with dignity and also do not consider women to be inferior to men in anyway. But the hype created over this one video still amaze me. After all this was not the first time women in our part of the world have been subjected to such harsh and cruel conduct in the name of Islam, social values, tribal code of conduct or simply cultural norms. We have had our women mauled by the dogs, buried alive, gang raped, dishonored, disfigured by acid attacks, burned and even killed in cold blood. We still take pride in living in a society where societal system is holier than lives of human beings.

Are we not raised to believe that women are in many aspects inferior to their male counterpart? Are we not inoculated with the idea that emancipation of women is an opulent luxury rather than a natural and legal right? Are we still not a society where it is considered a taboo for a girl to marry by her own choice but is considered sacred for parents to display their young daughters pushing tea trolley to strangers?

Whatever crimes the Talibans have committed are not their own invention but an extension of what our regressed society already strongly believed and practiced. The existing apocalyptic state we find ourselves so helpless in is a direct result of our collective state of denial, delusion and hypocrisy.

It was not the Taliban who professed disregard for rule of law. This concept was already abstract amongst the people. Our ‘great’ generals have proved it time and again and our feudal ‘democrats’ have mastered the art of perversion to achieve their selfish aims. It wasn’t the Talibans who started to deprive non-Muslims of their rights. We already considered laws to be nothing more than a nuisance and the only way for us to deal with them is to go around them or break them. When the state itself is guilty of subversion of law, it openly declares that the only law applicable in the land is the law of the jungle, where might of an individual or a group acts as the deciding factor. When democracy simply becomes a tool for extracting revenge anarchy is bound to flourish.

Today the Taliban are blowing up schools and denying education to young girls. The state of Pakistan deprived education to millions. And those who did simply became ‘another brick in the wall’. Our flawed and hollow educational system has sown in us hatred, prejudice and sycophancy. The militants are prohibiting vaccination campaigns in Swat region and the state of Pakistan in the last 60 years has preferred to be called a ‘nuclear power’ rather than provide its citizens with decent medical facilities. The Taliban appear as a symbol of intolerance & barbarianism, just as those self-righteous goons who vandalized the Shanakht Festival in Karachi.

The rest of Pakistan is no different than the Taliban militia. We are just as much of bigots as they are. We are just as cruel as those militants are. We too judge others by our own misconceived values just like the Taliban are doing now. And if the rest of Pakistan should ever hold a mirror to their face, they should see the reflection of turbaned and bearded hooligan.

Blinded by denial we have pushed ourselves into this mess and there is going to be no easy road out of this situation. We have to strip ourselves of the gaudy ornaments of duplicity that we proudly adorn and start to face the facts. We must denude ourselves from the thick layers of false ideologies and whimsical facades. We need to swallow the bitter pill lest we too simply become the victims of our own delusion. It is about time that we realize that this battle has no room for half-truths and quasi-morals.