Many Questions, No Answers

Judea Pearl and myself have been debating online for the better part of the year. Our discussions have centered around my political cartoons and the situation in the Middle-east. I was writing a response to Judea when I heard over the radio that the provincial assembly in Pakistan passed a bill introducing the Shariah law in the North West Frontier, a province bordering Afghanistan. These Islamic Party leaders are pushing their agendas at the national level, using their influence as a prevailing opposition force to twist concessions from the government. My thoughts turned to Judea’s son Daniel who was murdered in Karachi last year by a politically bankrupt extremist group.

Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was known for his sensitive sentiments towards the Islamic world. His killers, The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, unfortunately, did not care about this open conduit available to the Islamic world. The Group, as all extremist groups, had chalked a line. You either stood on their side or not. With September 11 Osama bin Laden drew his own chalk line. Muslims were urged to rise against the West, anyone who did not was declared a non-Muslim. The United States is no different. The Bush-Wolfowitz rhetoric preaches of democratizing the world. President Bush forced governments to commit themselves to being with either the “Alliance of the Moral” or the “Axis of Evil”. In Pakistan, where 24.8% of its exports are to the United States, President Musharraf was forced to hold elections to be considered “a front line state” and receive the much needed foreign currency loans. In a country where 35% of the population lives below the poverty line and only 42% is literate, votes are bought with money or salvation. If the Provincial Assembly can pass such a “defective Bill” is the country really ready for democracy? President Musharraf had warned President Bush of such an outcome.

As part of a global community it is not only imperative for the individual to critique any such extremist behavior but to understand societies and systems that operate outside one’s accepted norm. As a political cartoonist I often stub the toes of people with political and religious agendas. These individuals more often than not label me a pretender. Such reactions arise from insecurities, fears and frustrations. Just as I have to be responsible in how I "represent" issues the reader should show equal responsibility in how they interpret and react. Over the past few years I have had an American publisher remove my work from a publication because it did not tow the CNN-propaganda line on Afghanistan; I have had a cartoon stolen from the Munk Center for International Affairs which criticized human rights violations in Israel, and have received threats from an Islamic extremist group for criticizing the intelligence of the Taliban. Dialogues - written, drawn, or spoken - are constructive, not only for identifying sources of differences, but in identifying what one agrees upon. There are, for example, numerous differences that Islamic fundamentalists and American foreign policy-makers have amongst themselves. However, I would be hard pressed to mention one point on which they agree upon. One needs to establish a common ground. Presently, leaders on either side are guilty of moral and legal ambiguity of the highest order. When there is no common ground there is no mediation. To say one’s “way of life” is the only “way of life” sets oneself within the confrontational paradigm of "Us versus Them". This is the root of the problem.

It is only ”transparency” that brings “dialogue”. In an interview I gave to BBC World Service last year at the height of the tensions between Pakistan and India I mentioned that President Musharraf was someone Pakistan needed. He offered the country a level of transparency which had, ironically, severely lacked during the democratic years of leadership. He has a defined stance against extremism. In a country stricken by fratricidal conflicts this is what the people want. He mentioned at a conference last year that the main reason for such behavior is the lack of educational development and the inability for any self-criticism. In the late seventies, when General Zia’s self-serving Islamization began to polarize Pakistani society, the country began spiraling towards religious violence. Madrassahs began to fuel zealotry and ethnic conflict. Censorship took root and flourished. President Musharraf is quite aware of the perils of such a consequence, and is unlikely to sanction the Islamist’s takeover bid, not because of any liberal inclination, but with the insight that this would be catastrophic for Pakistan.

As a Pakistani residing in Canada, Canadians must look beyond the American and Extremist rhetoric if they want to be taken seriously as a pluralistic society. They must understand the complexities and complicities that are conceded in the backyards of many countries. Solutions do not rest in either Democracy or in the Shariah. The answers are in Education and Social Equality. Only this will invalidate the Bush Doctrine and Extremist Fatwas. One would think that Canadian television would promulgate the country’s views on an educated and social state. Why then on Canadian primetime news did they delight in the skies over Baghdad lighting-up in “Shock and Awe”? At times when the skyline failed to illuminate the anchorman would leave viewers with this obtuse statement…”we will be leaving you for a while as the skies over Baghdad seem to be silent” . I use the word “delight” because of the smaller inset window on the television screen. This window was our Circus Maximus with Baghdad pitted against the mighty Patriot. Canada’s prime time news during that period relegated “A Uniquely Canadian Perspective” to one no better than the voyeuristic excesses on an American reality show. There was no dialogue, no understanding, no empathy. There was no respect or dignity. When there is a camera and a film crew, it invariably changes how people behave. Daniel Pearl’s gruesome beheading, filmed on video, was proof of this - a senseless death with no answers.

With the legislative situation in Pakistan hanging in fine balance Canadians have an incumbent responsibility. A responsibility to ask questions. This does not necessarily mean having all the answers. True understanding always begins with a question. It is reported that when asked about his belief in the afterlife, Daniel replied, “I don’t know. I don’t have any answers, mainly just questions.”