Ferhat Hashmi, Pakistan’s leading (read ubiquitous), Islamic evangelist can now be seen on QTV (a religious outtake) of the not so religious (but equally ubiquitous), ARY Gold cable television network. She can be seen more often than not, monologuing the day away; talking, lecturing and balking away behind her jet black burqua wrapped around her face and with only her pin-shaped eyes showing.

She’s quite a sight, really. Nothing inspirational, mind you, but rather amusing.

“Mumph, mumph, mumph, mumph ...”, she goes on and on and on, her words and breath echoing and rebounding against her own fully clad frontal, making her sound like Darth Vedar’s fast talking baby sister.

May the force be with her. And the joke on us.

Her sudden fame and clout in this respect has been quite a revelation. Actually, not really.

There is nothing so new or reveling about what her fame is reflecting: i.e. The growing interest among the urban bourgeois to (re)-discover the “power and meaning of divine wisdom” regarding ones place and behavior in society and the state. Bad news for any chance for secularism to creep and evolve its way back into the social psyche and political mindset of the country. Good news, however, for general confusion, obscurantism and glaring contradictions to survive (even thrive) as an unquestioned reality.

Young begums and their younger daughters go ‘nod, nod, nod’ in euphoric, single-minded approval; accompanied by ‘80s yuppies (now young, modern dads), and stone-faced petty-bourgeois tableeghi look-alikes, also going ‘nod, nod, not’ in front of a separate screen beaming in a highly animated Dr. Israr Ahmed, with eyes popping out, beard in full tic-toc swing, and a crackling voice not different from a Christian evangelist propagating (read marketing), middle-man-friendly Christianity. The bottom line being that one needs the services of a wise, holy agent to reach the wise divine savior!

Otherwise, supposedly, one is bound to get lost and forget God. So ‘give, give, give.’ Chanda for (yet) another mosque; for (yet) another madressa; for (yet) another Yamaha 100 for the local Pesh Imam?

It’s always ‘nod, nod, nod.’

Quite like what the state of Hinduism was during the rebellious shun-all, casteless breakout of Buddhism, and the state of Christianity in the Dark Ages, Islam today is being played like a black comic relief as well; i.e a paradoxical black comedy within the chaotic soap opera of 21st Century
human condition. A dark comedy prompting both cynical chuckles of ridicule and as well as ulcerated pangs of phobic paranoia. All at once!

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Why the hue and cry over the banning of (overtly) exhibiting religious symbols at schools in France? I think it was mighty intelligent of the French government to extend the ban from the Muslim hijab and across Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, etc., fashion statements. France is a secular state. So what’s the big deal? All secular countries should do so. This “religious” fashion show is going beyond the personal self. If countries and society can (and should!) heap scorn at swastika-wearing neo-Nazis, so should they at people trying to make religious statements with hijabs and crosses, especially at schools.

All major religions have been responsible for retarding the human mental, political and economic evolution and inspiring only irrational plunges into delusions of grandeur and psychotic shows of faith-crazy “heroism.”

The original idea behind Western secularism and later Marxism was to separate the state and religion completely. And had the Jacobins been allowed to run the full course of their idea of a secular republic during the French Revolution, there would not have been tendencies of right-wing extremism which keep popping its ugly head in Europe and the United States. Matter like the (Church-supported) fascist movements in Italy and Germany (1920’s-40s); the reactionary (anti-Darwinism) Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States (early 20th Century); the power the religious right wield over right-wing Republican Party candidates (such as Ronald Reagan & George W. Bush), and so on.

Of course, “naïve” left-wing extremism of ‘70s Marxist revolutionary organizations and, especially Stalinism, did their damage to the idea of Socialism presentng itself as the most balanced and thoughtful of all secular ideologies.

Democracy driven and influenced by capitalist dictates has (as always) only managed to create cycles of prosperity and sudden economic devastation, and/or up & down scenarios, which end up generating eventual, widespread disillusionment and distrust of the whole idea of material profiteering, making the human mind and ego strive for a less dog-eat-dog existence.

Capitalism is equally responsible for ironically encouraging religious extremism as an alternative. It has spend much of its political energy and recourses to undermine and defeat Socialism, and for this many capitalist democracies have not hesitated in allying themselves with movements of the extreme right to ward off Socialist sentiments.

The west pumped in money and men to fight the Russian Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, while actually remaining sedated and “patient” of Hitler and Mussolini, until Hitler made the first move to finally draw Britain into war.

United States and its allies remained detached to the cause of Spanish republicism, when Spanish anarchists, Socialists, democrats and communists fought a vicious civil war against the army-backed and pro-Church Spanish fascists in Spain (1930-36).

Of course, the democratic west’s support for far-right South American dictators and Machiavellian obscurantists in Asia during the Cold War is now common knowledge. The Osama phenomenon is just a spillover effect of the West’s fight against Socialism. No wonder many former members of the Pakistani Jamat-e-Islami are now American citizens! This is their reward for helping the US defeat leftist thought altogether.
And now, with the Cold War over, capitalism is trying to cash-in on the capitalist-democracy fad.

It has economically allied itself with the ruling right-wing Hindu parties to exploit India’s newfound (and frantic) love for modern, corporate capitalism, and is trying to offer the same to most Islamic parties and countries. The MMA’s sudden deal with the once hated General Musharraf is a good example?

But democracy run by strict capitalist economics can only offer either numb consumerism on one end or blind religious extremism on the other. The implementation of Secularism as a thought and ideology (and not really a side-kick buzzword for capitalist democracy) is the way to find a balance between aggressive manifestations of ones religious beliefs and a more progressive and democratic one. Thus I believe France’s move in this respect is anything but “undemocratic.”

In fact if western democracies had allowed secularism’s ideological sides to take root, western societies would not have seemed to look like a bundle of contradictions and nor would their “third-world” counterparts reacted to look at bygone times as exemplary situations in the face of mad capitalist (and so-called “liberal”) onslaught.

This should suggest the said French law is perhaps the most progressive act emerging from a secular state in a long, long time.