Boots, Beards, Burqas and Bombs

Th3 girl author seems to be typical Roshan Khayal...modern women..having no deep insight of the problem..

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With a steel-ball tied to the foot

Khaled Ahmed
The theocratic stage is the terminal stage after which the state is either undone or finds refuge in reverting to the identity of the modern nation-state, with economic imperatives overriding religious passions

he state of Pakistan is founded on the ‘consensus’ that it has to be Islamic. As a religious state, it seeks Islamic Sharia Law as an ideal. All states must seek an ideal as their foundational teleology. There is muted disagreement between ideologues and pragmatists over this ideal. It is muted because of intimidation, but it is definitely there, especially after the Talibanisation of the country through illegal action by the Islamists. It is the threat of religion as an extra-legal force that is causing many Pakistanis to consider if the state can move forward into the future with Islam as its credo.

The Pakistan Movement and Islam: The founding party, The All India Muslim League, was apparently open only to Muslims because of its name. It challenged unsuccessfully the right of The Indian National Congress to represent Muslims too. The politics of the Muslim League unfolded in the midst of communal disharmony. Its ‘separatist’ electoral pitch compelled it to use Islam as a slogan. Jinnah used it too. He used the word sharia but it is doubtful that he understood sharia the way Allama Iqbal did, which led the Allama to reject the Hudood laws. Jinnah more likely knew it through his legal practice in Muslim family law.

It is interesting to note that when the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan adopted the Objectives Resolution in 1949, it used the less threatening term “Quran and Sunna” instead of “Sharia” that later came to be embedded in Article 203(C) of the Constitution relating to the Federal Shariat Court. The politicians who signed the resolution knew nothing about what ‘guiding code’ meant as they reassured non-Muslim members that they would be equal citizens. The non-Muslims, not easily consoled, came down to Lahore, only to learn from the clerics that they would be zimmis under Sharia. When General Zia-ul Haq shoved the Objectives Resolution into the Constitution through his 8th Amendment, he removed the word ‘freely’ from the sentence that assured non-Muslims that they would be able to practise their religion ‘freely’. No notation was made in regard to the change of text. In 1949, the Resolution had God Almighty in its first paragraph; it was changed to Almighty Allah in 1953 without reference to the Assembly that had passed it. The guiding principles, passed off as harmless in 1949, became menacing to Muslims and non-Muslims alike with the passage of time.

Hardening of Islam and the State: Pakistan became less viable as it converged on Sharia. Jihad used to be the grand Islamic subterfuge confusing the world about war and ‘peaceful effort’; now it is straightforward qital (killing). It used to be accepted that jihad could only be declared by the state. Now it is consensually privatised and internationalised, thus undermining a fundamental function of the state. On the law of evidence, if a scholar leans on the Quranic text to challenge the clergy on issue of a Muslim woman’s testimony being half that of a Muslim man, he is told to shut up because sharia has already decided the matter. Sharia is what a fiqh makes of the Quran and Sunna. An Egyptian professor of the Saudi-funded Islamic International University in Islamabad contended that infibulation (female circumcision) was sharia in Egypt under the practised Shafei fiqh but banned, ‘wrongly’, under the official Hanafi fiqh.

It is the doctrine of amr bil maruf wa nahi an al-munkir (approving the good and stopping that which is banned) which has begun the dismantlement of the state in Pakistan. It consists of taking vigilante action against munkiraat (banned practices) implying a rejection of the state authority, purported to be replaced by vigilantes. With jihad representing the external face of the Islamic state and amr-nahi representing the internal face, the state is converted into a destructive black hole on the map of the world. An internally failed state through amr and nahi will be seen to attack other states through its armed citizens without legal cover. The state will ban modern banking, insurance and lotteries, etc, under sharia.

Isolationism as badge of honour: An Islamic state intent on a sharia -based revolution embraces isolationism as its programme, almost like Stalinism’s socialism-in-one-country slogan. After 1947, the state incompletely understood its own self-descriptive term: Pakistan as a Castle of Islam. It fondly thought of itself as a society ‘cut off’ – that is what the word castle means - from the rest of the world with the ability to stand hostile sieges. It also presaged the totalitarianism of the clergy after the ‘modern’ state has been overthrown. Pakistan also allowed the transnational concept of the umma to inform its ideology. It acknowledged that the concept of the nation-state was not compatible with its teleology because of the concept of umma.

When it made its atom bomb, the state of Pakistan could not for long keep up the pretended doctrine that it was India-specific. It was soon acclaimed as an Islamic bomb, a transnational weapon that will threaten not only India but many other states on the globe. The moment it became a religious bomb, its transformation into a sectarian one was inevitable. Many respectable scholars believe that Pakistan’s Sunni bomb caused Iran’s Shiite bomb to be produced. Iran’s bomb, on the other hand, cannot be Israel-specific because of its undeliverability owing to Israel’s contiguity to the Shiite-dominated south of Lebanon. Just as a religious state, Pakistan cannot avoid becoming a sectarian state, its bomb too threatens Iran in addition to threatening to the non-Muslim world.

After the failure of political Islam: The terrorist outreach of political Islam is being opposed by strong world powers with the capacity to strike at its incubation grounds. If this polarity is interpreted as Christianity versus Islam, then Islam doesn’t benefit from the neutrality of the non-Christian world either. In fact, the non-Christian world feels equally threatened and has inclined to forget its contradictions with the dominant Christian powers and seek alliance with it to confront Islam. Given this near-total opposition of the world, political Islam, thriving on lack of secular education, has little chance of surviving as a winning force. Political Islam can only eat its own children.

The Islamic state is not viable in modern times unless Islam is reinterpreted. This is not the project of Islam today; it is inclined to change the world with force instead to fit the sharia. This attitude springs from the intellectual attitude of not rejecting the premise when it fails to encompass reality. The suicide-bomber of today is an agent of forcible change of reality to the premise of Islam. When not democratic, the Muslim state begins its process of decline as a state denying rights; when Islamic, it begins its process of decline under challenge from the clergy; when theocratic, it achieves stability by suppressing demands for rights under the doctrine of fasad fil ard. The theocratic stage is the terminal stage after which the state is either undone or finds refuge in reverting to the identity of the modern state with economic imperatives overriding religious passions. We are about to enter the terminal phase.

#8 Posted by edgeNRidge on August 23, 2007 5:57:01 pm


a crushing blow to the trouble makers at the pak-afghan border is needed.


What do you think those repeated hellfire attacks and airspace incursions have been about?

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=9759

US gave troops go-ahead to enter Pakistan in 2004
SAN FRANCISCO: Newly uncovered “rules of engagement” show the US military gave elite units broad authority more than three years ago to pursue suspected terrorists into Pakistan, with no mention of telling the Pakistanis in advance.

The documents obtained by The Associated Press offer a detailed glimpse at what US Army Rangers and other terrorist-hunting units were authorised to do earlier in the war on terror. And interviews with military officials suggest some of those same guidelines have remained in place, such as the right to “hot pursuit” across the border.

"What is the use of a dictator if he can't get rid of these idiots?"

That is almost justifying dictatorship.

Sure, for Pakistanis who would like to Islamize everything dictatorship as "Nizam-e-mustafa" is indeed the ideal state polity - provided he implements shariat and gets rid of idiots who commit kufr.

This is exactly the MMA's argument against the present dictator- replace him with some one who can get rid of "idiot" maunafiqoons and mushriqoons.

Re: # 5

"What is the use of a dictator if he can't get rid of these idiots?"

Pakistan doesn't have one or two idiots; it's a country of idiots. After seeing the chief crook who has given an entry visa to nawazoo (guy who can't formulate two coherent sentences), I think the country is a glutton for self-imposed punishments.

I hope Nawazoo contests and wins the elections. Pakistanis deserve an idiot leader just like them.

"This is a situation that military action alone will never resolve."

What a load of nonsense!

Unlike eye-rack, Pakistan's "problems" require a military solution -- a crushing blow to the trouble makers at the pak-afghan border is needed.

Leave it to pakistanis to turn a simple matter of law and order into a "noble" cause. More I read these articles and see "defenders of democracy" in action (thief nawazoo has an "inalienable right" to return to pak sayeth chief crook of Pakistan), more convinced I become that Pakistan is a country full of idiots. Good, well wishing guys like Musharraf are caught in a flood of idiocy that's drowning the country.

Re: # 5

"What is the use of a dictator if he can't get rid of these idiots?"

a good one Saima....:)

There is nothing worse than a "useless dictator" -- and Musharraf Sahib is deservedly -- one of them.

5 B's of pakistan:

boots,
beards
burqas
bombs
bakray da goshat
:-)

Great analysis. Can't Ejaz-ul-Haq be sacked or after this complete fiasco imprisoned? What is the use of a dictator if he can't get rid of these idiots?

good piece that would have been interesting a month ago. today it's another country.

great piece Beena -- very balanced well chronicled and well researched.

yet another pathetic article trying to blame the US and afghan war for the jihadisation of Pakistan.

Jihadis came from the saudi, as one has found in quantanamo , they came from all over the world, and only in pakistan it was adopted as a national idea, and sustained by the people of pakistan.

The link between ISI and the kashmir jihad is another factor.

This artcile is another pathetic attempt by another educated pakistani not to take any responsibility for the state of affairs and blame it on foreigners.

The fact remains that most educayed pakistanis support the jihad and basic tenets of the pak system such as what is being done to teh ahmadia etc by endorsing the govt policy by declaring the ahgmadias as non muslims every time they have to go to any govt office.

Take some responsibility, the pathetic educated of pakistanis, instead of blaming some long gone amercian support.

The analysis had nothing new to offer, nothing which hasn't already been said in the articles appearing and reappearing during the whole saga. The whole purpose seems to be just garner some support for the sinking ship of the Boot wearing Bastard which everyone seems to forget used the same mujahideens to launch the Kargil conflict and then left the bodies behind when retreating.