Religion to the extreme II

I have been reading a multi-part series of articles by Ajmal Kamal, published in the Express Tribune titled the “Development of the modern maulvi” (a maulvi is literally a pastor or a theologian, but more often a reference to a very religious person, often a religious radical). Part VI has been published in today’s paper. There seem to be more parts to this series, but the first 6 are already very interesting and already worth writing about.

Ajmal Kamal is one of the foremost scholars on this topic. I have heard him speak at Karachi’s T2F (The Second Floor – their mission is to “reduce intellectual poverty”, but they also serve great coffee), and also read some of his earlier work in the papers. What I have learnt from him informed much of my earlier post a couple of months back: Religion to the extreme (http://mambojambosalama.blogspot.com/2011/07/religion-to-extreme.html).

The articles in this particular set require quite a bit of knowledge of context and are a bit long and dry, and also tend to veer slightly off track – it takes some deep pools of interest in the topic to get through them. Let me try to briefly synthesize and tie them together for a universal audience:

i)                    POWER CREATED: In the middle part of the second millennium a stronghold on (Islamic) religious education and spirituality took root in the sub-continent – it was driven by a strong belief in the tradition of “apprenticeship” – teaching was reserved for “pirs” or “masters”, a highly spiritualized profession, which earned much patronage, and was passed on from generation to generation – education was exclusive; reserved for the “learned classes” – all this whilst my ancestors (from the “farmer” caste) structurally could not do much more than just plough their fields – no belief, no motivation, no infrastructure to provide means of transport, etc.

ii)                   POWER CONSOLIDATED: In fact, to preserve this stronghold (with its many social and economic benefits), several prejudices were created and perpetuated by the elite ruling educated class – mainly against non-Muslims, minority Shiites and lower-castes, but also cutting across other dimensions, e.g. gender – pluralism died (or was never really born) as we not only learnt to, but developed a habit of judging others, and accusing anyone and everyone of being a kafir (infidel) or at least believing without question that they were either destined for hell (the non-Muslims or Shiites in this case), or that they deserved their lower social status (the lower castes, such as my “farmer” ancestors, or women in this case)

iii)                 POWER SHAKEN-UP: Colonialism shook things up – old traditions were uprooted or were seriously threatened by rapid changes in the socio-economic dynamics of society; modern education, canal systems, new infrastructure and civil works, postal systems, civil service institutions, etc. provided unprecedented access to many more (such as my farmer family, which had by now become educated civil servants) and catalyzed the creation of the “Deoband” school (they fall just behind the Taliban on the extremism spectrum – in a very controversial way, a precursor to the Taliban). This was exacerbated by the identity politics or crisis faced by old school Muslims in the sub-continent – who for the first time in hundreds of years, were no longer in positions of privelege, power and control.

iv)                 RIVALRY & CONFLICT: The Deobandi School borrowed almost all of its ideology from the Wahhabis in Najd (present day Saudi Arabia – where women cannot drive, and men are castigated if they are idling around at prayer time). These were reformist ideas which were appealing or well suited to the times – on the other side of the spectrum to the more traditional “sufi”ish ideas. But there was a twist – the Deobandis cleverly, took over teaching and spiritualism from the old school (sufi-ish) guys, who as we know bequeathed them from their ancestors (by now known as the Barelvis – the Barelvi movement was started in the early 1800s as a reaction to the threat that their interests faced), thus ending their monopoly. As Ajmal Kamal points out in a story of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, an early and highly influential Deobandi, they cunningly preserved the old traditions of patronage of religious teachers and scholars.

His six parts sort of end on this note – but as we all know, what ensued was a bitter rivalry, and a tussle for this power, which eventually turned violent, and took on other political dimensions as well.

What this also teaches us, and what I also highlighted in my previous post on this topic, is that religious extremism was fait accompli or largely deterministic for Pakistan – rooted in hundreds of years of history – whilst both our political and military leaders have never been principled enough, if at all held any principles what so ever, or not had the spine to tackle this visible and dangerous trend, events such as the Lahore riots of the 1950s, or Bhutto’s declaration of Ahmedis as apostates, or his introduction of prohibition, or even Zia-ul-Haq’s super acceleration of the entire process, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, were mere milestones in the continuous running process.

The slide continues – It’s not just religious violence now, but more so all the ethnic and other divides which define and drive the politics of our country today. Let’s hope we don’t splinter into a bunch of  theological and ethnic fiefdoms run by maulvis and warlords – or to put it simply – a state of anarchy.