The Economist: Pakistan (Penguin Specials): Perilous Journey (Penguin ShortsSpecials) by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241963166
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Religion

In the shadow of the mosque

Religion is becoming less tolerant, and more central to Pakistan

THE CLEAN-SHAVEN, middle-aged academic in Lahore is under fire from his wife and his bushy-bearded 20-year-old son, a student. Last year he completed the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is expected to make at least once. Now, after a lifetime of weekly attendance at the mosque, on Fridays, he is told by his family that he should make the half-hour trip there to say his prayers five times a day. “Pakistan”, he says, “has become very religious-minded and anti-West.”

Since 2001, these sentiments—piety and anti-Westernism—have become inseparably fused. Pakistan’s founder, Jinnah, still revered as the greatest of national heroes, created a homeland for Muslims but was a Westernised intellectual, often photographed in Savile Row suits, puffing on a cigarette. Now, though, many Pakistanis see the West as waging war with Islam. The outward forms of piety have become more visible everywhere. Far more women now cover their heads.

Even before 2001, life in Pakistan was becoming Islamised. Zia ul Haq, the military dictator who ruled from 1977 to 1988, was a religious fanatic. Under him the school curriculum became far more rigidly Islamic. The failings of state education have meant that more and more children attend religious schools, madrassas, of which according to one recent study there are about 20,000, with a student body of 2m-3m. The large numbers of Pakistani migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere come home inculcated with stricter forms of Islam than the tolerant, mystical saint-worship of Pakistan’s Sufi tradition.

The spread of stricter forms of Islam has been disguised by the electoral failure of avowedly Islamist parties. Even in the general election in October 2002, when Jamaat and five others campaigned as a united alliance and enjoyed their best result ever, they won only 11% of the votes, despite some alleged help from the ISI. But supporters of the mainstream parties are not voting for secularism.

With the rise in religious observance society has become less tolerant. In late 2011, as Pakistan was rocked by crisis after crisis, the press still agonised over the antics of Veena Malik, a Pakistani actress who had posed on the cover of an Indian men’s magazine, apparently wearing nothing but a tattoo reading “ISI” (she claimed the photo had been doctored). It was hard to count how many taboos Ms Malik had flouted, but the ones governing female modesty were among the most important.

In a studio stacked high with his artwork and antiquities rescued from Hindu temples, Iqbal Hussain, a well-known painter, shrugs off the many threats he receives. His subjects are the working women of his neighbourhood, the red-light district of Lahore. His only customers seem to be foreigners. If intolerance stopped at public prudishness it would be less worrying, but all too often it is also a pretext for violence. 2011 saw the assassination of two leading politicians for daring to call for reform to Pakistan’s pernicious blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory

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