KARACHI - “Muslim countries, by their very nature, cease to take the first step towards creating a democratic modern state because their citizenship is based on inherited race and religion,” says Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani-born journalist who speaks boldly on how state and religion are separate entities — and why the difference needs to be maintained.
Fatah: A strong voice against religious states
“Take the example of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, where citizens other than Muslims are treated as second-class citizens. In Pakistan, the blasphemy law puts innocent people in jails (who) are even sentenced to death. In Saudi Arabia, the constitution determines the citizenship and a Christian cannot be a Saudi national,” points out the Toronto-based Fatah, also with the Muslim Canadian Congress and host of the Canadian TV show ‘The Muslim Chronicle’.
He argues that the very word ‘minority’ should be erased from the Pakistan constitution and that the status of a person’s citizenship need not be determined by the faith one is born in.
This, he says, is the basic reason for the decline of most Islamic states. “All successful democratic nations are constructed on the premise that citizenship be based on human-created laws, which the parliament can change. Islamic nations, on the other hand, base it on the divine laws that cannot be debated in parliament and are considered immutable. By its very nature, the rest of the people who do not believe in Islam become second-class citizens.”
So, if a state has the best of intentions and even if those belonging to other religions are treated well, they can never be equal, “We’re insulting their intelligence and forcing them to feel good about their humility.”
But then can we have an indigenous democracy as opposed to one that is defined by the west? To this Fatah replied, “I don’t agree that democracy is a product of the West. It’s the construct of economic development. It just happened that the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution took place there.”
His views are echoed by Ayaz Palejo, an intellectual and a Sindhi nationalist, who believes that citizenship laws and constitution are based on injustice and are thus bound to breed bias and prejudice.
Fatah feels that the basic reason for prejudice and bias stems from the absence of equality in society, seen in the treatment of women. He strongly criticises the religious clergy: “The Prophet Muhammad worked for a woman. Today in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, how many imams do we find working under a woman? What a complete contradiction between the essence of Islam and its practice.”
Fatah feels that the western forces cannot be blamed for the problems that Islamic nations face. “We need to reduce hatred amongst ourselves.” He quoted examples of how Iraq and Iran - both Islamic states - went to war. He also spoke of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the way that Kurdistan has been dominated for long (by the central government).
“It’s like we are in a car rally with our eyes fixated on the rear view mirror. Obviously when you’re looking into the rear view mirror you tend to lose track of what’s in front of you and bump into obstacles. When this happens we blame western imperialism and Jews of putting those obstacles in our way. But the fact is to win, while we look at the rear-view mirror every now and then to keep our perspective, we should be looking ahead as well.”
Pakistan was always a left-leaning country and the people have protested vociferously against imperialism, the Vietnam war, the Palestine issue. Activism was always there, but then with the onset of militarisation everything ended. “Every country has a military. In our case the military has a country and they are accountable to none. This is not a sovereign country. Zia ul Haq throttled it completely. Instead, activism was diverted to include religiosity. His was a classic merger of U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism. He served the U.S. interest. He destroyed a country,” said Fatah.
People usually oppose states like Israel that are governed by religious laws, but Fatah says that most Islamic states are doing the same, “Isn’t that what our contention is with Israel? We’re using Zionist principles when it comes to using religion to run the state.”
According to Fatah, Pakistanis’ moral composition can be determined by a speech given to the constituent assembly by Pakistan’s founder M A Jinnah on the eve of independence in 1947, and where he said that there would be no Hindus, Muslims or, Christians in the eyes of the state and no official religion. This was censored and kept away until 1972 when one of the leaders of the National Awami Party read it on record, he says.
In a debate held on inter-faith harmony and peace, Reverend Bishop Inayat used the word ‘Mazhabi dokandari’ to describe how religion today is being used to meet individual interests. He feels that apathy exists and people have become numb to the problems that our fellow human beings face in the name of religion. “We need to fulfill our responsibilities to our fellow human beings,” he said.