By Saif M. Hussain, Woodland Hills, CA
The so-called “mainstreamer moderates” of Pakistan (including many expatriates residing in our corner of the North American continent) are ever so quick to point fingers at the so-called “fundos” and “extremists” for all ills suffered by Pakistan, a notion that is totally belied by historical facts. As for Islam, many among the westernized elite (who some refer to as “kala goras”) seem to enthusiastically profess adherence to it, provided that it is the “moderate” form, preferably defined by the pseudo-Sufi Rock ballads of the likes of Junoon et al rather than Qur’anic or Prophetic definitions. The latter may just be, God forbid, too much of a “fundo” approach.
Some of our Karachi Grammar School (my own alma mater) and J&M Convent types, pining for the “moderate religion” that we learned [sic] while growing up, have even taken to forming internet groups, nebulously named “Muslims against Extremism” or “Muslims for Moderation” etc. Such activists appear to be particularly responsive, quite pathetically, to the self-righteous, ulterior motive ridden, criticisms of Islam and Muslims from a spectrum of western opinion makers, including diehard Zionists like Tom Friedman of the New York Times and Fundamentalist Evangelist Christians like Rev. [sic] Franklin Graham, who recently referred to Islam as “evil and wicked”.
After a near perfect diagnosis of the problem, Mr. Ayaz Amir, Dawn’s columnist in one of his recent writings, recommends a cure worse than the disease. He states that “[O]nly if the army pursues a Kemalist agenda and sets the country on the path to an enduring democracy will we be able to say that we took the right turning and exploited the situation to our advantage.”
I am not sure if he is simply glossing over the fact that Kemalist Turkey today is hardly a presentable model of “democracy” or whether the myths of western propaganda have indeed planted themselves in your mind as factual truths. All pretensions aside, Turkey is ruled by a stealth military power establishment, ruthlessly dedicated to their fascist view of “secularism” where the mere appearance of a silk scarf on the head of a duly elected female parliamentarian is more threatening than their own shameful maneuvers to remove elected governments at whim.
More raw forms of such neo-fascist systems may also be found in countries like Algeria, with overturned elections and thousands of political massacres and tortured prisoners to prove the point. Elite ruling minorities in such countries, the Euro/YankeePhiles in Turkey and the Francophiles in Algeria, effectively head off any true expression of the majority population in the governance of the countries’ affairs. Relationships with the latest American, EU or French governments are infinitely more important than solidarity with the common people.
Pakistan with its own Anglophile ruling elite, could be well positioned to develop a similar sort of pseudo-democratic structure with a stealth military power establishment to back the democratic facade. I dare say that that would be a dream come true for the ruling micro-minority, but no less than a travesty of democracy and a long-term prison sentence for the masses. We hope and pray that such a tragic fate for Pakistan is avoided at all costs.