Heavy Metal Islam (29 page)

Islamabad’s wide and relatively clean boulevards and gridlike pattern, common to the newly established capitals of developing countries in the postwar era, were intended to symbolize the efficiency of modern Pakistan, as was the division of the city into different sectors and zones (commercial, educational, residential, industrial, and diplomatic). Poor people get around on small, beat-up motorcycles. Women have to ride sidesaddle behind their husbands; it isn’t uncommon for them to fall off as the bikes make their way through the country’s potholed streets, especially if the women are old or carrying young children. Most of the wealthier inhabitants of the residential, diplomatic, and “defense” zones—the gated communities in most of Pakistan’s major cities—have drivers to ensure that their wives and children can move around Islamabad, or Pakistan’s other major cities, in the relative safety of their SUVs (the drivers often double as shotgun-toting home guards at night).

A few of the more flamboyant residents apparently also travel around in dune buggies. At least that was what was parked next to the half-dozen soldiers guarding a party being thrown by the son of one of the country’s wealthiest families. I had come to the party on the invitation of Arieb Azhar, the leader of an emerging generation of Sufi-rock singers who are grounded in Sufism as a spiritual practice and not merely as a source of lyrical and vocal inspiration. Arieb started out as a rock singer when the scene in Pakistan was in its infancy. The difficulty in getting gigs and making a career in the country prompted him to leave for Croatia, where he spent thirteen years, including the civil war and its aftermath, studying and working. “When I arrived I was a Marxist, and I sang revolutionary songs with a very harsh voice. Then I moved on to singing Irish and country music because that was what was popular at the time. Now I’m trying to lose all the harshness, trying to become more of a human being as a singer. That’s where the Sufism comes in, because being a Sufi forces you to focus on your own humanity and that of everyone around you as the core of being a spiritual person.”

The party took place in the backyard of the family’s home, which was the largest on a pleasant, tree-lined block of elaborate villas in Islamabad’s swank “F-8 Sector.” The entire yard was tented, with hand-woven oriental carpets on the grass, and was ringed by spotless white couches and tables. There was a delicious, fully catered buffet and barbecue. For entertainment there was a stage with a professional lighting and sound system, upon which half a dozen young rock and metal bands performed their best Guns N’ Roses impersonations along with Pakistani hits. A professional cameraman and photographer recorded the evening, which as far as we could tell was in celebration of little more than the wealth and fabulousness of the young host and his guests.

The partygoers were slightly younger versions of the glamorous Pakistanis who inhabit the country’s film, television, and music video industries. Tall, thin, with fine features and skin tones light enough to make their subcontinental exoticism seem almost safely European, the guests ranged in age from seventeen to about twenty-four years old. All were dressed in the peculiarly Pakistani fashion style that combines Armani A/X chic and the neotraditional fashions of rock star turned preacher and fashion designer, Junaid Jamshed. The young men looked like their lives were comfortably and enviably laid out before them, with no bumps on the horizon. The women perfectly fit their image on TV: modern, secular, yet ultimately there to be the objects, and servants, of men’s desires.

Alcohol was being consumed in quantity, although not openly. So were any number of illegal drugs. Most disturbingly for the half-dozen or so guards—their discomfort was clear—the young men and women were behaving toward each other in ways that, to say the least, were not traditionally acceptable. You could feel the sex in the air. But however un-Islamic the gathering, for the parents of these kids such parties are a convenient, “modern” way to ensure that their children wind up marrying socially and economically acceptable partners.

The guests either didn’t notice or didn’t care, but it was pretty clear to me that the heavily armed guards (AK-47s and shotguns) were not too happy with the behavior of their charges. The scowls on their faces made it perfectly clear what they thought of the kids they were protecting. I couldn’t blame them, honestly, since the guests were treating them with a kind of condescension and even contempt that was frightening considering the firepower at the guards’ disposal. Within the space of three minutes, Arieb and I each turned to his friend Tamur, a veteran of the metal scene, and half-joked that one day a guard was going to snap and mow down the next generation of Pakistan’s leaders (with Benazir Bhutto then still safely in exile, we had forgotten that there was still quite a bit of unfinished business with the current generation of leaders).

Yet it was hard not to be amused at the earnestness with which the bands were playing covers of nineties metal anthems and Pakistani rock hits—it seems that every rich teenage boy in Islamabad wants to be Slash. It stopped being funny, however, when it was our turn to perform. There was a definite buzz about our hitting the stage, since Arieb’s video had been in fairly heavy rotation on MTV Pakistan and The Musik. But once Arieb started to sing a rocked-out adaptation of a Sufi melody, the rugs and couches emptied as everyone headed for the buffet. Clearly the kids weren’t in the mood for anything that smacked of religion, even if it was clothed in metal. To Arieb’s credit, however, he brought most of the crowd back by the second song.

As soon as we finished playing, the guests moved inside to begin the “rave” segment of the evening’s festivities. One especially antsy guard, dressed in a uniform that was half Gurkha and half colonial-era hotel doorman, brusquely directed the partyers inside by pointing his shotgun at them. It was clearly time for us to leave, and we headed to a much quieter musical gathering, this time of devotees of Sufi inspirational music, a few blocks away. Arieb picked up a guitar and was joined by a friend on harmonium. They spent the rest of the night sitting on a small platform in a nice middle-class living room lit by aromatic candles, belting out songs of praise to the Prophet, while about a dozen middle-aged men and women drowned themselves in Rumi and Stoli.

A few kilometers away, in Islamabad’s downtown, 6,000 male and female students from the Jamia Hafsa religious seminary gathered to burn—literally—CDs, video recorders, and even televisions worth tens of thousands of dollars as part of a conference on “the enforcement of
sharia
and glory of jihad.” They also issued warnings to the owners of music shops to shut down their “un-Islamic” businesses within one month or be attacked, a worrisome development for the country’s capital, normally considered one of the most liberal cities in the country. These threats were not to be taken lightly. Extremists have killed government ministers with impunity. They also have burned down “Western” (in fact, Pakistani-owned and -operated) fast-food restaurants and banks, and threatened the president of one of the country’s main universities. And, at the end of 2007, gunned down Benazir Bhutto while she campaigned for Prime Minister after returning to Pakistan under a deal with Musharraf brokered for the Americans and Brits.

As the university president explained to me at a closed forum we both attended that was sponsored by the Council of Islamic Ideology: “A commission I was on wrote a report about education reform, and when a conservative mullah read a copy, he called me a traitor. That may not mean much in your country, but here if someone like him calls me a traitor, someone will shoot me on the street. And if I call him a traitor in return because of his corruption and obscurantism…”

“Someone will shoot you on the street?”

“Exactly. So we shelved the report and the status quo continues. That’s the way it works here, how religion and politics mix to maintain the current power structure in place.” That is, the extremists feed off the widespread anger at the country’s Westernized, secular elite, which in turn uses the threat of the extremists to maintain a quasi–police state that ensures their continued dominance of the country’s politics and economy.

Extremists might target fast-food restaurants, but most Pakistanis still eat in them if they can afford to. I also sought out the local Pizza Hut after a few days of spicy Pakistani food when I met with the director of one of Pakistan’s oldest private hospitals. He had graciously arranged for a car to take me to Peshawar and the North-West Frontier Province the next morning, and because he was from the region and had close ties to the tribal areas, I would have no trouble traveling around the otherwise less than hospitable, and potentially dangerous, region.

As we shared a remarkably spicy “plain” cheese pizza, my dinner companion (who asked that his name not be used) summed up the basic problem facing Pakistan. Quite simply, he explained, Pakistan does not exist. There is, of course, a state, such as it is, and a flag, and until its disastrous performance in the 2007 World Cup in Jamaica, one of the top five cricket teams on earth (no matter where you go in Pakistan, in the middle of rice paddies or garbage dumps, you’ll find young boys and old men playing cricket). But there is no cohesive Pakistani identity. Poverty, inequality, and corruption are so rampant that few people have faith in the future. And the situation is only getting worse, as he sees firsthand as the administrator of a major hospital.

Some Pakistanis blame themselves for the range of problems affecting their country. Others, both religious conservatives and more-secular leftists, blame the United States and the West more broadly. And their attacks can be vehement, as I experienced while being interviewed by Talat Hussayn, the country’s best-known news host, who challenged me, “Isn’t it true that the U.S. has been continuously at war for over a century, that it’s invaded dozens of countries?” Displaying the cover of my last book,
Why They Don’t Hate Us,
on his monitor, he asked, “Why shouldn’t people hate you? Why shouldn’t Pakistanis be angry at America for what you’ve done? Surely you’re being naïve.”

More nuanced and encouraging are the views of the graduate students at the International Islamic University, who are pursuing an innovative curriculum that is combining 1,000 years of Islamic learning with the latest developments in American and European scholarship. The group with whom I spent the most time were all PhD students in comparative religion. I was quite nervous when I was introduced to them as someone who’d lived in Israel and speaks Hebrew—in fact, my stomach sank a bit—especially as their long beards and traditional dress reminded me a lot more of the Taliban than of the graduate students with whom I normally spend time.

But as is so often the case, appearances are deceiving. They explained that they were all learning Hebrew, as well as biblical criticism (Old and New Testament) and contemporary approaches to religious studies, as part of their course work. They had little time or desire to engage in spirited critiques of the United States or the West; they were much more interested in discussing how to better integrate “Western” and Islamic methodologies for studying history and religion, and, more troubling, how to criticize the government “without disappearing” into the dark hole of the Pakistani prison system.