Pakistan: A Hard Country (27 page)
After partition became inevitable, Maududi and his chief fol owers moved to Pakistan. For a long time, the party kept a strongly Mohajir character (Maududi himself was born in Hyderabad, India). The cultural influence of relative Mohajir openness and progressivism (a key example of the role of migrants in promoting whatever social and economic dynamism exists in Pakistan), as much as Jamaat ideology, may have accounted for the more enlightened and modern aspects of the Jamaat, especial y concerning women.
Maududi took his intel ectual inspiration from Hasan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen) of Egypt and the Middle East, but carried their ideas considerably further. His plan for the Jamaat was very much that of al-Banna for the Ikhwan: ‘A salafiyya message, a Sunni way, a Sufi truth, a political organization, an athletic group, a scientific and cultural link, an economic enterprise and a social idea.’14
As these words indicate, the Islamist vision of this tradition is an al embracing one, based on the belief that Islam is ‘a system for the whole of human life’. Maududi took this further, developing a reformist agenda with certain socialist elements, strongly condemning modern capitalism and arguing that the Muslim tradition of zakat corresponds to modern Western ideas of social insurance. The Jamaat’s statement on its website (in rather poor English, for the Jamaat) emphasizes above al issues of social injustice, suffering and corruption: Have a look at our dear homeland injustice and mischief has become order of the day. God created man equal but a handful people have grabbed more land they needed and amassed, money in excess of their needs for, they want to live a luxurious life. And, such people have enslaved other fel ow human beings by keeping them poor and ignorant, we have weakened our fel ow compatriots by denying them their due rights. And thus have deprived their lives even of trifle joys, Corruption together with adulteration is prevalent. Bribery is must even for a legal thing. Police always acts beyond any norms of decency and emptying the purses is the only way to get justice from a court of law. Standard of the education is al time low and morality and ethics too, are no better. Obscenity is al permeating. The armed forces instead of conquering the enemy have conquered its own nation many a time by declaring Martial Law in the country. Bureaucrats who are supposed to be public servants have become public bosses.15
Gulfaraz, a Jamaat student activist studying political science at Peshawar university and with the neat, Islamic-modern Jamaat look (trimmed beard and spotless kurta) emphasized hostility to ‘feudalism’
and the ‘feudal’ domination of the other parties, as one of his key reasons for joining the Jamaat:
This is the root of al our problems that this smal group of feudals and their businessmen al ies control everything. It is because India got rid of them through land reform that India can be a democracy today. In al the other parties, the people who say they want change are in fact from within the feudal system, so obviously these parties can’t change anything. That is why we need student unions, trades unions, NGOs that can give rise to new, democratic parties ... In Jamaat, this feudal and dynastic system doesn’t exist. Our leaders are elected al the way down to the student groups, and they never pass the leadership to their children.
My reasons for joining the Jamaat were first religion, and then social justice and democracy. I only did it after a lot of thought.
My family are ANP, and I am the only one of my brothers and sisters to join the Jamaat. It happened gradual y. I went to col ege and met Jamaat members and was impressed by them and how they worked. Once you are affiliated, you learn political awareness and organization skil s as wel as religious awareness. Then as student members you go to other col eges to organize public debates and spread the Jamaat message.16
On the other hand, while the Jamaat has always strongly denounced ‘feudalism’, in practice its support for land reform has wavered to and fro and has never been more than lukewarm at best.
The Jamaat has enjoyed its greatest success among the educated classes, and has made gaining influence in the universities and the media a key part of its strategy – a sort of Islamist version of the reform-Marxist ‘long march through the institutions’. However, this also reflects the party’s failure to appeal to the masses in general, or to transcend the 5 per cent or so of the electorate which has been its average for the past sixty years.
Although its leaders often come from old ulema lineages, the Jamaat remains a party of the aspiring urban lower middle classes, and especial y of their educated elements. Apart from the hostility of Pakistan’s dominant classes, and lack of a clan and patronage base, the party also suffers from the fact that its entire puritan and intel ectual style is rather alien not just to the mass of the rural population but to the urban proletariat as wel , with their vulgar, colourful popular culture, love of Indian movies, extensive use of hashish and alcohol, and surprisingly frank attitude to sex (except of course as far as their own womenfolk are concerned).
The fact that the old urban middle classes are constantly being swamped by new migrants from the countryside casts a certain doubt on whether – as some analysts have predicted – Pakistan’s rapid urbanization necessarily means an increase in adherence to the Deobandi tradition as opposed to the Barelvi, and with it an increase in support for the Jamaat and other Islamist groups. For this to happen, a sufficient number of former migrants and their descendants would have to be not just urban, but upwardly mobile – anecdotal evidence suggests that the influence of Tablighi Jamaat preachers, for example, is strongly correlated with a rise in the social scale from the proletariat to the lower middle class. The problem is that the lack of sociological research and detailed surveys means that this is indeed only anecdotal evidence.
The Jamaat’s disdain for the mass of the population was very evident when I visited their headquarters in the great Punjabi industrial city of Faisalabad to see if they were benefiting from the workers’
anger at power cuts and unemployment. The Jamaat’s district leader, Rai Mohammed Akram Khan, seemed surprised that I thought appealing to the workers was important, and spoke contemptuously of their lack of education and ‘real Islam’, including their love of il icit liquor:
We don’t want to ral y the masses behind us, because they don’t help us. They can launch strikes and demonstrations but they are disorganized, il iterate and can’t fol ow our ideology or stick with our strategy. We want our party workers to be careful y screened for their education and good Muslim characters, because if we simply become like the PPP and recruit everyone, then the Jamaat is finished ... We don’t care if we can’t take over the government soon as long as we keep our characters clean. Only that wil help us one day to lead the people, when they realize that there is no other way of replacing the existing system.17
The Jamaat believes that the Koran and Shariah, properly interpreted and adapted, hold the answer to every social, economic and political question. It differs however from other Islamist movements in its acceptance of the principle of ijtihad, which al ows the reinterpretation of lessons of the Koran and hadiths (within certain limits) in accordance with human reason and in answer to contemporary problems. The Jamaat shares its belief in ijtihad with the Shia tradition; and indeed, Jamaat leaders have often spoken to me of their admiration for the Iranian revolution and the system it has created, which they say resembles Maududi’s idea of a ‘theo-democracy’. One of the more positive aspects of the Jamaat’s record has been its strong opposition to anti-Shia militancy in Pakistan.
In contrast to Khomeini’s movement in Iran, however (but recognizing Pakistani realities), Maududi’s and the Jamaat’s approach to Islamist revolution in Pakistan has been gradualist, not revolutionary. They have stood in most elections, and condemned the administration of President Zia (which in other respects they supported) for its lack of democracy. This is despite the fact that Maududi imbued the Jamaat with certain aspects of modern European totalitarianism. He was also quite open about the fact that his idea of the Jamaat’s revolutionary role owed much to the Russian Communist idea of the Bolshevik party as a revolutionary ‘vanguard’, leading apathetic masses to revolution. The Jamaat, and more especial y its semi-detached student wing, Islami Jamiat Talaba, have frequently engaged in violent clashes with rivals.
The Jamaat’s relationship with democracy is complex. It pursues quasi-totalitarian ends by largely democratic means, and internal y is the only party in Pakistan to hold elections to its senior offices – al the other parties being run by autocratic individuals or dynasties. The Jamaat and the Mohajir-based MQM are the only parties to possess real y effective party organizations, and the only ones with successful women’s wings. Indeed, I have heard it said that Munawar Hasan’s wife (leader of the Jamaat women’s organization) is ‘the real leader of the party’.
In this, the Jamaat is also close to the Iranian revolution. Its leaders like to emphasize that they believe strongly in women’s education, employment and ful rights and opportunities, ‘but in harmony with their own particular rights and duties’. At least in speaking with me, Jamaat leaders strongly condemned aspects of the Afghan Taleban’s treatment of women and the Pakistani Taleban’s destruction of girls’
schools. I got the feeling that this also reflected the disdain of educated people from an ancient urban – and urbane – Islamic tradition for the savage and il iterate Pathan hil men.
However, while intermittently condemning Taleban terrorism against Pakistani Muslims (though also frequently in private blaming it on the security forces), the Jamaat have consistently opposed any military action against the Taleban. Statements by the party’s amir (leader, or, strictly translated, ‘commander’) on the Jamaat website in December 2009 summed up the party stance very wel : ‘Munawar and Liaqat Baloch strongly condemned the suicide bomb attack on the Peshawar press club and termed it an attack on press freedom’; but at the same time, ‘Operation in Waziristan to have horrible consequences, and the nation wil have no escape’, and ‘Al Islamic and Pakistan-loving forces must unite against America.’18
Without taking up arms themselves, the Jamaat have also shown considerable sympathy for militancy. A large proportion of Al Qaeda members arrested by the Pakistani authorities have been picked up while staying with Jamaat members, though the party leadership strongly denies that this reflects party policy. The Hizbul Mujahidin, a Kashmiri militant group which has carried out terrorism against India, is in effect a branch of the Jamaat. In the course of the 1990s, however, its role in Kashmir was eclipsed by the more radical and militarily effective Lashkar-e-Taiba, and it has never carried out attacks in Pakistan.
The greater radicalism of the Jamaat was displayed during the Red Mosque crisis of 2007. The JUI condemned the actions of the Red Mosque militants and cal ed for them to reach a peaceful compromise with the authorities. The Jamaat by contrast gave them strong backing – while continuing to insist that it stood for peaceful revolution in Pakistan. Moreover, a considerable proportion of the leadership of the Swat wing of the Pakistani Taleban (the former Tehriq-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi, of whom more in later chapters) started with the Jamaat, although admittedly they left it because of its insufficient radicalism.
The ambiguities of the Jamaat’s position, and the divisions among its members, were amply demonstrated when I visited Mansura in January 2009. First I spoke with the head of the party’s youth wing, Syed Shahid Gilani. The lights went out during our talk, and he turned on a torch so that I could continue to take notes, making the spectacles of his three co-workers flicker like fireflies in the dark – a pretty reflection of Jamaat intel ectualism. While bitterly critical of US strategy and the US ‘occupation’ of Afghanistan, Gilani was also harsh in his condemnation of the Taleban:
We don’t accept the Taleban as a model. The Afghan Taleban offended the whole world; and in any case they didn’t believe in a political system, only in their own rule. Can you imagine the Taleban in power here in Pakistan? Impossible! The Pakistani Taleban mean anarchy – anyone with a couple of hundred men with weapons can take over cities ... So we should fight them, because we have to give protection to the people who are fal ing victim to their terrorism, and also because we can’t have a state within the state. We can’t accept that Pakistan is split into different zones under different parties. It would mean the end of the country. The writ of the state must run everywhere.19
Perhaps not coincidental y for these views, Gilani is a Punjabi from the great military centre of Rawalpindi. The then secretary-general of the Jamaat (elected its leader a few months later), Syed Munawar Hasan, gave a very different impression when I went on to talk with him. This was a notable meeting in that it was the only time in al my years of meeting with them that I have seen one of the Jamaat leaders – normal y so calm and polite – lose his temper, because I had forced him into a corner over the Jamaat’s policy towards terrorism and violent revolution (though let it be said he apologized afterwards and offered me some more biscuits). I asked him repeatedly if the Jamaat denounced terrorism against fel ow Muslims and violent revolution. He replied (in response to repeated questions): It is because of America that these terrorist attacks are happening. America is the biggest terrorist in the world ... I do not fear the TTP [Pakistani Taleban]. I only fear the US ...