Mockery of Ramzan

The sell­ers of souls antic­i­pate the arrival of the holi­est month of Ramzan more than any­one else. The fast­ing that sub­sists from predawn till the sun­set basi­cal­ly teach­es the car­di­nal prin­ci­ples of tol­er­ance, patience, care for oth­ers, absten­tion from vices, etc. Iron­i­cal­ly, in Pak­istan, from the big media hous­es to the hoard­ers, mer­chants, even the cart ven­dors, pseu­do-reli­gious (read: part time) cler­ics mas­querad­ing as schol­ars go exact­ly against the very spir­it of Ramzan. It would not be wrong to say that they earn more in one month of Ramzan than the rest of the year put togeth­er.

Pak­istan is pass­ing through a crit­i­cal phase of his­to­ry by fight­ing the war of its very sur­vival. Since the begin­ning of the 21st Cen­tu­ry the world has wit­nessed colos­sal changes in terms of new tech­no­log­i­cal trends and has also faced impend­ing secu­ri­ty issues. Pak­istan too has fol­lowed the world, but less in the for­mer and more in the lat­ter sense.

Dur­ing the era of Per­vez Mushar­raf var­i­ous rev­o­lu­tion­ary things took place that includes the advent of pri­vate and inde­pen­dent media chan­nels, which was actu­al­ly the brain­child of Benazir Bhut­to. The media played a sig­nif­i­cant role dur­ing Musharraf’s emer­gency and sub­se­quent events that proved fatal to the reign of Per­vez Mushar­raf and he had to unwill­ing­ly side­line from the polit­i­cal are­na.

As the time passed, media groups and their tele­vi­sion chan­nels kept han­ker­ing for new con­tents for their view­ers. Ini­tial­ly the same TV chan­nels used to host news, polit­i­cal talk shows, reli­gious shows, and enter­tain­ment pro­grams, all in one. But lat­er on the reli­gious, news, and enter­tain­ment chan­nels were grad­u­al­ly sep­a­rat­ed.

Dur­ing the rest of the year, TV chan­nels are filled with a com­bi­na­tion of pro­grams of mul­ti­ple kinds, but the holy month of Ramzan bears some spe­cial impor­tance for the media own­ers and most of the air­time is allot­ted to the Ramzan trans­mis­sion which goes live for an unin­ter­rupt­ed peri­od of 4 to 6 hours in one go. The com­pe­ti­tion and high rat­ings have made the media out­lets a mad ele­phant and they can go to any extent to get the max­i­mum rat­ings.

Aamir Liaqat insult­ing a par­tic­i­pant in Ramzan show

In the month of Ramzan the actors, singers, come­di­ans, news­cast­ers and polit­i­cal anchors appear out of the blue with altered attires and emu­late the cel­e­brat­ed reli­gious schol­ars. The so-called torch-bear­ers of Islam often mis­guide and mis­lead their fol­low­ers. Their knowl­edge in Islam is very lim­it­ed and they gen­er­al­ly mis­in­ter­pret the Quran­ic vers­es and the Hadith.

The Ramzan trans­mis­sion on many TV chan­nels go beyond the mind’s eye because if one has to switch the chan­nel for some enter­tain­ment, s/he does not have to both­er about it as every­thing is there in the reli­gious pro­gram. The pro­duc­ers of these shows spend an enor­mous amount of mon­ey on the set design­ing. They bring in ana­con­da, par­rots, and pea­cocks, dum­mies of ele­phant, croc­o­dile and even tigers, giv­ing the impres­sion of a zoo.

The anchors of the reli­gious trans­mis­sion, imper­son­at­ing as extreme­ly reli­gious and pious per­sons, use their act­ing skills and talk about the mis­eries of poor peo­ple of Pak­istan with impec­ca­ble face. Islam teach­es sim­plic­i­ty while the anchors of the Ramzan trans­mis­sion wear design­er Kur­tas which are worth more than the year­ly income of a com­mon cit­i­zen of Pak­istan. Most of the anchors of Ramzan shows own design­er clothes bou­tiques. Along with the pub­lic­i­ty of oth­er items, they take it as a bless­ing in dis­guise and use the pro­gram as pub­lic­i­ty plat­forms for their own mer­chan­dise.

The Ramzan trans­mis­sion gets even more rat­ings than the Turk­ish and Indi­an soap operas which bears tes­ti­mo­ny to the fact that it is pre­sent­ed in an allur­ing and glam­orous way that it attracts more view­er­ship than the fic­tion­al dra­mas.

Back in mid of 2000s, a pro­gram start­ed with the ban­ner of Aal­im Online broad­cast­ing from Geo TV which is said to be the pio­neer of reli­gious pro­grams in Pak­istan. Oth­er TV chan­nels stepped in the shoe of Geo TV and start­ed their own look alike reli­gious pro­grams. The indus­try is not short of mim­ics who at times change their fea­tures from singer, actor or a self pro­claimed intel­lec­tu­al ― with fake degree ― to reli­gious schol­ars and can enter­tain the audi­ence. Their super­fi­cial knowl­edge of Islam often leads their view­ers in the wrong direc­tion, fur­ther spread­ing intol­er­ance in the soci­ety.

The peo­ple of Pak­istan may or may not approve of the futile Ramzan trans­mis­sion, but the giant cor­po­ra­tions and media groups take it as grant­ed. They exploit the holy month to the fullest and earn huge rev­enues, cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the pres­ence of spe­cial trans­mis­sions. While in the broad­er spec­trum, the peo­ple of Pak­istan get noth­ing. Rather than giv­ing huge air­time to these reli­gious-cum-enter­tain­ment shows, the media groups should think of oth­er options. For instance, as in the UK, here also the air­time can be allot­ted to the pro­grams where­by funds for IDPs and oth­er deserv­ing peo­ple can be raised. Or it can be used to help edu­cate peo­ple about their rights and duties. We can reduce the ris­ing extrem­ism and vio­lence, and spread reli­gious har­mo­ny by edu­cat­ing the mass­es using TV. The cur­rent fash­ion of Ramzan pro­grams should be replaced with some­thing which is effec­tive and has a pos­i­tive impact on the soci­ety.