Laaltain

New Face of Civil Society

1 جنوری، 2015

Notwith­stand­ing the pro­found sense of grief and rage shared by so many Pak­ista­nis in the wake of Peshawar mas­sacre, the response from the civ­il soci­ety would have been pre­dictable. Indeed it was very con­ven­tion­al for the first two days; a few protests and vig­ils in Islam­abad, Lahore, Karachi and some oth­er big cities to offer prayers for the vic­tims and express sym­pa­thy with their fam­i­lies, the total num­ber of pro­test­ers not more than a few thou­sands in a coun­try of over 180 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, one man’s courage, inge­nu­ity and charis­ma brought new vigour, pas­sion and audac­i­ty in how civ­il soci­ety respond­ed to the Peshawar inci­dent. Jibran Nasir, 27, was vis­it­ing Islam­abad for a day from Karachi. When Abdul Aziz, the chief cler­ic at Lal Masjid, a con­tro­ver­sial mosque in the heart of Islam­abad, refused to con­demn the Peshawar attack, Jibran came up with an inter­est­ing idea. He would hold a peace­ful vig­il in front of the Lal Masjid, Jibran decid­ed, protest­ing against the pro-Tal­iban cler­ic and demand­ing the gov­ern­ment take action against the hate speech prop­a­gat­ed by peo­ple like Maulana Abdul Aziz from the pul­pits of mosques and in the media.

With­in very short time the cam­paign suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing out hun­dreds of peo­ple in front of Lal Masjid, many of them very promi­nent fig­ures from the civ­il soci­ety – writ­ers, intel­lec­tu­als and poets.

Jibran announced that after the vig­il, he would offer prayers in the mosque, giv­ing a sym­bol­ic ges­ture of reclaim­ing it from the extrem­ists. Unlike many in the lib­er­al and sec­u­lar civ­il soci­ety, who would avoid invok­ing reli­gion in such sit­u­a­tion, Jibran’s approach was very dif­fer­ent: sym­bol­i­cal­ly reclaim­ing Islam from extrem­ists by reclaim­ing the mosque – the plat­form they use to prop­a­gate their ver­sion of Islam. First, I thought it was a dan­ger­ous idea, giv­en the his­to­ry of the mosque and its occu­pants. But it was a great idea nonethe­less: iden­ti­fy­ing the vil­lains like the Maulana and tak­ing our mes­sage and expres­sion of resis­tance to them.

Jibran start­ed his cam­paign by mak­ing a Face­book event page. With­in very short time the cam­paign suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing out hun­dreds of peo­ple in front of Lal Masjid, many of them very promi­nent fig­ures from the civ­il soci­ety – writ­ers, intel­lec­tu­als and poets. The crowd was charged, speech­es were made and slo­gans were being raised against Tal­iban and their sym­pa­this­er cler­ic. Clad in black Shal­war — Kameez and stand­ing con­fi­dent­ly in the mid­dle of the pro­test­ers was Jibran Nasir. He stood out with his neat­ly trimmed short beard and intense look in his eyes. Jibran was try­ing to con­trol the pro­test­ers, some of whom want­ed to go inside the mosque which would have inevitably led to con­fronta­tion and vio­lence, for Abdul Aziz’s fol­low­ers had already come out and were threat­en­ing the pro­test­ers.

What Islam­abad saw that evening was uni­ty among an embold­ened and angry civ­il soci­ety. Unlike protests of the pre­vi­ous two days, this one was big­ger and it was get­ting a lot of trac­tion in the social media that was abuzz with live updates from the protest; #ArrestAb­du­lAz­iz was trend­ing. We had found the ‘ene­my’ that lived with­in Islam­abad, close to our homes. What we saw dur­ing the next few days was sus­tained protests, first in front of the mosque and then at the Aab­para Police sta­tion, putting pres­sure on the police to reg­is­ter FIR against the cler­ic and arrest him. While ini­tial­ly police resist­ed the pres­sure, they had to act in the face of pub­lic pres­sure.

Jibran was soon joined by some oth­er sea­soned activists like Farzana Bari, Shaan Taseer, and Syed Naeem Bokhari, among oth­ers, who formed a core group coor­di­nat­ing with the police and the pro­test­ers. The lead­ers and pro­test­ers were defi­ant even in the face of direct threats from Tal­iban and Lal Masjid cler­ics. The lead­ers were say­ing that they would take the protests across Pak­istan and reclaim the mosques that are mis­used by cler­ics. They were deter­mined to see Abdul Aziz behind the bars. And they did achieve that out­come par­tial­ly when arrest war­rants of the cler­ic were issued, though the police has not yet arrest­ed him.

While it is too ear­ly to say what the civ­il soci­ety ini­tia­tive has achieved, for it start­ed even less than two weeks ago, I think an analy­sis of the strat­e­gy, tac­tics and mes­sag­ing of the unique protests is nec­es­sary to pre­dict the poten­tial for its sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trans­form­ing it into a wide counter-extrem­ism move­ment.

Focussing on Lal Masjid cler­ic was a good strat­e­gy in the short-term, giv­ing out a strong mes­sage to Tal­iban apol­o­gists and sym­pa­thiz­ers that we will come after you if you will sup­port the ter­ror­ists; that we will take the legal recourse to appre­hend you. The mes­sag­ing was also inclu­sive and the organ­is­ers tried to avoid the impres­sion that lib­er­als are attack­ing a mosque. Use of social media was done very smart­ly. Video mes­sages by Jibran on Face­book also got a lot of trac­tion, where he spelled out the Char­ter of Demands in very sim­ple but pow­er­ful lan­guage.

Mosque is but one plat­form, one reli­gious insti­tu­tion cap­tured by the Tal­iban world­view. So are our schools, where hatred is instilled in young minds, so are our uni­ver­si­ties.

Hav­ing said that, fix­at­ed with Lal Masjid cler­ic, the lead­ers do not seem to have a long-term strat­e­gy, or at least they have not yet artic­u­lat­ed one. Ter­ror­ism stems from the extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy, a nar­row and big­ot­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam, which Tal­iban and the Lal Masjid cler­ic espouse. This ide­ol­o­gy has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­mot­ed in Pak­istan over the last many decades. Reli­gion was delib­er­ate­ly instru­men­talised for for­eign pol­i­cy and domes­tic agen­da. In fact the roots of the prob­lem go fur­ther back in our his­to­ry. They orig­i­nate from a theo­crat­ic nature of our state. The lead­ers of the protests did not try to con­tex­tu­al­ize and his­tori­cise the issue. They kept it sim­ple: arrest Maulana Abdul Aziz, who prop­a­gates hate speech. Well, who patro­n­ised and pro­mot­ed peo­ple like the maulana? Who lever­aged their fol­low­ing for recruit­ment of mil­i­tants for Jihad in Afghanistan and Kash­mir? How can you blame Maulana with­out men­tion­ing his erst­while bene­fac­tors, who still sup­port some good Jihadis?

Char­ac­ters like Maulana are not the only ones who believe in the mil­lenar­i­an world­view; the ide­ol­o­gy of extrem­ism is per­va­sive in our soci­ety. Mosque is but one plat­form, one reli­gious insti­tu­tion cap­tured by the Tal­iban world­view. So are our schools, where hatred is instilled in young minds, so are our uni­ver­si­ties. The new face of the civ­il soci­ety man­i­fest­ed in the lead­er­ship of Jibran Nasir and Shaan Taseer seized the ini­tia­tive, mak­ing the protests suc­cess­ful, but how will they “reclaim mosques” and how will they take this mes­sage to the peo­ple who are not stand­ing with them, who are on the oth­er side of the fence, who are very dif­fer­ent from the priv­i­leged and edu­cat­ed seg­ment of soci­ety rep­re­sent­ed at the protests. Jibran and oth­ers, who want to curb extrem­ism in our coun­try, will have to think and think hard about these issues. Oth­er­wise we will have lost anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to reclaim the nar­ra­tive, our reli­gion and our coun­try.

One Response

  1. Extrem­ism is a mind­set, an approach that we need to root out from its buds, we are lost oth­er­wise

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One Response

  1. Extrem­ism is a mind­set, an approach that we need to root out from its buds, we are lost oth­er­wise

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