The Reappraisal of Our Worldview

As a birth­day present on my 26th, Fazal and Ain, my two good and close New Jer­sey friends, showed me the Indi­an com­e­dy-dra­ma film, PK. Amani, their 5‑year old grand­daugh­ter, accom­pa­nied us as well to the cin­e­ma. Born to an Amer­i­can-Pak­istani Mus­lim moth­er and an Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian father of Lebanese ori­gin, Amani is a per­fect and beau­ti­ful blend of Arab, Amer­i­can, Pash­tun, Chris­t­ian, and Islam­ic iden­ti­ty fea­tures.

Sit­ting beside Amani and eat­ing pop­corn while watch­ing the movie, a thought from my past struck me: In child­hood, my reli­gious men­tor taught me that Mus­lims are the best peo­ple on the plan­et Earth. I grew up hear­ing con­ceit­ed claims that Heav­en is only for Mus­lims. And that non-Mus­lims will be burnt in Hell for­ev­er. Does not mat­ter who. Nel­son Man­dela? Moth­er There­sa? All of them. Their vir­tu­ous­ness and human­i­ty does not count at all because they don’t believe in ‘our’ God and our reli­gion, Islam. I was told. I was also taught that non-Mus­lims could nev­er be friends with Mus­lims. And that we can nev­er share meal with them as they are not pure like us (Mus­lims).

Absurd lessons such as these imply that non-Mus­lims must imme­di­ate­ly con­vert to Islam in order for them to be good human beings and on par with Mus­lims. It seems as if human dig­ni­ty is inher­ent in Mus­lim­ness only. How­ev­er, I have suc­cess­ful­ly escaped this trap through my own reflec­tion, and through appeal to rea­son, love, and com­pas­sion.

I admit though that I am nei­ther a schol­ar of Islam nor of reli­gion in gen­er­al. I have no author­i­ty, like every­body else, to cer­ti­fy who is supe­ri­or and who is infe­ri­or in the sight of God. But I do believe that the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of a reli­gious ide­ol­o­gy (Islam­ic or else) does not mean its uni­for­mi­ty, as there exist a vari­ety of pop­u­lar reli­gious beliefs with rel­a­tive strength, poten­tial, and their accep­tance by humon­gous pop­u­la­tions. There­fore, they all deserve equal pro­tec­tion and space for an unre­strict­ed and inde­pen­dent prac­tice.

As my train of thoughts con­tin­ued, I looked at Amani and won­dered: What reli­gion does she belong to? Islam or Chris­tian­i­ty, a blend of the two, or some­thing in the mid­dle? Or, does her reli­gious iden­ti­ty, if any­thing, mat­ter at all? Then I won­dered what reli­gion does her fam­i­ly as a sin­gle whole belong to? What reli­gion does the feel­ing of love, which bound her par­ents togeth­er, belong to? The answer is that there are no clear divi­sions due to the com­plex and cross­cut­ting nature of human iden­ti­ties that inter­link us all in mul­ti­ple and unbe­liev­ably var­ied ways.

But my coun­try Pak­istan is the com­plete oppo­site of what I believe in and hold dear to my heart. It does not even remote­ly resem­ble a place where peo­ple of diver­si­ty could live in uni­ty and har­mo­ny. Far from accept­ing peo­ple of oth­er reli­gions, extrem­ist groups and their sym­pa­thiz­ers among mass­es are at dag­gers drawn with their core­li­gion­ists. Shia Mus­lims, Ismailis, Ahamdis, Chris­tians, Hin­dus, and pagan com­mu­ni­ties in the far­thest north of Pak­istan have been per­pe­trat­ed vio­lence against by extrem­ist groups for quite too long. As there does not seem any change in the exclu­sivist think­ing of the peo­ple and poli­cies of the state, reli­gious vio­lence is on a rise.

Since the begin­ning of 2015 only, there have been some large-scale attacks against reli­gious minori­ties. While the irrepara­ble wounds of Shikarpur and Youhan­abad attacks against Shia Mus­lims and Chris­tians respec­tive­ly are still fresh in our mem­o­ry, yet on May 13 anoth­er hor­rif­ic episode of vio­lence was unleashed on Ismailis in Karachi. 43 peo­ple includ­ing 16 women were mur­dered in cold blood. I am sure that as some are lament­ing the bru­tal killing of Ismaili Shia, there may be many oth­ers who live indif­fer­ent­ly in its face as they are led into make-believes that elim­i­nat­ing such ‘heretics’ from the land of Islam and Pak­istan is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of ‘true’ Mus­lims. And such is also the pop­u­lar pub­lic nar­ra­tive at homes, in social gath­er­ings on streets, in Islam­ic edu­ca­tion class­es at schools, and on loud­speak­ers in mosques. And this kind of reli­gious hate and exclu­sivism boils down to one sim­ple but dan­ger­ous idea that sec­tar­i­an killing is nec­es­sary for puri­fy­ing Islam from ‘apos­tates’. Our col­lec­tive silence and inabil­i­ty or unwill­ing­ness in the face of such mur­der­ous ide­olo­gies has cre­at­ed a huge void filled in by the preach­ers of vio­lence and mur­der in the name of faith.

There­fore, it is high time that we reap­praise our think­ing by devel­op­ing a plu­ral­ist thought and hence a tol­er­ant soci­ety. Accom­plish­ing such plu­ral­ism requires chal­leng­ing indi­vid­u­als, groups, and insti­tu­tions that desire to impose their extrem­ist nar­ra­tive on oth­ers through vio­lence regard­less of their choice in faith. We also need to edu­cate our younger gen­er­a­tion which is being, and will con­tin­ue to be, trapped into make-believes that I expe­ri­enced myself once. But doing so is not easy when par­ents for­bid their chil­dren from read­ing books anti­thet­i­cal to their beliefs. An edu­cat­ed friend of mine, who is pur­su­ing a master’s degree in the US, was stopped by his ‘edu­cat­ed’ father from read­ing a book on sec­u­lar­ism. Much hard­er as it is, I sug­gest it is through trust with our fam­i­ly and friends that we can make plu­ral­ist mind­sets pop­u­lar and accept­able among them, in our imme­di­ate social cir­cles, and even­tu­al­ly in our com­mu­ni­ties.

More­over, with our world com­ing much clos­er togeth­er than ever before, we have much in com­mon to unite than fight for. I am aware of the fact that reli­gious bound­aries can’t sim­ply cease to exist, and cer­tain­ly for mul­ti­ple prac­ti­cal rea­sons and pur­pos­es. But, I believe, we can still be accept­ing of oth­ers by thin­ning our self-cre­at­ed thick and impen­e­tra­ble walls of reli­gious and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ties. Doing so is pos­si­ble by appeal­ing to our human iden­ti­ty, which is the strongest, the most tran­scen­den­tal, and above all else.

All this may seem too quixot­ic but still pos­si­ble and appro­pri­ate. And ide­al­ism for peace is more than worth try­ing for. I believe that it is only love for human­i­ty that will counter reli­gious bias­es and vio­lence jus­ti­fied on their bases. I am not against reli­gion. But its crit­i­cism does war­rant mer­it when loath­some and dan­ger­ous ide­olo­gies asso­ci­at­ed with it are pro­mot­ed at the cost of human­i­ty. I do acknowl­edge that reli­gion does have con­spic­u­ous and valu­able con­tri­bu­tions in pro­vid­ing hope to the hope­less and help­less, in dis­ci­plin­ing soci­ety, and in rein­forc­ing eth­i­cal and human val­ues but it has also lim­it­ed the scope for prac­tic­ing human­i­ty.

But I also believe that human beings are hard-wired for vir­tu­ous­ness. Which means they are inher­ent­ly empa­thet­ic with­out believ­ing in any form of reli­gion. And it is no sur­prise that many smile at me. I feel loved by thou­sand oth­ers. Mil­lion oth­ers accept me with­out any dis­crim­i­na­tion, no mat­ter where I am in the world. And I see them on my side. On the side of human­i­ty.

PK, released in Decem­ber 2014, also makes a sol­id and time­ly plea for decon­struct­ing mil­len­ni­al­ist reli­gious nar­ra­tives prop­a­gat­ed by reli­gious “man­agers” (as right­ly called in the movie). On reflec­tion, in the real world, these reli­gious entre­pre­neurs and their fran­chis­es are engaged unabashed­ly in pre­sent­ing dif­fer­ences of faith as an exis­ten­tial strug­gle for estab­lish­ing tran­scen­den­tal and escha­to­log­i­cal truth i.e. their brand of reli­gion is abso­lutist and supe­ri­or to all oth­ers. It is at such crit­i­cal junc­ture that the film strong­ly demands from us the reap­praisal of our think­ing about the world and our fel­low humans on the plan­et Earth.

Final­ly, we need to look at life as a much big­ger and rich­er enti­ty than reli­gion. Reli­gion is just a tiny part of it, not the oth­er way around. There is no one pre­scribed way to enjoy, live, and under­stand life in order to be at peace with it. There are in fact mil­lion ways to look at it and to live it. Reli­gion, among oth­ers, is one way of look­ing at life and the world. The solu­tion to our prob­lems lies not in aggres­sion but in intro­spec­tion. In inclu­sive­ness and accep­tance of oth­ers. Not in Mus­lim exclu­sivism. And we must under­stand that every per­son has inher­ent dig­ni­ty in them, and must strive to act in ways that reaf­firm the inher­ent dig­ni­ty of every per­son regard­less of faith.