When being a Muslim is not enough--Scourge of sectarianism in Pakistan

Mehlaqa Samdani

Violent religious extremism, in the form of sectarianism, existed in Pakistan long before the advent of the Taliban.  Prior to Taliban-instigated violence,  it was also the "principal source of terrorist activity in Pakistan" claiming more than two thousand lives over the past three decades.  While the Pakistani government has taken steps to curb Taliban activity in Pakistan, it has done little to rein in sectarian outfits as evidenced by the recent spate of intra-sectarian violence in Dera Ismail Khan and Faisalabad.

Over the weekend, as Pakistanis commemmorated the birth of the Prophet Mohammad, gunmen opened fire at a Barelvi procession in Paharpur "killing one person on the spot and prompting the angry crowd to retaliate by attacking a seminary of the local Deobandi Sunni sect".  An investigation was ordered and more than a dozen people arrested including a local cleric accused of inciting violence between the rival Deobandi and Barelvi groups.

In describing Pakistan's 'sectarian landscape', the ICG report, 'State of Sectarianism' explains the Deobandi-Barelvi divide:

"Although Barelvis and Deobandis follow the Hanafi (Sunni) school of jurisprudence, their interpretations of it radically differ...The Barelvi school strives to preserve and promote this Islam of hereditary saints and its shrine culture. In this syncretic Sunni system, belief in intercession by the Prophet Mohammad and hereditary saints and initiation in a mystic order is the path to salvation. Shrines of saints are the centres of cultural and religious activity." For Deobandis Pakistan's "shrine culture (is) a form of idolatry" and "these Barelvi practices, deviations from the true path"

While, historically, differences between various sectarian groups have mostly played out at the doctrinal level, the rise of radicalism in Pakistan has resulted in a corresponding increase in inter- and intra-sectarian violence. A combination of domestic and external factors contributed to this phenomenon; among these is the deliberate policies of the Pakistani state which tolerated and often promoted narrow sectarian identities to consolidate internal political advantage.

Soon after the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the Pakistan Muslim League which had led the Pakistan movement but had lacked a popular base in the country relied on religious leaders and parties to consolidate their power-base.   While Pakistan was declared an “Islamic Republic” in Pakistan’s first constitution of 1956, the question of "who is a Muslim" was never quite resolved.  This continues to create problems within religious and political discourse today. 

The newly acquired power of the religious clergy gave them the opportunity to assert themselves politically.   In 1952, Deobandi and Shiite ulema began agitating against the Ahmedis, a minority sect which claims Ghulam Mohammad as the last prophet.  The anti-Ahmedi movement soon became violent prompting the Pakistani military to intervene and for the first time impose martial law in the country.

Even though the violence ended, the movement to declare Ahmedis non-Muslims continued until 1974 when a constitutional amendment declared them to be outside the fold of Islam.  Empowered by their ‘constitutional victory’ against the Ahmedis, the Sunni (Deobandi) leaders now turned their rhetoric against
the Shiites in Pakistan and continued to agitate against them. 

The sectarian dynamic took a turn for the worse following the seizure of power by General Zia-ul-Haq in 1977.   To shore up domestic support and acquire some semblance of legitimacy, the General introduced “Islamic norms and institutions through government policy or decree” in a way that promoted Islam within
the context of a very narrow Sunni identity ("Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shi'iand Sunni Identities", Mohammad Qasim Zaman, Modern Asian Studies 32, 3 (1998), pp. 689-716, Cambridge University Press)

According to Mohammad Qasim Zaman:

“Which school of Islamic law would hold sway, and how that would affect those who do not recognize its authority, are questions never adequately resolved in Pakistan; they were raised with unprecedented vigour and alarm, however, when a wide-ranging programme of Islamization was initiated in early 1979 by the government of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq” (Zaman, pg. 692)

The regional dimension in exacerbating sectarian tensions was also critical.  Saudi Arabia, rolling in petro-dollars began the export of an austere, literalist Wahabi/Salafi ideology to Pakistan through the financing of mosques and madrassas.   Iran emboldened by a successful revolution did the same for the Shiite community in Pakistan, raising tensions between the two groups. Around the same time the war in Afghanistan led the ISI to establish hundreds of Deobandi madrassahs along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where an entire generation of students was primed for prejudice against the 'other' giving rise to
pervasive intolerance.

In the wake of the weekend violence, a Dawn editorial noted:

“The infrastructure of hate that has slowly taken hold at the grass-roots level is really what needs to be dismantled. Further delay in initiating that process will only cause the problem to grow in magnitude.”

Successive military and civilian regimes have failed to rein in the activities of these sectarian outfits and some have chosen to court them for political support. This was most recently evidenced in Punjab's provincial law minister's vist to a banned sectarian group's madrassah. The Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) is an extremist Sunni militant organization, which is known to have close links with Al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban,  has been responsible for numerous sectarian killings since it was formed in 1985. It was also implicated in the murderous rampage against Christians in the town of Gojra last year.

The editorial of an influential daily noted:

"Mr Sanaullah was on a by-election campaign for a provincial assembly seat in Jhang, but it cannot be said with certainty if he paid a visit to the seminary for electoral purposes or deep-rooted extremist linkages. Even if it was for purely electoral purposes, should the law minister have taken along a sectarian
leader with him on an election campaign?....If we want to rid our country of extremist ideology, our lawmakers should set an example instead of giving official patronage to terror outfits"

A renowned human rights activist in Pakistan, I.A. Rehman put it best:

"...the roots of terrorism in Pakistan are indigenous; they lie in the enormous work the state has done, by its acts of omission and commission, to eradicate the ideas of liberal Islam and facilitate the rise of obscurantists leaving the entire area of intra-religious discourse open and clear to utterly conservative and dogmatic twisters of texts and exploiters of the faithful’s vaguely understood belief. Pakistan will not be safe from terrorists’ depredations unless a crash programme to build a tolerant, pluralist society is seriously executed.” 
 

Flickr photo by groundreporter used under a Creative Commons license