The Reactionary Public

To an outsider, Pakistan’s perceptions of its own political history appears to be mired in a culture of ‘whataboutery’, denial and deflection. So it is encouraging to read the occasional piece by Pakistani political commentator Nadeem Paracha because he does not patronise his readers with yet another analysis of Pakistan’s sectarian unrest by putting the blame on Zionists and US drone attacks. When it comes to talking truth to power, Paracha seems less affected by the culture of denial that afflicts most of his peers.

Here’s Paracha reflecting on how the military and the orthodox religious establishment of Pakistan have contributed and cultivated the heady mixture of nationalism, political Islamic extremism and sectarianism that currently assails Pakistan:

Here’s a question: How come whenever there’s a drone attack (in which most of those killed generally are extremists), or a case of perceived obscenity or blasphemy surfaces, street corners are at once filled with burqa-clad women and bearded men chanting slogans like ‘Death to infidels’? But none of these fine, sensitive Muslims can be seen protesting when there’s an attack on innocent civilians – Ahmadis or others – by the extremists?

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Many Pakistanis routinely continue to deny the fact that the monsters behind all ‘faithful’ barbarism cutting this country into bits are the mutant products of what our own state and society have been up to in the past 30 years or so. For years a convoluted narrative has been circulated by the state, the clerics, schools and now the electronic media: Pakistan was made in the name of Islam (read, a theocratic state).

Thus, only Muslims (mainly orthodox Sunnis, shall we say?) have the right to rule, run and benefit from this country. ‘Minority’ religions and ‘heretical’ sects living as Pakistani citizens are not to be trusted. They need to be constitutionally, socially and culturally isolated. Parliamentary democracy can’t be trusted either. It unleashes ethnic forces, ‘corruption’ and undermines the role of the military and that of Islam in the state’s make-up. It threatens the ‘unity’ of the country — a unity based on an unrealistically homogeneous understanding of Islam (mainly concocted by the state and its right-wing allies). Most of our political, economic and social ills are due to the diabolical conspiracies hatched by our many enemies (especially India, Israel and the West).

The bad news is that such beliefs are symptomatic of a society that has started to respond enthusiastically to the major symptoms of fascist thought. Symptoms such as a xenophobic exhibition of nationalism; disdain for recognition of human rights; identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause; supremacy of the military (might); obsession with national security; intertwining of religion and government; disdain for intellectual thought and the arts, and an obsession with crime and punishment.