The moon gazers

Their stern looks put the fear of God into our hearts and make us tremble for our lives. We know that a shout from the pulpit can result in lynching, imprisonment or exile before any guilt is established and no law or institution can save us from the fury the holy men can generate in minutes.

In many ways, a Pakistani clergymen holds more power than a medieval king and they never hesitate to flaunt this authority. Having failed to capture the state, they have succeeded in becoming a state within the state – with no small help from the real deep state.

However, the holy month of Ramadan brings much-needed respite. For four weeks in a year, we are able to revive our centuries-old ‘joking relationship’ with the guardians of our souls. It is a month when they need us the most and we need them the least. They need us the most because it is the ‘season’ for them to make a large part of their annual earning. And we need them the least because in this month we feel more pious than them, with every fasting Pakistani acting and feeling like a little saint.

This month does not belong to bearded warriors like Maulana Munawar Hasan who find solutions to Pakistan’s problems in qatal-e-fi-Sabeel-lillah (murders to please the Almighty) in the country or Maulana Sheerani who are kind enough to grant us, the brave men of Pakistan, the right to lightly beat their wives to make them truly obedient. The month belongs to the moon gazers; and the real celebrities of the holy month are the likable duo of Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman and Mufti Abdur Rahim Popalzai. Every year around this time, they suddenly erupt on the scene like the monsoon clouds, bringing needed relief and smiles on our faces.

While it is hard to criticise the other type of holy men, this duo takes a lot of flak from people with a weak sense of humour. For example, the followers of Aligarh’s rationalist tradition become irritated – and irritating – because they want the lunar calendar to replace the practice of moon gazing. Like Maasai hunters, they want to snatch the hunt from a pack of lions but none of them have the courage to go anyway near the pride. After a century and a half of lost battles, they still fail to realise that science belongs to a realm that is different from the world of faith, symbols and rituals.

Then there are the nationalists, particularly the hyperactive journalists, who feel that to be a nation we must celebrate Eid on the same day. This line of thinking, adopted by the state itself, makes moon gazing a part of the national project. And as a result we have this great national institution, the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee (the Committee to Spot the Crescent Moon). The nationalists consider Mufti Popalzai the last stumbling block to achieving the goal of national unity. In their opinion, if Mufti Popalzai gave in to Mufti Muneeb, we would suddenly be one nation.

Luckily, Eid is not a national but a religious festival and every individual and community has a right to celebrate it according to their own beliefs and practices. Amongst the Muslims, the common ground is the festival of Eid, not celebrating Eid on the same day. No riots have ever been reported between people of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over celebrating Eid on different days – though there has been much bloodshed over other religious matters for which there are no committees.

The controversy is also a proof that all religious scholars cannot be true at the same time. If Mufti Muneeb and Mufti Popalzai gaze at the same moon, one of them has to be wrong. In other words, for some religious scholars to be right, many others have to be wrong and therefore we cannot be condemned to lynching in this world and hell fire in the afterlife if we agree with some guardians and disagree with others.

While our maulvis may appear all-powerful, they are caught in a downward spiral, constantly losing their turf to outsiders. For example, the consumers’ search for fusion between tradition and modernity has resulted in online aalims who masquerade as spiritualists but are in reality high priests of the free market – peddling kurtas, perfumes, shampoos and whatever can be sold. Their presence is a false reassurance to us that we have not gone astray and that it is okay to worship the idols of consumerism alongside the true Creator.

Perhaps even more dangerous than the traditional scholars are the self-taught and self-proclaimed religious aalims and muftis belonging to different professions and finding their place on the idiot box. They speak for the tribe of Islam without caring for its essence or message. Most political Islamists fall in this category. As French sociologist Oliver Roy maintains, contemporary Islamic radicalism has little to do with the traditional views of Islamic religious scholars, the ulema. Most ‘political Islamists’ are anticlerical intellectuals intent on finding ways to deal with the modern world.

Talal Asad, a leading anthropologist, defines orthodoxy as “not a mere body of opinion but a distinctive relationship-a relationship of power.” Blending theology with legal authority, our religious scholars want to have the final say over state and society. However, they have only ended up promoting anarchy, lawlessness and social degradation.

The ulema, due to their own failings, are witnessing their power and religious authority slipping from their hands; and the means they are using to cling on to their privileges is only expediting their fall. One great example is Hafiz Hamdullah’s obnoxious attack on Marvi Sirmed during a television show last week. Why shouldn’t people vote for the PTI instead of the JUI-F, if the mojo lies in humiliating your foes?

As we demanded that the military go back to the barracks during martial laws, we must demand the ulema go back to their cloisters and mosques to focus on their duty, not only for the sake of the nation and humanity but also to preserve whatever is left of their moral authority. They came to the bazaar claiming that they would reform it but today they are amongst the foremost traders, resisting any idea of reforms.

As Farid Younos notes, “The reason that Ulema have been given [a] distinguished place (in Islam) is because the ulema, or men of knowledge …are to be role models of ethics, morality, conduct, and values, for the whole society.”  Mawlana Wahiduddin Khan, a respected Indian religious scholar, notes in a paper titled ‘The Leadership Role of the ‘Ulema’’ , “the criterion of power has changed in the modern world: power is now measured in intellectual and technological terms, and this is the real basis on which Western societies have risen to and maintained their position of dominance in the world.

“The ulema, however have tended to conceive of this dominance exclusively in political terms, without understanding the profound changes of which it is the result. They have remained so much immersed in the political view of the world that the significance of other changes, or of the need to adapt themselves and their followers to those changes, has continued to escape them.”

The writer is an analyst with a background in media, public policy and development.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com Twitter: @zaighamkhan