Breaking the monopoly on religion

Amaar Ahmad

In Pakistan today, very few can genuinely challenge the hateful sermons of self-righteous Mullahs. Voices that call for reason, moderation and universal human fraternity appear weak when confronted with the fire-breathing preaching of these religious parties. The state apparatus seems vulnerable and cautious whenever challenged by any party that uses a religious excuse for street violence or a puritanical argument for a perverted purpose. So sentimental are our sensibilities to religious affiliations and ‘ghairat’ that anyone that calls for a rational discourse can be labeled a traitor or blasphemer. There is no priesthood in Islam yet our masses remain pitifully attached to religious scholars who act as if they have been commissioned by God.

This problem is partly because of the lack of religious understanding both in the wider public and in the intellectual circles. Intellectual surrender of religion has gradually led the society to loose its values and state its authority to vagabonds. As a result, the civil society is unable to collectively confront the religious narrative as presented by our mainstream ‘Islamic’ parties and which holds great sway in the masses. Because the understanding of religion has been left to obscurantists so too have been our wits. If the Ulema can exploit this weakness to arouse base passions to seize Christian property in Gojra and false promises of paradise to turn madrassa students into suicide attackers, why would not the wider public blame ‘outside’ forces for our internal problems?
Our surrender begins the moment we let a Mullah define who is and who is not a Muslim. When we let him do that, he initiates the next level of proceedings; the declaration of apostasy. In his eyes, Shias, Ahmadis or even Sunnis who do not ‘toe the line’ fall outside the pale of Islam and hence become apostates. The Mullah considers that Islam proscribes death as a punishment for apostasy. Therefore such Muslims with ‘false’ and ‘ghumrah’ beliefs deserve to be killed. The argument gets even better; since helping infidels is against Islam, any Muslim who helps apostates becomes an apostate and deserves a similar fate. Furthermore, since a Muslim cannot remain married to an apostate, his or her nikah is annulled as well. This is essentially the view of our Mullahs of how to deal with anyone they deem Kafir. Their argument is foolproof and leaves no escape for the ‘infidels’. Thus with the pronouncement of their fatwa, a person who believes in one God and Prophet Muhammad (sw) can potentially be reduced to a pitiful status.The murder of the spirit of religion therefore begins the moment we allow an ‘Alim’ to dictate our God-given faculty to sift right from wrong and adjudicate matters of faith on our behalf. Mohsin Hamid in ‘Fear and silence’ (Dawn June 27, 2010) similarly argued that such a stage-by-stage and relentless logic of Mullahs allows them to silence anyone. Even political heavyweights like Nawaz Sharif then cannot escape this black hole when challenged for calling Ahmadis brothers.

It is high time to give the Mullahs a taste of their medicine. Little do our educated and informed classes realize that each argument which the Mullah presents can be easily defeated from Quran and Sunnah (and without necessarily needing help from a humanist or liberal perspective). Since our masses are deeply affiliated to religion, it ought to be religious arguments that have the potential to break the spell of the dark magic our religious parties have cast.
No Mullah has any right to redefine a ‘Muslim’ for the ‘purposes of law and constitution’ which Prophet Muhammad has already done so. Secondly, no Mullah has any right to pass a fatwa of death against any former Muslim who no longer wishes to remain within Islam – a right which God has given to mortals for this life. For starters, the bogus logic of the Mullahs is dispelled from the Quran very clearly:

1. “There is no coercion in matters of religion” (2:256 )
2. “Whoever chooses to believe let him believe and whoever chooses to disbelieve let him disbelieve” (18:29)
3. “Your religion is for you and my religion is for me” (109:6)
4. “And revile not those deities whom they call upon beside Allah” (6:108)

The above verses should serve as a stimulus to the collective mindset of Muslims. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s current constitution is a far cry from Islam’s commandments and Jinnah’s wishes. The need of the hour is to return to Jinnah’s call for a state where Muslims, Hindus and others cease to become anything but citizens of the state for the purposes of the state. That would also explain why Jinnah had to invoke the moral and ethical teachings of Islam to urge on the citizens of the new state. Instead of reading his statements in a puritanical light they have to be taken in the right spirit – that earthly laws that legislate matters between man and God cannot be allowed. Today that would be possible when a large segment of society begins to sincerely apply its own mind and realize the demagoguery in the name of religion.