Pakistan’s State of Nature

By AA Khalid
The Hobbesian Narrative
Hobbes is perhaps the most important political philosopher Pakistanis concerned about their country should be reading. Of course it will require a ‘’Desification’’ (or ‘’Pakistanization) of the man’s central work, ‘’The Leviathan’’. The Islamic tradition too has works of political philosophy, we think of Al Farabi, who applied the utopian understanding of Plato’s Republic (the rule of the Philosopher King) to the prophetic experience of the Prophet of Islam as a pre-eminent example.
Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajja were more realistic if not pessimistic about politics than Farabi’s enthusiastic application of political Platonism. In fact Tufayl and Bajja seek to return to another strand of the Platonic tradition which is more pessimistic and realistic. For Plato knowledge was power and that is why the Philosopher the individual who possessed that greatest of intellect should rule and be king. However, in another tradition of Platonic theorizing, it is realised the great Philosopher is corrupted by the machinations of politics and inevitably his ideals are sacrificed at the altar of political power. Ibn Bajja’s The Governance of the Solitary is such a work, which is concerned about securing the happiness and integrity of the philosopher in the midst of corruption and strife. Or what about that great philosophical novel, ‘’Hayy ibn Yaqazan’’, where the hero of the philosopher Hayy realises that the greatest and most profound truths of philosophy and faith can never find practical application in the real world because as is the case in modern politics the politican will always manipulate simplistic and populist emotion against the beautifully constructed systems of the philosopher. Both Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajja conclude that the philosopher must isolate himself from the world and inevitably the great truths of the sages, philosophers, mystics and rationalists will never find true expression in the real world. To pursue the ‘’Platonic Ideal’’ is a vain pursuit.
There are other great philosophers to consider such as Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina. Likewise, we should consider the Islamic tradition as part of the Greek tradition of political philosophy.
But Hobbes’s work speaks with a profound resonance that one can find etched into Pakistan’s political history. Hobbes ‘’philosophical anthropology’’ shaped his pessimistic consideration of human nature and gave the moral substance of his liberalism. Whereas liberalism is always associated with an optimistic faith in human progress and reason, Hobbes’s liberalism is born out of the trials and tribulations of human suffering and existential pessimism.
This passage that Hobbes wrote in the Leviathan postulating about the existence of mankind in a ‘’State of Nature’’ has profound meaning for Pakistanis struggling to make sense of the anaemic civic and democratic organs of the Pakistani State:
‘’Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’’
And:
‘’ Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.’’
But we can take issue with Hobbes’s assertion that life is ‘’solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’’. Life in Pakistan is anything but solitary, in a country where clan, tribe and ethnicity as well as feudal and class status (not to mention the existence of the Pakistani caste system) life is a constant trial of membership and trust that one must invest with their respective social group to make any sort of living. Life therefore is poor, nasty, brutish and short but it is not solitary. In Pakistan life is communal and it is from this communality that we derive the brutality, the destruction and the conflict. It is a constant conflict between different groups of the social structure rather than individuals.
As such with the absence of the modern nation state and the rule of law these groups operate virtually in a state of war as seen in the ethnic sectarianism tearing apart Karachi. Pakistan internally is in a neo-Hobbesian state of war. Neo-Hobbesian because the communal dimension of Pakistani public life is something not touched upon by Hobbes, but it is a perfectly logical extension to make.
Absence of Ideology
The failure in Pakistan is a failure of ideology – because there never has been a free exchange of ideas in Pakistan, there never has been any ideological contestation. The major sources of party conflicts in politics are found in family feuds, feudal rivalries and ethnic division. The major conflict in Pakistani politics is between the Zardari/Bhutto clan and the Sharif brothers. There is no universal ideological narrative – everything is constructed on the basis of family name, feudal affiliation and ethnic status. In Pakistan civil war is played out in the democratic process – it is perhaps the formality of the electoral process which prevents outright intra-warfare between different social groups. The party system in Pakistan reflects the essentially tribal nature of Pakistani political culture.
As such labels such as ‘’secular’’, ‘’liberal’’, ‘’progressive’’, ‘’democratic’’ and other categories of modern political philosophy make no sense when applied to Pakistani politics. It is fruitless to talk about ‘’liberals’’ v ‘’conservatives’’ because that was never the conflict in Pakistan.
As such the reductive and simplistic schemes put forward by some commentators on the role of religion in Pakistani public life is unfounded. The great strife and crisis of the Pakistani State has never been to do with religion directly but rather the failure to establish a civic identity and a workable nation-state. It is the machinations of clan, tribe, ethnicity, feudalism and class that determine the major urban conflicts in Pakistan. Religion has been fused with the Machiavellianism of the Pakistani Army to stay in control – religion has always been used cynically in Pakistani society. But if we even imagined a Pakistan without Islam the same problems would still exist today. That is because religious extremism in Pakistan is something not organic to traditional Pakistani society – it has taken a generation of social engineering by the Pakistani Army to produce the sort of religious extremism we see today and still the religious parties in this country do not have any success in the political process. Observers such as Tariq Ali have noted that it is amazing that a theocratic Islamist revolution has not taken over Pakistan given the socio-economic crippling of the Pakistani state, the theological depravity and social engineering of the Army.
Religious radicalism in Pakistan is anarchic it simple exists not only to overthrow the State but undermine the whole structural logic of the Pakistani Hobbesian scheme. The religious radicals can never be successful in taking over Pakistan because of the culture of feudal, ethnic politics and patronage that not only acts as a buffer against religious extremism but also against liberal reforms.
From Geneva to Islamabad
Pakistan is neither a theocracy, a democracy nor any other discernable modern political organism. It is a neo-Hobbesian creature that trundles along with the social glue provided by ethnicity, provincialism, feudal patronage, Army intervention, tribal affiliation and all the associated pre-modern forms of deliberation, negotiation and conflict that defines everyday Pakistani life.
The real crux of the matter in Pakistan is not the unsustainable and in many ways imported religious radicalism from the hard shores of the House of Saud – because this form of extremism is anarchic and in many ways resembles the untenable experiments of European puritans such as Calvin.
Today we see the city of Geneva as the quintessential embodiment of European secularism and social democracy. But Geneva was once the theocratic stronghold of the Protestant Reformation under Calvin. Calvin’s new and charismatic brand of Protestant faith challenged the clerical authority of the Catholic Church but only so that he could implement his vision of clerical rule.
In Calvin’s theocracy we find the same sort of puritanical measures carried out by the modern day Taliban and Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia. A ban on the arts, culture, freedom of expression and an emphasis on strict religious observance which was forced and an insistence on keeping to laws of blasphemy. Calvinism too was based on an absolute and literal understanding of the sovereignty of God and in many ways this deviated from classical Christian understanding as does the understand of the Wahabbi theologians today which echoes the anarchistic theology of the early Kharijites.
The Kharijite understanding was shunned by the classical tradition of Islamic philosophy and law but it nevertheless has had influence on the modern theocratic Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb and Maududi. Where else did the popular slogan of, ‘’ ‘La hukm illa lillah’’come from, which was the essential creed of the Kharijites. This completely went against the teaching on human agency, human fallibility and the imperfection of human nature taught not only by the Sufi mystics, later Islamic philosophers but also by legal theorists like Abu Hanifa who always accepted that his judgements were only fallible opinions and that people could always challenge his legal rulings.
This brief comparative illustration indicates that modern Islam is undergoing a crisis of authority and many of the actions and beliefs seen today in the Muslim World go against the conclusions and scholastic method of the classical Islamic tradition.
From Utopian Ashes To Religious Secularism
Today we are seeing a total breakdown of classical Islam and we should accept that the classical Islamic tradition is all but dead. What has replaced it is a scary and shallow populist charisma espoused by the likes of Maududi and Qutb who never received rigorous classical Islamic training. In many ways the memberships of the theocratic Islamist followers surprisingly come from secular backgrounds. The vast majority of Islamist movements today are not made up of clerics but rather from Muslims with a secular background who are doctors, lawyers and middle class professionals.
But out of the failures of Protestant utopianism and I believe out of the ashes of Pakistan’s unusually violent brand of anarchic theocratic Islamism will arise a religious secularity. American theologians like Roger Williams and European religious intellectuals like John Locke realised out of experience and applying Hobbes philosophical anthropology that Church and State had to be separated to save religion from power hungry tyrants. In the end what can and what is emerging throughout the Muslim World is a distinctly religious understanding of secularism.
A religious logic of secularism arises out of the ashes of religious utopianism. The European experience and more so the American experiences document how religious traditions articulated the powerful moral intuitions associated with liberty, democracy and secularism. It was the success of the theologians and religious intellectuals of America particularly that popularised an accessible understanding of democracy, secularism and liberty.
It is a fact of life as Bertrand Russell said, ‘’ The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.’’
The social contract theory of the Enlightenment theorists and philosophers is not the reason why most Americans have a deep moral attachment to democracy and liberty. It is because the religious traditions of American have powerfully articulated the moral values required for democratic practice, citizenship skills and given ideas of liberty and secularism a deep moral significance for many Americans. For many like de Tocqueville in his work ‘’Democracy in America’’, it is the biblical theory of Covenant rather than social contract theory which affirms democracy in the hearts and minds of many Americans.
Fundamentalism – A Product of Modernity
As Ashish Nandy has remarked modern day religious fundamentalist movements mark a total break from the scholastic and theological traditionalism of classical religious learning. Hindutva, Zionism , theocratic Islamism are all expression of identity politics couched in religious imagery by individuals who essentially come from secular backgrounds.
Theodor Herzl (the father of Zionism) and Maududi (father of Pakistani theocratic Islamism) were both journalists who came from secular backgrounds but gravitated towards being amateur theologians who mixed powerful religious imagery with clearly secular political goals. Fundamentalism as Khaled Abou El Fadl remarks is a an ‘’orphan of modernity’’.
We are passing through a period of breakdown in the history of Islam in the Pakistani region of the sub-continent. In India and other parts of the Muslim World the story is completely different. In other parts of the world such as Tunisia we have liberal theology flourishing with the likes of Rachid Al Ghannouchi who promote a form of Islamic liberalism. Egypt is more complex – because there are competing theologies such as the Salafis, Islamic liberals, Islamic constitutionalists, legalists, conservatives, pragmatists, reformers and followers of televangelists such as Amr Khaled. The conclusion is that every Muslim society is experiencing some sort of transformation but there are no grand sweeping narratives that can be imposed on each one. Pakistan is in many ways an anomaly in the Muslim World – there is only a crude form of religious anarchism, because the religious liberals and moderates have been persecuted through the instruments and proxies of the Army.
The Army’s State of Nature
The real problem in Pakistan is the role of the Army in public life. This is the elephant in the room that not many Pakistanis talk about. In the English press there are plenty of articles found on criticising the religious establishment but you will not find many criticising the Army directly.
The clerics and madrassas have marginal influence on the daily political discourse in Pakistan. The areas of concentrated political power do not reside with the clerics but within the fierce competition between different social groups. The decline and decay of Karachi is testament to this fact where ethnic sectarianism has destroyed the civic fabric of that city.
We have been looking at the wrong things. The powers of the clerics today, the rise of religious radicalism are all symptoms not causes. The causes lie in the peculiar logic of Pakistani political culture that frustrates and blocks any liberal reform, the causes lie in the failure of the political parties in Pakistan which are nepotistic and despotic, the cause lies in the failure of Pakistani democracy and with the fantastical success of the Pakistani Army that has managed to stay in power through any means necessary. The brutish and neo-Hobbesian nature of the Pakistani political and social fabric is the cause. The reason for today’s ills is because Pakistan has been in a ‘’State of Nature’’, where the sovereignty of the State has been replaced by the Machiavellian logic of Pakistani Army. The Army has played its role in staying in power magnificently by clearly understanding the social logic of the Pakistan and by manipulating the Islamist movements. But of late that tightrope of deceit that the Army tread along has unravelled but for all intents and purposes it seems the Army will consolidate its position again.
The sort of religious thinking present in Pakistan is a symptom of what has gone wrong rather than a cause. It is symptom of the post-colonial failures in Pakistan. When we speak to the older generation they remark with great astonishment the social transformations that have taken place when it comes to faith in Pakistan. The Army’s social engineering has fundamentally altered and distorted religious discourse in this country. Add to this new information from the Wikileaks cables which suggest that clerics in the Punjab have received millions of dollars of funding from the Saudis and UAE and you realise that much of the social transformations that have taken place with regards to faith have been all imported rather than the result of indigenous organic evolution.
The new Wikileaks Pakistan Papers documents the neo-Hobbesian nature of this nation in its full and unrelenting glory. Kayani calls for more drone attacks, Zardari treats the PPP as a play-thing and whoever pleases can come and buy up the allegiance of the Army for the right price of course. How else can we explain the millions of dollars pouring in from the Saudis and UAE into clerical institutions – this can only happen under the auspices of the Army.
Questioning needs to be directed at the centres of concentrated power in Pakistan – it is only recently that the clerics have become such a centre after decades of being sponsored by the Army. Pakistan is a hard country where the real dynamic forces are those of manipulation, ruthless power grabbing and cold calculated political consolidation. The Army and its Generals are ruthlessly utilitarian when it comes to how many Pakistani lives are lost – for them Pakistani lives are mere pennies in the grand calculus of profit.
Beyond the chaos there is a frightening control exerted by the Army, with General Kayani sitting as the unquestionable Pharaoh of Pakistan, who merely chuckles at the bickering of the civilian politicians and humours the democratic system. For all those calling for the Army to enter into a political settlement with civilian there is absolutely no incentive for the Army to do such a thing.