pakistanis, control and conspiracies

Conspiracy theories, a study recently presented in the magazine "Science" has found, are likely to be believed by people whenever they feel they are not in control. For outsiders following Pakistani media, it would seem Pakistanis definitely feel they have no control over their country. Conspiracy theories, wherever the war in the tribal areas is discussed. Most popular is the search for a "foreign hand" behind the militancy. It's quite common these days to hear a TV host, such as Javed Chaudhary on "Express TV", tell his viewers:

It's a fact that weapons and technology for the war in the tribal areas are coming from Russia. Russia is providing large amounts of ammunition and explosives which are brought to Mazar-e-Sharif via Iran. And from there into the Pakistani tribal areas. In Pakistan, commandos have been arrested who were no Muslims, who eat dogs' and cats' meat and drink alcohol.

Well, personally I find it difficult to imagine the tribal areas full of dog-eating foreign agents, but there are definitely more extreme characters on Pakistani TV. Take Zaid Hamid, for example, who runs a think tank and a series of programs on News1 channel, both called "Brass Tacks". He presents a totally closed and confused view of the world in which everything can be explained logically - and which is full of enemies of Pakistan - such as India, obviously, with whom a final showdown is inevitable, according to Zaid Hamid. Who, almost needless to say, has lots of fans...

In two recent articles in the Pakistani daily "The News", Fasi Zaka has criticized some of this hate speech which is freely published in the Pakistani media. About Zaid Hamid, he writes:

In this postmodern world where people have surrendered a good deal of their intimate freedoms to impersonal institutions, where the interlinked nexus of governments and corporations creates ripples that people find difficult to understand, the conspiracy theorist takes the easy way out by assuming that all events are at the hands of a secret few. Despite the invalidity of these theses, they have staying power because they offer no proof, and hence they cannot be disproved, especially if they are the product of a paranoid imagination. Common to most of these conspiracy theories is 'de-individualization', which is lumping people into impersonal groups and taking their humanity away from them. That's what Zaid Hamid does when he rants about the inferiority of Hindus, the inherent evil nature of Jews or Pakistani leaders he disagrees with. He neglects to realize that his method is what also drove the neoconservatives in creating a world in their own ethnocentric image and in the killing fields of Iraq.

All of this is not without its negative fallout. As Fasi Zaka rightly points out,

crucially, what people like Zaid Hamid do is hurt the process of self-reflection which is needed. Why look inwards for self-improvement if it is someone else's fault?

The only way out would seem to be transparency. As long as people feel no control at all, that not even their most basic questions are answered, many will be ready to believe anything...

islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism

A day after another horrible suicide bomb attack, this time at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, I'd like to quote here some of the last words of a book I just finished: "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple. It's a remarkable work about the uprising in India, in Delhi 1857 against the British, which failed and in the end brought down the Mughal dynasty. Dalrymple points out that the British (wrongly) branded this revolt as a kind of global Muslim conspiracy, whereas it was in fact an uprising within the British Indian army which was mostly made up of high-caste Hindus. But this idea of the "Muslim conspiracy" and its fallout have, in hindsight, had dramatic implications for Hindu-Muslim relations in South Asia and probably also for the global relationship between the West and the Muslim world. I cannot go into all the details - you have to read the 500 pages yourselves - just one more explanation before the quote: Dalrymple contrasts the narrow-minded British approach with the tolerant ways of the Mughal court and its last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Today, West and East again face each other uneasily across a divide that many see as religious war. Jihadis again fight what they regard as a defensive action against their Christian enemies, and again innocent women, children and civilians are slaughtered. As before, Western Evangelical politicians are apt to cast their opponents and enemies in the role of 'incarnate fiends' and conflate armed resistance to invasion and occupation with 'pure evil'. Again Western countries, blind to the effect their foreign policies have on the wider world, feel aggrieved to be attacked - as they interpret it - by mindless fanatics. 

Against this bleak dualism, there is much to value in Zafar's peaceful and tolerant attitude to life; and there is also much to regret in the way that the British swept away and rooted out the late Mughals' pluralistic and philosophically composite civilisation.

As we have seen in our own time, nothing threatens the liberal and moderate aspect of Islam so much as aggressive Western intrusion and interference in the East, just as nothing so dramatically radicalises the ordinary Muslim and feeds the power of the extremists: the histories of Islamic fundamentalism and Western imperialism have, after all, often been closely, and dangerously, intertwined. There are clear lessons here.