PAYING THE PRICE

Exploring Religious Extremism, Misogyny, Transphobia & Class Apartheid in Present-Day Pakistan

by

Muneeb Qadir

Daastan Publishing 2024

First Published in Pakistan by Daastan PVT LTD

House # A-41, Madni Street, Lala Rukh, Wah Cantt, Punjab 47040

www.daastan.com

www.meraqissa.com

Text copyrights © Muneeb Qadir

Book Design copyright © Muneeb Qadir

Edited by: Mariam Rizvi

The moral rights of the writer, illustrator and editor have been asserted.

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This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-969-696- 945-7

eISBN 978-969-696-944-0

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The ‘B’ Word

Chapter 2: Mera Jism Meri Marzi

Chapter 3: Jaagi Jaagi Moorat Jaagi

Chapter 4: Class Apartheid In Pakistan

Conclusion: How Did We Get Here?

Introduction

I was a final year Law Student. The date was 4^th January 2011. Out of nowhere I got to hear of the assassination of the then Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. In my small circle, everyone that I knew expressed shock at the news. The shock stemmed not only from the ‘reason’ behind the assassination but also from the brutal way in which the Governor had been murdered in broad daylight. He had been shot with 27 bullets by his own bodyguard. Why? Because he had been advocating for the release of a Christian Pakistani woman accused under Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws. The Governor of Punjab had been campaigning for law reform and his words and intentions had been twisted by the mainstream electronic media. For journalists whose income and relevance and popularity depended upon sensationalist reporting, there were no scruples that guided their work. Only ‘numbers’, i.e. ‘ratings’ mattered. The stage was set for the inevitable; The brutal yet unsurprising assassination that took place that day.

For a politically unaware Law Student as I was at that time, this was enough to acquaint me with the ‘price’ one had to pay for going against the tide in a country such as Pakistan. You may be an industrialist turned Governor of the country’s most populous province, not even your economic and political power could protect you from that dreaded ‘B’ word which haunts every single Pakistani every single minute of their lives. You were refused a job? Just accuse your potential employer of the ‘B’ word. You got rejected by the person you wanted to marry? Just accuse that person of the ‘B’ word. You want to get rid of a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court[1]? Just accuse them of the ‘B’ word and you’d have your revenge. That was my first moment of realization as an ordinary member of the public; the realization that we were all walking on a tightrope where we could all potentially be the next one, waiting to be accused, waiting to have the mob unleashed on us.

If that weren’t enough, my moment of truth came when I saw that many people whom I had been acquainted with, COMPLETELY endorsed Governor Taseer’s killing. When I opened my Facebook account, I saw a post from a boy who used to be my classmate in A Levels. Now, when I say ‘A Levels’, one can make an obvious guess that I’m talking about an elite, private educational institution in a country where not many can afford pursuing British educational qualifications. When I say, ‘A Levels’, one can think of words like ‘modern education’ (whether that is true or not is an entirely another debate). So, my A Levels classmate’s Facebook post was one in which he had shared a video of the Governor’s assassin in jail, with the most obsessive look in his eyes, taking immense pride in what he had done. The caption on the post said, ‘Sher Mard’ (Lion Man). My jaw literally dropped. This particular former class fellow of mine who had made the Facebook post used to sit with me in the English Literature lessons. His other subjects of study included Arts and he had taken admission in an Arts College, something that was deemed to be fairly rare for male students to pursue. To think that a boy who used to sit in the same classroom as me, who had many female friends, who seemed fairly ‘tolerant’ and ‘moderate’ and who was inclined towards the arts & literature, was celebrating and glorifying a cold-blooded murder completely turned my perception of the world upside down.

Later that day, when my best friend and I expressed our thoughts to each other regarding the news of the Punjab Governor’s assassination, in a very disturbed voice he told me, ‘You know what my mother said when she heard the news on TV? She said, “Why did he bother shooting him 27 times? Could have achieved the aim with just one shot”’. I could sense from my friend’s voice that he was visibly shaken by his mother’s complete apathy towards something so blatantly violent. In our own ways, we were both experiencing the uncomfortable feeling that our whole lives were a lie. In my family and social circle, who are fairly tolerant, everyone had been advising one another ‘Not to speak a word on this topic’, which once again, to my mind, to the mind of an undergraduate student, was a brutal reminder of the extent of the slippery slope that we were all treading on.

I had gathered that the majority of the Pakistani public had sympathized with the assassin; There were video clips circulating online of Salman Taseer’s murderer being showered with rose petals or garlanded by lawyers and the police and bystanders at large. That allowed me a glimpse into knowing that if there was one thing that the majority in my country were certainly not agreed upon, it was this foundational principle which I have observed to prevail in societies considered to be ‘safe and stable’; If someone’s beliefs or personal lifestyle choices do not pose threat of physical violence to others or to the state, then others or the state have no right to deny that unarmed, non-violent person’s most basic rights to life & liberty.

Thus started my interest in identifying those who are most vulnerable to mob sentiments at the hands of a majority which has been dangerously indoctrinated for decades. Those who are potential prey to mob violence and vigilantism are the ones whom no one would want to talk about, either because one agrees with and endorses their victimization or otherwise, one is too scared to speak out against the prevailing mindset. This book explores 4 situations which I have personally observed to display humanity at its most dangerously intolerant form in a country as complex and precarious as Pakistan: Religious extremism, misogyny, transphobia and class-based discrimination. There is a great deal of intersectionality between the issues I have addressed in this book and by the time you have completed reading my labour of love, I hope that you, dear reader, shall be able to get a holistic view of just how different forms of injustice feed into each other in creating a society that is unequal, dysfunctional, exploitative and where abuse of power goes absolutely unchecked. If this book makes you feel anything remotely resembling sadness or aversion or frustration, I’d consider it as having served its purpose. Lest it be thought that this book is banking upon negativity (after all, sadness, aversion and frustration are all negative feelings, are they not?), then just know that acquainting yourself with unpleasant sensations is not always negative but can act as a catalyst for change and to move you to want to change the prevailing injustices is the larger aim of this book.

CHAPTER 1: The ‘B’ Word

uch ink has been spilt over the roots of religious extremism in Pakistan. Some blame the Former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for caving into the demands of the religious rightwing in making certain Constitutional Amendments whilst others blame Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation policies which resulted in several amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) leading to the introduction of new offences with severe penalties whereas many other suggest that the roots of religious extremism had been sown much earlier. Regardless of where one points their fingers at, this much is true that religious extremism has become quite entrenched within the Pakistani society, so much so that everyone lives under a constant threat of the public’s religious sentiments being weaponized against them. The question is: How did we get here?

Identity plays a huge role in shaping up people’s collective attitudes. Pakistan came into being in 1947 based on the Two-Nation Theory, i.e. the perception of the Muslims of the subcontinent as a distinct people in the Hindu-majority India which necessitated the creation of a separate homeland. Immediately upon the 1947 Partition of India, the Muslim-majority Pakistan and its people had to decide how their common religious identity had to be placed within state politics. Decades of debates and constitutional amendments and legislative measures later, the country came to be known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as is declared in the 1973 Constitution. Although the Islamic nature of the Republic had been determined long ago, the challenge of defining and ensuring the Republic’s Islamic character remained to be completed.

One of the ways in which this was achieved was through an Amendment to the Constitution in 1974 where the Parliament had agreed upon the constitutional definition of a ‘non-Muslim’; the first ever Constitution to do that. One particular community which had been included in the definition of ‘non-Muslims’ eventually found their very existence criminalized through later amendments to the PPC introduced under the self-proclaimed religiously devout military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime in the 1980s. Sections were introduced to the PPC stipulating a 3 year prison sentence or fine or both for members of the ‘Quadiani’ (a term regarded as derogatory by those identifying as Ahmadis) group if they were to [among other things] term their places of worship ‘Masjid’ or their calls to prayer ‘Azan’. Additionally, these amendments also made it a criminal offence for members of the said community to be preaching or propagating their faith. So, for example if parents belonging to the said religious group were to raise their child within their own faith-based system, they would technically be ‘propagating their faith’ which means that the parents shall be exposed to 3 years’ prison sentence.

Hence, one understands the connection between this gradual law-reform process and how it enabled the ever-increasing marginalization of members of one specific community, whose status as citizens of the country remains uncertain. Are they entitled to avail the rights accorded to religious minorities? If not, then would that not be contrary to Pakistan’s international law obligations under Article 16 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which states that ‘Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law’? If they are regarded as religious minorities, then the question is, whether their rights to protection of life under Article 6 of the ICCPR and Article 9 of the Constitution of Pakistan are being protected? If not, then this amounts to members of the community being reduced to non-entities in the eyes of the law, thus contravening binding provisions of international and national law.

Further Amendments that were made to the PPC introduced offences of strict liability making it a criminal offence to ‘defile, damage or desecrate’ sacred religious texts while other aspects of these legal amendments made it an offence, some even punishable by death, to ‘defile the name’ of Holy Personages. Many of these legal amendments did not require any proof of mens rea (A legal term used to define the level of criminal intent that needs to be proven before conviction. This requirement before a finding of guilt is considered a touchstone feature of due process rights of an accused) or ‘fault’ element on part of the accused. For example, with regards to these offences, the law only states that ‘anyone who by written or spoken words or directly or indirectly, commits’ the various prohibited acts mentioned in Chapter XV of the PPC, would automatically be liable to death penalty or life imprisonment or to imprisonment of varying terms. Hence, no defence of insanity or lack of intent would relieve the accused of criminal liability and in the severest of scenarios, the death sentence.

Given this overview of the provisions in the PPC, one can understand the role of legislative enactments in cementing social attitudes regarding religious matters and how these empower non-state actors into taking the law into their own hands. It’s not just the society which shapes up the law but the law also, in its turn, shapes up the collective social consciousness. Therefore, whenever somebody falls prey to mob lynching or extrajudicial killing in the name of religion, there is a feeling among the masses that ‘It was justified’ or ‘When the law fails to be enforced, people will be motivated to take the law into their own hands’.

Collectively, this institutionalization of vigilante justice has resulted in an endless cycle of violence leaving no one in the country safe from being the next in line to face religiously motivated violence. Typically, what happens is that to settle your scores against your rival, you would accuse somebody of committing religious offences under the aforementioned legal provisions. Two possibilities could flow from thereon.

1. Members of the public would have recourse to the law and complain to the police. The police WILL HAVE TO register a First Information Report (FIR) because if they don’t, they would themselves be exposed to allegations of ‘protecting a blasphemer’. Without any concrete evidence, the police would therefore have to register an FIR. When the case would be brought in a court of law, the judges would be scared for their lives, and they would either convict the accused without any concrete evidence or they would delay handing down a verdict in the case. Evidence wouldn’t even be looked at because a repetition of the alleged blasphemy would count as blasphemy itself. Lawyers would be terrified of representing an accused in such a case, especially when previously lawyers have faced violent attacks on their person whenever they have sought to represent the accused.
2. Alternatively, an angry mob of hundreds and thousands of men & women (mostly, but not exclusively, men) would find out and kill the accused with their own hands and people at large, including many of the law enforcement officials, would be scared to disapprove of such mob ‘justice’ so as not to be seen as sympathetic towards the accused. Chances are that majority of law enforcers might even be in complete agreement with the actions of the mobs.

An example of the phenomenon mentioned above can be gleaned from what had happened in 2020 in a Peshawar court. When a defendant accused of committing offences against religion had been brought to stand trial in court, a man gunned him down on court premises in broad daylight and the judge ran away from the premises. Later, the lawyers and police officers present in the surroundings had applauded the murderer for his ‘bravery’ and took selfies with him. Even politicians, from both the then ruling party as well as from among the opposition parties (even a prominent film actor ‘saluted’ the murderer[2]) had changed their social media account display pictures to that of the newly proclaimed ‘Ghazi’ (‘Warrior’).

Politicians, even from ‘centrist, mainstream’ parties have always fueled such sentiments by capitalizing on Pakistani public’s sensitivities over religious matters, making references to words like ‘Qadianis’ even where there is no relevance to the topic under discussion. Raising moral panic over religious matters has proven to be immensely useful for political leaders in the country because it helps them evade accountability when faced with hard questions over their performance (or lack thereof) regarding complex matters such as handling of the economy, provision of access to welfare facilities for the masses and delivering on their promises to the people, etc. So, the moment a Government and its members are faced with tough questions on issues such as inflation or unemployment or lack of access to healthcare or access to justice, they would immediately distract from these very real issues and come up with the announcement of a new policy of protecting the nation’s religious values from ‘hostile forces’ or the introduction of a religious exam for eligibility to receive University degrees or a change in the wordings of the marriage contract, i.e. Nikahnama to ensure the protection of matters related to faith. Playing with the emotions of a religious society in this way, politicians and leaders can easily deflect attention away from their failures to produce concrete results on practical matters which impact upon lives of millions of people living below poverty line. This explains the interest that the political elite has in maintaining the status quo.

However, this comes at a direct cost to unsuspecting, unarmed, everyday people, who find that their lives tend to be resting on extremely precarious foundations where all it takes is just ONE accusation to undo everything they’ve built their lives upon. Hence, we’ve seen a lawyer being jailed at the complaint of a mob because he used the name ‘Syed’[3]. We have seen raids being carried out with the cooperation of the law enforcement agencies into the homes of members belonging to certain religious communities in the run up to Eid-ul-Adha to ensure that no sacrificial animals were kept in the private properties of those who were barred from celebrating the religious festive occasion. Seeing video footage of Ahmadis’ graves and places of worship being desecrated by angry mobs is a routine sight to behold on social media.

The interesting thing is that not just religious minorities, but even Sunni and Shia Muslims living in Pakistan risk death under unsubstantiated allegations of committing offences against religion. In 2017, Mashal Khan, a University student had been killed by fellow students in his hostel/student accommodation building after putting up a social media post which was deemed to be blasphemous by the charged mob. After his murder, the police had concluded that his social media post was not blasphemous after all.

What one sees is a state machinery held hostage to the whims of angry mobs; A state machinery which has lost its monopoly over violence, having to succumb to the pressures of religiously charged violent mobs. In February 2023, a 45-year-old man Muhammad Waris had been accused of blasphemy offence in Nankana Sahib. The police tried preventing his killing, but the mob had managed to break into the police station and dragged out the accused, beating him to death. The police were powerless.

Just to get a glimpse into the extent to which the state apparatus itself has become hostage to extremist mobs, the example from 2021 is particularly instructive. In April 2021, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) brought the entire country to a standstill after the then PTI led Government had failed to fulfill its promise to expel the French Ambassador from the country. The unrest started owing to series of offensive drawings published in France which was repeatedly highlighted by the PTI Government in their social media posts and public statements. This antagonized the Pakistani masses so much so that the TLP came into ‘action’. They had decided that something had to be done, hence they demanded that the PTI Government expel the French Ambassador. What had started out as a political ploy on the PTI’s part to deflect attention from criticism of their troubled Government had turned against them with the most unintended consequences. The Government had known all along that expelling the French Ambassador would diplomatically be impossible for a country which ultimately rests upon foreign aid and IMF loans for survival. Alienating France would mean alienating the EU (and the GSP+ Status Pakistan enjoys in its trade relations with the bloc) and the Western world (with its economic and diplomatic might) at large. All the whipping up of popular sentiment in relation to the events in France was done by the PTI purely for political reasons which had now backfired.

However, it was now too late to undo what the Government itself had started. So, when the deadline for expelling the French Ambassador had crossed, members of the TLP took to the streets and protested violently, breaking down shops, burning public places, issuing threats to Government Ministers and using deadly violence against police officers. The State apparatus was helpless. Despite arresting TLP protesters both in April 2021 and then again in October 2021, the Government of that time had not only later released TLP leadership from prison but members of the then ruling party welcomed the TLP Chairman with bouquet of flowers, promising seat-adjustment in Parliament with the same group they had just been apparently fighting[4].

Interestingly, whilst the PTI led Government had briefly cracked down on TLP members, it was members of the Opposition Parties, PML-N and PPP who issued sympathetic statements towards the TLP[5]. Why? Because it was politically expedient for them to add to the public resentment against the Government. In fact, such political point scoring using the religion card is a very common feature in Pakistani politics. Previously, when the same TLP had carried out extremely violent protests against the then PML-N led Federal Government in 2017, the PTI (which was in Opposition) lent absolute moral support to them in their religiously motivated rightwing agenda and used the TLP’s street power to bring down the PML-N regime. Political opportunism based on the ‘blasphemy card’ has proven to be the go-to formula for politicians. Mian Javed Latif of PML-N had accused Imran Khan of being ‘Qadiani’ in 2022 whereas the PTI had run a concerted campaign to accuse the Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa of blasphemy in 2024 when the latter had issued a verdict allowing the bail of an accused who had been in prison for allegedly publishing ‘prohibited literature’. The fact that their incendiary words stirring a radicalized public’s religious sentiments could cost people their lives is no deterrence for Pakistani politicians. Their world of politics is a ruthless one where there are absolutely no scruples, but all is fair in pursuing one’s political aims and objectives.

It is owing to these factors that the country keeps falling deeper into the dark abyss of extremism with each passing day. Every man and woman on the street has become empowered in weaponizing a whole nation’s collective paranoia into the deadliest form of vigilante ‘justice’. On 16^th August 2023, desecrated pages of sacred scriptures had been placed outside the private properties of Christian communities in Jaranwala which gave religious mobs the perfect excuse to burn Christian community’s houses and churches in hundreds. The Government, lawmakers and the religious clergy ‘condemned’ the violence but that was a superficial, cosmetic step. You cannot be expressing shock and horror over the occurrence of something which you have yourself enabled. More candid was Pervez Khattak’s reaction, the former Defence Miniser under the PTI Government, in the aftermath of the mob lynching of a Sri Lankan worker in 2021, when he stated that ‘emotions of youngsters got hurt’ and hence, the former Defence Minister appeared to justify or at least ‘humanize’ the reaction of the mob that had displayed their most violent tendencies in Sialkot.

A country where life is so precarious and fragile, where an accusation can be weaponized so easily, can hardly have a healthy economy. What confidence would potential foreign investors have in a country where mobs hold sway over Government policies? Security is one of the most basic guarantees that potential foreign investors and their personnel would want to seek when engaging with any country. Unfortunately, up till now (let’s hope it might change in the future), events of the past have been less than reassuring, to put it mildly.