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| India-Pakistan |
| Right-wing divided |
| 2017-12-16 |
| [DAWN] WHEN Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... made the umpteenth provocative policy statement of his presidency last week by declaring that the US would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel, it was reasonable to expect that the religious right across the Moslem world would front a ferocious reaction, with Pakistain no exception. Well, it hasn’t happened yet, at least not in our land of the pure. This is intriguing, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Faizabad dharna, which for many signalled the culmination of the religious right’s rise to a position of almost unchallenged cultural hegemony. Why has the religious lobby made no attempt to capitalise on a clearly emotive issue and further consolidate the gains made by Rizvi & co? At least part of the answer was provided by an Islamabad High Court judge immediately after the dharna was called off. In lambasting the compromise, including the role of the army in brokering it, the learned judge indicated that state personnel and institutions ‐ some of whom constitute what we call the ’establishment’ ‐ are hardly on the same page about Islam, and what posture the state of Pakistain should adopt towards the religious right. The differences within the state are not reducible to a simplistic binary, namely ’does the state want to continue patronising the religious right or not?’ Religion is so deeply entrenched in the body politic that there is no question of a wholesale shift in the state’s historic policy of politicising it. It is much more meaningful to interrogate the extent and nature of conflict within the state about how to use religion in politics, including the thorny matter of which religio-political forces are to be patronised and in what way. It is not rocket science that the rise of the Mumtaz Qadris and Khadim Rizvis of the world has coincided with the (relative) falling out of favour of more puritan sects that were previously the dominant bearers of public religiosity. It follows that state personnel sympathetic to different religio-political movements do not see eye to eye with one another about the manner in which Islam should guide the affairs of the state. In short, the actually existing state is anything but a monolith. Thought about intuitively, the state is comprised of many individuals in a great many number of institutional and geographical settings with varying histories and localised imperatives. With this in mind, it makes sense that state personnel with long-term ties to, say, Deobandi groups are not thrilled at the fact that Barelvis are currently enjoying more favour at the highest echelons of the security apparatus. |
| Posted by:Fred |