Secular vs Religious TO secular and religious

These days, some very intersting articles are appearing in newspapers in the backdrop of Musharraf-Benazir deal. Most of the seculars and more importantly self proclaimed "liberals", are pro-deal, citing it as the only solution for Pakistan's woes which seem to revolve around the threat posed by extremism. They opine that the current volatile situation of Pakistan demands that moderate, "liberal" forces join hands to sideline the extremists and forge a united stand against them.

So strong is the threat to secularism and liberalism in the country, they say, that democracy can be ignored, its ideals and principles just a banter that should not be allowed to hinder the formation of a "liberal", secular front. Well, then wasn't the religious right justified in its suppport for Zia? For them he was Marde momin, Marde Haq, the saviour of Islam in this vice ridden society of ours. The seculars will be as guilty of denying the common man of Pakistan his right to a democratic setup as were those maulvis in the 80s. They, just like the maulvis of yonder fail to realise that it’s military dictatorships that constitute the biggest tragedy of Pakistan, which have bred these extremist tendencies and polarized the society to a point where the religious right presents the seculars as anti-islam and the seculars on their part denigrate the other side of the divide by considering them outside the fold of general society, and therefore not worthy of any consolidations that would otherwise be commonplace for any fellow citizen. Recently, Abdul Aziz's lawyer went into a heated tirade on a tv show, zealously trying to shout down another analyst who had "sinned" enough to call his client a terrorist. This analyst, on the other hand though showing remarkable restraint, was commenting about these madressah students and their teacher in the same tone as do the American officials about the Guantanamo prisoners-irreconcilable, lunatic brutes who are better kept in protective custody away from general society.

Military dictatorships, having little grass roots support rely on exacerbating ideological divides in societies to generate bigoted blocs of either extreme whose only concern is the stability of the ruling regime for the perpetuation of its "threatened" values. Islamisation was the war cry in Zia's time, "enlightened moderation" a bait prepared by Musharraf. Also, besides being a planned goal, ideological rifts are inadvertantly created in societies when force is used by military dictators to enforce their personal inclinations on the society which causes alienation within ideologically divergent segments of the society. Democratically elected governments cannot afford to rely on brutal force and end up engaging the masses, whatever their inclinations, and engagement has always proved to be an emollient for extremist and violent tendencies. I would further state that even Benazir with all her rhetoric, once in power will be unable to tackle the "extremism" issue, the miliatry way. Afterall, how many Women Protection Bills did she pass in her tenure, only because the Pakistani sentiment, fortunately or unfortunately (requires another debate) could not and still cannot bring itself to terms with such reforms.

It would be better if all the political parties sincerely stepped into the movement ignited by the lawyers and strive for real democracy in Pakistan, which cannot afford any parleys with military heads whose constant intervention in governance created Bangladesh, the Balochistan insurgency, the Waziristan saga and the "red" Islamabad. For all the "liberals" out there, it needs to be understood that democracy is one of the most enlightened discoveries of the human intellect, in social behavior. It is high time Pakistanis had their share too, to amalgmate the secular and the religious, the moderate and the extremist, the right and the left.