http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\06\05\story_5-6-2010_pg3_4
Saturday, June 05, 2010 COMMENT: Free enterprise religion -Nasir Abbas Mirza We want sects and we want brands. We want to outdo others by doing or undoing what other sects are doing. The sectarian system is a class system. We have to devise ways to stamp our identities. Once that is done, we proudly wear the proof of our distinctive identity on our foreheads. That is extreme branding In two countries of the world - the US and Pakistan - religion is a model-free enterprise. Rival mosques and madrassas compete for the allegiance and charity of the God-fearing people of our Islamic Republic. In this war, all tools of hard-sell marketing are employed and aggressive advertisements and media manipulation techniques sort out the sectarian winners and losers. Why not? What works for cell phones and shampoos also works for the business of religion. It is the freest of free enterprises with no state to speak of to monitor, let alone regulate, the working of this multibillion dollar business. When our government speaks of 'non-state actors', it is not diplomatic doublespeak; it actually means it. All those who have read Econ-101 know what laissez-faire means. Well, literally translated, it means "leave to do" or "let them get on with it". That, in a nutshell, is our government's policy (especially in Punjab) in relation to the religious hell-raisers. Long before there were brands and labels for products, there were brands and labels for human beings. There are more brands of humans than there are shades of lipstick. Leave alone for the time being racial and ethnic labels and stick to my favourite label: religion. Mankind has not yet invented a more inflammatory enemy-labelling device than religion. To start with, it is the most divisive: centuries old historic divides stay alive with ferocious enmity and vendetta. Anywhere in the world - Kosovo, Ulster, Sudan, India or Pakistan - religious labels first fuel hatred than sanctify murder as holy. If a religion is like a designer than its sects are brands or labels catering to various market segments of the believers. If there are 12 Pakistanis in a room, rest assured that there are 12 different Muslims in that room. Each will belong to a different sect, each follows a different set of beliefs and each lives, bathes and prays differently. And each one will be smug about the superiority of the beliefs of his particular sect: "My sect is a Mercedes and your sect is a Suzuki, ha ha! You will find out on Judgement Day. I will be having a ball in heaven while you will burn in hell because you did not grow a moustache-less beard and also because you wore a shalwar that is the wrong length." "You will rot in hell because you step into the bathroom with your right foot and, if that is not enough to justify killing you, the WC in your bathroom faces in the wrong direction." Such nonsense is not typically Pakistani. There is a telephone hotline that updates the Jews on the kosherness or un-kosherness of things. Needless to say, it is a pain and it makes life miserable for the experts as they have to follow a chocolate bar or cod liver oil all the way back to whet its kosher-purity. In an interview in The Guardian, a rabbi was asked why he bothers with this obviously pointless exercise. He makes it very clear that the point is precisely that there is no point: "That most of Kashrut laws are divine ordinances without reason given is 100 percent the point. It is very easy not to murder people. Very easy. It is a little bit harder not to steal because one is tempted occasionally. So that is no great proof that I believe in God or that I am fulfilling His will. But, if He tells me not to have a cup of coffee with milk in it with my mincemeat and peas at lunchtime, that is a test. The only reason I am doing that is because I have been told to do so. It is doing something difficult." Here we have 180 million people going berserk to do "difficult things" to prove that we believe in God and that we are fulfilling His will. We have sects, sub-sects and offshoots of sub-sects and a race going on between their adherents to come up with the craziest and most idiosyncratic religious dos and don'ts because, well, they have been told to do so. Reminds me of the Nuremburg defence: "I was only obeying orders." Bertrand Russell once argued that if it could be proved that the destruction of the Jews could secure God's promise of heaven on earth, there would be no reasonable argument against it. Change the scene to 21st century Pakistan and replace the Jews with the Ahmedis or the Shias and Russell's argument hits you right in the face; yes, there is no reasonable argument against the killing of the Ahmedis or the Shias. There are any number of online and off-line ulema who can, and who have, proved that such killings have divine sanction and that it is the only way to secure heaven on earth and heaven in the hereafter. The logical end of this argument would take you to the old morality theory that if the authority of morality depends on God's will, then, in principle, anything is permitted. We want sects and we want brands. We want to outdo others by doing or undoing what other sects are doing. The sectarian system is a class system. We have to devise ways to stamp our identities. Once that is done, we proudly wear the proof of our distinctive identity on our foreheads. That is extreme branding. It is no fun being a plain vanilla Muslim; anyone can do that. That is so common, so un-cool, so classless. If all women wore similar abayas that would not be free enterprise, that would be a brigade of Muslim women in Chairman Mao's Red Army. That is why we have designer abayas or abayas that can only be worn with Louboutin shoes and Birkin bags. That is still not the end of it. There is yet another brand inside the abaya: is she a Barelvi or a Wahabi? Listen up, even al Qaeda can only be discussed as a brand. There are no headquarters, no top management and no chain of command. Its hierarchy is loosely defined and that information is based on hearsay. There are as many small-time al Qaeda franchise operators in our country as there are mobile phone franchises. There is no business like the religion business. Long live free enterprise. Laissez-faire zindabad! The writer is a freelance columnist
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