http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\09\20\story_20-9-2010_pg3_5
Monday, September 20, 2010
VIEW: Protestants and Catholics -Yasser Latif Hamdani
Pakistan more than any other country in the Muslim world has the
potential to play the kind of pivotal role that England played in the evolution
of the Christian west
In his famous August 11th speech, Jinnah quoted, as an example, the
Protestant-Catholic conflict in England and how that country overcame religious
strife and conflict. It was a most revealing statement and one that is not
often commented upon by biographers of the Quaid-e-Azam. If they would have
done so they would have perhaps found it easier to reconcile the idea of a
separate Muslim state in the subcontinent to the clear prescription of secular
democracy that Jinnah gave for his people on that August day. Perhaps a lesson
in English parliamentary and ecclesiastical history would be instructive.
This past weekend, as I sat down to write these lines, the Pope was
making his way to Westminster Hall (the first visit by a pontiff) in the famous
Pope-mobile along with the Archbishop of Canterbury to speak to the who's who
of British politics, including four former British prime ministers. This is the
same place where the Catholic martyr, lawyer and politician Saint Sir Thomas
More was tried and where he was sentenced to be "hanged, drawn and quartered"
in 1535. The struggle by the reformists against papacy and its excesses had
taken a violent turn under the chief minister-ship of Thomas Cromwell, the
iron-willed English statesman who was instrumental in the UK's break with Rome.
In their evangelical zeal, the pallbearers of liberal Christianity that
Protestantism was took to burning papists and Catholics in England. In this
they were helped by their love interests and an insatiable mania for the grand
Tudor king, Henry VIII. What followed was a continuous tussle between Catholic
mainland Europe (with the exception of Germany) and the UK.
These are poignant lessons for the Muslim world. We are roughly at the
same place in our evolution as a civilisation that Christianity was in the 16th
century. Islam's history is full of martyrs like Thomas More right from the
early years to the times of Dara Shikoh. An echo of England's religious policy
in the early half of the 16th century can be found in the straitjacketed
bigotry of Aurangzeb in the 17th century. The problem then is one of stagnation
in Muslim thought.
It is somewhat ironic of course since the Shia-Sunni conflict predates
the Protestant and Catholic divide by 700 years at least. However, the correct
analogy of the Shia-Sunni conflict may lie between the Greek Orthodox and
Catholic churches. It is not till Wahab's simplified hyper-puritanism followed
by the reform and revival movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
that Islam began to face the same kind of challenge to tradition that Martin
Luther had posed to papacy. It is therefore premature to rule out the ability
of a society like Pakistan, marred by continuous strife and conflict, to
produce the same kind of organic movement towards reconciliation of secular
rationality and religious faith. Indeed, one could argue that Pakistan more
than any other country in the Muslim world has the potential to play the kind
of pivotal role that England played in the evolution of the Christian west.
It would no doubt be fruitful if our brightest minds take a closer look
at the events of Europe in that period and ensure that Muslimdom avoids
whatever mistakes were made by Christiandom. It means foremost to emphasise
substance over form. It means reconsidering seriously the religious
justification for hudood laws and harsh punishments. For example, the Islamic
Republic of Iran's prescription of stoning for adultery, when none of the
essentials of the law of evidence as prescribed by Islamic law are met (namely
four eye witnesses of good character), is patently un-Islamic. Yet no one
amongst Iran's clerics has the courage or integrity to challenge blatant
travesty. The same goes for Pakistan where all attempts by scholars to present
a more humane and compassionate side of the faith is discarded for the
straitjacket of evangelical Puritanism. Thus Sufis and the mainstream Barelvi
Sunnis who form an overwhelming majority in Pakistan are increasingly the
target of our own evangelical zealots. Just like the Protestants went after all
rituals and stripped bare their churches of art and culture, so do our
evangelicals persecute all creative expression in religion. Shias are
Pakistan's papists while Ahmedis in Pakistan enjoy a position similar to the
position of non-Christians in King Henry's England or under Ferdinand's Spain:
punishable by death for their belief.
They say that on a long enough time line the survival rate of everything
falls to zero. Therefore, from intolerance must come tolerance and from chaos
must come order. This has been the logical course that history has taken
whether some people like it or not. After all, the great Westminster Hall, once
the scene of sheer intolerance was also the cradle of one of the greatest ideas
and aspirations of man: participatory democracy which stands on the foundations
of tolerance and accommodation. This is what I suspect Jinnah was telling
Pakistan's first constituent assembly.
The writer is a lawyer. He also blogs at http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com
and can be reached at [email protected]
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