By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Not so long ago the Pakistani Taliban took credit for murderous attacks on Ahmadi mosques during Friday prayers, and most Pakistanis registered no particular outrage. This time the victims were devotees at the Datta Darbar, a Sufi shrine in Lahore, and the outrage was nearly universal. Although the Taliban have not claimed this hit, it’s notable that Taliban figures aren't vigorously disavowing it either.
Christians once burned heretics; some Muslims still think elimination is a good idea. The Ahmadi sect is considered to be heretical because its adherents revere Mohammad but don’t believe he was the last of the prophets. However, the latest target of murder and mayhem was a Sufi saint's tomb, a shrine sacred to most Sunnis and Shia—and to Hindus, too, which is also true of Sufi shrines in India. As a result, a large number of noted Sunni clerics have called for action against known terrorist groups (and their madrassas), especially those headquartered in Punjab, and they have issued a long overdue fatwa: “Whoever kills a Muslim has nothing to do with Islam.” One mufti declared on TV that suicide bombers are “destined for hell.”
It’s about time.
Other figures have other agendas. Cricket star Imran Khan, whose entry into politics has been less than overwhelmingly successful, stooped to portraying the attack as the result of “siding with the United States” in its war on terror. He’s not entirely alone, although the absurdity of this charge seems to be evident to most Pakistanis. So long as the Taliban were targeting police stations and military targets or politicians, an argument that the victims were U.S. collaborators had some plausibility. Only a blind idiot would believe than an attack on Pakistan’s most popular shrine could have anything logical to do with punishing the foreign policy establishment. No. This is clearly the work of a salafist group determined to rid Pakistani Islam of “saint worship.” The argument would go like this: since those who revere saints are not proper Muslims, they can be killed with impunity. Just like the Ahmadis.For the second time, however, the Taliban have been recklessly over-confident. The brutal takeover of Swat alienated a large swathe of the population. Sending suicide bombers into Datta Darbar seems to have united the country against them.
Well, maybe not Nawaz Sharif, who heads the Punjab-based Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). Unlike the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party, now in power at the center, Nawaz doesn’t want to wipe out terrorists. He wants to have a dialogue with the Taliban. This conciliatory stance should not come as a surprise. Nawaz was mentored by the Islamizing General Zia-ul-haq, he is a long-standing member of the salafist-leaning Tablighi Jama’at and, when he was forced into exile by General Musharraf, he settled in Saudi Arabia. By contrast, Benazir Bhutto chose to live in cosmopolitan Dubai during her period of exile.
As to other possible non-Islamist scapegoats, India has, of course, been mentioned, but not very aggressively. Since Sufi shrines are as deeply revered by Hindus as by Muslims, an attack on the Datta Darbar would have been very unpopular in India. And even if Sufism were attractive only to Muslims, India is not about to anger its own substantial Muslim majority by attacking religious targets Pakistan.
Although both military and civilian governments in Pakistan have propped up their governments by making concessions to conservative Muslim parties over the years, there has been a smug certainty among urban elites that the Islamists couldn’t win enough votes to form a government even if they could always bring demonstrators into the street. The Taliban are a different sort. They have no interest in contesting elections under a constitution they reject. They also seem to reject non-violent street power. And, considering the destruction they have wrought in Pakistan’s cities over the past couple of years, it’s evident that they can no longer be dismissed as borderland religious yahoos. There was the Red Mosque infestation in Islamabad some years ago. Fanatics had begun to terrorize shopkeepers and women on the streets of Pakistan’s capital. Next came the brutal Taliban takeover of the lovely resort valley of Swat. Now comes a strike at the very heart of the country, not only geographically, but spiritually.
To say nothing of innumerable less dramatic incidents.
Will the Data Darbar outrage, finally, shock the PPP-controlled government into moving against the Taliban and their allies within Pakistan? Can the government now be confident of popular support for squelching terrorist organizations that have been protected by elements of the Army and by some sympathetic politicians? Will the U.S. have a more reliable partner in the campaign to eliminate terrorism? It would seem that the potential for real action has never been greater.
As evidence of a new mood of urgency, I am going to reproduce in entirety two recent editorials from Karachi’s leading daily Dawn. What you need to know, as you begin to read, is that the editors of Dawn are a very prudent breed. At this point, however, they are no longer mincing words.
Search for Soul
Perhaps the only faintest ray of hope one can find in the aftermath of the Data Darbar tragedy is the near-universal condemnation of the attack. Major political parties and civil society groups have always been in the forefront when it comes to remonstration against suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism. But the silence in all this of many religio-political parties has often been deafening, so much so that it has led to speculation that they might tacitly approve of such tactics.
This time round, however, it seems that the affront was much too monstrous to stomach for even those who might share certain ideological links with the insurgents whose mission it is to destabilise Pakistan. The Data Darbar massacre has been condemned by people who do not approve of drone attacks or Pakistan’s partnership with the US in the fight against Taliban-inspired militancy. This is significant in a country as conservative as Pakistan, a land where the opinion of the religious right can mentor public thought. When a leading religious figure says that suicide bombings are unacceptable in Islam — without any qualifiers — we might be taking a step in the right direction. Mindsets have to change here and our religious scholars should go even further to stress that no person or community is ‘worthy of death’ simply because their beliefs differ from those who cannot tolerate divergence of opinion.Here's the other:
This may be the time for our religio-political parties to ponder a key point, a defining moment as it were. The insurgents operating under the umbrella of the Taliban — it doesn’t matter if they are Punjabis or from the northwest frontier — are looking to dismantle a belief system. Their target is not just people of liberal bent or the vast majority that abides by the motto of live and let live. Ultimately they wish to unravel the fabric of society and disempower all those who stand by democratic values. And that group includes the religious parties who contest elections and attempt to contribute to social welfare. The battle lines have been drawn and should be unmistakable to anyone with foresight and a grasp of the reality on the ground.
Equally important is the acknowledgment that the enemy lies within. Pointing to ‘hidden hands’ or foreign forces bent on creating havoc in Pakistan may be convenient for officialdom but does not address root causes. Let there be no doubt: the problem is homegrown. Also, let’s move beyond the myth that ‘terrorists have no religion’. If anything, in our context suicide bombers have been brainwashed into believing that they are more devout than the peaceful majority.
Lahore came under attack yet again on Thursday. This time the militants targeted devotees at the shrine of Hazrat Ali Hajveri, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, one of the earliest saints to introduce this land to Sufism and its spirit of brotherhood. It is tragic that the safety of devotees at the shrine of one revered as Lahore’s protector should be dependent today on the little security the administration can provide in these dangerous times. No less disappointing has been the response that some can still come up with, even in the wake of continuous terrorist strikes. The most common reaction on the streets in Lahore a day after the Data Darbar tragedy was that this could not have been the work of ‘one of our own.’
People, in a desperate attempt to disown the terrorists and their acts, were again eager to point fingers at anti-Pakistan, anti-Islam elements outside the country. A similar pattern of thought was reflected in the statements of some officials. Their attitude does not stem from apathy, criminal negligence or incompetence. It is part of a deliberate policy. Perhaps there is a fear of the consequences involved in the identification of the terrorists. Surely it is part of a strategy which says that the only way we can survive is by pretending that we have no enemies at home.
Just how much data do we need to unearth the truth? Mounting evidence points to the monumental flaws in our theories of self-preservation. The clues to local involvement provided by terror incidents of the past aside, the attack on Data Darbar should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind just how expansive the designs of the terrorists are and how easy it is for them to find recruits in the vicinity of a planned strike anywhere in Pakistan. While details are coming in and ‘investigation is under way’, initial reports say one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up at Data Darbar belonged not to Waziristan nor to southern Punjab but to a suburb of Lahore. He apparently belonged to the Barki Hadiara area which makes him as much a Lahori as the large number of people killed in the blast. His involvement is indicative of the expanse governments in the country themselves need to cover once they have decided to fight terrorism in earnest. The government action — call it operation or whatever — will have to go much beyond Waziristan or southern Punjab or any particular region. It will have to be a campaign that covers the entire country.