Tolerance in Short Supply
By Anwar Syed
28 August, 2012
As Maulana Abul Ala Maududi once wrote, these people are Muslims in name only and in the sense that they were born to parents who called themselves Muslim
Tharparkar is strategically important because it is close to the entry and exit points between Sindh and the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is made beautiful by the presence of nearly 100,000 peacocks that spread their magnificent wings and dance. Nature became envious of the place and an epidemic killed quite a few of the birds. This unhappy event was followed by another, albeit unrelated development. Almost 50 Hindu families, whose ancestors had lived in Tharparkar for generations, boarded a train to Wagah, 15 miles from Lahore, ostensibly for pilgrimage to holy places in India.
Insiders said that they were migrating to India because they had been persecuted in Pakistan on religious grounds. Neutral observers, including a Muslim woman member of the Sindh Assembly, confirmed that Hindus in Tharparkar had indeed suffered harassment. Muslim mafiosi in the area had extracted protection money (‘bhatta’) from them, molested their women, kidnapped young girls and forcibly converted them to Islam, subsequently claiming they had married a Muslim man and converted of their own free will.
Nearly 90 percent of the population of the area that composed Pakistan after 1971 was Muslim. Hindus made up less than one percent and they were concentrated for the most part in Sindh. During the 65 years since independence, I have not known a Pakistani Hindu except one, a young woman from Sargodha who was a student at the Punjab University where I taught briefly around 1968. Her family, who owned several hundred acres of land, chose to remain in Pakistan instead of abandoning their property and migrating to India as refugees. The point to emphasise here is that neither the Hindus nor all of the minorities taken together pose any threat to the security, stability, or well being of Pakistan. Yet they are persecuted.
Persecution is not limited to non-Muslim minorities. It extends to all those persons who will decline to think and act as their tormentors do. Dissident groups arise within the larger Muslim community and become objects of harassment by those who happen to be dominant at the time. Majorities and minorities are not rigidly fixed. Groups will divide into factions, which in turn will split into still smaller entities. Theoretically, this process of division could go on until we arrive at the single individual. But individuals must join hands and work together if society is to move forward and promote the collective good. It follows that they must all be tolerant of one another’s unique personality.
Tolerance of the dissident does not come easily to Pakistani Muslims. It cannot be said that they take this attitude from Islam, because Islam teaches tolerance. But as Maulana Abul Ala Maududi once wrote, these people are Muslims in name only and in the sense that they were born to parents who called themselves Muslim. They do not actually obey Islamic injunctions, and they disregard much of what Islam enjoins. One may ask if the inclination to intolerance derives from their ethnic or regional backgrounds. We would then have to know if others, such as Hindus and Sikhs, who share the same background are equally intolerant of dissidents within their communities.
Following the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Sikh tribal chiefs fought constantly and reduced much of Punjab to a state of chaos. That is what the term ‘Sikhha shahi’ denotes. These fights were not motivated by doctrinal differences. They were manifestations of an ongoing struggle for power. Hindu princes have battled one another through history and Hindu politicians oppose and fight one another in our own time. These contests are also not ideologically motivated; they too partake of a competitive pursuit of power. Doctrine has little to do with Hindu politics. This is probably due to the fact that Hinduism is not the bearer of a dogma. A person is a Hindu if he says he is one and if he has found his place in the Hindu caste system. There are many gods for him to choose from and he does not object if his neighbour has given his allegiance to a god different from his own. This is not the case with Islam. Belief in its main tenets — such as the oneness of God, the Quran as His word, and the finality of Mohammad’s (PUBH) prophethood — is not to be taken lightly. Denial of any one of them would place a person outside the pale.
This may be as good a place as any to ask what tolerance means in functional terms. To begin with it means that we are willing to live in peace with people whose beliefs and practices are different from our own. It could mean also that we regard their persuasions as worthy of respect even if we do not intend to adopt them. Intolerance would involve not only unwillingness to listen to the dissident but also to penalise him for his opinions and pressuring him to change to our satisfaction. Various modes of reaction are at work in societal interaction in Pakistan. There are individuals, civil and decent gentlemen of the old school, so to speak, who will defend your right to oppose them. There are not many of them. Here discussion will often turn into an angry exchange and a fistfight is not to be ruled out. In fact, such exchanges have taken place in recent months in the august chambers of the National and provincial Assemblies. Gruesome and much more violent encounters have also surfaced. Extremists such as the Taliban and al Qaeda operatives go about killing people because their Islam is different from that of their tormenters. Just as alarming are cases of sectarian conflict that have been on the increase during the last several years. Sunni militants have forced their way into Shia congregations, opened fire, thrown bombs at them, and maimed and killed scores of people. They have stopped buses carrying people, pulled out the passengers and shot down the Shia among them.
With intolerance so pervasive, where is this country going? It is moving towards a state where a great many people are alienated from one another, where instead of practicing the arts of associating together, they are ready to resort to physical violence, and whereby they will make society dysfunctional. Pakistan has immense potential for accomplishing greatness. There is no shortage here of high-class talent. A few weeks ago, a young man invented a procedure for cleansing industrial waste water and converting it into potable water. The State University of NY has awarded him $ 200,000 in a scholarship. But Pakistan cannot become a great society unless its people learn to respect each other’s beliefs and live in peace and goodwill in their domestic interaction with one another.
The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.
Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\08\28\story_28-8-2012_pg3_2
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-tolerance/tolerance-short-supply/d/8467