titillation of the opposite sex reminded me of something...
'Step by step, we are becoming Talibanized'
by MARTIN REGG COHN, Toronto Star
PESHAWAR, Pakistan-First they tore down the Pepsi billboard, because it showed a woman drinking cola with a man.
Next, a rooftop ad was blacked out because it featured a glamorous beauty selling ceiling fans. Now, female ultrasound scans by male doctors are banned, to stop titillation of the opposite sex.
Islamic law has come to the wild west of Northwest Frontier Province.
Here in the heart of the tribal belt, along the Afghanistan border, voters sent shock waves across Pakistan by installing a fundamentalist coalition in power a year ago. After three years of military dictatorship, the Frontier opted for religious rule. Emboldened by their electoral success, the province's preachers-turned-politicians have decided to impose sharia Ñ or Islamic religious law Ñ over the objections of the central government led by President Pervez Musharraf.
The differences in their political agendas are symbolized by their competing travel itineraries last week: While Musharraf was feted in Canada as a bulwark against extremism, a delegation of fundamentalists from Frontier province was being warmly received in Iran to study implementation of sharia.
In the colonial-era provincial assembly where they hold a majority of seats, the elected clerics are plotting their next move: How to segregate female patients from male physicians who perform electrocardiograms and ultrasounds.
"We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women's bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound," proclaimed Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, provincial secretary of the governing Islamist coalition known as the MMA.
"Some women could lure men under the ECG or ultrasound cover. In both cases, perversion could prevail in society. Therefore, to save the supreme values of Islam and the message of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, the MMA has decided to impose the ban."
Protecting women from the prying eyes of suspect physicians is only the latest measure imposed by the ruling Muttahihda Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six pro-Taliban parties that swept to power after Musharraf's military government emasculated the old-line secular parties last year. The centrepiece is sharia, which would reform the legal code and modify social measures to conform with the mullahs' interpretation of Islam.
The veil for women is now de rigueur under the new regime, male students must wear the traditional shalwar kameez uniform, and the sexes are segregated. Prayers are mandatory for public servants, and the provincial government has just announced a ban on musical performances in designated public venues to protect people from disco and other deviant forms of entertainment.
Next on the agenda is a religious police force, pioneered by the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan, dubbed the Department for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The morality measures have sparked an outcry among women who must now travel 150 kilometres east to the national capital, Islamabad, for ultrasound scans.
"The ruling party is only concerned with the female anatomy," fumes Dr. Umar Ayub Khan, an orthopedic surgeon at the local Police and Services Hospital who is also president of the Pakistan Medical Association. "I think this obsession is not what Islam is about. I would call them obscurantists who are trying to make Northwest Frontier Province a theocracy."
Local hoteliers, already hurting because of the menace of terrorism here, warn that the music ban will push them into bankruptcy if guests can no longer enjoy entertainment when they visit. "Slowly, slowly, step by step, we are becoming Talibanized," complains Bashir Ahmed, manager of the Khan Klub hotel in Peshawar's old city.
Ahmed says that next week he will close the doors of his luxury hotel a restored mansion recalling Peshawar's glory days as a trading centre in the British Empire because foreigners are frightened of the fundamentalist tide.
The provincial government makes no apologies for carrying out its campaign promises. In fact, it claims a clear mandate from voters to give the Frontier an Islamic look.
And that's not fanaticism. That's fundamentalist democracy, according to one of the movement's most influential thinkers.
"We have promised the people, and that (sharia) was our manifesto," insists Mohammed Ibrahim Khan, a religious scholar turned politician who sits on the province's new sharia council.
In his second-floor office overlooking the sprawling headquarters of the powerful Jamaat-e-Islami party, flanked by leather-bound religious books in a glass bookcase and Qur'anic inscriptions on his walls, Khan stresses that he is the face of moderation. The Frontier province will avoid the excesses of the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was toppled by the Americans after 9/11.
"There were many things in the Taliban regime that we agree with," muses Khan, 48. "They established peace within Afghanistan, and they said whatever was in their hearts."
But Khan insists the Frontier Islamists offer a kinder, gentler fundamentalism. "We can succeed where they failed," he boasts. "Statecraft is a difficult task, but we are learning."
Unlike the Taliban, which barred girls from schools in Afghanistan, everyone gets an education in the Frontier. And while the bearded scholar backs the Taliban view Muslim men should not trim their facial hair, he insists no one will be beaten or imprisoned for shaving.
The veil will be voluntary, and prayer caps will not be imposed.
"This can be done through propaganda," Khan says. "Those women who are without veils can be persuaded by the propagation of virtue."
Where the Taliban's religious police used whips to enforce order, the Frontier will use words, according to the government's soft-spoken minister of law, Zafar Azam. As the man charged with enforcing sharia and setting up the sinister-sounding virtue and vice squad, Azam is the new sharia sheriff in town.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`We are not the Taliban,
we are democrats.'
Frontier Law Minister Zafar Azam
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But he is an unlikely enforcer. Azam is clean-shaven, boasts that he holds an American green card, and loves Michael Jackson tunes. So why can he watch Thriller with his kids in America, but teenagers here cannot? Azam frets that rock videos with suggestive lyrics could overwhelm impressionable young people in the Frontier.
"Here it is an illiterate society, they need education about that," Azam explains over chilled soft drinks at the government officers' club. "Look, personally I like Michael Jackson very much, and I have lots of his songs, but for the young generation it is not good for developing their morals and values.
"Because of this music, teenagers are thinking too much about sex."
For the law minister, sharia is not merely a matter of morality, but offers greater efficiency for clogged courts. "Sharia works because it is a quick procedure," Azam explains. "In Islam, the first thing is virtue and vice. This is the main guideline for sharia, to prevent bad things."
As for segregation of the sexes in hospitals and clinics, Azam makes no apologies.
"We have some customs for the ladies, the purdah (seclusion) system. For conditions like pregnancy, it's very bad in our tradition for the lady to have the delivery by a male doctor."
But Azam expresses contrition about the heavy-handed tactics of Islamist vigilantes who tore down the billboard showing a man and woman flirting over a Pepsi. There was no need for these fundamentalists to destroy property, because the government had already pressured the bottler to remove the ads.
"This picture was not good," Azam explains. "I talked to the Pepsi multinational and they agreed to replace it."
But before Pepsi could make good on its promise, the hardliners struck. Azam says he disciplined the local police for negligence in giving the fundamentalists a free hand.
More than 100 activists used stones and iron rods to destroy the billboards while police looked on, there have been bonfires for videos showing music and dancing, and vigilantes have threatened cinemas and cable TV operators for showing similarly unsuitable fare.
"That damaged our image," Azam frets. "We are not the Taliban, we are democrats."
Azam has a point. In fact, many in the cabinet are veteran politicians who only embraced Islamic fundamentalism on the eve of the last elections as a way to win votes.
Like, for example, the province's chief minister, Akram Khan Durrani, who grew a beard only under pressure from his religious coalition partners. Before playing the Islamist card, he was known as a secular politician.
Most analysts fault President Musharraf for creating the conditions that allowed the Islamists to make a breakthrough in the parliamentary elections.
Previously, religious parties were considered a fringe movement, capable of massing extremists for street protests, but never capturing more than 10 or 15 per cent of the vote. That changed when Musharraf sidelined the major secular parties, banning the candidacies of his two main rivals in exile, Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto, and Pakistan Muslim League chief Nawaz Sharif (whom he ousted in a military coup four years ago).
Encouraged by the military, the various religious parties agreed not to run candidates against one another in the same constituencies. By avoiding a split in the vote, and exploiting local resentment against America's war on the Taliban, the new coalition won a two-thirds majority of seats.
Foreign diplomats and local analysts say Musharraf has opened a Pandora's box in Pakistani politics. The religious parties that the army had expected to be compliant are confronting him with their sharia strategy.
"The president was so hellbent on destroying the two (mainline) parties that he didn't realize the consequences of fragmenting the secular vote," says Aamer Ahmed Khan, editor of The Herald newsmagazine.
Now, Musharraf is vowing to block the province's plans for sharia if they impinge on federal jurisdiction. But the mullahs are not intimidated.
Khan, of the Jamaat-e-Islami party that dominates the Frontier coalition, points out that Musharraf has backed down from his earlier pledge to regulate Pakistan's controversial religious seminaries, known as madrassas. Singled out as a breeding ground for extremism, most of the 10,000 madrassas have ignored the government's authority with impunity.
"The government has retreated and the madrassas have won," Khan asserts. "There is rage in the madrassas against Pervez Musharraf, and he felt the power of the madrassas."
But if the fundamentalists won power through political expediency and military manipulation, they may ultimately alienate their electoral base by misgoverning, local analysts predict. The appeal of their religious garb is wearing thin amidst the mundane realities of politics.
"After one year in power people are noticing that the mullahs who used to ride on bicycles are now driving around in fancy cars," says Shamim Shahid, Peshawar bureau chief of The Nation daily. "Unemployment is high, and povery is increasing."
The Frontier's flirtation with fundamentalism could be short-lived if the mullahs fail to revive a moribund economy, tempering the popular appetite for religious radicalism.
"People are fed up because they are not delivering," says Afrasiab Khattak, a long-time human rights activist who predicts his secular Awami National Party will make a comeback when people tire of religious obsessions.
"The mullahs are discrediting themselves with fundamentalism, because people want education, jobs and economic development .... This is an infantile disorder that I hope we can get over."
thestar.com. |
