Social Intolerance in Pakistan

The nineteenth-century English philosopher J.S. Mills once noted that the most serious threat to civic liberties stemmed not from the government but from society itself, which could not bring itself to accepting the diversity of views and heterogeneity of ideas. In such a society, even a slight departure from the prevalent norms and values is suppressed. This astute observation is perfectly applicable to Pakistan. “Words without thought never to heaven go,” says William Shakespeare in Hamlet. 

The discrepancy between words and thought, desire and action, intention, and deed, is amply brought out by our society. We want peace and security but promote violence and fanaticism and enthrone sentimentalism and sensationalism. Rationalism and moderation, logic and sanity, rule of law, and respect for human rights are no more than a voice in the wilderness. The entire society is swept by emotionally charged, high-sounding words of demagogues wearing different garbs. It seems that our society has become an inferno.

Examples of societal radicalization abounds, they are not limited to the silent tolerance of violence against religious minorities. A few months ago, Pakistan shut off for some time access to the social networking website Facebook, which had a link to content regarded as blasphemous. A poll conducted by the website Propakistan reported that nearly 70 percent of the Pakistanis responding to the poll wanted a permanent ban on Facebook. 

Similarly, we recently saw the banning of Teray Bin Laden, a comedy film that pokes fun at Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The affinity for bans suggests the increasing prevalence of a worldview that wants to eliminate perspectives that are repugnant, rather than develop intellectual arguments against them. Cumulatively, all these cases point to the constriction of the Pakistani public sphere. 

From the complex web of factors that have fostered intolerance and violence in Pakistan, it is possible to disentangle the main strands. The first is Pakistan’s strategic position. Big powers have long competed for control of the area between Russia and the Arabian Gulf, and the unresolved tensions with India has dogged the country since its birth. 

Pakistan never tried to keep herself out of its neighbors’ affairs. It was America’s enthusiasm in the war to eject the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s, which it sold to its people as a jihad. Pakistan used religion as an instrument of change and still paying the price. When the Soviets went away, Pakistan had a very large number of battle-hardened people with nothing to do. 

They were redirected towards India, and on the western front, Pakistan helped to create the Taliban in the 1990s to try to exert some control over Afghanistan. By fiddling with India and Afghanistan, Pakistan has undermined its own stability. After al-Qaeda’s attacks against America on September 11, 2001, the army decided to wind down the policy. But many of the gung-hoes had contacts with people in the Afghan jihad and they rejoined those people. Because the Pakistanis were helping the Americans in their fight against the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani jihadis turned their fury on the government. This whimsical foreign policy led to emergence of a multi-polar society at home and without a pragmatic approach and political forte, the poles gradually became stronger, and every pole came with its own philosophy of realpolitik, in which dissent views are anathema.