Pakistan Has Sunk Deep into The Mire of Economic Crisis Due to Extremism
By New Age Islam Staff
Writer
13 July
2024
Poor Quality of Education and Low Literacy Rate
Have Resulted in Extremism
Main Points:
1.
Extremism and vigilantism in
Pakistan have scared away investors.
1.
2.Pakistan has incurred loss of $123
billion thanks to extremism and terrorism in the last one decade.
2.
Pakistani politicians wrongly
believe extremism to be a tool of security and diplomacy.
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ASP
Syeda Shehrbano Naqvi (left) and an image of the design that sparked the
incident. — ScreengrabX/@OfficialDPRPP/@TahirAshrafi/File
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Pakistan is
going through the most severe economic crisis of its history. To wriggle itself
out of this crisis, it has been seeking a bailout package of one or two billion
dollars from the IMF but ironically, Pakistan has incurred a direct or indirect
loss of $123.13 bn due to extremism and vigilantism during the last one decade.
It speaks volumes about the damage extremism and terrorism has done to
Pakistan's economy in the last ten to fifteen years.
If
Pakistan's successive governments had curbed the menace of religious
vigilantism and extremism, the country would have prospered and flourished with
$123 billion in its external reserves instead of begging for one or two bn
dollars from the IMF that will not help it much because Pakistan needs to
borrow more money to repay its debts. Pakistan has exhausted all its resources
and has nowhere to turn to for financial help. China and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan's
traditional friends have refused to help it further.
The
economic condition of Pakistan has come to this passé due to ever growing
malady of extremism, terrorism and vigilantism. The erroneous interpretation of
blasphemy and the flawed blasphemy laws have contributed to the rise of
violence in the name of protecting the honour of the prophet, the Quran and
Islam.
The flawed
blasphemy laws of Pakistan provide for death penalty to the convict but does
not provide for punishment to those who make false allegations of blasphemy or
take law into their own hands. As a result, incidents of mob lynching of
blasphemy accused have seen a rise in recent years. In 2021, a Sri Lankan
factory manager in Sialkot was lynched for alleged blasphemy. In 2023, Christian
houses and churches were burnt and destroyed by mobs in Jaranwala for alleged
blasphemy. In 2024, a mob attacked the house and factory of a Christian in
Sargodha for allegedly desecrating the Quran. One man of his family was killed
while other members of his family were removed to a safer place. Hundreds of
Christian families of Sargodha have fled the area.
These are
some of the incidents of mob violence. Similar incidents of mob violence have
occurred in Pakistan in the last two decades.
This
growing curse of extremism and vigilantism has not only affected non-Muslims
but also Muslims who too fall into the definition of blasphemy according to
some modern Islamic scholars of Pakistan. Muslims keep accusing the common
Muslims or even ulema of the opposite sect of blasphemy and a number of Muslims
have been killed extra judicially for blasphemy.
Some ulema
of Pakistan have propagated the belief that a Muslim should kill an accused of
blasphemy. A renowned Islamic scholar of Pakistan, Mufti Tarique Masood recently
retracted his fatwa exhorting Muslims to kill those who insult the prophet. In
his new fatwa, he said that the case of blasphemy should only be decided in a
court of law. But unfortunately, he retracted his fatwa after five years when
many Muslim fanatics would have acted on his fatwa.
Low
literacy and poor quality of education has exacerbated the problem of
extremism. People lynch Muslims and non-Muslims alike on mere suspicion of
blasphemy due to their illiteracy. Two months ago, a Muslim lady wearing an
Arabic calligraphy dress was suspected of blasphemy and was surrounded by an
illiterate mob who insisted that the Arabic word printed on her dress was a
word from the Quran. She was rescued by a lady police officer. But the man in
Warbartan was not so lucky. He was going through a phase of depression and was
accused of desecrating the Quran. The mob dragged him out of the police
station, beat him to death and finally set him on fire.
Another
Muslim man named Md Sulaiman was accused of desecrating the Quran in Swat. He
too was dragged out of the police station and burnt to death.
These
incidents of mob justice have scared the investors away from Pakistan causing a
huge loss to its economy. Even Muslim investors who want to invest in Pakistan
fear for the life and safety of their family, particularly women. They might be
lynched in the street for wearing a dress with an Arabic calligraphy or killed
for alleged desecration of the Quran.
The worse,
Pakistan's government or politicians or even religious scholars have not woken
up to this crisis. The government does not have the courage to reform blasphemy
laws for the fear of backlash from the clergy and religious organisations. They
do not allow the government to include punishment for those involved in mob
lynching on allegation of blasphemy and for those making false allegations. The
country is paying a heavy price for this widespread trend of mob lynching and
vigilantism.
China has
taken advantage of this crisis and has made huge investments in Pakistan as
other countries do not want to take risks by investing in Pakistan. It provides
security to its own nationals and also puts pressure on Pakistan's government
to provide security to its nationals. Recently, Pakistan launched operation
Azm-e-Istehkam under threat from China.
In short,
religious fanaticism and mobocracy in Pakistan has become a big hurdle in the
path of Pakistan's progress. It will have to reign in religious extremism and
vigilantism to come out of this economic crisis.
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By Husain Haqqani
March 14,
2024
After a
flurry of praise for the police officer who saved her life, most Pakistanis
seem to have forgotten the incident in Lahore involving the woman who was
accused of blasphemy for wearing a dress with Arabic calligraphy. That a woman
was almost lynched for wearing clothes that an illiterate crowd mistook for
religious text highlights Pakistan’s extremism problem.
Dismissing
events like this incident as outliers or choosing to ignore them will not
prevent them from occurring again. In December 2021, the Sri Lankan manager of
a factory in Sialkot was beaten to death and set ablaze by a mob over allegations
of blasphemy that turned out to be spurious. The woman in Lahore with the dress
bearing Arabic language words was lucky that she escaped a similar fate.
The dress
worn by the woman in question bore the word ‘Halwa’ in Arabic script. The word
means beautiful in Arabic, and it is not uncommon in the Muslim world for
Arabic calligraphy to be used to adorn dresses, buildings, and much more. But
the irrational environment in Pakistan over religious matters, especially
allegations of blasphemy, put the woman’s life at risk. The international
publicity over the incident ensured that everyone around the world who might be
thinking of doing business with Pakistan had to think about facing similar
risks.
Nations pay
a hefty price when the rest of the world sees them as irrational or extreme.
Racist violence, for example, acts as a disincentive for business travelers
belonging to different races from traveling to countries where race is an
issue. In the case of Pakistan, religious extremism and vigilantism have become
a factor in the decisions of potential investors and merchants.
Two days
after the Lahore incident, an Arab businessman remarked to me that he
immediately thought of his wife and daughters. “They wear Arabic calligraphy
designs as part of their dress,” he said, adding, “I was thinking of expanding
my business to Pakistan, but do I want to walk through Lahore or Karachi with
my wife or daughters, risking such attacks?”
Pakistan
already has the world’s toughest blasphemy laws and blasphemy is punishable by
death after a trial. But some groups do not wait for the law to take its course
and want to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Several people have been
lynched before their cases go to trial and those acquitted due to lack of
evidence are also attacked as if the allegation of blasphemy requires no proof
other than the allegation itself.
Judges,
too, have to fear the backlash of those who pretend to be all-knowing while
hearing such cases. Instead of making Pakistani society more religious or
pious, the practice of whipping up a crowd in a religious frenzy has created
situations in which mobs lose all fear of God. Even in the recent case of the
woman wearing the Arabic calligraphy dress, the crowd had to be pacified with
an apology from the woman though she had done nothing wrong. As Maulana Tahir
Ashrafi pointed out, the men in the crowd, rather than the woman, should have
been the ones to apologize.
Government
after government in Pakistan has appeased groups that use religious slogans to
divide and scare Pakistanis. Some have even seen the extremists as guarantors
of Pakistan’s security or as instruments of Pakistani influence across the
border in Afghanistan or Kashmir. But the net impact of nurturing a religious
outrage industry has only been to undermine Pakistan’s external relations and
weaken its economy. Official data suggests that between 2001 and 2018 “the
direct and indirect cost incurred by Pakistan due to incidents of terrorism”
amounted to $123.13 billion.
Add to it
the cost of fostering a society driven by anger and unable to figure out its
real place in the modern world. Since falling under Western colonial rule, the
Muslim world has developed a narrative of grievance and Pakistan is no
exception. Like all national and community narratives, it has some true
elements. But the current weakness of the Muslim world or of Pakistan is not
entirely the fault of Western colonialism or postcolonial machinations.
Pakistanis
must understand the consequences of low literacy rates, poor quality of higher
education, and low female participation in the workforce. Instead, they are fed
narratives of conspiracy theories and hate against more powerful nations and a
steady diet of religious-sounding rhetoric that is more political than
religious.
On March 6,
1948, Pakistan’s first opposition leader, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (who later
became prime minister for a short time) warned the country’s earliest leaders
against building “a state which would be founded upon caucuses and coteries, a
state which will be founded on sentiments, namely that of Islam in danger or of
Pakistan in danger.”
According
to Suhrawardy, “a state which will be held together by raising the bogey of
attacks and which you keep together by keeping up a constant friction between
yourself and your sister Dominion [India], that state will be full of alarms
and excursions. You think that you will get away with it but in that state
there will be no commerce, no business and no trade.”
Cautioning
against attacks on non-Muslims in the immediate aftermath of partition,
Suhrawardy said that such a course will only erode rule of law. “There will be
lawlessness and those lawless elements that may be turned today against
non-Muslims will be turned later on, once those fratricidal tendencies have
been aroused, against the Muslim gentry and I want you to be warned in time,”
he observed.
Today,
those words seem prescient. Even now, a comprehensive strategy of pushing back
extremism is the only way forward for a country that faces a multitude of
challenges.
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Husain Haqqani, former ambassador of Pakistan to the US, is
Diplomat-in-Residence at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi and
Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC.
Source:
The Price of Extremism
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/pakistan-mire-economic-crisis-extremism/d/132694
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