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| India-Pakistan | ||
| Our Doomed Democracy | ||
| 2012-07-29 | ||
| Pakistain's gradual alienation from democracy and its irreducible secular conditionality is owed to the growth of the idea of Islamic governance, today showcased by the Taliban Pakistain follows the rest of the Mohammedan world in thinking about the state. There was a time when it was normal for a Pak to say that he was a Pak first; now he says he is a Mohammedan first, little realising that he was negating the modern state. Most of the states in the Mohammedan world began as modern states but are now on the brink of choosing a pre-modern order that is stranger to democracy. Egypt that leads the Mohammedans of the world intellectually now manifests the following symptoms: Democracy as 'tyranny of the majority':
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... as the preferred model. 2) Asked whether Egypt's laws should strictly adhere to the Koran, 60 percent said yes while 32 percent said it should follow the values and principles of Islam and only six percent said laws should not be influenced by the teachings of the Koran. 3) The survey found that 61 percent of Egyptians want to diplomatically de-recognise Israel, while only 32 percent think it should be recognised. The feeling against Israel has surged among the youth. Another poll found that 52 percent of Paks too wanted sharia and desired an increased role of religion in their lives. Pakistain's wealth is in the hands of a conservative elite which controls the media. Once upon a time the state TV was extreme in its Islamic tilt; now PTV is moderate compared to the 'free' TV channels numbering nearly 80. A new book Radicalisation in Pakistain by Muhammad Amir Rana & Safdar Sial (Narratives 2012) tells us on the basis polls that 87 percent of the journalists think that radical elements 'have an effect' on the media. You don't have to read John Stuart Mill to conclude that Mohammedans demand democracy to impose 'the tyranny of the majority' on their societies. Urdu and conservatism: Conservatism in traditionally tolerant Mohammedan societies has morphed into fundamentalism threatening enough to cause three categories of Mohammedans to shut up: secularists, liberals and the moderate. The nation in Pakistain is weaning itself from the bilingual ambience of the past despite an increasing trend in the private sector to employ persons proficient in the use of English language. Urdu is the vehicle of Islamist view. Pakistain is moving towards the status of a single-language country because of the ouster of English-language TV channels. Most graduates from universities are less able to use English and tend to be conservative if not Islamist in their aggressive rejection of secularists and moderates. This trend is shockingly clear in the social media. Some analysts are frank enough to say that the youth that dominates the social media - facebook, youtube, twitter, etc - will threaten the modern state in the Mohammedan world. Radical assault on social media:
In Pakistain the assault on the modern state is led by youths using the social media. Moderates, secularists and liberals, still airing their views in the English-language print media are attacked there. It is not a two-way debate on the internet; the non-extremist citizen simply does not participate in it, except for those who plead that they have been wrongly accused, fearing that they could be killed by jihadi elements working in tandem with the faceless myrmidons belonging to the non state actors nurtured by the Pak state in the past. Moderates as 'American agents': Pak politicians, after assessing that the aggressive and activist sections of society have turned against America - with much help from the media - have moulded themselves to the new environment of fear. A moderate raising his voice against extremism is dubbed an American agent and condemned as a traitor. The Army has intensified its traditional but somewhat muffled negative interpretation of the 'American connection' and has joined the chorus of extremism through its retired officers. The criterion for this judgement is India - and America's betrayal over the decades by favouring India at crucial moments of Indo-Pak conflict. Terrorism, clothed in the vocabulary of Islam, presides over this essentially anti-democratic scenario. After radical support for Blasphemy Law, the minorities and the squeezed liberal lobbies are targeted. Advocacy NGOs, funded from outside Pakistain, are abominated on the media and accused of 'working for the Americans'. Women in Pakistain are under rising pressure from an aggressive change in male behaviour. In a research project by Mashal, an NGO based in Lahore, 80 percent of the sermons given in the mosques of Punjab condemn women who 'go out shopping without veil showing off their presence'. (Laki Marwat in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... has actually banned single women from shopping in Ramadan.) A conservative Supreme Court: A factor in the increase of conservative influence is the Supreme Court of Pakistain. It is supported on the Pak street by an aggressive lawyers' community, lending muscle to the activism of the judiciary, but intensifying further the innate conservatism of judges serving under an ideological constitution. The 'basic structure' argument has once again revived the Objectives Resolution of 1949 declaring Pakistain an Islamic state. Some liberal lawyers have opined - in English - that if called upon to adjudicate on the constitutional provision of pardon and presidential immunity, the Court might declare it against the 'spirit of the constitution' which, in the eyes of most conservative commentators, is more correctly reflected in Article 63 of the Constitution, laying down conditions of Islamic ritual adherence for public representatives. An ideological state finds it hard to be democratic. It lays down the point of view of the state and punishes the 'variant point of view' under law. Ideological democracy loses its credentials by suppressing freedom of expression. It institutionalises intellectual anxiety by constantly positing an unfulfilled ideological agenda - an agenda that remains utopian and therefore impossible of fulfilment. The Mohammedan League under Jinnah was never clear about the nature of the state Pakistain was going to be. It was unhappy with the 'philosophically untenable' thesis of Jinnah to duplicate the secular Indian state after separating from it. An ideology of isolationism: The Mohammedan League thought that the people would not accept liberal democracy unless it was couched in the vocabulary of an Islamic worldview. After Jinnah's death, it adopted the Objectives Resolution and parted ways with India's secularism by declaring the Koran and Sunnah as its 'ground norm'. Pakistain's gradual alienation from democracy and its irreducible secular conditionality is owed to the growth of the idea of Islamic governance, today showcased by the Taliban. Today's Pakistain is indoctrinated with an anti-West and anti-Hindu interpretation of world and Indian history. Overlaid with notions of international Islam, it is today poised to confront the entire world, making economic recovery virtually impossible. Most citizens, when asked for a solution to the national crisis, helplessly recommend extreme isolationism as the only cure. Persistent economic decline undermines democracy just as economic prosperity increases popular tolerance of dictatorship. It simply proves that economic security is finally more important than the security of the state. Alas, the Army, which still rules Pakistain, will not hear of it. | ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 In this kind of circumstance whom has the ADVANTAGE in Pakistan or USA, etc.? Answer - RADICAL ISLAM! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-07-29 20:05 |
| #2 DEFENCE>PK/FORUMS > NINETY-FIVE PERCENT [95%] OF PAKISTANIS ANGRY WID THEIR COUNTRY'S LEADERS. and * SAME > [Senior PAK Supreme Court]JUDGE: REVOLUTION IN PAKISTAN IFF POOR DON'T GET JUSTICE. Ditto for the US or any other Country - no Country on Earth is immune or invincible. Nothing in Representative or Constitutional Democracy prevents US Politicos from putting anti/post-Nationalist "Globalism", OWG = Space Govt-Order, and anti-Constitutional Socialism-Govtism before US Voters in nation-wide referendum(s). US Voters likely won't even be asked to vote on these ventures until many years after its already been deeply entrenched in American life. "POST-CONSTITUTION" = don't have any Document higher than same, nor AFAIK are even working on one - not even in support of OWG or "Globalism"??? Asking for TROUBLE, i.e. DOMESTIC UNREST, PERHAPS EVEN CIVIL WAR. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-07-29 20:03 |
| #1 Pakistan has democracy---who knew? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2012-07-29 14:01 |