When the State Became Hostage

Source: Amir Queshi/AFP/RT

Pakistani social conservative nationalists, who are almost always from the Muslim majority, are often perplexed by the demands of a secular constitution. The thought just does not make any sense to them when all the answers can be found within Islam.

Perhaps an easy way to understand it by looking at the rogue Islamist group Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). The extremist Barelvi group has a single-minded voter on a single issue. Avenging blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad. This was the sole purpose of the formation of the group and this drives their politics. Sounds simple, right? Of course, around this core are ideas such as the imposition of Sharia, their version. However, considering how their adherents come from all walks of life in Punjab, Sindh, and Karachi, they are surely anything but like the Taliban. They are probably far worse in how seemingly harmless they are.

The group has become so out of hand that it has started dictating state foreign policy. And the death of their firebrand leader last year November, suspected due to COVID-19, could not slow the movement down.

Catapulted to power by the military agencies in Pakistan to oust former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s party in 2018 elections, the group has developed a mind of its own. Following the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty, and the French tribute of projecting Charlie Hebdo cartoons on municipal buildings, the Islamist group in Pakistan went totally berserk.

In their violent protests, the TLP were making one thing clear. The Pakistani state authorities were apparently helpless in front of massive crowds of angry zealots willing to kill for their love of the Prophet. Their singular demand was to expel the French ambassador to Pakistan and to sever relations with a nation with a history of being generous to Pakistan, particularly in terms of providing military equipment.

The influence of TLP is so immense that they forced frightened retail stores to put red crosses over French consumer goods like hair colors and shampoos. The boycott is clearly half-hearted and hypocritical for a market that clearly can’t get by without French products. Especially when such massive capital has been put into their import.

https://twitter.com/faisal__chemist/status/1359505833307103232

His government announced boycotting french products and his government signed the agreement with TLP to take their matter to parliament but he doesn’t even take himself to parliament … https://t.co/bjR93668UB pic.twitter.com/Cxoxb3PoRX

— Meena Gabeena (@gabeeno) April 19, 2021

Just like each protest put off by the group, the government offered them false assurances of capitulating to their demands, no matter how unreasonable they are each time. They agree to debating expelling the French ambassador in the parliament in a shouting match of every MP trying to prove that they are a bigger fanatic than the other. All the “debate” ended up doing was legitimizing the narrative of the Islamist and radical TLP. But what was worse, it ended up legitimizing the fundamentalist and violent belief system of the group as the state faith and policy.

The government also accepted the condition of releasing all their arrested activists, most of them involved in damaging private property across the Punjab province. It was clearly a case of the Government of Pakistan on the retreat. It showed clear as day that a nuclear power was helpless against a gang of fundamentalist clerics. And what was the reason behind it?

Pakistan-France relations will survive this madness. But the question is whether Pakistani society will survive this murderous chaos in the name of faith.