Pakistan mob violence holds ominous warning for Malaysia

 

Pakistanis are ashamed; or at least right-thinking Pakistanis are. They are ashamed of the actions of a mob that tortured, murdered and burnt the body of a Sri Lankan over allegations of blasphemy. They are ashamed that the mob felt proud about it.

As I read the stories about the violence, I wondered if it could happen in Malaysia. Maybe not today, but perhaps in five or 10 years, for we seem to be on a similar trajectory as Pakistan.

I fear if Malaysians do not open both their eyes – regardless of racial and religious affinities – we may see similar violence sparked by religious intolerance or extremism in the not-too-distant future.

The Pakistan story is a story of how religion, if not properly understood and practiced, can cause fear and furore in society. It is a story of the monstrous danger in mixing politics and religion. It is a story of how closing an eye to extremism creeping into the body politic can lead to disastrous consequences.

Briefly, on Dec 3, a mob of hundreds of Pakistanis in Sialkot, attacked and killed Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana before dragging his body onto the road and burning it. Those who attacked him included workers in the factory where he was manager.

Reports said the killers cheerfully admitted to killing Diyawadana and proudly claimed in front of TV cameras that they had sent a blasphemer to hell. More than 130 suspects have since been arrested.

I read in one report that Malaysians were among the foreigners working in managerial posts in Sialkot factories.

Sialkot police chief Armagan Gondal told the media that the factory workers had accused the victim of desecrating posters bearing the name of Prophet Muhammad. It was later reported that Diyawadana had removed a sticker of the extremist political party Tehreek-i-Labbaik from factory machinery prior to a visit by international clients.

There was outrage in Pakistan following the murder, especially from political leaders. I don’t wish to say anything about the remarks made by politicians as the sincerity of political leaders is questionable – whether they are Pakistanis or Malaysians or Americans.

However, I want to include the comments of several Pakistani newsmen because I think they are sincere.

Before that, let me say that I have high regard for Pakistani newsmen. Many of them face tremendous pressure and threats from the government, the army, the secret service, militants, religious fanatics, politicians and paid thugs but they continue to write.

I met a couple of Pakistani newsmen two decades ago at an international media seminar in Manila where I presented a paper. That is where I, and those present, learned of the dangers they faced in their attempts to be truthful and ferret out the facts.

Pakistani journalists have, over the years, been attacked, even murdered, for being truthful to their profession.

Writing in leading newspaper Dawn on Dec 5, former editor Abbas Nasir said: “Sialkot was just another reminder, albeit a brutally harsh one, that sanity and our blighted land have parted ways. The fuse lit decades back when religion was deployed to fight foreign powers’ wars, and to later manipulate public opinion to thwart the democratic process, has now raced to its explosive-laden home.”

Doesn’t the use or misuse of religion and the manipulation of public opinion to thwart the democratic process remind you of what’s happening in Malaysia?

Abbas said: “But why should we be shocked? The day before Sialkot happened the prime minister was asking universities to research the ‘harmful effects of the Western culture on our family system’. Yes, that is what he considered the top priority for social scientists/researchers; not what fuels extremism, intolerance or why is blasphemy weaponised at will.”

Doesn’t that remind you of our own leaders and their misplaced priorities?

Noting that the mob seemed calm after the murder, with some taking selfies against the backdrop of the burning corpse, Abbas said it showed how normalised such behaviour had become in Pakistan.

“The result is that Pakistan is poised at the edge of the precipice. When I say so, many friends argue it has already gone over the edge. Despite my undiluted optimism, I too am losing hope, simply because there is no evidence of any organised attempt to stop the descent into self-harm of gargantuan proportions.

“I can’t believe that those at the helm of the security state are unaware of this. But I am sorry to say, their own institutional/personal extended interests and their rather uninformed worldview of what is good for the country and what’s not holds supreme, taking precedence over all else.

“Any resistance, even when it’s backed by popular mandate, is blunted, and beyond a point, adjudged against the national interest and snuffed out.”

Doesn’t that ring a bell? Isn’t that true of Malaysia too?

A day earlier, Dawn’s Islamabad resident editor Fahd Husain wrote a sarcastic and scathing piece about how inured society had become and how leaders, celebrities and others were merely following response SOPs, as in a checklist, in the wake of the horror.

Here’s an example:

“Prime minister’s tweet of shock. Check. Chief mi­­nister’s expression of sadness and ordering of in­­q­ui­­ry. Check. Inspector general police’s vow to arrest the culprits. Check.

“…Cabinet ministers’ random vows/ outrages/ condolences. Check. Official maulana/ ulema/ cleric reminder this is not what our religion teaches us. Check. Usual suspects’ denial of involvement. Check. And check, check, check….”

Fahd adds: “Finally, the post-event file is extracted from the drawer and the SOPs implemented like clockwork. Those arrested to be produced in front of cameras and the courts. Check. PM/ CM/ IGP/ ministers’ statement claiming no one will be spared. Check. PM/ CM/ ministers’ media talk lamenting the state of affairs over decades and how it will take them time to steer things in the right direction. Check. PM/ CM/ ministers’ announcement of compensation for the heirs. Check. Speeches in the National Assembly and Senate on random points of orders leading to a whole lot of nothing. Check. Local administration officials transferred/OSD-ed/ reprimanded. Check. General calls for tolerance/ interfaith harmony/ review of hate literature. Check. Candlelit vigil/ walk/ run/ moment-of-silence. Check. And check, check, check.…”

Doesn’t that remind you of the many times we Malaysians have experienced or seen this, or reacted in similar fashion, when some disaster or tragedy happened? (Yeah, I know, I’ve contributed to this in my columns too).

According to an Al Jazeera tally, 75 people had been killed between 1990 and 2020 over blasphemy allegations while Lahore-based research and advocacy group Centre for Social Justice said in 2019 that at least 62 men and women had been killed on mere suspicion of blasphemy between 1987 and 2015.

Amnesty International had, in the past, called for the abolition of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, saying they were incompatible with respect for human rights and open to abuse.

In their book Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide, Paul Marshall and Nina Shea say curbs on perceived anti-Islamic speech – whether called blasphemy, defamation of Islam, insulting Islam, or hate speech – are incompatible with democracy and individual human rights.

Blasphemy restrictions forcibly silence criticism of dominant religious ideas, especially when those ideas support, and are supported by, political power. When politics and religion are intertwined, there can be no free political debate if there is no free religious debate, they add.

In an interview with Herald of Pakistan in 2016, Marshall said most of those accused were Muslims and that they were usually accused not because they had actually blasphemed or insulted, but because they had “disagreed with some other interpretation of Islam”.

Marshall said: “I believe that having laws and carrying out physical attacks against people accused of blasphemy makes the situation worse. Brian Grim and Roger Finke have a very good book The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the 21st Century, which shows that the more you have state/government controls on religion, the more religious violence there will be.

“Attempted controls on blasphemy lead to more violence… I think we have to move away from legal controls and stress good education and mutual understanding.”

Coming back to the Sialkot incident, Dawn had an incisive editorial titled Horror in Sialkot on Dec 5 which started with: “It is indeed a day of shame for Pakistan.”

Here are some excerpts that have a message for Malaysia:

“Not surprisingly, however, the official denunciations only touch upon the here and now, the tip of the iceberg. The bitter truth is, on the last day of his life, Mr Diyawadana came face to face with the consequences of the Pakistani state’s decades-long policy of appeasing religious extremists.

“Even though the violent ultra-right outfits once used for strategic objectives began to be reined in a few years ago, other sectarian groups that were radicalised as part of the same process have since gained new ground. As extremism seeped into the body politic, blasphemy increasingly became weaponised, an expedient tool that could be wielded in a variety of situations: to take over the land of minority communities, to settle personal disputes — even to engineer protests to destabilise a sitting government in 2017.

“All it takes now is an allegation of blasphemy and an individual or two to incite a mob to commit murder. Who can forget young Mashal Khan, lynched by his fellow students in 2017, or Shama and Shahzad Masih, burned alive in a brick kiln in 2014? These are but three victims in a long chronology of horror. Each act of lynching, each desecration of a place of worship, each life destroyed as a result is an indictment of a state that has long made cynical use of religion as part of its playbook. We must reverse course before the flames of intolerance devour us as a nation.”

Doesn’t that make you nod your head in agreement? Doesn’t that make you think: ”I hope our leaders are man enough to act on this” or “I must use my vote and power of persuasion to change the course of the nation?” - FMT

 

Police officers stand guard at the site where a Sri Lankan citizen was lynched by a Muslim mob outside a factory in Sialkot, Pakistan, Friday, Dec. 3, 2021. (AP pic)

 

 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT