Anwar Ahmad

Times were when the advent of Moharram had galvanised both the Shias and the Sunnis, albeit in ways different from each other and the way they react now. The Shias would go into active mourning of the Karbala epic, centred around its emotion-charged remembrance in Majalis and culminating in the procession and self-flagellation on Youm-i-Ashur. The Sunnis shunned all festivities, made special offerings, facilitated the procession and arranged water-points along its way. Women stood on rooftops, and youngsters lined the streets to watch solemnly. It was, thus, a coming together of the Muslim community to mark a turning point in its history when perfidy and murder had cruelly struck down the Prophet's (PBUH) family and left Islam's equalising message hostage to the eternal evils of tyranny and grandeur.

The most striking aspect of the Moharram commemoration was its harmonious management by the community and a nominal state involvement. One measure of how fast and how far things worsened during the 1980s is the progressive increase in the state's intrusion into Moharram activities. As Sunnis huddled indoors and prayed for a safe passage of the Ashura procession, Shias had many more, and recent, deaths to mourn. Police manned the rooftops and lined the streets to prevent a terrorist strike.

In more recent years, as the helpless state and a hapless society became hostage to the bigots and mercenaries, the local and transient Moharram tensions degenerated into a year round trauma of sectarian mayhem. All the post-Zia elected governments vowed to stamp out the menace, but failed to match brave words with deeds. The killings have now become a daily occurrence and, unlike the past, are almost entirely one-sided. As members of the Shia sect are being killed at will, the state continues to thunder.

To add affront to the anguish, all hell breaks loose when an American journalist or church is targeted. There is inequality in death as well, and we are guilty of undervaluing the lost lives of our own people. Why, then, should others place equal premium on them?

Yet, the irony is that combating sectarian terror seems far easier than, say, fighting corruption. Primarily, because there is an unshakable socio-political consensus behind it. Whenever any government, the PPP/PML (J) coalition, the PML (N) and now the military, has resolved to act, it has received enthusiastic backing from the people, civil society, political parties and the media. When it has faltered, there has been exasperation and criticism from all around. Secondly, the civil-military establishment is also free of sectarian bias and wholeheartedly behind a crackdown on sectarian terrorists. Thirdly, until Pakistan was hitched to the post-9/11 American bandwagon, the sources of sectarian terror were few and experience showed that they could be routed. Jhang, once lost to the bigots, was retrieved by honest and strong-willed officials backed by the government. Now, unfortunately, the sectarian menace has been mixed up with the `Jihadis', driven underground and made more malevolent.

Even so, the greatest plus is that sectarian hatred and violence -- much less killing -- are not rooted in our social fabric. There are differences, of course, and grievances against each other; but also an overarching tradition of tolerance. Thus, the majority sect may be guilty of not being more vocal and proactive against the bigots, and may even seem hostage at times to the zealots, but it has not been guilty of supporting them.

In the elections, for example, sectarian identity of the candidate has never mattered -- except, briefly, in Jhang where, too, sanity returned when Ms Abida Hussain regained her Sunni-majority constituency from the zealots. Nor is there any sectarian discrimination in the realm of the state -- in the constitution, other laws, services, anywhere. This is but a reflection of the society.

The sectarian problem is unknown in Balochistan, except Quetta city where, too, the ethnic dimension is equally, if not more, pronounced. The tradition is of tolerance, and the occasional flash arises courtesy a visiting spitfire from Punjab or Karachi. In the Frontier, despite some recent sectarian battles in a few tribal pockets, religious fervour remains tempered by the ethnic identity and a tribal power balance. In rural Punjab and Sindh also there is a historical legacy of harmonious coexistence. Shias and Sunnis share some patron saints, inter-marry and are blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the divide. Though stressed in recent times, this amity has survived the hate-mongering and bloodletting by the bigots and hired assassins.

Originating as a contest between the Shia-Persian and Sunni-Central Asian nobility for pre-eminence in the Mughal court, the ethno-sectarian divide assumed intolerant dimensions when the clergy embraced it. It migrated to Pakistan, but remained restricted to a small section of the clergy in urban Punjab and Sindh. Ziaul Haq's hypocrisy in Pakistan and the revolution in Iran gave it a fratricidal twist. Other external linkages, and some self-serving elements in the state, are/were also suspected of stoking the fire.

But all the hate-sermons and fratricide have only increased the people's aversion to intolerance and violence in the name of Islam. Each killing arouses grief, anguish and anger at the continued state failure. The present spate of targeted killings of Shias shames and agonises the Sunni majority. Beyond words, though, it doesn't know what to do.

With the US involvement, things have become complicated. A dirty game is being played, outside and above the societal level. Fingers are pointing everywhere, but no one is quite sure who is doing what and why. Is it a conspiracy to sour a post-Taliban Pak-Iran proximity? Is it a campaign to destabilise Pakistan, particularly Karachi, to exacerbate its politico-economic woes? Is it a militant backlash against the state, which has not only disowned them but, fatally, has done so under US pressure? Or, a combination? Or, what?

If the government isn't equally clueless, it is guilty of silence and, thus, adding to the people's trauma. Whatever the motives and whoever the perpetrators, the bloodletting has to be stopped. If it continues much longer, Sunnis will not be able to face their Shia friends. There is, already, an uneasiness. This drift has to stop now for the state and society to have any collective meaning and purpose. It also has to stop because Muslims and Islam are enduring an unprecedented trauma and threat to their ideals and identity. Whenever they come for us, in Palestine, Kashmir, India, the sect is irrelevant.

The lead actor will have to be the state because the problem has been aggravated by a long chain of its omissions and commission. But so deep-seated and pervasive is the institutional decay that nothing gets done on its own -- as it should. The governmental flip-flops of the past decade having left them as sitting ducks for the terrorists' revenge, the officials and courts are reluctant to stick their necks out again. If our gallant military cannot respond to this challenge, all else it does will be secondary, if not irrelevant. That is how important sectarian harmony is.

The people too have to atone for the state's failure. Just as the individual cross-sectarian friendships remain deep, so should the collective affinity; and demonstrably so. Everyone who can do anything must do so. The media and the civil-political society have to focus single-mindedly on compelling the state to do its neglected duty.

Finally, the clergy and the religio-political parties cannot be unaware of the body blow dealt to them by the Taliban disaster. They have a lot of atoning of their own to do. Even though the sectarian divide involves some sensitive issues, enlightened religious scholars and the government need to address the causes that have given rise to extremism in both sects.

Since history cannot be altered, the asinine practice of blaming (and abusing) each other over it, which has only poisoned the present, can. If this inescapable premise is accepted, interpretational differences can be minimised and the agreements expanded -- through tolerant dialogue, Ijtehad and Ijma. The ideal to be aimed for should be the unity of the mosque. Whether the hands are clasped in prayer or free, whether `Amen' is said aloud or not, mosques must not have sectarian identities. The houses of Allah are for all Muslims. Would the Prophet (PBUH) and Imam Hussain (RA) have it any other way?

The writer is a freelance columnist

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