What Is It about Martyrdom?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
A debate that should never have been agitating the minds of some very intelligent people in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is, nevertheless, weighing quite heavily on them and making the headlines in a news media addicted to storms-in-a-tea cup.
What my old friend, the Jamaat-e-Islami Chief Syed Munawwar Hasan, said in reference to the slain TTP supremo, Hakeemullah Mehsoud, was unfortunate. Those words—describing a mass murderer as a martyr—should never have escaped Munawwar’s lips. But they did and that’s what’s so unfortunate to me, as it’s to so many others in the ‘Land of the Pure.’
I refer to Munawwar as my old friend because he and I go back sixty years to our school days. We’re class mates in the Government High School on Karachi’s jail Road, and have stayed friends though we may not have seen each other in decades. Munawwar is an intelligent and articulate man who doesn’t use words without meaning them. And that’s why his granting the medal of martyrdom to a notorious terrorist rankles me, too.
Why did he have to stick his neck out for a terrorist with a deadly history of indiscriminate murder and mayhem should best be known to Munawwar. He didn’t have to be that insensitive but did. Was he provoked in that TV interview on Nov. 9—in a programme called Jirga and aired on Geo Television, which itself is a highly controversial news channel of Pakistan and is getting ever more controversial with the shenanigans of its business-oriented CEO—is a question that may cross many a mind.
However, Munawwar is a cool customer who doesn’t get carried away, no matter how prodding or inquisitive his interlocutor. And, again, the Geo anchor interviewing him, a man going around under the name of Salim Safi—I don’t know if it’s his real name or nom de plume as they’d say in French—has controversy surrounding him in spades. This generation of anchors now hogging Pakistan’s tele-media as its ‘stars’ was virtually unknown before the age of private television descended on Pakistan. But some of them have now been lording over the small screen as if they’ve owned it forever. Giving airs to themselves and pontificating with the authority of reporter-anchor-scholar-and-pundit all rolled into one, they sometime treat their quarries as men of straw—a deplorable tendency, to say the least.
I watched Munawwar’s interview live. The anchor kept coming at him with a repeated barrage of probing on the issue of martyrdom, which the JI Chief parried with considerable finesse. And he stuck to his view that the slain TTP leader was a ‘martyr’ fallen to American aggression. That’s exactly what the anchor wanted him to say. I feel sorry for Munawwar that he swallowed the bait and walked right into the trap the anchor was striving so hard to lay for him. Or did he, really, the counter argument may contend, take the bait?
Insensitive as he was—at least in my book—to the popular sentiment in Pakistan about the TTP, Munawwar compounded the problem—for himself and everybody else—by showing no such clarity of pronouncement on the martyr status of thousands of Pakistan Army’s officers and jawans killed and often butchered by the TTP terrorists. He was diffident and obfuscating, which was quite contrary to his style of talking straight, if not always lucidly.
Munawwar’s obvious prevarication and foot-dragging on the martyr status of the Pakistani soldiers is what seems to have taken the goat of the military brass and invited a swift and powerful backlash. They hit back hard and denounced the JI Chief’s insensitivity on a matter of great national importance in terms that have surprised many, including this scribe.
The ISPR official press release—swift on the heels of the JI Chief’s interview—was hard-hitting and strongly-worded. It denounced his verdict on the TTP’s supremo as “an insult to the thousands of Pakistani civilians and soldiers killed.” Finding Munawwar’s remarks “highly condemnable” it went on to demand “an unconditional apology “ from him “for hurting their feelings.”
Now that the breach between the military and JI is out in the open and seems to engage not only the two but other political actors too, the question that naturally comes to mind is whether the two deliberately sought this parting of the ways or is it spur of the moment thing?
Pundits keeping Pakistan under focus on their radars know it well that JI and the Pakistan Army have had a history of camaraderie going back to several decades. Critics and detractors of the two have found it convenient for their own vested agenda to lump them together. Some have made a career out of JI-military-baiting, including Hussain Haqqani—whose services to his pay-masters have been amply documented. The alleged Mullah-Military alliance wasn’t just a rhythmic sound-bite and cliché but also a handy tool in the hands of enemies of Pakistan to paint the two pillars of the state—political parties and the military establishment—as retrogressive forces.
The JI-military entente came to its full blossoming under General Ziaul Haq, who was often accused of being a closet-JI aficionado.
That was also the time when JI got closer to Washington because of the confluence of their interest in Afghanistan. But it was, at best, a marriage of convenience. US used JI’s extensive contacts and liaisons with those Afghan freedom fighters then in the vanguard of resistance against the Russian invasion of their country extremely fruitful for its agenda. That was the halcyon period for Afghan ‘heroes’ of the day, such as Gulbadin Hikmatyar, feted and hailed in Washington as reincarnations of America’s own founding fathers. That’s how no less an American icon than President Ronald Reagan had welcomed the Afghan ‘Mujahideen’ in the White House. Now the very same Hikmatyar is enemy number one on Washington’s list of Afghan ‘terrorists.’
But JI was into the Afghan resistance out of principle. That explains the stance it has consistently pursued vis-à-vis the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. The nightmare of US drone attacks has only fueled the JI’s opposition to American presence in Afghanistan in the convenient guise of the so-called war on terror.
Seen in this perspective, a parting of the ways between the army and JI was only a matter of time. It’s no secret in this context that the military establishment—the biggest beneficiary of American largesse to Pakistan—has found it convenient to hedge its bets on the drone issue; many of its critics haven’t pulled any punches in accusing the military brass of being hand-in-glove with Washington on drone attacks and turning a blind eye to the scourge for its own convenience.
So if one were looking for a tripwire that unraveled the army-JI nexus of yore it’s none other than American drone that have increasingly been acquiring a pivotal context of politics in Pakistan. While the military may go on sitting on the fence, JI has apparently chosen to make the rift public.
Munawwar is undoubtedly more outspoken a JI Amir than his illustrious predecessors. He was, in his early youth, a fire-brand votary of the left-leaning National Students Federation (NSF) and has carried the exuberance of his youth into his new profile of the JI leader. No careful pundit of the ISPR’s press release critiquing Munawwar could’ve missed noticing a barely-disguised pining for the past camaraderie in the tribute paid to the international stature of JI’s founder and first Amir, Maulana Maudoodi. The brass must be ruing the loss of the glue that bonded the two in good old days.
But nostalgia of the past trust can’t paper over the savaging of what may be an inconvenient leader of an old ally. The ISPR’s terse denunciation of Munawwar almost looks like a personal vendetta. It doesn’t stop there but goes on demanding JI, as a party, to hold its Amir accountable and get rid of him.
Come on, generals, don’t kid yourselves. You must be day-dreaming in making this puerile demand off the cadres of a political force as disciplined as JI. Don’t you know how well-oiled a machine JI is? What made you believe your frontal assault on Munawwar would trigger a revolt within the party against him?
The JI leadership, alert as always to intrigues against their citadel, lost no time in closing their ranks and lifting up the draw-bridge across their moat. The JI Secretary-General, Liaquat Baloch—no novice to Pakistan’s arcane power politics—hit back hard at the army in an official JI rejoinder of November 11, accusing the brass of “direct intervention” in the country’s politics. Noteworthy is his allusion to ‘direct intervention.’ It doesn’t require a rocket-scientist to read between the lines and concede an unfortunate reality of Pakistan’s political culture: the army throwing its weight around, indirectly, in almost every sensitive situation or major development.
Since nothing remains localised for long in Pakistani politics, the fallout of the JI-military fracas has started spawning permutations of all kinds. Nawaz Sharif, not known for reacting to a situation with alacrity, has apparently decided to jump on the military’s bandwagon. He decided to visit the hallowed precincts of the GHQ in Rawalpindi, on November 12, a day after JI’s rejoinder, to pay glowing tributes to the sacrifices of the jawans for the sake of the nation. This was his first time in GHQ since becoming PM in June. Bruised by the JI assault, the GHQ brass couldn’t be more obliged to the PM for his timely input in morale-boosting.
Lost in all this thicket of verbiage and criss-crossing darts of vendettas is, what’s the real sense of martyr according to the Qur'anic injunctions?
Whatever my little reading of the Qur'an suggests is that the Holy Book isn’t profligate, at all, in bestowing the coveted title of a shaheed (martyr) lightly. That honour, according to the Qur'an, should be reserved for only those who deliberately lay down their life to earn the favour of their Creator. In contrast, in the Land of the Pure, even those killed in plane crashes, or even road accidents, have been instantly granted the title of a martyr.
But Maulana Fazlur Rehman walks away with the trophy with his injunction that even a dog killed in an American drone attack is a martyr in his book. For God’s sake, Maulana, have a heart if you find it so difficult to have a sense. - K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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