“What’s the point of wearing a headscarf, if she’s going to roam around campus wearing tight jeans like that?” remarked a not so conservative friend, while referring to his former crush, after she turned him down. Pakistani society is visibly in flux when it comes to understanding the role religion should play in society. This fluidity will naturally translate into individuals that struggle to define the role religion should play in their lives. Most of these people can be spotted from a distance; they stand on the edge of external markers of religiosity. The edge is where all the action takes place: a young man from an ultramodern family goes to university clean shaven and returns home four years later, wearing a thick black beard and a white Saudi style thobe with a turban. The edge is where one young woman – from a family full of women donning the hijab – chooses to take her hijab off and is ostracized by her own mother.
Their story is Pakistan’s story.
I still remember the whispers of hypocrite that followed a girl in university who chose to take her head scarf off. “Why did she wear a scarf in the first place, if she wasn’t sure about her ability to follow through?” was a common comment on the campus grapevine. Same was the case with young men who chose to vary the length of their beards. Labeled ‘confused’ at best and ‘hypocrites’ at worst, these men and women are physical manifestations of a nation on the edge – we hang onto religion as our last hope for salvation or self-destruction, whichever comes first.
Beards and hijabs may serve as visible proxies of an individual’s religiosity but Pakistani society has taken this to an extreme by transforming these external markers into a religious stock market, where your shares trade up or down based on the length of your beard on a particular day. This outside in approach to religion hasn’t just turned people off religion, as some secular folks like to argue. It has also corrupted the understanding of religion for those genuinely trying to be religious. Pakistanis have used their signature ingenuity to crack a short cut to understanding religion. So what if you can’t become a good human being overnight? You can develop the intention to grow a beard or start wearing a headscarf overnight.
We blame ‘foreigners’ and ‘conspiracies’ for the horrible things done in the name of our religion but which foreigner or conspiracy forces us to ostracize a family member for her decision to take the Hijab off or take it for the first time? Our actions and taunts suffocate those who want to genuinely discover their faith, at their own pace. In fact, for all their striking differences, there’s one belief religious and non-religious Pakistanis share; both have a low tolerance for individuals struggling to figure out religion, with interpretations different from their own.
We need to challenge ourselves to be better Muslims and human beings – to respect each other’s right to evolve our religious identity, without being quick to pass judgment. The purpose of this column isn’t to condemn everyone with the same broad brush but to highlight that collectively as a society, we tend to gravitate towards judging those who don’t look like us or our worldview. This has to stop.
Take a look at the beating religion has taken because of our judgmental behavior: an extraordinary emphasis on external behaviors has incentivized a one dimensional view of religion that quietly replaces spirituality with showing off. This behavior is now visible in society with kitty party aunties trying to top each other by hosting the most elaborate ‘dars’ at their DHA Mc-mansions. Or infamous rich tycoons strutting out sacrificial animals, imported all the way from Australia for Eid-ul-Adha, to draw record crowds appreciating the beauty and fat content of their prey. And then there are middle aged men playing mine is bigger than yours with their beards, while forgetting that religion also requires us to pay our taxes, not park in the middle of the road at Juma and be honest in business dealings.
A jugaru nation will find shortcuts to anything, which includes understanding religion. The least we can do is spare those refusing to take a short cut – those living on the edges, who try to reflect on religion from the inside out rather than the outside in.
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