An interesting news item crossed my attention this past week. It was reported (in The Nation and many other places) that sermons delivered in Pakistani mosques before the Friday prayers will now be recorded by police. Under the Loudspeaker act, the government has mobilized the Police forces to clamp down on mosques where Friday sermons are being used to incite hatred against other sects, religions, or especially against the government. According to an AKI/Dawn report:
A source in a law-enforcement agency told the Pakistani daily Dawn that police officials would be deployed in mosques across the country to film the Friday sermons. The move was aimed at ensuring that hate speeches were not delivered from the pulpit. Pakistan’s provincial home secretaries and senior officials of the country’s law-enforcement agencies attended a meeting on Saturday to chalk out a strategy to keep close tabs on the Friday sermons â€â€? sometimes employed to foment sectarian unrest.
The source said station house officers would give a report on the recorded sermons and speeches to district police officers on a weekly basis. He added police action could be initiated against those who offend people’s religious beliefs.
This is a big deal in Pakistan, and if serious steps are indeed being taken to ‘monitor’ or ‘control’ the messages being relayed from mosque loudspeakers, I believe ramifications can be felt further down the road. The loudspeakers are really the best way for the mosque administration to reach a large audience, and I am sure they will protest if punitive actions are taken against Imams whose lectures are considered threatening.
Friday prayers hold a special place in the culture and tradition of most Muslim countries, including Pakistan. While many muslims pray 5 times a day, it is indeed Friday when mosques are filled up, and when communities come together in a prayer exercise that almost carries a ritualistic fervor to it, in addition to the special status it holds within the religion Islam.
The Friday sermons from the pulpit have also held a special status in South Asia. They were not just lectures that clarified religious teachings, but were also used to declare community consensus on issues that were linked to religion and religio-politics. For example, my dad tells me how some sermons in the Indian town of Kanpur were essential in calming Hindu-muslim riots in the pre-partition India. I also remember growing up and learning so much about the various aspects of muslim life, such as the histories of Islamic rule at various times and the personalities associated with them, the rights of women in marriage, arrangements for funerals, etc etc through friday sermons.
With the advent of loud speakers, however, these sermons started reaching out to audiences beyond those who came to the mosque voluntarily, and became a permanent presence in every household on Friday (whether you liked it or not). Sermons today, at least in many parts of Karachi, start early in the day and provoke a certain sense of guilt if one was going to miss the prayers, and invoke a little motivation in the listeners to go and attend. Despite the frequent annoyance of loud religious messages being thrust onto an involunatry audience for an entire half day, at least the messages conveyed in the past via the content of the sermons were often positive or thought provoking.
However, that has not always been the case. Every now and then, the pulpit continues to be abused, and sermons littered with misleading political messages, and even those inciting communal disharmony, hatred and violence, have been delivered to an otherwise eager and ‘available’ audience. It was just a few years ago, under Benazir’s last stint in office, that a friday sermon at my local mosque was used to declare that Islam did not allow a woman to be the head of state. Similarly, soon after 9/11, I heard a sermon asking God to severely punish all those Muslim leaders who were conspiring with the ‘Kafirs’ to throw bombs at muslims in Afghanistan. Last year when sectarian violence was erupting in the city, a Friday sermon declared a prominent sect in Islam to be equivalent to another sect which had already been declared non-muslims by the state of Pakistan. On my last visit to Pakistan, I heard a sermon declaring that jihad-fi-sabeel-lillah in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine was a sure way to earn a permanent place in the heavens.
And the list goes on…There are many who complain about the use of loudspeakers by mosques, but I believe the content of the sermons is probably a more important issue to deal with. So I am indeed interested in seeing further what the government now intends to do to monitor the friday sermons, and limit their use for (hopefully) useful education and information dissemination. But there is a wider question that we must ask ourselves. Should the state have any authority over the content delivered in mosque sermons (I am told Saudi Arabia may already have tight controls over their Friday sermons)? Would such monitoring and control strategy constitute a limit on the freedom of speech for the mosque Imams? Or would it really all be easy if simply the loudspeakers were removed from the mosques?
A large audience sitting fully engaged for an extended period of time can be an ideal way to engage society in discourse on important matters, such as those related to religion and community life. But how to get it done without getting it hijacked by one or more parties, including the government?
Personally I would prefer to not be ajudge of what is and what isn’t Islamic. Despite our assumptions of our own literacy, I believe we all can afford to learn some more about our faith and the ways in which it can be practised.
As much as some people hate the word secular, the issue of loudspeakers on mosques or not can be best handled in a secular context. One should not have to listen to Azan at 5 am if he/she is a non-muslim, and similarly one should not have to listen to Naat all afternoon if he/she thinks of it as bid’at, etc . These are the issues on which I have seen three mosques bickering over for the past 2 decades in my mohalla. Those of us who choose to go to a mosque do so voluntarily and the Imams can be asked to keep their voice low so it only stays within the confines of their mosque.
Is it difficult to implement? Yes. Somehow many people in our society have been convinced that our aakhirat is dependent not on our actions in this world, but on how many muslims and non-muslims we can preach to and proselytize. I may be exaggerating, but I think it is breeding a culture where people tend to blame all their problems on others instead of doing serious soul-searching.
patexpat made the point.”illetracy” is the keyword but how do you seprate an educated with a litrate person.In old times our ancestors were not ‘educated’ like today but they were not illetrate.Today I found more illerated educated person in society and Pakistan has suffered a lot due to those “parhay likhay jahil” than any mullah or religious party.
I also oppose concept of reading naat on loud speakers.Thats really not Islamic anyway.
Adnan,
If you want to control loudspeakers because you don’t want to hear the shrilled voice azaan five times a day or the half hour to 45 minutes friday sermon as it causes a noise pollution or nuisance; I would have understood.
How about we control the ‘Naat(s)’ that the ‘hari pagri’ mosques carry out through out the day and night during some holy day or night. Or the whip-cracking ear-deafening muharram shiite sermons. Nobody seems to mind those which cause so much agony to the residents.
Its never the friday sermon that is used to spread the hatred. Some mosques might do it, but the hatred has always been there in people’s hearts due to ignorance of their own religion and other religions as well.
And who is going to judge whether the friday sermon is spreading hatred. The corrupt policeman. I am sure we can do better than that.
Once again I hate to reiterate what i said earlier. Why do so many people go to ‘neem hakeems’, ‘aamil baba’ etc. Its because they are illiterate. Why don’t you and I subscribe to the hatred that the maulvi keeps spewing? The reason is we are educated. If the populace is educated, they will also turn a deaf ear to such maulvis.
Its never the friday sermon that is used to spread the hatred. Some mosques might do it, but the hatred has always been there in people’s hearts due to ignorance of their own religion and other religions as well.
If you are still not convinced, go ahead with the monitoring of friday sermon. But then you are not focusing on the root cause.
I would be very concerned giving the government a larger role in ‘controlling’ mosques or maulvis. Or controlling number of mosques or things like that. I suspect nothing good will come from it. Yet, some of the hatred that is sometimes spreadd (even if in very small number of cases) is serious and something should be done.
PatExpat,
Many of the writers above, including myself, would not contend with you on your premise that the populace needs to be educated but our concern is the dangerous control “maulvis” have come to have on people specially in the interior of the country. Of course the people allow this to happen but as you indicated they are uneducated and in many cases fall for mere appearances than for anything else. In line with the main spirit of the post above we must control the loudspeaker and the use of the mosque for any purpose other than the sacred one intended for it. As for the sectarian theological differences and educatiing the entire population, it’s a long term battle that has to be won at some point.
[quote post="6"]I am blunt but I think there is no need to have so many masjids in single street of Pakistan[/quote]
I might be wrong but I have not come across any such area yet in Karachi where there are more than one masjid situated on single street.Yep there are more than one masjid in a single area and it is Ok and much required.
State appointed molvis will obviously never say anything against government then there will be no difference between govt alliance and those imams.*grin*
That village Moazzan was an innovative person.He might be hired by Google in near future.
On a serious note,I heard that in turkey Azaan is relayed in Masjids rather giving by seprate Imams.Is it true?
Adnan, I did not intend to sidestep the issue in my previous post and dont want to overload the blog with my comments.
Regarding the education of Mullahs, how do you expect maulvis to accept similar education. Shia will never study islamiat as taught in university. A barelwi will never go for the deobandi version. Then you have the tableeghi jamaat which has a accomodative approach to highly puritanical wahhabi subscribing ahl-e-hadeeth. All the mosques are associated with one of these school of thoughts.
And secondly, some of these schools use mosques to illegally occupy land. And when you try to bring down the mosque, its not some imported population that comes to save it. Its always the locals residing nearby that rise to save the mosque.
I agree that maulvi needs to be educated but more than that, the populace needs to taught logical thinking and reasoning. As long as the population is ignorant of its religion and incapable of thinking rationally, there will always be an opportunity from some maulvi to control them.
And if you allow me to extend the argument further, Muslims are supposed to have sufficient knowledge of their own religion. The power they have allowed the maulvis is akin to Theocracy which is not in line with Islamic spirit.