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 -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?
Good point that why govt. should not appoint a Mulvi. True we have different sects and even new/innovated sub-sects, which in reality are more political parties than religious groups. But if govt. will give them freedom to open 3 new masjids in single street then we will have plenty sects and with new and never-ending problems. Therefore govt. should apply some well-made laws that people will not open masjids in each and every corner. I do not say govt. should take Lathi and say NO MASJIDS but it has to be significantly diplomatic to give permission to only those areas where the masjid is far away to go for prayers.
I agree if that the govt. should provide a quality education atleast to those people who study Islamic studies, this will indeed bring some good results. As I believe mostly people who study Islamic studies in Pakistani universities are those who are either not smart or capable enough to join other fields. It can also be because of having no other choice e.g. many students in NWFP leave their desired course which they studied in FA or FSc. and join Urdu or Islamic studies in BA as because the rest of the courses are only taught in english.
I worry about the idea of certifying and appointing mosque imams. Isn’t that exactly what happened under Zia, and I assume still continues.
Bilal and Ayesha,
The problem lies less with Maulvis and more with us. Its a simple case of market dynamics. There is a market out there for off-the-shelf ready-to-digest solutions to your problems in Islamic context. Maulvis are just catering to this niche (or rather the large market). Its a simple case of specialization. We turned to specialists for our concerns; an architect when we want to design the house, a doctor when we are feeling ill, a banker when need some financial advice etc.
But realistically speaking, having knowledge of religion is the responsibility of every Muslim. But who is going to find time to learn Arabic (to understand whether the maulvi is saying what is really meant in Quran or is the maulvi improvising it) but then Arabic would not be beneficial to us in our objective to attain financial freedom unlike English, French or Spanish.
Unless we make an effort to understand Islam ourselves this problem will persist. Like law, understanding of Islamic jurisprudence requires the understanding of history, legal precedence and historical contexts.
Final note: If the government starts appointing maulvis, who is going to define which sect should the maulvi represent. Whether you like it or not, the sects are here to stay. Government can try interfering in this matter but it will be playing with fire. With Waziristan, Baluchistan, politics; the government already has enough on its plate. It will not open another front.
Point taken Bilal, but I still don’t believe that it is unattainable. The major obstacle – the numerous sects and schools of thought of Islam – cannot be easily overcome. However, what the government can do is strongly monitor the presence of intolerance in the ideologies espoused by the Imams. Not just monitor political content but also religious intolerance. And of course, stringently persecute the culprits.
There is also another aspect: there are very few mosques that are provided patronage by the state. Thus the imam of the masjid is really under no serious compulsion to listen to what the government is telling him. Most likely, he would espouse the school of thought of whichever community/individual/group that supports the mosque. My suggestion might sound somewhat draconian, but the government ought to take control of all mosques in the country and start ordaining what is preached and what is not. This will be a huge task – but reform of this institute of society is desperately required.
Also, the populace of our country needs to be taught that not every maulvi is a learned person. In our country we have placed all religious entities on this high pedestal and in most cases maulvi sahab‘s word is the final word. This attitude allows more laxity to the Imams and it only becomes blasphemous to dare question their views. Maybe I am digressing here, but it’s just not the sermons – it is our whole attitude towards any religious figure. We have resigned our ability of rational thought to them.
Saadia and ayesha:
I have heard the recommendation of improving the education of Imams in mosques before. But I can’t quite rconcile how this could actually be done in a society like ours. There are recognized degrees that many Imams get (sanads or Ijazahs), but I worry if the degree awarding institutions, or individuals, are themselves either ignorant of their blatant intolerance of others, or worse still, comitted to actually preventing sectarian/religious harmony.
One interesting proposal brought up by a friend was for the government to directly hire all the Imams at the mosques (and pay for their salaries etc), and then train them under the auspices of a general education board so they can upgrade their knowledge base. Unfortunately the problem remains that our society is quite divided between the Deobandis and the Wahabis etc, and there is plenty of philanthropic money available so gov’t money is not needed. The unfortunate reality is that most Pakistanis do not understand Arabic, and hence they are vulnerable to paying undue attention to anyone with a religious getup (beard, kurta pajama, oonchi shalwar, imama, familiarity with arabic, etc). Often we find it difficult to distinguish between the good and the bad imams/ulema/leaders.
In general I feel that religious education in pakistan needs to become much better than the current method of shoving outdated islamaiat texts down our throats in schools. Reform is needed not just in Madrassahs, but in all our schools and colleges. As much as anything else, it is our ignorance about our own religion that lets us stay captive in the hands of deviant people at the pupits.