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?
Aziz Akhmad, It was short but accurate analysis and it does sort of takes us back to the original post. On a side note, the question is why does the state always side with the mullahs. I think it is because of the tremendous leverage they have in te Pakistani society and it is considered a political risk to go against them. Who would want to have a fatwa against himself or herself? Yet history has it that whoever tried to please them eventually ended up with a loss. In the end they (the mullahs) are for their own good.
This discussion has branched into many different directions, which is o.k as long as we don’t lose sight of the original question: Monitoring of Friday sermons by police — is it good or bad?
The sermons spewing out of the loudspeakers present multi-layered problems. At one level it is the question of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, which in my view must not be suppressed or controlled. But the problem is that the mullahs in Pakistan, while themselves enjoying both these freedoms to the hilt, would not allow the same freedoms to others who may have a different viewpoint. Ironically, the state, more often than not, would side with the mullahs on this issue.
On another level is the question of hate speech. Should it be monitored? It is known that some mullahs do preach hatred and violence from the pulpit in the guise of Friday sermons. I believe any speech that may inspire violence against another individual or a group of people must not be allowed. I think there is already a law on the statute books against such speech. That law must be enforced without any political considerations.
Then there is the question of ignorance being preached in the guise of religious discourse. That, I believe, is a market driven phenomenon. If there are people who still believe the earth is flat there will be people who would be ready to sell them a formula to measure the distance between its four corners.
Iqbal, a favorite poet of the mullahs as well, while addressing the mullahs had very appropriately said:
Teri namaz maiN baqi jalaal hai na jamaal
Teri azaaN main nahin hai meri sahar ka payaam
There is neither dignity nor beauty in your prayers
Nor your azan heralds the dawn that I am waiting for
P.S: PatExpat, the use of loudspeakers is not ordained by Islam. It is a latter day invention which was originally condemned by the mullahs as a Satanic invention.
Bilal,
I owe you an apology for making an implicit claim about your ignorance of religion, I was out of line. Please accept it. For all I know, you may know a lot more than I do.
However, what I intended to point out was the ayats should be read in context because they alone do not explain the idea. If every christian and jew was going to heaven anyway, Allah did not need to send a Prophet with a new religion in the name of islam which he preached to Christians and Jews and everybody, with the warning that non believer would go to hell; Allah could have sent someone to show the Christians/jews their original religion.
Why do you think, these Yusuf Islams, Yahya Haroons try to preach Islam. If I have studied Islam correctly, practicing Islam in solitude will not get me into heaven. Amr bil maroof and nahi anil munkar is a defined and agreed upon characteristic of a Muslim which all the sects/mosques will agree. Thats why after getting Prophethood, Prophet Muhammad came out of solitude (of Ghar-e-hira) and started openly preaching religion.
Dont you think he understood the meaning of Quran himself? Why did he and his followers send troops to Faris (Iran), Rome, Constantinople to establish a Islamic society. Wasn’t the ayats obvious to them. Roman empire was christian. Ghazwa Khyber was against Jews. Did the prophet not know the meaning of Quran that was revealed unto him.
By the way, in my earlier post I only talked about Azaan which does not fall into stepping over someone’s feet. Its a call to prayer only and not calling it defeats its purpose.
Regarding the pope’s comment, he did not need to quote the Byzantine emperor. What is offensive is that he searched amongst the most offensive quotations by any emperor and used it. How would jews feel if we quote the present iranian president on holocaust just to get some point across about need to carry inter-faith dialogue.
Though prophet Muhammad is implicit with Islam, yet explicitly associating him with terror is very offensive for Muslims. Nobody raises a voice anymore when people use the term ‘islamic terrorists’ but we don’t allow similar latitude for prophet Muhammad’s name. Had he only omitted Prophet Muhammad’s name, we would not have seen such an outcry.
And my apologies to ATP editors for this long post. Will try to keep future posts as short as possible or keep my mouth shut. If still there are some of Bilal’s questions unanswered, may be some other time or some other post. We will get an ample opportunity in these blogs.
Adnan:
Bilal,
Though I don’t consider myself ‘secular’ at all, however, I try to keep my posts as secular as possible (here the definition of secular is as understood by english speaking educated population of Pakistan) but your post forced me to set the record straight by qouting from Quran (OMG! OMG! OMG!)
Azaan is a call to prayer. If it is to remain in the confines of Mosque, the whole purpose of Azaan is defeated. On this issue, none of the three mosques would be bickering at all.
I know that there is an ayat stating there is no compulsion in Islam. It means that nobody is forced to convert to Islam and has nothing to do with secularism and is mainly quoted out of context. There is also an ayat “you are the best ummah who came out of the people, you will ORDER the righteous and PROHIBIT the vices”. if you know arabic (Amr bil maa’roof wa nahi anil munkar concept – again every sect will agree on it).
So Islam does call for calling to praying, preaching, ORDERING the right way and PROHIBITION of vices. If you have stayed on the topic, i would have remained secular.
I know you don’t want to be a judge of what is Islamic or Unislamic so I will stop here. And would appreciate that in future, we keep it as secular as possible without mentioning the word because (as Adnan Siddiqui would have said it) you don’t want to talk religion without having studied it, do you?