Why is the pulpit non-committal?
(Pulpit is a platform or rasied structure in a mosque from which the preacher delivers the sermons)

By Nasser Yousaf

THE people of the Frontier Province in Pakistan can do little more to further establish their sincere Islamic credentials. Throughout the length and breadth of the province the mosques are overflowing with the faithful. Come time for the evening prayer and the bustling Saddar Road in Peshawar ceases to exist; shoppers and shopkeepers from all around convert the road into a makeshift mosque.

Men are sporting beards in large numbers as one keeps bumping into hordes of them at every step. No women on the streets or at university campuses in the province have ever been spotted in skirts and those few who wear jeans do so with long flowing shirts. Similarly, women driving cars keep to their cultural ethos in the most profound sense of the word. Little is needed to substantiate the Pakhtuns’ way of adherence to the month of fasting. The severity of fasting in the Frontier is such that the rest of the country lightly refers to Ramazan as the headache of the Pathans. There are no nightclubs, pubs or casinos anywhere and life comes to a halt when the night is still pretty young.

But this does not seem to be enough in the eyes of those currently at war with the defenceless people of the Frontier. The puritans’ brigade killed 12 innocent people on Aug 12, 2008, in a suicide attack in Peshawar and then called it a fidayeen (holy warriors) onslaught against forces presumably inimical to their cause. Two veiled women and a minor girl on their way to a wedding, two persons on bicycles and some lower-ranking officials of the air force were among the targets.

Before this, the militants twice targeted the 500 KV power tower on the outskirts of Peshawar in the infamous summer heat of the plains. As a result power supply to the provincial capital and scores of other districts remained suspended for days causing untold miseries to the sick and old.

Perhaps the militants did not know that a majority of cancer patients being treated at various reputed hospitals of the country hail from the Frontier or else their think tank would have reconsidered their plans.

The ongoing frenzy in the province might be sending very confused signals to the outside world. Those not familiar with the area might be imputing this fracas to a battle between the Islamists and non-Muslims. The record says otherwise: Muslims constitute 99.4 per cent of the population of the Frontier.

This leaves little room for people of other faiths to figure on the map. Nevertheless the census report does put the Christians and Ahmadis way down at less than one per cent while Hindus are so few that they easily evade even telescopic review. What is the issue at stake then? With the holy month of fasting to begin next week, why has Bajaur Agency been exorcised of most of its 900,000 inhabitants? The pulpit was supposed to shield the faithful but it is keeping mum or has it also been silenced into submission?

Friday prayers hardly get ignored when, in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Quran, Muslims stop working and find themselves mosque-bound as if by instinct. Several mosques in the Frontier have built separate enclosures for women. Children invariably make it to the mosques, adding an aura of special festivity to the congregational prayer in the true spirit of the ritual. The preacher leads the congregation, according to his own sweet will, reinforced by his easy access to the loudspeaker that now forms a part of his dress code through his buttonhole.

Garrulous preachers are what no administration would like to have in its jurisdiction but yet they are there occupying the pulpits till death do them part. A candidate being interviewed for the civil service was once asked why it was considered ominous to have the Eid festival on a Friday. After the interviewee drew a blank, the suave examiner explained that the issue was not one of superstition but one that concerned the management of two congregations gone awry on the same day as the enormity of the occasion entailed great cost for the government of the time. This in a nutshell shows the importance of the Friday sermon. But why is the preacher turning a blind eye to the melee in his own ranks?

No doubt, it is the presence of hundreds of worshippers listening to him in rapt attention that lends vanity to the tone of the preacher sitting on a higher pedestal. A politician spends a fortune on assembling a crowd of a few hundreds and then trying to keep it in good humour. On the other hand, preachers have facile access to an audience of more than 20m every Friday in Pakistan. People make it to the mosques without anybody’s persuasion or prodding. But the preacher seems to be oblivious of the added responsibilities that the enviable position bestows on him. He can thus be heard busying himself with inanities.

In a mosque in one neighbourhood, the preacher vents his spleen on those who according to him are throwing away their fortunes in the laps of dancing girls, a euphemism for a term that the preacher would have preferred. The sermon is relayed to all houses down the street on airwaves as the preacher repeats the charge more vociferously. This happened on a Friday when a woman fleeing from the battlefields of Bajaur Agency gave birth to a child on the roadside. The preacher then invoked curses on the enemies of Islam not knowing that salvation was one prayer away: the prayer that the pulpit may be restored to its conceived status in Islam.

courtesy Dawn, printed on August 30, 2008