Education Jails
Like everything else, greedy Pakistanis have seen religion as a pragmatic tool to ensure abundance in life after death. So, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t pragma-tism what my entire thesis is about?
As I said previously, I’m an advocate of pragmatic nationalism AND idealistic individualism. The lust for sawabs, hoors and paradise is actually pragmatic indi-vidualism (opposite of what I said) and is based on the same entrepreneurial mindset as “zar, zan, zameen”. There is nothing wrong with that mindset per se. I am all for capitalism, even in matters of faith. The problem arises when your actions render permanent dam-age to Islam and safety of Muslims in the global village. For e.g., Mumtaz Qadri killed Salman Taseer and booked his plot in heaven. The mullahs supported him and got sawabs deposited in their spiritual bank accounts.
However, international media reported it as a case of Islamist terrorism, and Mr. Thomas Jacobs who had booked a flight and given dollars to State Bank of Pa-kistan in exchange for rupees to meet the friendly people of Pakistan had to cancel his plans and convert the currency back. These dollars could have other-wise been used to buy Honda motorcycles from Japan or the petrol from Saudi that the fanatic mullahs used to go to Mumtaz Qadri’s funeral.
The most pragmatic tenet of Islam that has unfortunately been abused by the mullahcracy is that of “biddat” or innovation. Allah says in the Quran (5:3), “…This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you…” Muslims believe Jesus is a prophet, and that Christians changed their books and misrepresented him son of God. This is an example of biddat. But did anyone wonder how this process may have happened? Did the Christians wake up one day and decided ooh let’s make Jesus son of God. No. They gave ample justifi-cations that were universally acceptable, made logical derivations and still ended up with the wrong conclusions. Sound familiar? Bingo, this is exactly what Is-lamist mullahs of yesteryears have done and what political mullahs of today preach.
Inspired by the classic strategy of divide and conquer, mullahs have vilified harmless innovations like Ashura and Milad to ostracize certain sects and limit their influence, but conveniently turned a blind eye to dangerous biddats such as Islami Jamhuria and Islamic Banking. We need to set the record straight with two facts: 1) consuming riba is haraam in Islam; 2) modern finance cannot work without interest. Illiterate mullahs dis-agree with the second point, but like all their lusts, this one is also mere lip ser-vice to book a plot in DHA, Jannat. Are they principled enough to boycott pet-rol that Pakistan buys from Saudi using loans acquired on interest? Or for that matter everything that Pakistan imports including food items? A pragmatist tries to find a middle ground between the two facts above since they’re not actually mutually exclusive, as opposed to what mullahs would like you to believe.
Islam is a religion for mankind. As such, my cat that has extra-marital relations with seven other cats cannot be held religiously accountable, nor can a machine that is programmed to vaporize intruders. Similarly, banks and countries are also non-living things, so Islamic laws do not apply on inter-bank or inter-state deal-ings. The actual sin in Islam occurs when the end-user, a human, consumes in-terest. Even then, Islam leaves him answerable to Allah on the day of judge-ment and does not enforce the biddat of a universal anti-riba system.
I don’t have an issue with Islamic banking itself as it aims to bring the hesitant sections of the society into documented finance and productive use of money. However, Islamic banking does it at the expense of conventional banking, when it is nothing more than a marketing tactic. In actuality, a Muslim’s responsibility ends when the bank tells him that he will get X% profit, not X% interest. If the bank lied, the CEO burns in hell, not you. This is like going to a restaurant, or-dering mutton but getting served dog meat. You won’t lose your faith for con-suming haram meat, but the restaurant owner will.
The problem with universal application of zero riba in a nation like Pakistan is that a) not many people lend money purely from the good of their heart; b) the loan beneficiaries are rarely compliant with repayment timelines and believe bor-rowed money is "baap ka maal". In my opinion, just as salaat is left to the dis-cretion of Muslims, riba should be too as there is no reference from Quran or Sunnah that preaches enforcing Islamic banking on a state level. There are al-ready loan sharks operating at the societal level who charge exorbitant interest rates with minimal regulation, so Islamocratic laws are only cosmetic, and actual-ly inhibit white-collar, needy people from seeking loans for the fear of haraam. I believe it is better to regulate interest instead of introducing a blanket ban.
There are three thought groups among Muslims: 1)