Islamophobia is the reverse of the coin minted by jihadist groups operating in and away from Muslim countries. The Muslim terrorist phenomenon owes its origins to the Afghan wars stretching over the last four decades. However, despite initial support to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan by the US-led west and Pakistan, the phenomenon even to this day represents but a thin sliver of Muslim opinion throughout the globe. That has not prevented racist, white supremacist hate-mongers to tar all Muslims with the same 'terrorist' brush to justify their attacks on Muslims in their own countries.
The Christchurch attacks have focused minds as never before on the rampant Islamophobia to be found in far-right, neo-fascist circles in the developed world. They have been responsible for a series of attacks and massacres of Muslim immigrants in their countries. Fundamentalist assertion of free speech, ignoring the sensitivities and possible fallout, has encouraged some circles to mock Islam and its Prophet (PBUH). The west having traversed a history of the incremental decline of religion (Christianity) in their societies, think nothing of mocking a church that has besmirched itself in recent years through the sexual abuse (ongoing) scandals that have rocked it. But that is not the case with Muslim societies, in which religious belief is still deeply held and even the 'bad' Muslim will be outraged at the mocking of his faith. The cycle of hatred and violence by Muslim fanatics and terrorists and its counter-blast from Islamophobic hate-mongers has to be tackled before the whole world descends into atavistic barbarism.
The foreign ministers of the toothless Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) have been invited to a summit in Istanbul on March 22, 2019 by present revolving chair Turkish President Recip Erdogan to address the issue of Islamophobia. Not to prejudge the outcome but the OIC's ability to change the present global landscape of hate and 'othering' (mutual to both sides of the hate coin, it must be admitted) is open to question. However, anti-immigration, racist leaders of the west like US President Donald Trump need to reverse course and policy if rivers of blood are to be stopped before they begin to flow.
While the world grapples with this issue, the people of Pakistan (as hinted at in the opening sentence) have more than their fair share of woes to deal with. Saddled with a Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government led by PM Imran Khan through a controversial election in 2018, the people of Pakistan are groaning under skyrocketing inflation, unemployment, insecurity of life and limb, and little or no prospects of any relief in sight. The PTI government could be forgiven for inexperience, but incompetence stemming from little or no homework before assuming office and contradictory policies are harder to forgive eight months down the road. The government has been unable to shake off its aura of being rudderless, still in opposition 'container' mode rather than in government, and unable to offer much except reliance on financial bailouts from friendly countries as a preliminary to going back to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a programme centring on balance of payments and budgetary support (both inflicted with stubborn deficits). The corruption mantra of the PTI, stemming from its agitational opposition mode, needs to be interrogated on the touchstone of credibility, effectiveness, and fallout.
Corruption is endemic in our system from top to bottom. Targeting a few opposition leading figures and bureaucrats suspected of loyalty to the previous governments of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) may reap political satisfaction to the incumbents, but it falls far short of a serious, systemic change in the loopholes that allow corruption. In the process, helped by the National Accountability Bureau's (NAB's) ham-handed methodology, the cry of 'victimisation' from those targeted erodes the credibility of the anti-corruption drive, whether those targeted deserve it or not. The bureaucracy, gripped by fear of being dragged over the coals has, in time honoured fashion, 'shut shop' by refusing to take decisions that could later be used against them by NAB (as has happened to a few prominent bureaucrats). Paralysis of government is the inevitable outcome.
The indigenous business community is wooed on the one hand to assist the PTI government in reviving a sinking economy, while the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR), under pressure from the government to meet its revenue targets, is conducting raids on businesses with dubious legal validity and in the process destroying what remains of business confidence. Local investment therefore is harder to obtain than seeking a needle in a haystack. The FBR 'raiders' are having a field day in extorting bribes from business houses raided to exempt them from the further unwanted attentions of the tax machinery. Now finally there is talk in government circles of stopping this practice that is reaping negative dividends even where enhanced revenue is concerned.
The PTI government has yet to introduce a single piece of legislation in the last eight months in parliament (the hurried passing of a bill to enhance Punjab Assembly members' salaries is perhaps the dubious and controversial exception, that has even earned the ire of PM Imran Khan in a situation where public finances are short and the people suffering). Given the arithmetic of the Assemblies, the government has no hope of passing significant legislation without the cooperation of the opposition (especially in the Senate), the very opposition government ministers from the PM down waste not a single opportunity to badmouth. The government wants, for example, to extend the life of the military courts set up in 2015 after the Army Public School Peshawar massacre of children and students by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan terrorists, whose extended tenure expires on March 30, 2019. But for this, a constitutional amendment is required. Without the opposition's help therefore, this is unlikely to pass muster.
The working class, peasantry, youth, women (despite the admirable, broad-based Women's March this year) and minorities have all been left abandoned. They have little hope from either the older parties or the governing incumbents. With the decline of the Left, they lack a credible and effective champion to take up their cause/s. Hence the title of this piece, which reflects the current reality that critics, dissidents and rebels who oppose the present iniquitous, exploitative economic system and reject the parties representing at the core the interests of various factions of the elite are marginalised and struggling for relevance. The challenge for them is formidable in a global climate of writing off the Left's vision, although green shoots of resistance are sprouting everywhere, even in the heart of global capitalism, the US.
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