Here comes the hirsute brigade

The Friday Times
Khalid Hasan

All things good and bad come to an end, and so have the elections. What is to follow is of course another matter. There may be uncertainty in the air but of one thing we can be certain. This is bad news for barbers. The hirsute ones are coming. General Pervez Musharraf who takes credit for everything, done and undone, true to form, has also taken credit for this phenomenon.

No longer can Pakistani representatives in Western capitals begin their conversations with, “But you know the religious parties have never taken more than two or three slots in parliament.” This standard opening served our diplomats and visiting delegations splendidly for many, many years. Often, it was able to clinch an argument and even during the years of Zia-ul-Haq when this dragon’s harvest was being well and truly sown, this gambit served to deflect criticism that Pakistan was going fundo. Well, surprise, surprise. Pakistan has gone fundo and Zia-ul-Haq rests in peace at last.

How can we ever express our gratitude to the Pakistan Army? Whatever we are today, we are because of our Bahadur Mussalah Afwaj (stirring sounds of the national anthem whose words 99.9 percent of the population of Pakistan is unable to understand, rise in the air. Stand up everybody). I think this grateful nation should pin another medal on the General Musharraf’s chest, though it appears to be running out of space. Perhaps he should be respectfully asked to put some of them in storage, as museums do with their art collections.

The Americans who have maintained near silence over the election results are no less worried about the future, speaking privately than, say the All Pakistan Anjuman-e-Araish-e-Gaisoo, or in less ornate language, Pakistan’s barbers and hairdressers. Between Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Maulana Sami-ul Haq “Sandwich”, Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani of the India-ink beard, Prof Sajjad Mir who used to be perfectly normal once, believe it or not, should have at least a donkey load of hair, give or take a few kilos. It is hard to believe today that this country was created by that elegant, immaculately dressed gentleman Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Are they going to put a beard on his face as well? After all, a beginning has already been made by the federal secretary with his directive that all who draw their salary from the exchequer begin wearing “the national dress” whose only advantage is that the wearer will never know how much blubber he has put on.

My friend Mir Jamilur Rahman has warned in a newspaper piece that the holy warriors of the MMA are all poised to have Friday redeclared the weekly holiday. I suggest they go a step further and have Sunday abolished altogether so that it no longer exists on the calendar to dilute the piety of the faithful. Women are to be required to wear that awful thing called the hijab. Since the world began, women have tried to find new ways of beautifying themselves, and that is their privilege. The hijab is one invention that immediately turns a woman into something unbearably drab. If you put a hijab on Marilyn Monroe, she would be indistinguishable from, say, the late Phoolan Devi.

The MMA, writes my friend, is also determined to “end vulgarity and obscenity” on PTV. I would suggest, it go a step further and end PTV itself since, along with Radio Pakistan, PTV makes up the twin otters of dullness and disinformation. Like that poet in Julius Caesar, it should be killed for its bad verses. And what is it that the MMA find particularly sinful on PTV? It turns out that bareheaded women in sleeveless shirts and jeans do not let the maulanas sleep at night. Perhaps they have stolen a leaf from Mian Nawaz Sharif’s book who once wrote out a memo in his own hand directing that “these jean-jacket boys with long hair” should be banned from TV and, further, that the satellites that brought down “shameless Western programmes” should be “jammed.” Had he succeeded, we would have seen Star Wars in our own time.

The Pure Ones also want to abolish co-education once for all. Why don’t they go ahead and abolish women themselves because the female of the species it is that appears to bother them the most. The great contradiction of the mullah is that while on the one hand he leches for women, he detests them at the same time. My first visit to Iran after the Khomenei takeover was instructive. Everywhere, there were signs that women should on no account be seen without the chador, nor should their hair be visible to the naked eye. It struck me that the edict had come not from women but men. Women had no problem at all with looking their best and wearing nice clothes. It was only the mullah who felt in need of “protection.” So the sinfulness lay not in the appearance of the women but in the hearts and minds of those who issued such decrees. It was they who needed moral reform.

At the height of the Taliban terror, Kishwar Naheed wrote a lovely poem that began: Wo jo bacheeyon se dar gaye (They who felt threatened by girl children). But the Taliban were across the Durand Line in Afghanistan. This is happening right here and now under the rule of a man who is afraid to be seen in public with his dogs. Mir Jamilur Rahman wrote that the MMA was also of the view that women should not travel by the same public buses as men. He added that if this were to be carried further, it could well lead to the demand that there should be separate passenger aircraft for women.

But more sinister is the determination of the MMA leaders to implement the Hudood punishments. It is typical of the hypocrisy of those who have ruled us that none of them had the decency or the courage to strike off these primitive laws. While Nawaz Sharif because of his father or out of his own inhibited outlook was unlikely to have done so, Benazir Bhutto was afraid that if she acted, the mullahs would come after her. What she did not realise was that they were going to come after her anyway. General Musharraf began on a promising note but soon retreated into the reactionary cocoon that Pakistani leaders have fashioned for themselves. The mullahs, thrown up by the general’s shenanigans and the genius of General Tanveer Naqvi, will begin to chop hands, stone adulteresses and blind others on the “an eye for an eye” basis before long. Is there someone to stop them?

Someone wrote to a newspaper the other day that he was going to leave Pakistan the day Maulana Fazlur Rehman became Prime Minister. Since no other country would give a Pakistani a visa, he was proceeding to Papua New Guinea where no such restrictions existed. My advice to him is to hurry before Papua New Guinea also slams the door shut.