Over the last year or so, as I reconnected to friends and associates from Pakistan, I ran headlong into a wall. My childhood, teenage years and 20s were spent in Pakistan. In the 1980’s with the help of Zia-ul-Haq, a modern brand of Islam was sweeping through the schools and colleges. In this version—let’s call it ArabPk Blend 101, the most exciting act of protest against the world was to turn Muslim. Back in the day, hijab was simply taking a sheer piece of cotton and wrapping it around the head. It was pretty graceful actually. But alas, I struggled to keep the piece of cotton on my body, and was too clumsy to wrap it and actually have any hope of keeping it stuck in place. Plus I remained somewhat unaffected by religion. Not unaffected by morality—but unaffected by religion. I wasn’t as afraid of the hereafter as of life and people around me. Perhaps that is why I remained skeptical and critical of all the cultural crap that was dished out under pretext of religion. Being an Arab didn’t strike me as more moral than being American.
Yet, I watched in amazement at what happened in the 1980s. They actually thought that turning religious was a way to safeguard their way of life. Yet, consumerism—the worst aspect of Westernization was embraced without any questioning. God became a two dimensional being who looked the other way while the rich did absolutely nothing for the poor, and exploited every opportunity to harm the vulnerable. God lives in heaven and only passes judgement when you die. Until then you can do whatever the heck you want, as long as you pray, fast and quote Arabic.
I watched with almost a slight envy as my classmates kept perfect order with pins and a glue called grace. It wasn’t for me. I was just too happy playing with imaginary friends and laughing with some of the funniest people I ever met. Who needs religion when you are happy?
Traditionally the moment people saw the ‘light’ they started preaching. One day a classmate talked about religion to me. About how we must arrive somewhere or have a sense of ‘isness’ or being or become more ‘Muslim’. To me that felt like finding a large label and sticking it on to keep the broken parts together.
Our intrinsic collective self was broken and the muslimness was supposed to keep it together. Instead of examining why were broken, instead of healing our broken selves, we had resorted to hiding our broken selves behind various labels of identity that now reflected back whole in a mirror not of our making. This was Zia-ism. It came from the army or rather the man who became our dictator, who sought refuge in a twisted religion to control the population.
In other words, we were faking it. It was a grand lie told to keep children quiescent as they witnessed the suffering and the horror of the army’s rule and its grand plans. We had sacrificed true spirituality for the dubious pleasures of materialism and that too for the army only or those who are affiliated with it. We knew we had done it. Our souls knew what we were doing was giving up the most precious for the most mundane reason–survival. But we did it anyway. There were no words to even describe our anguish. The poets tried to speak about it…we silenced them. The writers tried to tell us. We silenced them. No! we went one step further we jailed them, we persecuted our truth tellers and we burned their books yet our anger found no solace.
We continued to buy a modern Islam that puts a balm called ‘We ARE Muslim’ over our agonizing wounds.
Perhaps the wise are wise because they refrain from defining themselves. The moment we define ourselves, we now have to rank ourselves. We now have something to protect—and that thing we protect is our idea of ourselves. We start to take ourselves very seriously. That can only lead to suffering—an ever present sense of sensitive humiliation. In that vulnerability, even humility becomes an attribute to show off about in the world of the non self reflective identified self.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly free of desire
One observes its wonders
Constantly filled with desire
One observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders
Free of the desire to define yourself, you can watch life with wonder, unattached to people’s appreciation or love for you. It is actually about embracing vulnerability. It is the way of the warrior of the heart. It takes infinite courage to love yourself despite witnessing one’s inability to find that one thing one craves the most. Our pain body is formed on the bulwark of our yearnings.
When we make our pain body our morality, only more pain results. Thus we watch horror struck as society erupts in violence or perversion. We think it is someone else’s doings. Someone else is responsible for it. We have no depth of understanding about the book we call holy and divine. We recite paragraphs from it. We tell each other to follow rules. We make our children learn it, promising them hell and damnation if they stray towards Westernization i.e., being more respectful of women. Yet, we are like children who were told that increasing our belief will take us to heaven and our entire focus has become to believe rather than to have faith.
We think that destroying the idols will mean freedom from falsity. If only God was literal. But God, isn’t literal. What if the checklist of belief does not open heaven’s doors, but instead shuts them even tighter?
What if belief is leading us to a false god, the god of monarchs who would rather we stayed obedient and quiescent.
If you ask the believers to think, they say it is not part of their belief to think. They aren’t going to think because it could endanger their beliefs. What a shortcut to conscience this belief is! it allows for all kinds of craziness to exist unquestioned….as a woman’s problem, as god’s problem, as somebody else’s problem!
Behind The Veil 