Getting down to fundamentals

So let me make clear in my column this week that I did not and do not intend to give the fundamentalist political parties much credit at all.

I certainly do not intend to give them credit for the quality of their political positions and programmes or for the morality of their leadership.

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I suppose that I do give them credit for their political organisation and their ability to articulate a consistent and superficially compelling agenda that might appeal to a certain segment of the public.

Their principal advantage over their political adversaries lies in their capacity to put forward a vision for the future of the country. But this is only an advantage insofar as the rest of the political parties have been unable to persuasively accomplish what should be a pretty basic task for a political party.

Let me reiterate my belief that the future envisioned by the fundamentalist parties is one that should chill the bones of all sentient Bangladeshis.

Let us look at this vision -- a vision of sorts I called it -- and examine where and how it is deeply compromised.

I want to leave readers of this column in no doubt that if the fundamentalists were successful in enacting their vision of the future then it would be a catastrophe for the country.

Before we look at their agenda, let me first make one or two points.

These points may seem obvious to many of you, but the fact remains that they are not necessarily so obvious to many people and so we shouldn't serenely assume that people are too smart or too educated or too liberal-minded to fall for the fundamentalist party line. Many extremely smart and educated and liberal-minded people do agree with the line peddled by the fundamentalist parties.

So, first things first.

I want to make it clear that the equation of religion with the fundamentalist political parties cannot be permitted to stand. Leaders of both the principal fundamentalist parties are on record as equating attacks on them with an attack on Islam.

The truth of the matter is quite the opposite.

In the first place, there are more types of Islam than that advocated by the fundamentalist parties. Indeed, even if one identifies oneself as a fundamentalist Muslim (and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this -- "fundamentalist" means is one who wishes to return to fundamentals, however he or she understands this), this does not mean that you have automatically signed on to the fundamentalist political agenda.

In fact, just as there are many different ways of being a good Muslim, there are also different ways of being a fundamentalist Muslim, and the way espoused by the fundamentalist political parties is not the only way to being either a good Muslim or a good fundamentalist Muslim.

Second, the best way -- and this has been demonstrated all across the globe -- to preserve and strengthen religion is to keep the state out of it. One can legislate the length of men's beards or what clothes women must wear -- but you cannot legislate goodness of heart or true spirituality.

Look at the Taliban regime in Afghanistan as an example. Look at Saudi Arabia where domestic servants -- from Bangladesh as well as elsewhere -- are often treated little better than slaves. Look at Iran where the Islamic revolution has entrenched an authoritarian clerical leadership that has contributed to an entire generation of young Iranians' severe cynicism about religion.

Rule by strict religious law has not brought us the good society -- but forget about the good society for a moment -- Islam has neither flourished nor prospered nor been invigorated under fundamentalist rule anywhere in the world.

Is Afghanistan (under the Taliban) or Saudi Arabia or Iran the model for the kind of country we want here in Bangladesh?

What do these countries have to recommend them in comparison with other Muslim countries such as Malaysia or the Emirates or Turkey that we might more profitably look to as models for the future?

Once upon a time, the Muslim world was the centre of learning and creativity and forward-thinking on the planet. Not coincidentally, this golden age corresponded with the time when Islamic society was at its most open.

Today, as at all other times in history, fundamentalist regimes have not created societies that are more prosperous or more moral or more dynamic than others, or societies that lead the world in terms of scholarship or art or creativity or innovation or justice or equality.

The real argument against the fundamentalists is not that just they won't deliver in temporal terms, it is that they won't deliver in spiritual terms either.

If they created a better or more moral society, but one that was less prosperous, many people would find that an acceptable trade-off.

But the fundamentalists (I am speaking of the political parties) do not care about the state of man's soul.

They are peddling their medieval agenda solely in order to amass political power. These are not men of God. These are hucksters, confidence men, cheap trick artists.

The fundamentalists play on the religious sentiments of a religious people and exploit their religiosity, susceptibility, and gullibility to advance their own agenda.

This is neither a Bangladeshi nor a Muslim phenomenon.

It exists, for instance, among Hindus in India, among Buddhists in Sri Lanka, among Christians in the US, and among Jews in Israel.

Everywhere it is the same old story.

Snake-oil salesmen are peddling their pseudo-religiosity and preying on the powerless and manipulating the impressionable in order to consolidate political power. Nothing appeals to a religious person more than an appeal to a higher authority. Nothing beats an endorsement from the Almighty.

I cannot think of anything more cynical, more blasphemous, and more irreligious than the shameless manipulations and machinations of the fundamentalist political parties, here as elsewhere.

How anyone can find these charlatans posing as men of God persuasive is beyond me. How anyone can believe that the hate-filled campaigns against the Ahmadiyyas and women and minorities are doing God's work astonishes me. How anyone can think that acquiescing in violence and intimidation is the way to build a more Godly society saddens me beyond belief.

Luckily, in this country at least, only a small minority buy into the vision of the fundamentalists.

But being wrong and being in the minority does not mean that they are no threat. The fact that the fundamentalists are so little concerned with morality is the strongest argument against them.

The fundamentalists do have a vision -- of sorts -- but let us make no mistake that their vision for the future of the country is a nightmare and not a dream.

But the fact remains, unless and until someone or some party succeeds in advancing an ideology that challenges them and articulating a vision for the future more compelling than theirs, the fundamentalists will quietly go from strength to strength.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.