Need for Moderation

As we go through the Holy month of Ramzan, a time of deep introspection and reflection, one cannot stop thinking how far away we, as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, have drifted from the core principles of Moderation and main values fostered by Islam.

Somewhere down the path, we have collectively lost the quality of being moderate, avoiding extremes, and of remaining within limits that are not excessive.

This mindset of extreme attitudes is now reflected in all aspects of life in Pakistan. Be it politics, governance, judiciary, journalism, sports, business, civil society, academia or any other domain, a thick fog of intolerance, bigotry, and fanaticism seems to have hampered our vision making us blind to recognize the merit of “Golden Mean” or “Wasat-the justly balanced”.

Moderation, considered an excellent and praiseworthy quality that also personifies ‘justice’, has become a foreign concept to us both as individuals and as a nation. In fact, a focused look at our faith reveals that each command, suggestion, and recommendation of Islam, from worship to lifestyle, resonates with the human disposition and is guided by moderation.

Justice presupposes knowledge and freedom. Without knowledge and freedom, it is not possible to be just, to choose what is good, to acquire virtue, and to be moderate. Ignorance and indifference are antithetical to moderation. It betrays cowardice and insincerity-in short, it is injustice. Justice, on the other hand, demands that what is true and right be consciously promoted and defended, and what is false and wrong be rejected and eliminated.

Extremism denotes the transgression of limits in all aspects of a person and the body of the nation as a whole.

An extremist has no regard for any limit in his mind, speech, or action. When limits are transgressed in any sphere of private, political, and public life, injustice and all sorts of extremism will emerge. It is a situation when truth and falsehood can no longer be distinguished resulting in a state of mental confusion. Corruption of knowledge, according to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, is the root cause of corrupt leadership in every sphere of life.

If the people go to an extreme, the leaders have a duty to reign them in. Fish starts to rot from the head – so do societies and nations. It is, therefore, important for the people to have checks and balances between various sections of society and government can help prevent extremism and the oppression that arises from it.

History is witness to the fact that when leaders undermine social contracts and abandon moderation in favour of populist politics, it inevitably leads to societal collapse as we are witnessing in Pakistan in recent years. Whether societies are ruled by ruthless dictators or popular representatives, they fall apart in time, with different degrees of severity.

It is now an established consensus among thinkers and scholars around the world that societal collapse occurs when leaders of society undermine and break from upholding core societal principles, morals, and ideals. It is the failure of the principal leadership to uphold values and norms that guide the actions of good governance, followed by a subsequent loss of citizen’s confidence in the leadership and government that leads to the breakdown of the social contract and inevitable societal collapse. When leaders abandon the society’s founding principles and ignore their roles as moral guides for their people, then people lose trust, diminish their willingness to pay taxes, move away, or take other steps that undercut the fiscal health of the polity.

This pattern of amoral leaders destabilizing their societies goes way back. These patterns can be seen in many countries including Pakistan, as inept leaders threaten the core principles and the stability of the places they govern. Mounting inequality, concentration of political power, evasion of taxation, hollowing out of bureaucratic institutions, diminishment of infrastructure, declining public service, and hounding minorities, both religious and sectarian are all evidenced in Pakistan today.

Leaving the path of moderation and indulging in extreme viewpoints, particularly in the political domain leads to people losing faith in “business as usual”. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

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Furthermore, local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources, or fail through internal conflict. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity”. Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources.

Pakistan is on the precipice of enormous financial and economic change and it does not seem to be for the good. Excesses and miss-allocated resources of several generations are exposed as we sink deeper into the economic hole we have dug for ourselves. The purging of these economic mistakes will be painful, it could create new conflicts as politicians attempt to deflect blame and may end up changing the political form of government.

The corrosive nature of politics and government has destroyed the economy and the moral fiber of citizens. These issues are not insurmountable, but they are very close to being so. Their ramifications are potentially existential in nature: the average time span or cycle of a nation has been proven in history to be approximately 250 years of which Pakistan has already utilized seventy-five years of political shenanigans.

In order to save ourselves from an inevitable societal collapse leaving a vacuum to be filled by extreme ideologies and attitudes, we need to arrest the direction of extremes in all aspects of private, public, and political life in Pakistan.

We need to urgently revert to the golden mean or moderation. The national ethos needs to be nurtured in every individual in Pakistan which, is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual. National ethos is exemplary and promotes excellence and the pursuit of excellence by one and all for the good of the collective.

Children should grow up witnessing hard work being rewarded; knowing playing by the rules signifies civilized behaviour; that crime does not pay; that justice rides the long road but she eventually arrives; and a hard-won reputation, if abused, “will fly away in a plane and return on a tuc tuc.”

National Ethos is essentially aspirational and if we do not work hard for it together as one, it will elude us, as it has for the past over 75 years. Today we see Pakistan grappling with, ethnic antagonism, lack of national ethos, lack of inclusivity, lack of true devolution, divisive elections, absence of security and safety, corruption, and nonexistent shared prosperity, and responsibility.

The Quaid taught us that the resources of the country belonged to all; and that one Pakistani was for all and all for one. But where are we today, practicing the philosophy that public resources exist to be plundered by those in authority and with access?

Sectarianism and parochialism are galore all around, excellence retracting in the face of aggressively spreading mediocrity and a pervading culture of abuse, intolerance, hypocrisy, and bigotry in the public space. In today’s Pakistan, each one of us claims to be more patriotic than the other and his brand of Islam or democracy to be better than that of others, everyone calling everyone else a traitor and thief and following some hideous agenda against the state. If we are ever to have a common national ethos, this has to stop and stop now.

Our curse is our politics of extremes, selfish and powerful pressure groups who have corrupted and polluted what would have been our national ethos and policy priorities. The Constitution is no more sacrosanct and is used as a crucial tool for political re-engineering. What needs fixing in Pakistan is the politics. And it can only be fixed by collective participation of all and not by shutting other players out.

The country needs inclusion and not exclusion, political exclusivists practicing divisive politics need to be marginalized if we are ever to develop an identifiable National Ethos leading us to Unity, Faith, and Discipline, the golden principles and foundation of a strong nation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of the South Asia Times.

Naghmana A. Hashmi

Ambassador Naghmana Hashmi, a retired diplomat with over 37 years in Pakistan's Foreign Service, held key ambassadorial roles and advisory positions. She's a prolific writer, authoring books like "Magnificent Pakistan" and "Pakistan-China-All Weather Friendship." On X, she can be found @AmbNaghmanaHash

South Asia Times