Punjab notes: Mosque: the past and the pres­ent

Mosque has been un­til re­cent times much more than mere­ly a com­pound where faith-based rit­uals were per­formed or re­li­gious con­gre­ga­tions took place. And there was noth­ing un­usu­al or new about it as the prac­tice of mak­ing the mos­que the cen­tre of so­cial and po­lit­i­cal life was in­i­ti­ated by none oth­er than the proph­et (Peace Be upon Him) him­self.

The mos­que in fact func­tioned as a mul­ti-pur­pose Muslim com­mun­i­ty cen­tre.

The mos­que in a vil­lage or a town in Punjab not long ago used to have a skel­e­ton staff com­pris­ing Maulvi/Imam (pray­er lead­er) and a care­tak­er paid in kind or cash by the com­mun­i­ty. It re­mained open day and night with no guard de­pu­ted be­cause no­body, peo­ple be­lieved, would dare to vi­o­late its sanc­ti­ty in any man­ner. Anybody could go there any time to pray or re­cite the Holy Quran with­out any check. It was a meet­ing place for the eld­er­ly where af­ter of­fer­ing their pray­er they would dis­cuss the is­sues of in­di­vid­u­al and col­lec­tive na­ture. The best thing about its ega­li­tar­i­an char­ac­ter ex­pressed it­self in be­ing the shel­ter for the home­less, the ref­uge of the trav­el­lers and the kitch­en for the hun­gry. A strang­er en­ter­ing the mos­que with the in­tent of spend­ing a night there would be trea­ted like a guest ir­re­spec­tive of caste and creed. Someone would spread the word about the guest’s pres­ence and wom­en from dif­fer­ent house­holds would send the best of their food to the mos­que. It was con­sid­ered to be a great so­cial dis­grace for the com­mun­i­ty if some strang­er in their mos­que spent a day or a night with­out be­ing fed. Not tak­ing care of the nee­dy who got shel­tered in Allah’s house was like in­vit­ing di­vine wrath and be cursed for­ev­er. And be­ing cursed was what the com­mun­i­ty drea­ded most.

Remember Waris Shah’s Heer; Young Ranjha, one of the main pro­tag­o­nists, af­ter hav­ing been cheat­ed by his broth­ers over the di­vi­sion of their an­ces­tral land, leaves his home­town as no­body, to­tal­ly dis­pos­sessed. He trav­els with no­where to go and lands in a vil­lage. Being a strang­er and no­body’s guest he finds shel­ter in the mos­que. “After hav­ing trav­ersed the wide stretch­es and wa­ded through the wa­ters of hun­ger, he (Ranjha) en­ters the mos­que for a night stay”. The Mullah ap­pears from his clois­ter. “Mullah look­ing at Ranjha’s long hair said: who the hell are you with this ap­pear­ance of an in­fi­del? Get lost / this is no place for the ras­cals. Get rid of your flow­ing hair and be ac­cep­ted among the faith­ful”.

Ranhja comes out of the mos­que and starts fid­dling with his flute. A large crowd of men and wom­en gath­ers and stands en­thral­led by his mu­sic. Seeing the crowd and its mood, Mullah has no choice but to grudg­ing­ly al­low the young man to stay in the mos­que.

Sadly dur­ing the last four dec­a­des the mos­que in Punjab as else­where in the coun­try, has slow­ly and grad­u­al­ly been turned in­to an all-to­geth­er dif­fer­ent pub­lic area where all are not wel­come. It has been made to shed off some of its so­cial func­tions with the re­sult that it re­mains most of the time locked and guar­ded. No trav­el­ler or strang­er is al­lowed in. No food for the hun­gry. No dia­logue be­tween in­di­vid­u­als in the sa­cred pre­cincts.

In plain words, our mos­que now stands sec­tar­ian­ised. We have sects ga­lore. Each sect has its own mos­ques with its strict sec­tar­i­an rules and reg­u­la­tions. Sectarianising the mos­que is a phe­nom­en­on di­rect­ly and in­sep­a­ra­bly linked with the geo-po­lit­i­cal fac­tors i.e. cold war, the American he­gem­o­ny, po­lit­i­cal use of re­li­gion and the fierce ri­val­ry be­tween the Wahabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Shiite cler­gy led Iran for po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence in the re­gion.

Striation of re­li­gious iden­ti­ty along the sec­tar­i­an lines by the state is an open se­cret. It is in fact now a part of our law. If you want to build a mos­que in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal, Islamabad, you need the per­mis­sion from the Capital Development Authority (CDA). And per­mis­sion is gran­ted on­ly when you de­clare in your ap­pli­ca­tion the name of the sect the pro­posed mos­que would be­long to. Being Muslim is not suf­fi­cient. To be ‘fully Muslim’, the state dic­tates, you have to choose a sect and wear it on your sleeve. So it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult if not im­pos­si­ble to build a sect­less mos­que be­cause you can on­ly do it by cir­cum­vent­ing the law.

Mosque, not in a dis­tant past, was on one hand a place of wor­ship open to all that in­spired rec­on­dite re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­en­ces and on the oth­er pro­vi­ded the com­mun­i­ty with a pub­lic space for its so­cial in­ter­ac­tion. That pre­cise­ly was one of the fac­tors that cre­ated re­li­gious har­mo­ny and so­cial equi­li­bri­um in the Muslim com­mun­i­ty. It’s pain­ful­ly iron­ic that the mos­que which uni­ted the Muslims, has now been turned in­to an em­blem of dis­u­nity in the wake of ris­ing tide of po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­va­ted sec­tar­i­an­ism. The preach­ers open­ly trade in re­van­chist barbs in ev­ery lo­cal­i­ty as if the sects mat­ter more than the faith. The car­ol-sing­ers of sec­tar­i­an self-right­eous­ness take pride in di­vid­ing us with their nos­trum, while the Holy Quran says in its third Surah: “And hold fast, all to­geth­er, un­to the bond with God, and do not draw apart from one an­oth­er.” Let the mos­que be what it is; the house of the God, an in­vit­ing place. — soo­fi01@hot­mail.com

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2014