THINKING ALOUD: Ostentatious piety

After reading this article on Islam by Razi Azmi from the Daily Times, I could not help but wonder if Christianity is not living through this very problem. There is a segment of Christianity hung up on ritual and another working to divorce itself from ritual to regain the spirituality of Christianity. I often hear a person reference a lack of spirituality in a church, seminary, or other religious experience, but when ask no one can tell me what is meant my spirituality. Have reduced spirituality into the newest drug and the church or para-church organizations into neighborhood pharmacies?

Islam as practised today is all about rituals surrounded by pomp and publicity and has little to do with humanity, compassion and humility. Ritualism has replaced spirituality and form has displaced substance in the lives of Muslims.

Anyone who has lived long enough to be able to contrast the post-Zia ‘Islamified’ Islamic Republic of Pakistan with its pre-Zia predecessor, a normal country inhabited by Muslims, or anyone who is sufficiently travelled to be in a position to compare today’s Pakistan with other countries (including most Muslim countries) cannot but notice that the public display of piety in this country has reached gargantuan — if not comical — proportions.

Indeed, piety in Pakistan has acquired a touch of abnormality about it. It has moved from the realm of the spiritual to that of drama and visual art. The increasing and unusually high ratio of burqa-wearing women and bearded men in the population represents only a part of that transformation.

Recently I had the experience of travelling by train from Karachi to Islamabad, on the much publicised and supposedly modern ‘Burraq Express’, the name itself being symptomatic of the times. More often than not, there was no water in the compartments, for no sooner was the overhead tank filled with water than it was consumed in a frenzy of ablution (wazu) by the pious preparing themselves for prayer.

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Filed Mon - February 5, 2007, 04:21 PM in

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