Revolution

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TO TELL THE truth. I had no interest in politics in the 1 970s or much of the 1 980s.
From the time I had left university in 1 975 until 1983. I had been so single-mindedly
and obsessively involved in international cricket that I had no time to think about much
else. Anyone who has played professional sport would understand how it completely
takes over one' s life. One lives and breathes the sport. so intense is the competition and
hence the focus. Over the years. I came to the conclusion that ' genius' is being obsessed
with what you are doing. So I was too absorbed to worry about the consequences of
Zia ' s military regime. his slow reversal of Bhutto ' s nationalization programme. or the
turmoil in neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan. Life continued as normal for most people
- the only ones who really felt Zia' s rule were his opponents. As the captain of the
Pakistan cricket team I had a good relationship with Zia. He used to call me personally
when we won matches and when. in 1 987. he asked me on live television to come back
out of retirement for the sake of the country. I agreed. Only after his regime ended did I
realize his devastating legacy and that. like so many of Pakistan' s leaders. he was
motivated purely by his desire to stay in power and was oblivious to the country's
decline. or the long-term consequences of his policies.
Amidst the steady erosion of the country' s political and social fabric. the
Pakistani people drew solace from its success in cricket. During the 1 970s and 1 980s
our team started growing in strength to the point that we could match our former
colonial masters. For teams like Pakistan. India and the West Indies. a battle to right
colonial wrongs and assert our equality was played out on the cricket field every time
we took on England. My friends. and two of my greatest opponents on the cricket field.
Sir Vivian Richards from the West Indies and Sunil Gavaskar from India. were both
examples of sportsmen who wanted to assert their equality on the cricket field against
their former colonial masters. I know that the motivation of the great teams produced by
the West Indies in the 1970s and 1 9 80s was to beat the English. For Viv in particular. it
was about self-esteem and self-respect. the two things that colonialism deprives the
colonized of.
Sport was not the only way to demonstrate post -colonial independence. I little
realized how far the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1 979 would transform the Muslim
world. However. it was a watershed moment in the way the West would view the
Muslim world. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan later that year. putting
Pakistan in the frontline of the Cold War. few of us fully grasped the extent to which
that too would affect Muslim thinking - in the world in general and Pakistan in
particular. I had visited Iran in 1 974 when I went to stay with a school friend from my
time at the Royal Grammar School. Worcester in England. Seeing the economic and
cultural divide of Iranian society and women in miniskirts in the bazaars of Tehran
surprised me. In today' s Lahore and Karachi I have seen a similar disparity - rich
women going to glitzy parties in Western clothes. chauffeured by men with entirely
different customs and values. But at the time I had never seen people behave in such a
westernized way in a Muslim country and was shocked by their disregard for the
cultural mores of the masses. I remember the look on the faces of the stallholders in the
bazaars as these women in short skirts sashayed past. The Iranian Islamic Revolution a
few years later was to draw heavily on the support of the bazaaris, who formed the
backbone of a traditional. devout middle-class in Iran that felt threatened by the Shah ' s
attempts to impose a n alien culture upon them and enraged by his role a s a puppet o f the
West. In Pakistan, however westernized people like me were, when we visited our
ancestral villages or went into rural areas - or even the old city of Lahore - we had to
respect local customs and sensitivities. The women in our family would wear the chador
(a cloth covering the head and shoulders, leaving only the face exposed) , or the burka (a
long garment covering the whole body) . Even in Lahore my mother always covered her
hair when she went shopping in the bazaar. To this day most women in Pakistan wear
the traditional shalwar kameez with dupatta (headscarf) . Only very recently have
younger urban women started to wear jeans.
The Iranian Revolution was a reaction in part to rapid westernization and
secularization campaigns in Iran by Reza Shah (the ruler of Iran from 1 925 until he was
forced to abdicate by the Allied powers in 1 9 4 1 ) and then his son Muhammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi. The latter was a brutal autocrat seen to be beholden to the United States
after he was restored to power following a 1 953 CIA-backed coup to overthrow
nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh had had the temerity to
stand up for the rights of the Iranian people and seize the country' s oil production,
which had hitherto been controlled by the British government's Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company. Muhammad Reza Shah ' s sweeping social and economic changes alienated
the poor, the religious and the traditional merchant class who grew resentful of an elite
enriched by the 1 970s oil boom. Meanwhile, there was a growing class of rural poor
who had moved to the cities in the hope of benefiting from the petrodollar-fuelled
economic growth but found themselves unemployed, consigned to the slums and
increasingly under pressure from inflation as the economy overheated.
The revolution led by Khomeini promised to return power to the people and
restore religious purity to Iran. The events of 1 979 in Tehran and the establishment of an
Islamic state highlighted to the world the revolutionary potential of Islam and its power
to threaten the established order in the Muslim world. The overthrow of a tyrant was
welcomed jubilantly by ordinary people in Islamic countries, most of whom were also
suffering under the anti -democratic rule of leaders they viewed as Western stooges
disconnected from the economic realities and religious faith of their people. As with the
Middle East revolts in 201 1 , a sense of euphoria rippled across the region. The broad
base and strength of a movement that had toppled such a powerful US-backed regime
was also inspiring to people long resentful of colonial interference and Western
hegemony. And it had been achieved through relatively peaceful means, with mass
demonstrations and strikes.
In Pakistan there was tremendous excitement, and I could sense this when I
returned from playing cricket in England in the summer months. Since independence we
had already been governed by four different constitutions. We had run through
parliamentary democracy, Ayub Khan ' s ' presidential democracy' , which was effectively
a military dictatorship, economic liberalization and martial law. Yet here was Khomeini
standing up to the West with a new system that was both Islamic and anti-imperialist.
The political Islam of the Iranian Revolution filled the void left by the failure of Arab
nationalism in the Muslim world. Socialism had been discredited and communism had
never really taken off in a culture where religious faith is such an intrinsic part of life.
As the Iranian slogan went: 'Neither East nor West' ; Khomeini had forged a new path
that owed little to either the Western powers or communist Russia. And he explicitly
presented his ideology as an exportable political solution to the entire Islamic world.
Consequently, the West was terrified the Muslim world had reached a new
turning point. At stake were Western puppet regimes in oil-producing countries like
Saudi Arabia - whose royal family Khomeini openly criticized. In the same way that the
West turned a blind eye to corrupt regimes that claimed to safeguard the free world from
the evils of communism, from then on, autocratic rulers could manipulate Western fears
in order to clamp down on any political opposition in the name of fighting Islamic
fundamentalism. (The 9/1 1 attacks on the United States further reinforced this
tendency.) It was also at this point that the West started sending NGOs into Muslim
countries to encourage secularization - often in the name of liberating our women or
promoting human rights. Whenever there is unrest in an Islamic country, the old fears
about ' Iranization' or ' Islamization' of the country in question are raised by the West.
Only recently, in early 201 1 , this happened when the people of Egypt and Tunisia
toppled their dictators . Other countries, too, faced internal dissent but dealt harshly with
it; however, in Yemen and Bahrain, the actions that in Libya would lead to NATO
intervention were allowed to continue as the regimes were deemed pro-Western.
Zia, keen to legitimize his unconstitutional takeover of Pakistan, felt the mood
created by the Iranian Revolution and responded accordingly. His predecessor, the
Oxford- and Berkeley-educated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had used religion to counter his
Western secular image by pandering to the religious parties. Bhutto ' s 1 973 constitution
confirmed Pakistan ' s identity as an Islamic Republic, the teaching of Islam was made
compulsory in schools and a Council of Islamic Ideology was set up to advise on
Islamic legislation. He had declared the Ahmedi sect non-Muslims. His critics, though,
only hardened their demands, campaigning for the introduction of more Islamic laws.
Zia cashed in on the opposition to Bhutto from the religious parties, which equated
secularism with anti-Islamism. He was prepared to go much further than Bhutto,
pledging on coming to power in 1 9 7 7 to make Pakistan an Islamic state. His version of
the Nizam-e-Mustapha (the System of the Prophet) aimed to overhaul penal codes
inherited from the British by bringing them into line with Sharia law. Emboldened by
events in Iran, from 1 979 he introduced still more reforms, ' Islamizing' the economy
and education system. He tried to introduce interest-free banking, imposed the automatic
deduction of zakat (a proportion of one ' s wealth which every Muslim has to contribute
annually) from bank accounts and invested in madrassas. The Hudood Ordinance
imposed strict punishments for crimes, including adultery, and its abuse by a corrupt
police and judicial system undermined the legal status of women, especially in the lower
strata of society. Zia revamped so many laws, but failed to introduce true Islamic social
justice; in fact his regime actually promoted inequality and corruption. His political use
of Islam was aimed more at capturing the mood of the time.
Zia also enforced Islamic rituals and promoted traditional dress codes in a bid to
' Islamize' the country; many years later Musharraf attempted to overhaul Pakistan and
turn it into a modern, liberal secular state by encouraging the use of English and
Western dress, which he thought would westernize Pakistan. Zia's ' Islamization' and
Musharraf's ' Enlightened Moderation' failed in their aims, as in such situations people
follow the latest diktats, but inwardly carry on as before. Both Zia and Musharraf failed
to understand that imposing outward observances will neither instil a sense of religious
faith nor propel a country into the twenty-first century.