THE passage of the revised version of the Hasba bill by the NWFP Assembly on Monday raises a question or two which are of profound significance for the entire country. Even though confined to the NWFP and subject to gubernatorial assent, the bill seeks to set up a department and a police force whose duty it will be to enforce Islamic morality. By appointing ombudsmen at various levels of government to “enforce virtue” and “prohibit vice”, it establishes what looks like a parallel judicial system in a province (and a country) where three sets of laws — the British-crafted criminal procedure code, the ‘Islamic’ Hudood ordinances, and the various martial law regulations which have been given constitutional cover — already exist. The question is: what sort of message is an elected government giving to its constituents and the country at large? If the MMA thinks it has a duty to serve the people who have voted it to power, then it must ask itself in what way the Hasba bill promotes the people’s interests and aims at lifting them out of the poverty-ridden life which has been their lot for long. In fact, the first duty of any Islamic government is to work for the creation of an egalitarian society free from want. The Hasba bill does not set the MMA government’s course in that direction.

Looking back at the MMA’s tenure as a ruling party, one notes with regret that, notwithstanding its Islamic claims and credentials, it has not put in place a system that aims at public good in the widest sense of the term. Public good here means ending poverty and unemployment, spreading education for both sexes, building hospitals, schools and colleges, taking electricity to the remote areas, giving land to the tiller and in general adopting a development strategy that brings to the people of the NWFP the benefits of modern science and technology. As against this, the Hasba officials’ duty will be to ensure that children honour parental wishes. How precisely this objective is

to be achieved defies an answer. Also, to give a liberal look to the bill, it pledges to ensure women’s rights and discourage honour killings and Swara. But the people have not forgotten that the only manifestation of the MMA’s respect for women’s rights was when its party zealots went about defacing women’s faces on billboards.

One hopes that the governor and the federal government will use their constitutional powers to block the bill which in essence violates one of Islam’s fundamental principles by attempting to create a hierarchical priesthood for controlling the people’s daily lives. It is amazing how the atheist communists with their apparatchiks and the MMA with the Hasba brigade seem to agree on a common methodology for ensuring absolute conformity. Unfortunately, the generals ruling Pakistan do not seem to admit their guilt in foisting on us parties and groups pledged to Talibanisation. The reason for the MMA’s electoral victory in 2002 was the military’s decision to queer the pitch for the PPP and PML, and unless there is evidence to the contrary, one has the troubling feeling that things may not be any better next year. Talibanism is knocking on the door, and it is the duty of all those who do not wish to see Islam become an instrument of tyranny in the hands of priests to come forward to resist this law that defies political common sense.