The debate touched off by the way Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution were applied by the returning officers (ROs) to assess the eligibility of the candidates running for national and provincial assemblies is comparable to the one raged with that in Europe some seven centuries ago. By no means an analogy that should make us hold our heads high. If you are a good Muslim, you must know the verses of the Holy Quran by heart. This is what the ROs believed and a large section of society agrees with them. But are the ROs, or for that matter any other authority, competent to judge the religious credentials of their countrymen and women?
The key question in this discourse is whether faith can and should be assessed. Faith has two aspects: covert and overt. Faith is essentially what one believes in the depth of one’s heart. It is born of intensity of feelings and is thus in essence a matter of inner experience. But faith is also given outward expression. When a person goes to a mosque or a church and performs an act of worship, he is giving expression to his or her faith.
A disparity may exist between what one believes at heart and what one pretends. A person may recite the kalma or go to the mosque five times a day but may not be a sound believer. History, not least Islamic history, is replete with examples where people in order to escape religious persecution or secure some worldly benefits made false protestation of their creed.
The point to note is that no person can reach the inmost recesses of another’s heart and find out the latter’s set of beliefs. The creed can only be determined by what one professes. If a person professes to be a Muslim, Hindu, or Christian, others either must fathom his innermost self or alternately must give credence to his profession.
Turning to the question of being a good Muslim, there’s no universally accepted definition of that. For some, a good Muslim is one who prays five times a day. For others, a good Muslim is one who earns his or her living by hard work. Others still may maintain that it is compassion and a sense of justice that go into the making of a good Muslim.
One may refer here to the report authored by the late Justice Munir Ahmed on the 1953 Punjab disturbances, which led to the imposition of martial law in the province. The Munir Report, as it’s commonly called, on the basis of the author’s dialogues with some leading Muslim divines of different sects, notes that they can’t even agree on the definition of a Muslim. To quote the report: “The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-e-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims, and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic state with the penalty of death, if the government of the state is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge the consequences of this doctrine, when it is remembered that no two ulema have agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim...”
Declaring someone a good Muslim then entails strong value judgement, which is neither absolute nor fallible. Granted, for the sake of argument, that a good Muslim is one who is well-versed in Islamic teachings, an otherwise good Muslim may not be able to rattle off a few religious lessons when asked to do so randomly, while a not too good Muslim may be able to do so, simply because he had prepared hard for the test.
In that event, reciting Quranic verses or answering queries pertaining to Islamic history comes to be more of a test of one’s memory than of one’s knowledge and learning. Mercifully, though belatedly, the Lahore High Court restricted the ROs from putting such questions to the candidates.
The question of a person’s religious credentials is outright different from the question whether he or she has a fake degree or is a tax or loan defaulter. The latter has an objective criterion and hard core evidence to support that, which the former by its very character doesn’t commend itself to. Besides, it’s far more important to call to account those who have stolen this nation blind. Regrettably, this condition was given a short shrift.
Article 62 (g) also disqualifies a candidate if he has worked against the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’. This term is as contentious as ‘a good Muslim’. Assuming, again for the sake of argument, that Pakistan does have an ideology, where is it to be found? Yes, we may find it in the textbooks of Pakistan Studies. But the same are known for distorting history and twisting facts and poisoning the impressionable minds of the students.
The fact is that if it were that easy to define Pakistan’s ideology, an authoritative definition of the same would have been supplied. In the absence of such a definition, disqualifying a candidate is a classical case of condemning someone for failure to measure up to a standard which has not been defined.
However, to be fair to the ROs, one must admit that they had a difficult task applying a bad law. The provisions of Articles 62 and 63 pertaining to religious credentials of the candidates are a bad law but nevertheless part of the constitution. An RO tasked with assessing the eligibility or otherwise of a candidate can’t hold the relevant law in disregard. Whether that law is good or bad, it’s not for an RO to determine. His job is simply to apply that law as per his own understanding.
It has been argued that the ROs should have disregarded the contentious clauses of Articles 62 and 63. The counter argument can be that if some provisions of electoral laws are to be disregarded, why not others? Articles 62 and 63 couldn’t have been disregarded except by invoking the infamous doctrine of necessity, which our judiciary claims to have buried once and for all.
Both Articles 62 and 63 were part of the original 1973 constitution albeit in a softer form. Late Gen Ziaul Haq, as part of his efforts to ‘Islamise’ the polity, introduced some stringent conditions in the two articles pertaining to determining whether an aspiring legislator is a ‘good, practising Muslim’. These changes were ratified by parliament vide the 8th Amendment to the constitution. The 17th and 18th Amendments, both of which made comprehensive changes to the constitution, retained the Zia-introduced provisions of the two articles.
Therefore, the prime culprits in the controversy are not the ROs but the authors of the 8th, 17th and 18th Amendments. One only hopes that the next parliament will amend these articles suitably.
The writer is a freelance contributor.
Email: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com

Source : http://e.thenews.com.pk/4-15-2013/page6.asp#;