Pakistan: What Law and Whose Rule?

Pakistan: What Law and Whose Rule?

by Iqbal Jafar

Columnist Iqbal Jafar describes the lawlessness prevailed in Pakistan. No one is listening to anyone there hence there is no rule whatsoever. He writes, “A QUESTION has been waiting to be asked for a long time, but hasn’t yet been formulated. Let me try: why do our collective thought processes work in such devious ways that twisted logic, perverse defence of patently criminal acts and misplaced sympathy for the guilty, find easy accommodation in our legal and moral universe?

This is not an idle question in a society where vocal support for, or partisan silence over, suicide bombing, faith-based murder, massive corruption, open defiance of the law, or even making fun of the superior courts is not uncommon.

Two factors could be at the root of this moral and legal disorder. First, the lingering colonial mindset where defiance of the laws of the state is not only permissible but even laudable, and free of social stigma Second, the different laws, values and practices of pre-Muslim, Muslim, and of the modern origin, that have coalesced into a mishmash of hybrid morality.”