PAKISTANIS ARE USING the Urdu word zulm a lot these days. The twin suicide
bombings last week in the port city of Karachi that left hundreds injured and dead were
zulm. So is a deal between political rivals that left millions of dollars stolen from the state
unaccounted for. The Pakistan Army's continuing military assault on the tribal areas is
being termed zulm. The bombing of girls' schools by Taliban militants in the same tribal
belt along the Afghan border, the US military's operation in Iraq - all zulm.
The word signifies severe cruelty or injustice. The Arabic root implies doing wrong, and
is used in the Koran as the most basic reference to sin. Zalimeen are sinners who commit
zulm. Allah does not guide them, it says in the holy book - their abode is a fiery hell. In
Pakistan, a country caught in the middle of several wars, the words are read in the press
and heard on TV and in tea-stalls on street sides every day. There is much zulm in the
world today, and many zalimeen on all sides.
The antithesis of zulm is adl, the Koranic word for justice, and insaf, the Persian
equivalent. The demand for adl-o-insaf, for justice, has emerged as a compelling rallying
call in Pakistan. It has become a vital tenet of the nationalists and of Islamist party
rhetoric, it is built into the spirit of the civil society movement for democracy led by
lawyers and championed by Supreme Court judges, and it is the platform for the Pakistan
Tehrik-e-Insaf, or Pakistan Justice Party, a political party led by Imran Khan, a onetime
cricket star.
In many postcolonial Muslim states, a new call for justice is catalyzing a process of
transformation. Political fronts with Islamist roots and leanings based on justice are
making rapid inroads to power from Indonesia to Kosovo, from Morocco and Turkey to
the Maldives. The concept of justice has sparked a new conversation between Islam and
governance in these countries, creating a third way that recognizes the universal notions
of freedom and equity yet casts them in an indigenous, sometimes explicitly Islamic light.
It is a potent political formula that appeals to economically depressed classes by
addressing issues of social injustice while also drawing in the growing middle classes,
who are frustrated with rampant corruption in their countries.
The call for justice is striking a chord with broad swaths of the Pakistani public: with the
religious who hear the divine in it, with the secular and urban educated who are frustrated
by the blatant corruption in bureaucracy and government, and with the country's
economically depressed majority.
"We are living in a society where the strong are crushing the weak, where an avarice elite
has become a parasite on us all," said Khan, sitting in his sparsely furnished, bare-walled
office at the party headquarters in Islamabad. "A system based on justice would liberate
the people, give them true freedom, and unleash their real potential."
Western rhetoric - concepts such as freedom, democracy, and liberty - are being rejected
in favor of the more incontrovertible "justice." The West's efforts are often dismissed as
insincere, but it matters little, since concepts such as democracy and freedom are often
partly lost in translation. In many cultures, freedom is incomplete without
responsibilities. Some orthodox religious scholars might even argue that true freedom is
found only in the complete submission to the will of Allah - a far cry from how the
concept is appreciated in the West.
In Pakistan, the movement for justice has the potential to redefine the discourse of
religion and politics. Come the elections in January, it could emerge as a powerful
contender for power. In the second largest Muslim country in the world, which has been
struggling to reconcile its secular foundation and Muslim identity since its creation, some
are hoping that this new movement could cure a decades-old political schizophrenia that
has brought chronic instability. And, of course, it could also pull Islamist politics, which
has always tended toward extreme rhetoric and militancy, closer to the mainstream.
At a time when Pakistan has become a front-line state in the "war on terror," the United
States is throwing its chips in with Pervez Musharraf. It hopes the "moderate," proAmerican leader will be able to keep a lid on what seems like a country on the tipping
point of change. But by supporting the general, American policy is suffocating a robust
and eclectic opposition movement - Khan's movement, elements within the Islamist
coalition, nationalists, a growing secular civil society movement led by lawyers in their
black suit and ties - based on justice.
"Americans," Khan warned in a recent newspaper column, "are pushing people who are
in favor of democracy at the moment towards extremism."
...
Justice has long been an important element of classical Islamic social and political
thought. Two of the 99 qualities of Allah described in the Koran are al-Adl, "the just,"
and al-Muqsit, "the most equitable." Words with the root a-d-l are used dozens of times
in the book, most often in reference to establishing social order. At one place the Koran
instructs: "And let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart
from justice. Be just: that is next to piety."
In Muslim countries the political emphasis on justice has traditionally been garbed in
calls for social welfare and focused on social inequities. The pro-West Justice and
Development Party of Turkey, which holds power in both the Legislature and the
executive branch, is an offshoot of Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist Refah Partisi (Welfare
Party) established in 1983. In a country in which the separation of religion and politics
was militantly guarded, the Welfare Party cloaked its Islamist ethos in the call for Adil
Duzen, or "Just Order."
Similarly, the Justice and Development Party of Morocco is the only legal Islamist party
in the country and forms the main political opposition, having secured 46 parliamentary
seats compared with the winning party's 52 in this year's election. Its leader, Saad Eddin
Al Othmani, fashions the party along the lines of the Christian Democrats in Europe and
claims that "efforts, such as combating bribery and corruption, are based in sharia." The
Islamist Prosperous Justice Party in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is
now a major political force, working off a strong anticorruption platform.
Imran Khan was a newcomer to politics when he founded the Pakistan Justice Party in
1996, but he was hardly an unknown. After studying politics, philosophy, and economics
at Oxford alongside political rival Benazir Bhutto, he embarked on an illustrious sports
career. He was captain of the Pakistan cricket team that brought home the World Cup in
1992, becoming a minor deity in a country in which the sport might as well be a religion.
His rugged good looks and larger-than-life persona made him a global heartthrob and to
this day he is haunted in his political career by allusions to his "playboy" past. Many
never really forgave him for marrying British heiress Jemima Goldsmith. (Khan and
Goldsmith have two children, and were divorced in 2004.)
After retiring from cricket, Khan wrote a book on the tribal areas of Pakistan (he is of
tribal Pashtun decent). When his mother succumbed to cancer, he raised funds to
establish Pakistan's first and largest cancer hospital, which provides free cancer treatment
to the poor. Only after carrying out the largest fund-raising campaign in the country's
history did he decide to enter the political arena.
The Justice Party's manifesto includes detailed reform proposals for every institution of
the state - an anomaly in a country in which slogans and cults of personality are usually
enough to rise to power. But the cornerstone of the Justice Party is the establishment of
an independent judiciary. This alone can begin to cure Pakistan in profound ways, the
party states, by keeping its rulers in check.
...
Initially, Khan's call for establishing a free and independent judiciary found little popular
support. But this year, things started to change when on March 9, Musharraf attempted to
remove the chief justice of Pakistan to clear his path to a reelection. The activist judge
had earned a reputation as being pro-poor and had aggressively prosecuted corruption,
embarrassing Musharraf. But Musharraf's move backfired; public rallies attracted
antigovernment crowds of the kind that hadn't been witnessed in the general's eight-year
rule.
"After 9th of March people began to understand what it means to have an independent
judicial system," Khan told a private television channel recently. "Eventually, if the civil
society and the political forces stand behind an independent judiciary, you will have a
revolution in Pakistan."
Khan is now contesting a political deal between Musharraf and Bhutto in the Supreme
Court, which granted the ex-prime minister amnesty from charges of stealing millions of
dollars from the state and allowed her to return from exile this month. The country, he
says, is struggling to shake off a feudal system in which the government bureaucracy
attracts only two kinds of people: those who want to get involved in crime and those who
are already criminals and need protection.
The young Justice Party holds only one seat in the Legislature. But Khan has built
alliances with the lawyers' street movements, some prominent Islamist leaders, and the
nationalist Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which has twice swept elections in
Pakistan. When the elections come in January, he has high hopes for his party - and, more
importantly, for the idea of justice behind it.
"It's not something particular to Islam or even Pakistan," he says. "It's the basis of every
civilized society."