The below piece was originally written for Foreign Policy‘s AfPak Channel and was an attempt to delve into what survey results often don’t show. For example, the Pew Research Center’s poll, released last week, shows that Pakistani Muslims overwhelmingly feel that punishments like stoning and flogging should be put into law. However, in practice, many of these same people would not advocate for such an approach or such repurcussions. The phenomenon reflects the complexities of Pakistani identity and the idea behind the state itself. Over at AfPak, the piece garnered some interesting comments, mostly from people who didn’t believe my hypothesis at all (which is fine). I did want to repost the piece here to generate interesting discussion on the topic and get all views on the table:
Last Thursday, the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, which conducts public opinion surveys around the world, released a new poll on Pakistani perceptions based on face-to-face interviews conducted from April 13 to April 28, 2010. However, the sample size is relatively small — 2,000 Pakistani adults out of a population of 180 million — and admittedly “disproportionately urban.” Moreover, while Pew polled people in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (formerly NWFP), portions of Balochistan and K-P were not included because of instability. Pakistan’s tribal areas (FATA), Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir were also not included in the survey, leading one to question how reflective Pew’s poll results are of Pakistan’s entire population.
The results were, for the most part, unsurprising, and paint a grim picture of Pakistani attitudes in the wake of militancy, military operations, a worsening economy, and political instability. For example, an overwhelming number of Pakistanis polled continue to have a negative view of the United States (68 percent), and a majority of Pakistanis (53 percent) see India as the greatest threat to the country, over the Taliban (23 percent) and al-Qaeda (3 percent). Much like last year’s Pew survey, the majority of Pakistanis polled say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, citing terrorism, crime, and a lack of jobs as very big issues.
Some of the most interesting results relate to attitudes toward religion, law, and society. According to the findings, “Pakistani Muslims overwhelmingly welcome Islamic influence over their country’s politics. Nearly nine-in-ten (88 percent) of those who see Islam playing a large role say that is a good thing.” Moreover, many Muslims in Pakistan say there is a struggle between groups that want to modernize their country and Islamic fundamentalists (44 percent), and of those who see a struggle, most identify with the modernizers (61 percent). At the same time though, a solid majority of Pakistanis polled said they would favor making gender segregation in the workplace a law in the country (85 percent), as well as punishments like whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery (82 percent), and stoning people who commit adultery (82 percent).
So what explains this obvious paradox between people who side with modernization but simultaneously support punishments like stoning and flogging? According to Peter Mandaville, professor of Government and Islamic Studies at George Mason University and author of Global Political Islam, this reflects “a mistaken tendency to conflate modernization with the adoption of liberal social and religious values. When many Pakistanis think of “modernizing” their country, they think primarily in terms of economic development and technology — both of which can comfortably coexist alongside conservative religious attitudes.”
Although Pakistan has drifted right of center over the last three decades, the aforementioned findings seem to be contradicted by the reality on the ground. Cyril Almeida, an assistant editor and columnist at Dawn, noted that though Pakistani Muslims overwhelmingly welcome an Islamic influence over the country’s politics, citizens continue to “consistently reject religious parties at the polls.” The alliance of Islamist parties in Pakistan, the MMA, was trounced at the 2008 polls, managing to win only a miserable 2.2 percent of the vote. Moreover, a rise in public opinion against militancy in 2008 was in part due to a video showing the Taliban flogging a girl in Swat Valley, images that generated outrage in Pakistan. Almeida emphasized, “Pakistanis have certain fairly rigid conceptions of what is religiously permissible and what isn’t. This isn’t to say they will always do what they believe is required of them — but when a survey puts certain questions, they’re more likely to respond to what ought to be than what they do.”
The framing of survey questions can help explain contradictory quantitative data. In the case of the results generated in Pew’s Religion, Law, and Society section of the survey, respondents were asked black-and-white questions, like, “Do you favor or oppose making stoning people who commit adultery the law in Pakistan?” According to Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia Advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace, much of the so-called “Muslim World” find it difficult to go against anything seen as ordained by Islam. He added, “At an abstract level, Islam remains important to even the most secular of Muslims — remember Islam is very candid about state and religion being an integrated whole (at least in the classic narrative) and so such questions would elicit such responses.”
When faced with a choice between what they are supposed to say and what they actually practice, respondents tend to match abstract questions with equally abstract answers. However, Yusuf noted, “Do they want to be flogged or stoned for the same sin? No way. What about their own family members? Most probably not.”
But issues related to such punishments continue unabated in Pakistan (Just last week, media outlets reported that a couple was sentenced to stoning to death for alleged adultery in a tribal court in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa). This suggests that quantitative data cannot capture the nuances and complexities of identity and society. In the case of the Pew opinion survey, the data provides an important snapshot of some Pakistani attitudes, but it is by no means the whole picture.
“…n overwhelming number of Pakistanis polled continue to have a negative view of the United States (68 percent), and a majority of Pakistanis (53 percent) see India as the greatest threat to the country, over the Taliban (23 percent) and al-Qaeda (3 percent). ”
Shocking.
Shocking! Should it be in the light of following. Most of those who live in Pakistan are Muslims.Madeline Albright once remarked that a million Iraqi children who died due to US sanctions deserved to die.Condoleeza Rice termed the massacre of Muslims living in Lebanon by genocidal Zionists as the birthpangs of a new Middle East. How psychopathic!.For me resolving the conflict is very easy. America needs to renounce its imperialistic ambitions against the Muslim world quite honestly admitted by Alan Greenspan.
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,”What Americans shoulkd do is to convince their representatives not to meddle in Muslim affairs as suggested by an American here:
http://americaspeaksink.com/2010/01/communist-domino-theory-meet-radical-islam/
neorient@gmail.com
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Nuance? The sample size is TWICE what is typically used in US polls, and the United States has a much larger population. So there’s nothing “small” about the sample size. And, given that a tiny fraction of Pakistan’s population lives in FATA, Gilgit, and AJK, a reader should have no meaningful questions about the representativeness of the sample. I’d have no problem finding credible a US poll that left out parts of Montana and Idaho.
Most importantly however, is that fact that, for many, the key story of the Pew survey was a notable decrease in concern about the threat posed by religious militants, even as attacks by such militants persist at static or even accelerated rates. This includes a DOUBLING of favorable views toward Al Qaeda! By omitting this issue from your commentary, you seem to miss the headline and seek “nuance” on arguably less urgent topics. Reads like an apologia.
First, Pew did react to my critique of the sample size and did note that it’s a normal size for a regular survey. However, maybe this is a bigger problem with polls and how representative they are – considering it’s disproportionately urban and doesn’t include all of Pakistan, I have every right to probe the results.
Second, the point of the piece was not to highlight what every other news agency was already pointing out – about the decrease in the concern about the Taliban or the increase in favorable views of Al Qaeda. Every news agency, as you noted, already discussed this at length. My point was to analyze the newest part of the poll that reflected a very interesting paradox in the Pakistani identity – a topic I have discussed at length on this blog. It’s not being an apologist, but it’s called analyzing very shocking statistics within the context of the ground realities. I apologize if you find it “arguably less urgent,” but I find it to be a very important topic because it reflect an enormous issue within Pakistan itself and the crisis of identity the citizens and the state are constantly in.
Depending on the purpose, we don’t need the whole picture, we just need the relevant parts of it.
A key question becomes – how are these questions phrased in normal political discourse in Pakistan? How would it work in a democratic set-up?
When faced with a choice between what they are supposed to say and what they actually practice, respondents tend to match abstract questions with equally abstract answers.
So, legislators will be supposed to infer from behind the pious abstract answers that say “we want X” that their constituents don’t actually want X.
This reminds me of the idea being pushed by some that Jinnah merely meant Pakistan as a bargaining ploy, he never really wanted partition. However there are constant public statements from 1940 onwards from Jinnah that Pakistan is not a bargaining ploy; so it becomes a case of having to infer “I don’t really want X” from public statements of “I want X”.
Unless Pakistanis have the ability, unconstrained by Islam, to say what it is that they want clearly and unambiguously, nothing will work.
As I see it the biggest disconnect in Pakistan is the cheerful use of annual PEW polls to figure out what Pakistanis want or feel alongside the near total absence of real elections that poll the entire adult population as to what they want.
For an elite ruling class anywhere in the world, the idea that people can be left to choose what they want for themselves is a worrying idea especially if the people are not from the same social class as you are. In fact prior to 1947 the big concern for the founders of Pakistan was having elections where non Muslims of India would decide about leadership of Muslims. That was solved by partition.
Now, in the absence of elections people spend time dissecting nuances of PEW polls. In actuality a series of 2 or 3 free and fair polls held over 10 or 15 years will provide all the answers clearly. But Pakistani is not about to do that.
My opinion? Pakistanis will vote for sharia. Sharia will give the average Pakistani a better deal and more power than they have got from the current establishment. And after all, if they don’t like sharia they can always vote it out at the next elections. But isn’t that funny? “Voting out sharia”? Imagine the fate of a Pakistani who wants to “vote out sharia” LOL
This is the big problem with Islam in particular and religion in general. Even relatively sane, decent, modern, liberal human beings who happen to be Muslim, when asked an ‘abstract question’ about whether they accept the Sharia punishments for crimes, feel compelled to respond that they support sharia law and the inhuman (by modern standards) punishments it recommends.
Now the interviewers in this survey stopped there, but in the hellholes of the Middle East and the Islamic World (including Pakistan), this question would be asked not by secular, harmless surveyors but by bloodthirsty medieval mullahs, and the context they would ask it is probably while administering a public stoning of some hapless woman for ‘adultery’ (read: gang-rape) or chopping off of some ‘thief’s’ hand (read: serf refused to let feudal lord have his daughter for the night). The mullah probably asks this question a thousand times when some well-meaning, half-decent liberal type Muslim steps forward at these brutal occasions and asks if such brutality is really necessary.
That is when the Mullah will shriek ‘ARE YOU A KAFFIR?!?!?!?! THIS IS PRESCRIBED IN HOLY QURAN!!!’ and that stifles all further argument from the decent Muslim.
And that is the problem. That is why the Pew question was such a good one – because it gets to the heart of the matter. Do you, as a Muslim, have the courage to stand in support of basic decency and tolerance EVEN when that goes against sharia? Or does the mere mention of that word overawe and cow down all resistance, no matter how reasonable, simply by virtue of coming from ‘the holy book’ written by a bunch of desert Arabs hundreds of years ago?
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’ – Edmund Burke
And evidently, Islam forces good Muslims to do nothing in the face of evil.
@Kamboja
“The mullah probably asks this question a thousand times when some well-meaning, half-decent liberal type Muslim steps forward at these brutal occasions and asks if such brutality is really necessary.”
The pejorative Mullah is a very vague adjective. You probably come from a Western background where the historical religion has been Christianity.In Islam, the issue of Divine punishments is different.It is beyond the purvey of human prescription. Sharia is what Allaah has determined as a Law for humanity. If a so called “Mullah” happens to say tomorrow that it not Wajib to stone to death someone who indulges in extramarital sex, no Muslim believer would attach any significance to his non-Sharia statements. Sharia is what every Muslims knows is Allaah’s Law.
And, if we want a sexual crimes free tomorrow-including consensual sex outside marriage that is destroying the sacred institution of family-Sharia enforcement is indispensible.
neorient@gmail.com
“most secular of Muslims”. You cannot find one of this species in Pakistan. The minorities of Pakistan have been searching for one such creature for 60odd years now and they are certain that they don’e exist in Pakistan.
If you want to see them, you have to go all the way to India, where people practise Islam as they ought to be practised. Forget the fringe elements, but a majority of Indian Muslims are peaceloving, secular liberals. If Islam has to survive then the rest of the world needs to learn from Indian Muslims.
Kalsoom,
I love your blog, but I humbly think you go too far here. It’s not written in stone that most of the people from the country of your ancestry have to be nice, modern, liberal decent folk. Embrace the suckage of being from Pakistan! I have, and it’s truly liberating!
Best,
Javed
Javed,
Thanks for reading and for your comment. However, I wasn’t trying to say that most of Pakistanis are nice, modern, liberal and decent folk – believe me, I criticize Pakistan’s pitfalls on this blog as much as I celebrate its positives. What I was pointing to was an obvious paradox illustrated by the poll that is inherent in the Pakistani identity – this idea that as a “Muslim state” many people feel the need to welcome Islam into politics but at the same time prefer modernity over fundamentalism. I was trying to delve into what that means because we as a country are still at a point of contention over what Pakistan is, what it means to be a Muslim state (secularism versus Sharia).
Again, as I noted in the post, honor killings and crimes are in abundance and is a serious issue. But in terms of the attitudes polled, there may be more to it than people just saying they agree that flogging and stoning should become a law, especially when we see the outrage that is generated by flogging videos in Swat. Given that the poll was disproportionately urban and focused more in Punjab and Sindh (and not so much in the northern areas), this is an important litmus test of what people feel they should say and what they actually practice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yhN1IDLQjo
The above should hopefully link (I can’t check here at work) to a yes minster scence where they discuss getting the answer you want from an opinion poll 🙂
Many countries go for a religious party at some time or other, often out of disgust at the other parties efforts. However they very rarely last more than one term, unles of course they end the voting system. This is because religious ideals are no substitute for skills in town planning and whatnot, and employing state workers based on religion rather than skill is a hiding to nothing in most cases. Further such countries disgusted at the mainstream typically exist in very poor governance systems so any political party that wishes to do anything has to make compromises and deal and very soon its all to human members are justifying all sorts of activities.
A further angle to consider is that quite often an authoritarian country will have shut down all other avenues of protest. Religion though is hard to target and so naturally people use it to express grievances. You can see this in many places though Egypt is normally held up as the easist example.
Its worth noting in the Soviet union they had prior to its fall an astronomical number of complaints about the environment (having a difficult relationship with their state church), post collaspe this reduced considerably as there were now other avenues to complain.
It is the hypocricy of the pakistani society that will bring it to doom. They dont want to mix religion and politics?.. If they spent even a fraction of their time actually studying the life of our prophet (pbuh), embedding his pure, selfless qualities and ACTUALLY reading and understanding the Qur’an, they will come to learn that he integrated islam and politics to create a system and a society that ruled majority of this world for centuries and may I add very succesfully AND peacefully,until the muslims started parting from their souls and the soul of our religion…thus being slapped up from every angle of this earth.
I pray for peace in my forefathers land…
Convenience Religion is what most of the mulsim wants in pakistan and all over. Best example is that most of the mulsim who criticizes the west wants citizen ship in that country. Even the rulers have asylum visa in hand while ruling is the reality of pakistan.
This could be attributed to the thoughts process of islam which seek adherence without reasoning or questioning. Any reasoning is against islam if they donot have an answer to satisfy the questionaire.
Muslim world wide has the double standard. When they are in majority minority does not have right. when they are in minority they want individual rights to be protected.
World has seen, understood the hypocracy and that is one of the reason nobody bother about whatever happens in the islamic countries.
I hate the polls. Unless you know how polls work and how the results depend on many things (i.e. how the questions are formed) you are always ‘misinformed’. Polls not only attemp to get a snap shot of what it is curertnly, it influences policy making and general public’s perception – I think polls are such dangerous tools to be used. Great post, Kalsoom!