Once Were Radicals (8 page)

During our days in Karachi, Mum and I would visit relatives who lived in a nearby suburb. I loved these visits for two reasons. All the uncles and aunts spoke fluent English so I could let my cultural and linguistic guard down. The second reason was life-saving: they had a proper Western-style toilet seat into which I could let down some other stuff as soon as I arrived!

The house was actually the same house where my mother lived when she first moved to Pakistan. It belonged to her maternal uncle, who had passed away by the time we were in Pakistan. The head of the household was my mum's aunt, a regal and extremely fair-skinned woman of impeccable good looks and North Indian refinement. Just like my maternal grandmother, we used to call Mum's aunt Naani Amma even though our real grandmother was still alive. Now, in her older years, Naani Amma had become
a prominent figure in the women's wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI).

The name of JI simply meant ‘Islamic group' or ‘Islamic organisation'. It was a generic term adopted by numerous Muslim organisations and parties of various stripes across the world. It isn't to be confused with Jemaah Islamiyah of Indonesia, al-Gamaah al-Islami of Egypt or Jamiat-i-Islami of Afghanistan.

At age six, I could hardly be expected to understand or be interested in the politics of JI. I knew that they published books in English, and Mum stocked up on each and every religious book in English she could find in Naani Amma's private library. I tried reading some of these books but found them terribly boring. However, I did become familiar with some of the authors' names: Syed Abul Ala Maududi, Khurshid Ahmad, Khurram Murad, Syed Qutb, Maryam Jameelah and Hasan al-Banna.

Naani Amma used to talk to my father from behind a screen. She never appeared in his presence, even though he was married to her niece and even if my mum and a roomful of others were present. I found this quite extraordinary, and at first thought they must have had a long-standing argument. Naani Amma would also cover herself with a long cloak and a veil over her face when she left the house. I had seen women wearing this kind of clothing in the bazaars, and asked my mother why they would wear it.

‘It part our reelijun,' she said.

‘So why don't you wear it, Mum? I've never seen you or our aunts wear it in Australia. You don't even wear it here.'

‘Becuz it not cumpulsury. I cover my hair ven somebody read Kooraan loud and ven I teaching yoo Kooraan or at reelijun gadhuring. But other time it look silly vering in Sydney. Thing diffurunt in Pakistan. Vee in Muslim country.'

I wasn't quite convinced. It seemed strange that Mum, the most religiously observant person I knew, could be outclassed in the religion stakes by someone else.

When it came to religious ceremonies, Mum had impeccable and incomparable credentials. In Sydney, she played the role of religious teacher among the Pakistani Muslim aunts in her group of friends. She even encouraged her Hindu, Sikh and Catholic friends to observe their own religious practices. Mum regarded all religions as forces of good. She brought us up to believe that the best people were the most religious ones.

However, I was beginning to learn a different kind of Islamic religiosity in Pakistan. I was hearing that people of other religions were probably going to hell. And certain religious ceremonies I was familiar with were now missing. No one celebrated Hindu festivals like Diwali in Pakistan, and we didn't distribute sweets or burn incense when people died. Innocent religious adjectives like ‘Hindu' and ‘Sikh' were now spoken of in a derogatory manner.

Mum and Dad were attuned to these changes, and would try to inoculate us from this novel and divisive way of religious thinking. Mum would try to explain to me why the Jamaatis did everything so differently and so strictly. In her most strident Hindlish, she would declare: ‘Eerfaan, dhay have dhayr own society. Dhay only mix eech udhar.
Jamaati only marry Jamaati. Dhay good peepul but sumtiem dhay too extreme.'

‘So why do you stay with them?' I'd ask.

‘Beecuz Naani Amma my relative. She like my mudhar.'

Mum's biological mum (whom we also called our Asli Naani Amma where
asli
meant ‘real' or ‘literal') was alive and we visited her often.

Although I was very attached to Mum's mum, I could never quite understand her. She was always talking, babbling away, whether we spoke with her or not. Mum said that she had an illness of the mind that had afflicted her ever since my grandfather died.

Despite her illness, my grandmother was fastidious in her performance of the five daily
nemaaz
. She made sure we also performed the
nemaaz
, and kept reminding Mum of the importance of remembering God. My grandmother always kept a large set of rosary beads with her (known in Urdu as
tazbih
) and would recite the ninety-nine names of God frequently. She told us that we could feel God close to us by repeatedly reciting these names.

Mum didn't approve of some of Granny's religious practices. She said Granny used to frequent the graves of saints and ask for favours and intercession. This was regarded as an act of
shirk
(associating partners with the Divine or treating a non-Divine being as capable of granting things only the Divine being—as in God—could grant).

Mum told us that some of her older brothers were also involved in these practices, though they were affected to a greater extent. They followed an allegedly holy man known
as a
pir
who claimed a special proximity to God and who added many unnecessary and extreme forms of worship to the religion.

I grew to associate the
pir
with the spiritual charlatan, one who took advantage of emotionally unstable or vulnerable people. My uncles had apparently paid their entire incomes to their
pir
at a time when their father had just passed away and the family desperately needed money. My mother said she and her sisters suffered a lot because of her brothers' fake
pir
, who lived in a place called Ajmer in North Western India where a famous Arab saint known as Moinuddin Chishti is buried.

The
pirs
were the figureheads of Indian Sufism. Mum instilled in all of us a healthy scepticism of all forms of Sufism. Her prejudice towards Sufism was understandable, and was nurtured by her Jamaat-i-Islami aunt who had adopted the anti-Sufi sect of Wahhabism that was the state religion of Saudi Arabia, whose government donated funds and moral support to the Jamaat.

During the final month of my stay in Karachi, Mum decided it was best if she taught me from religious books, including some her aunt had provided. By this time my Urdu was quite good, and I could converse with her with relative fluency. Mum felt my listening to her read religious books would improve my Urdu. Many of the books she read were written by one Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat and a former journalist. Even Maududi's staunchest critics amongst the orthodox religious scholars acknowledged that he was one of the greatest (then) living
writers in the Urdu language, a man who had developed his own school of Urdu literature.

Mum would read from the simpler books Maududi wrote. Among these was a set of sermons he delivered in Punjab in 1941, before the Partition of India. These were delivered to a group of largely illiterate villagers, and they concerned basic aspects of belief and religious life. The language Maududi used was simple yet forceful and effective. Even when translated into English, the sermons leave a deep effect on readers (at least they did on me, and continue to do so). In Urdu, their force is magnified many times.

Mum also would read excerpts from Maududi's commentary of the Koran which was entitled
Tafhim al-Qur'an
(literally ‘Toward Understanding the Koran'). Parts of this commentary were written when Maududi was imprisoned at various times.

Apart from books by Maududi, Mum would read a book of stories of various incidents from the lives of the Prophet Muhammad's family members and friends. This book was called
Hikayaat-i-Sahaba
(literally ‘Stories of the Sahaba' where the term
sahaba
referred collectively to the Prophet Muhammad's companions), and was intended to be a story book mothers would read to their children at night. It was written by a twentieth-century Sufi and expert in the sciences of
hadith
from India named Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhalwi. Sometimes Mum would be reduced to tears reading these stories. These were the first times I saw her show visible signs of profound religious experience.

Later in life, I was to learn more about these scholars and writers, and where they stood in the modern Islamic theological scheme of things. However, at this stage, I just
knew them as authors of books that my mother would read to us when she wanted us to learn about our religion.

Mum was always very careful about what she would read to us. She skipped whole paragraphs if not whole pages of books. At the time, she told me it was because the material there was beyond our understanding. Later, when I read these books for myself, I realised she had skipped the contents she felt would be unhelpful for us living in Australia. Some of Maududi's ideas about non-Muslims and rejecting Western culture may have been okay for Pakistani consumption. But we had to spend our lives living in Australia. She didn't want us to think Islam meant being hostile to Western people.

Mum avoided reading the political content of Maududi's books. Like many devout South Asian Muslims, she was discerning about what she took from his writings. Although Mum respected her aunt, she didn't share her aunt's views on political matters.

Mum didn't like the way Jamaat people stuck to themselves like some exclusive club. For instance, she didn't like how Jamaat men would only marry Jamaat women. Mum also felt like she wasn't always welcome by Jamaat women because she refused to wear the
niqab
(a type of face veil but covering slightly less than the burqa).

Jamaat people insisted that a woman must wear a
niqab
when she leaves her home. Their view was largely based on a book written by Syed Maududi entitled
Purdah
, in which Maududi sets out how gender relations are to be conducted according to his interpretation of Islamic texts.