Opinion Offence is easy

It later surfaced in an operatic twist that he who smelt it,dealt it — the cleric who first accused her may be responsible for making the whole thing up,in a misguided effort to target the Christian minority in his village. Support for Rimsha and her case was widespread. Many TV programmes and opinion pieces decried the injustice in a case that was so pointedly useless. For the weeks that she was in jail,news of her case raced through the world’s newspapers adding to Pakistan’s already stellar presence in “The World’s Worst Headlines and The Countries That Inspire Them” (“Good evening! We interrupt your regularly scheduled documentary programming,‘Innuendo: The History of the Italian Laxative’,to bring you this latest from Pakistan” ). I think only Kazakhstan and Namibia are worse off in terms of the press. Even North Korea gets an affectionate “look-at-the-fat-baby-playing-dictator” chuckle when its papers show little Kim prancing around empty factories.

Headlines eventually spill onto book titles that,on a scale of 1 to Terminal,make Pakistan look like it is five steps ahead of Sudan but dangerously close to Haiti. The recent headlines were no different from those that have come before on intolerance and misinformation,and usually involved someone with the earnest desire to harm someone else.

Look around now and you’ll see everyone is offended. The Israelis are offended that Obama refused their request to meet with their PM. The Egyptians are offended that a hatemonger from Where-Am-I,Florida,made a movie degrading Islam and so formed an angry mob outside the US embassy in Cairo,which must have offended the Americans. (Can’t you just see a whole panel of TV talking heads looking at the Arab Spring now and saying: “Yeah,see? Told ya”?) My point is,offence is not a local creation; it is everywhere,as is blasphemy. Usually the only difference is that with blasphemy you’re offended on someone else’s behalf,which is somehow worse.

The concept of punishment for blasphemy is quite intriguing to me because a) it is so often one-sided and b) it serves no purpose other than making others aware you were offended. So you’re offended. Huzzah! Tell you what,let’s stage a celebratory pantomime because,horror of horrors,you don’t like what you heard. I find myself deeply offended by something daily — irate rickshaw drivers,socialites and their half-baked politics,xenophobia,brain masala,skin-whitening creams,bankers,censorship,cherry cola,ignorance,my hairline — but you don’t find me demanding incarceration for others. At least,not often and rarely in public.

Even you,cousin India (we used to be siblings but you married so well),are not beyond reproach. Recall when art star M.F. Husain was forced to live his last years out of the country because he had committed “blasphemy” against a Hindu deity. It surprised me even then that a man as well-regarded as Husain,repeatedly called a national treasure,was buried outside his country because he had caused offence to a few and that too,through art. I am sure it surprised others. Perhaps it is because it is far easier to get your views heard today,even the smallest thoughts go across the greatest of distances,that there are far more people who don’t want to hear them. Aspects of this intolerance bubble up around the world like sulphur.

Last week,I heard of a man who owned a store in Ahmedabad that made international news for choosing to call itself “Hitler”,which is probably what you see in the dictionary next to “offensive”. The owner claimed he did not know such a man existed,let alone his penchant for genocide. Considering India is the biggest of a few countries where the swastika is ubiquitous in religious imagery,one doesn’t believe him. But,no offence.

Aijazuddin is a writer and artist based in Lahore