Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [175]
The shrines and the pir families illustrate a key obstacle to the propagation of sectarian hatred in Punjab, which is that no one knows how many Shia there actually are, because in a great many cases no one can ascertain – including quite often the people concerned themselves – who is Shia and who is Sunni. The Sufi shrines, their custodians and their followers play an important part in this by constantly preaching against the Sunni – Shia divide and stressing that ‘our saint preached that there should be neither Sunni nor Shia, but only worshippers of God’ – as I was told at many shrines.
Apart from the stricter followers of the saints, masses of ordinary local people worship at the shrines and are influenced by this feeling. As for the pir families themselves, some of the Gardezis are openly Shia, as is their shrine. The Qureishis and Gilanis are generally thought to be Shia, but practise Sunni worship in public. Then there is a variety of traditional local arrangements, either based on status, or intended to dampen sectarian conflict and extend the alliance networks of particular clans. Thus I was told that the local Khosar tribe (like the Legharis, of Baloch origin but now Seraiki-speaking) worship the local saints and take their wives from Shia families, while the men of the tribe remain Sunni. Sayyids (descendants of the Prophet, including all the pir families) by definition only marry other Sayyids, and this rule is far more important than sectarian divides.
I visited the shrine of Shah Yusuf Gardezi in Multan together with a member of the Syed Gardezi family, a student at the local Broomfield Hall School where I had given a talk. The shrine is home not only to the tomb of the original saint but to those of members of his family and leading followers – including the lion and snake which accompanied him to Multan, and come in for their own share of respect. Presumably when paying respects to a lion the question of whether the creature was a Shia or Sunni lion is not uppermost in the mind of the worshipper.
Though openly Shia, the shrine is therefore also worshipped at by local Sunni. The stories of miracles I heard about the shrine were told to me by local Shia and local Sunni. A senior official in Multan told me that during the Shia festival of Ashura (10th Moharram) in Multan, when the administration issues licences to carry taziyas (imitation mausoleums of the martyred Imams made of wood and paper, like small towers) in procession, ‘90 per cent of the licences went to people calling themselves Barelvi Sunnis’.
Less encouraging was what my Gardezi guide told me in January 2009 about his school. Broomfield Hall is very much the school of the local elite (not the very top elite, who would go to the famous schools of Lahore, but their close relatives). He said that three-quarters of the boys in his class sympathize with the Pakistani Taleban: ‘They say that they are good Muslims oppressed by America and the Pakistani army.’ He said that one seventeen-year-old son of a local businessman
is trying to grow a big beard to look what he calls proper Muslim. He says he is a Wahabi. I don’t think he really knows what that means but he certainly hates us Shia. He says that he would like to go to America and blow himself up together with Americans. He makes me laugh, though it isn’t really very funny.
Most of this is doubtless adolescent posturing, but as far as anti-American sentiment among the students goes, there can be no doubt. When I spoke to the senior classes, they were full of the same crazed conspiracy theories as the rest of society. In their view, it has been proved that the Jews were responsible for 9/11; that a Jewish conspiracy exists to dominate the world;