Religion and the Pakistan Team
Finding Faith
By: Osman Samiuddin
During India's tour to Pakistan last year, an Indian journalist asked an ex-player
from the `80s with as much flippancy as seriousness why, in his time, Pakistan
players didn't feel the urge to exhibit their faith as openly as current members
did. Having been tickled by a stream of pre- and post-match comments littered
with traditional Islamic salutations and on-field celebrations of landmarks
with a sajda (kneeling down in Muslim prayer), the query was justified. Suitably,
the reply was simultaneously glib and revealing: "Clearly we weren't good
Muslims."
Certainly during his time and periods preceding it, public displays of religiosity
at least (not its private practice) were absent. At one defining moment in its
recent history, when Javed Miandad struck a leg-side full toss for six in Sharjah,
Pakistan cricket had no overt religious commemoration of the event. Instead,
Miandad and non-striker Tauseef Ahmed dashed off wildly, arms akimbo, as natural
and impulsive a celebration as you could imagine.
Six years later, at arguably a greater epochal moment in Melbourne, a handful
of players knelt in sajda and offered thanks for winning the World Cup. Today,
if you talk to any cricketer, on or off the record, replies will begin with
and be bookended by a bismillah ("In the name of Allah" - it is a
traditional recitation at the start of any Muslim act) or inshallah ("God
Willing"). And now, with Yousuf Youhana's conversion to Islam and a new
identity - Mohammad Yousuf - the growing phenomenon of faith within the team
finds its most intriguing example.
It is difficult to say with any certainty how or why this gradual change has
come about. Superficially, we can pinpoint key actors and factors. Saeed Anwar,
after the traumatic death of his young daughter, turned to religion and spirituality
and took to the Tableeghi Jamaat (missionaries), who practise a stricter adherence
to the codes of Islam than most. Anwar's influence spread among senior players
such as Saqlain Mushtaq, Mushtaq Ahmed and Inzamam-ul-Haq and the group travel
together regularly to Raiwind, a small town near Lahore, where the Tableeghis
congregate for prayer and dialogue.
Yousuf's revelation that he had actually converted some time ago adds further
credence to the theory that Anwar's role has been crucial. Three years ago,
during the World Cup, there were persistent rumours that he had converted under
Anwar's influence.
Maybe too, in the spectre of match-fixing, there lies a compulsion towards
religion. Sharda Ugra, senior editor with India Today, suggested in an article
on the subject last year during India's tour to Pakistan that "the post-match-fixing
generation in Pakistan cricket is grappling with a `double burden'; as sportsmen
not only are they under scrutiny for their professional conduct, they have also
become characters in a public morality play, always vulnerable to being accused
of match-fixing should they fail."
Tellingly, when Salim Malik was first accused by Rashid Latif and Basit Ali
of match-fixing during the African jaunt of 1994-95, almost the first thing
manager Intikhab Alam asked him to do was swear on the Quran that he wasn't
guilty of any such deed.
But for younger or newer members of the team, who haven't played with Anwar,
scouring for the roots of their religiosity is a more difficult proposition.
To an extent, conformism and peer pressure play a part. But a broad, not infallible,
argument can also be drawn: as the socioeconomic and geographic composition
of the team has altered so too has the inclination of the team towards religion.
Where once the national team was sourced in large part of players from the
metropolises of Karachi and Lahore, and where the leading figures were urbane
and rounded personalities such as Asif Iqbal, Majid Khan and Imran Khan, this
is no longer the case. In Pakistan's last Test match, against the West Indies,
only four members of the team were born in Lahore or Karachi.
There will be some who will argue that in smaller towns, such as Sialkot and
Sheikhupura, religion perhaps holds a greater significance in people's lives
than it does in Karachi or Lahore. Levels of education are poorer, fewer people
are literate and because awareness is generally low, religious beliefs, orthodox
and otherwise, assume an enhanced importance. Abdul Razzaq's mysterious illness
and dizzy spells during last year's Australia tour is an example: apparently
he was on a spinach-only diet that a pir (spiritual leader) had advised would
make him stronger.
But this assumption can be, and often is, countered by some Pakistani sociologists
who rightly point to the higher incidence of sectarian-fuelled violence in cities
like Karachi and Lahore that suggests the opposite to be true. This indicates,
they say, that the importance of religion has grown in urban, rather than rural,
Pakistan over the last decade or so.
Maybe the development isn't linked so much to changing demography as it is
to changing times. Many Pakistanis will tell you that the country as a whole
has increasingly come to identify itself in religious terms. When Pakistan came
into being it wasn't, after all, officially known as the Islamic Republic of
Pakistan, as it is now. The gradual Islamisation of the country began towards
the end of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's premiership in the mid-'70s. Bhutto declared
Ahmadis non-Muslim, banned alcohol, shut down nightclubs and changed the weekly
holiday from Sunday to Friday to appease the religious front.
The subsequent policies of General Zia-ul Haq - he brought in the Shariah law
(the Islamic legal system) - and the pre-eminence of Islamic political parties
such as the new religious alliance under the banner of the MMA have since enhanced
the process. But even here, it can be argued with some justification that the
right wing Jamaat-e-Islami party held sway over Karachi's politics through the
'60s and '70s.
In recent months, two of the more heated domestic debates have been whether
or not to retain a column that asks you to identify your faith in the Pakistani
passport (after much debate, the column has been retained) and the impending
implementation of a Hisba bill in the North-West Frontier Province. The bill
essentially puts forth yet another parallel legal Islamic system, one which
liberal circles decry as an act of Talibanisation, so strict are its moral codes.
Younger players in the current team are children of this era, unlike players
such as Imran, Javed and even Akram. When Salman Butt says, as he did in a recent
Wisden interview, "we are Muslims and we believe in Allah. We do whatever
Islam says and we try to be what we are supposed to be. Religion is the complete
code of life and we follow its guiding principles," it is but natural for
someone born in 1984, at the peak of Zia's rule, to not just say it, but stress
upon it.
Ultimately, of course, there isn't anything to suggest the trend really matters
in terms of either performance or selection. It forms but an interesting aside
in what is, intrinsically and traditionally, an interesting team.
Cynics have speculated that Yousuf's conversion was the derivative of the belief
that being Christian would preclude his elevation to captaincy. Disregarding
his credentials as captain, the more cynical would counter that having a Christian
as captain of Pakistan, an Islamic country fighting a global war on terrorism
and a domestic one on extremism, would in fact be an admirable international
PR coup for the media-savvy President Musharraf, who also doubles as Patron-in-Chief
of the PCB.
In any case, Yousuf has denied that his aspiration to captaincy had any link
with his decision. In a matter as personal as this, we must go by his word and
nothing else, not speculation, rumour or the displeasure expressed by his very
vocal family on the subject.
Source: http://content-usa.cricinfo.com
Date Created: 10/04/05
Date/Time Last Modified: 10/4/2005 8:46:48 AM
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