Dawn’s Mohsin Hamid explains why legislating religious values is not only futile, but also corrosive to public morality:
A state that mandates religious practices, as Pakistan does, is a state that mandates hypocrisy, because the law can only govern outward behaviour. It can say that such-and-such behaviour is prohibited, but it cannot say that such-and-such belief is prohibited. And as the gap between belief and behaviour widens, hypocrisy sets in. People with beards still kill. People who cover their heads still steal. People who thank God for their victories still cheat. And because so many people do these things, the split between religion and morality becomes profound and widely accepted.
Sadly, it seems that we have gone from a period when the new post-colonialist countries of the Muslim world, learning from the West’s disastrous period of religious government, separated mosque from state, to a situation where the new generation in these countries is intent on learning the perils of mixing religion and government firsthand. In truth, real faith is voluntary and requires no ostentation.
A state that mandates religious practices, as Pakistan does, is a state that mandates hypocrisy, because the law can only govern outward behaviour. It can say that such-and-such behaviour is prohibited, but it cannot say that such-and-such belief is prohibited. And as the gap between belief and behaviour widens, hypocrisy sets in. People with beards still kill. People who cover their heads still steal. People who thank God for their victories still cheat. And because so many people do these things, the split between religion and morality becomes profound and widely accepted.
Sadly, it seems that we have gone from a period when the new post-colonialist countries of the Muslim world, learning from the West’s disastrous period of religious government, separated mosque from state, to a situation where the new generation in these countries is intent on learning the perils of mixing religion and government firsthand. In truth, real faith is voluntary and requires no ostentation.
