Social media as space for peace education: Conceptual contours and evidence from the Muslim world

Abstract

In this research, we present a conceptual framework to examine the potential of social media as an educational space for peace education. In particular, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of social media that set it apart from other traditional media and educational spaces. Specifically, we conceptualize features of social media such as: social media as ‘knowledge commons’; imagined communities of purpose; public and private voice; civic engagement; and the experts’ gaze. Finally, we provide empirical and discursive evidence from social media in the Muslim world with specific examples from the Pakistani blogosphere in support of the conceptual framework drawn earlier.

Introduction

This paper explores the possibilities of using social media, identifying the blogosphere in particular, as a space for peace education. We argue that social media is a valuable arena for cultivating conversation, debate and dissent about salient issues in processes of societal regeneration. Following Barraclough (1964), we will show how social media is the new ‘town’ in which communities rally to engage in self-renewal. We will attempt to demonstrate how, unconstrained and relatively unpoliced by credentialed ‘experts’ of academic and political privilege, the social media, especially the blogosphere, is host to democratic and inclusive multilogues among civil society participants. In this regard, the blogosphere is a particularly useful space in which issues of national or societal self-regeneration can be discussed without the pressures of political or economic interest (or expertise).

To illustrate the potential of social media to create meaningful spaces for peace education, we draw upon examples from the Pakistani blogosphere. We chose to analyze blogging sites with a high degree of engagement from civil society that call attention to prominent issues of Pakistan as an in-crisis society. The blogs we read and analyzed were in both English, and Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. These online texts have profound civic and educational value in the opportunities they extend to the public to engage with contending meanings, articulations and representations of the self, and conceptualization of ‘the other’ during processes of social and national self-regeneration. Amid such contested interpretations online in Pakistan, our aim is to uncover counter-discourses on representation, regeneration of the self and the potential for discourse change. Our analysis shows that social media, especially the blogosphere, can be and actively are conduits of change. We argue that these virtual spaces are prospective arenas where change can and will emerge.

At the same time, we are cognizant of both the limitations of social media and also its dark side. While we make a case in this article for social media as a space for peace and societal self-renewal, we are painfully aware that the same space is also being used by those who perpetrate violence for recruiting youth to their ranks, for putting out hateful messages and texts and for propagating their violent ideologies. ISIS, among other violent groups, is a case in point. It has expertly used social media to recruit youth from almost everywhere in the world, including Canada. It has also made use of the social media platforms to spread fear and violence (Blaker, 2015; Farwell, 2014). The limitations of social media were also apparent on many levels during the so-called Arab Spring (Arshad-Ayaz, 2014). However, we believe that while developments related to peace building and societal regeneration in and through social media might not be as rapid and spectacular as the use of social media by the extremists and the hatemongers, yet it is also the space where peaceful social constellations of citizens can and do emerge, as we will show below.

The blogosphere

In its most basic form, the blog is a ‘frequently updated website consisting of dated entries in reverse chronological order’ (Walker, 2003, cited in Davies and Merchant, 2008: 84). In its inception, the blog template was usually that of community blogging about moderated or directed topics. Users post URL links to websites with accompanying commentary, analysis or questions for others as well as a title for their entry. In 1999, a number of hosted blog tools for journal-blogging were launched, including LiveJournal, OpenDiary and Blogger. In this template, blog content is not constructed by many different community players commenting on existing text but, instead, is typically managed by a single user who uses the platform to share personal insights or stories without necessarily referencing other media. Both the filter style and journal style still exist, but the latter’s potential for developing and expressing personality and the personal narrative has guided the proliferation of blogging.

The decisions bloggers make about their blog title and what sites and links to share indicate what Danath and Boyd call ‘a public display of connection’ (2004). Davies and Merchant (2008: 82) advise, “it is important to understand ‘what blogging is, what it can do and how blogs work as part of meaning making’”. The sequence in which a blogger shares thoughts and ideas sketches the evolution of the author’s voice and allows readers a glimpse into his or her narrative. The tone of the blogosphere is one of accessibility and familiarity (Risdahl, 2006), and invites engagement. Such engagement is integral to the building of a community feeling amongst bloggers and their audiences.

In the blogosphere, it is the community that decides the importance of issues at hand based on expressed interest, and measured by human and automated processes (Lampa, 2004: 4). Evidently, content is filtered more democratically in the blogosphere than in traditional media outlets, where the mediascape is determined by political, academic and economic elites based on what is most profitable. Lampa (2004: 2) points out, ‘unlike the profit-driven enterprise of print-capitalism, the economy of the blogosphere is driven by the free dissemination of texts produced by unpaid amateurs’. According to Rosen (2003, cited by Lampa, 2004), the socially rather than economically charged direction of the blogosphere represents a shift from the status quo of the traditional print media industry.

In traditional print media, measures of marketability and profitability often impede the circulation of certain ideas in it and, more broadly, in cultural consciousness (Lampa, 2004). According to Greg Ruggiero,

[Old] media is a corporate possession … you cannot participate in the media. Bringing that into the foreground is the first step. The second step is to define the difference between public and audience. An audience is passive; public is participatory. We need a definition of media that is public in its orientation (cited in Blood, 2000: 2).

The blogosphere and social media at large are consciously public in their orientation, making a once passive audience into constructors, moderators and collaborators of knowledge (Boyd, 2008). Moreover, writers may be empowered in a shift from consumers to producers of media texts. They often embody both roles. Lampa (2004: 2) argues, ‘a blog empowers the writer with greater freedom to provide colorful, subjective, and political commentary than would be possible within the framework of a traditional media outlet, which has an economic interest in maintaining a sense of detached objectivity’.

Nonetheless, there are blogs that deviate from the not-for-profit motivation trend and, for example, corporations and businesses can employ blogging strategies in for-profit campaigns. Though technology (e.g. the Internet, computer, SMS, Web 2.0) has facilitated civil society’s participation in constructing media content, for-profit media has demonstrated significant ownership and appropriation of media space that induces certain cultural and political landscapes and configurations. Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr, a popular microblogging interface, is one example. Additionally, blog indices such as Blogdex, Technorati, Daypop and Popdex reestablished the role of the ‘gaze’ and the ‘expert’ in knowledge construction and dissemination.

In the wider Internet access and usage, the blogging community represents a relatively small group of global elite who enjoy such time, talent and wealth (Lampa, 2004: 5). However, as we will argue, the blogging community reflects an engaged group of citizens resisting the gaze and expertise of academic and political elites. The virtual space they occupy, where ideas circulate in the wider community, so often rejects hegemonic social discourse. That is to say, though bloggers may be ‘elitist’ in their access to technology, the Internet, time and language abilities, they certainly reject elitism in the counter-discourses and ideas they adhere to. Moreover, many have little access to the requisite tools themselves and rely on public resources. A striking example is Ken Barbieux, a homeless man in Nashville who used Internet and computer resources at public libraries to blog about his experience of homelessness in urban America, suggesting counter-hegemonic understandings of the problem and encouraging civic engagement (Barbieux, 2003, cited in Lampa, 2004: 6; Luo, 2003).

Different scholars have suggested various ways of defining and understanding blogging. Authors of an influential Pew Research Center study on Internet use after 9/11 argue that blogging is DIY journalism. Davies and Merchant (2008) have included blogging in their work on new literacies, and define blogging as citizen journalism as well as a practice in text-making and literacy. Richardson (2006), cited in Davies and Merchant (2008), understands blogging as read-write-think-link. Conclusions drawn in the Pew (Rainie, 2005) and the Perseus Development Corporation (2003) studies have been very influential in understanding blog users and their landscape, namely that the blogging community is made up of active bloggers (2–7%) and the passive periphery. The Perseus study specifies the latter as ‘teenage girls’ who write personal blogs for friends and family readers. While it may be useful to categorize these divisions within the blogging community, the hierarchical insinuations are problematic on three accounts. First, the implied ranking adopts the public/private Enlightenment binary in which ‘teenage girls’, in the ‘private’ sphere, are not validated or valued as ‘active bloggers’. Second, epistemologically, such categorization follows the Enlightenment model of knowledge in which personal experience is not considered a legitimate source of knowledge. The Perseus categorization subordinates the experience and agency of teenage girls expressed online in their insights and stories to that of ‘active bloggers’. Belittling the experiential texts in this categorization is deeply gendered, casting the ‘teenage girls’ in the blogosphere as distinctly non-expert and less valuable contributors to the community. Lastly, the constricted definition of a blog based on the frequency with which it is updated (Perseus Development Corporation, 2003) and its average life span precludes the qualitative knowledge and meaning-making elements of an online narrative that may not be updated as often as a technical blog.

The qualitative and civic importance of the blogosphere as the ‘new’ social medium and counter-hegemonic discursive space is immense. The qualitative impact of the blogosphere should be investigated as a community-of-purpose, a community including the blogger, the reader and those who engage with both. This community develops from what Graham Lampa identifies as the ‘shared experience of instant publishing’ (2004: 2). Lampa’s conceptualization borrows from Benedict Anderson’s understanding of the ‘imagined community’. The ‘style’ in which it is imagined manifests itself in the instant publishing medium such that it creates a discursive, transnational and online imagined community. We believe Anderson’s concept of the ‘imagined community’ cannot be wholly applied to the blogosphere as it ignores the reader, an integral community member because of his/her consumption of bloggers’ text, who is also in interaction with content that produces alternative texts and widens the potential for changing discourse.

In recent years, the blogging community has come to perform three vital functions. First, it acts as a safe, accessible space for counter-hegemonic ideas to generate and, second, by giving these ideas life, it also acts as a watchdog. In other words, it serves to remind the community at large that ideas are relevant and current even if mainstream media does not deem them so. For example, the blogging community kept writing about Senate minority leader Trent Lott’s racist comments long after traditional media had let it go. The blogging community certainly feels the distinction between traditional print and media journalism in its fifth estate status. The commonality of purpose and role in bringing non-mainstream ideas into cultural consciousness is clear, and this emphasizes the cohesion of the community. Users in the blogging community are engaged as both consumers and producers of texts and meanings that produce, as Lampa argues, a ‘democratizing effect that can evoke feelings of shared experience (2004: 2). The ideas that are ignored and marginalized by mainstream news producers are the tools with which bloggers express their purpose and agency, evading the experts’ gaze and being heard in new ways and voices. During 9/11, blogs were instrumental in hosting everyday people’s ‘first-hand unedited accounts of the common people in New York and Washington DC that otherwise may have been lost amid broadcast media’s more pressing coverage of the overarching national security issues’ (Rainie et al., 2002, cited in Lampa, 2004: 3). This example also speaks to the third function of the blogosphere, to force traditional media to extend its own possibilities for participation. Reflecting the participatory organization of the blogosphere, traditional media has begun inviting readers to comment on or otherwise respond to news items. Most major print media have also created their own blogging sites. The same trend is apparent in electronic media, with increasingly interactive features on websites. However, though readers are now invited to add content in old media, the news is still determined by editors and management rather than the participating community, such as happens with new media. The exclusive selection of news items and issues still marks the difference between traditional media outlets and the genuine participatory blogosphere and wider social media.

In the blogosphere, selection by community imports and legitimizes the mundane as newsworthy. Whether written by an active blogger or the ‘teenage girl’, the personal becomes newsworthy as a source of new, shared knowledge. Epistemologically, the blogosphere invites and legitimates the mundane (routine or experience) as sacred, including what a blogger sees, eats, reads and watches in a frame of news and topics of discussion. As a methodology, blogging renders traditionally excluded sites and sources of knowledge accessible. The experiential, performative and personal are introduced not as subordinate to knowledge based on logic, empiricism and rationality, but simply as counterposed. In publicizing the private, the individual’s experience is blended in the blogosphere with others such that the relationship between personal experience and wider society is more easily identified and engaged with. The blogosphere in this sense is an imagined community that joins individuals whose lives may appear disconnected, but who share concerns, interests and experiences. Anderson’s initial conception of the imagined community relied on nationalistic print media but the blogosphere offers imagined communities the opportunity to connect on a transnational scale. The blogosphere has the potential to globalize the local and localize the global.

Not all bloggers introduce purely personal and experiential content. In offering opinions and scrutiny on broader social conditions, bloggers can also use hyperlinks to provide readers with the source of their analysis. The analysis is then open for readers to comment on, add to, criticize, support or share with others. An initial text on which discussion is based is easily at the disposal of readers. Authors of those texts can even be invited to debate or discuss their work. The ease and accessibility with which this can be done is not so in old media. Lampa (2004: 4) points out that

it is in these small, tightly knit bundles of blogs (texts and engagements) where a kernel of real interactive community lies … the most striking feature of the imagined community of blogging is that it enables users to both experience a shared base of knowledge and to contribute directly to that cultural consciousness (parentheses added)

Social media: The new ‘town’ and ‘factory’

In his work on the decolonization of Asia and Africa, renowned British historian Geoffrey Barraclough (1964: 149) sketches out how colonists never saw the colonized societies’ great potential for self-renewal. He argued:

More fundamental in the long run than the pressures resulting from the interplay of power politics were two other factors. The first was the assimilation by Asians and Africans of western ideas, techniques and institutions, which could be turned against the occupying powers – a process in which they proved far more adept than most Europeans had anticipated. The second was the vitality and capacity for self-renewal of societies which Europeans had too easily dismissed as stagnant, and decrepit or moribund. (emphasis added)

What Barraclough so aptly points out in this analysis, in fact, did lead to self-renewal in former colonies. From 1945 to 1960, 40 new national and cultural identities had emerged (Barraclough, 1964: 148). Scholars, politicians and other ‘experts’ in the Western world have largely dismissed the progress and potential of many of these societies, naming them ‘failed states’ and ‘societies in crisis’. A society’s capacity for self-renewal is deeply intertwined with its ability to effectively assert community identities in spaces made available by knowledge and technology. During phases of self-renewal that led to independence, many former colonies did effectively maximize their civic educational potential and expressed agency in and through new social and political arenas such as the ‘town’, the ‘factory’ and ‘media’ (for example, the shortwave radio). Nevertheless, it is this capacity that Western pundits still question and use to write off many societies. With regard to the role of ‘towns’ in processes of self-renewal, including decolonization, Barraclough (1964: 186–187) explains:

the most spectacular aspect … was the growth of towns; and the new towns generated both a social life of their own, unlike any that had previously existed … Four main consequences [of the emergence of towns] ensued. First, the towns threw up a new stratum of tough, emancipated, politically active men … Secondly, they provided a mass audience. Thirdly, they acted as new focuses of national unity, which cut through tribal divisions and formed an urban network … And finally, the tremendous improvement in communications which economic progress necessitated enabled leaders to forge organizations which covered the whole country. (parentheses added)

There are striking parallels between how the ‘town’ facilitated the initiation, aggregation and dissemination of multilogues on possibilities for self-renewal and how the blogosphere offers a space for agency, activism and resistance. We argue that just as the decolonization movement saw the emergence of ‘towns’ as assembly spaces for different ethnic, racial and religious communities of colonized subjects, the new media provides spaces for communities of different backgrounds, affiliations and allegiances to confront social barriers to self-renewal and peace in conversation.

In fact, the new media surpasses Barraclough’s notion of ‘towns’ in their dynamic and expansive accessibility. While ‘towns’ are geographically static, the new media invites people from different geographic places to engage with one another. Moreover, the new media as the new ‘town’ is more participatory in its inclusion. The ‘town’ offered nationalist leaders the opportunity to confront and mobilize communities, whereas the new media gives the community the opportunity to confront each other and mobilize themselves. The once requisite leader (political, religious, academic, media) is now obsolete, as ideas, not people, guide and lead movements. Participants are not leaders or followers, but peers.

National and societal self-regeneration in the Pakistani blogosphere

For the past few years, Pakistan has been a focal point for both terrorism and the War on Terror. Accordingly, analysts in academia, politics and media often frame Pakistan as a failing state. Except for a brief hiatus from 1988 (Soviet Union withdrawal from Afghanistan) to 2001 (the beginning of the US-led War on Terror), Pakistan has been a frontline state in one form or another for the last four decades. Unfortunate developments in the region, none of which were of Pakistan’s own making, have had serious consequences for the social, economic and security fabric of its society. Ethnic, sectarian and political violence has almost become a norm. Indeed, since 9/11, there have been thousands of civilian casualties in Pakistan. For example, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, in a three-year period between 2006 and 2009, there were as many as 7000 violent terrorist attacks in which 9263 people died, and thousands were injured. Also, there are deep political, social and religious schisms that are seen as the failure of the society (and the state). Despite deep social, political and religious fissures underlying national instability, there is profound potential for societal self-renewal in Pakistan, the means of which are rarely discussed by media and political ‘experts’.

Three popular blogs were chosen to illustrate how Pakistanis have engaged with the social media to confront one of the most contentious debates in and on Pakistan: Islamic terrorism. The first of these blogs dates from 2010 while the other two are more recent (2016). The purpose in choosing these blogs over a span of six years is to show that the conversations about societal self-renewal are ongoing phenomena in Pakistani social media and the blogosphere. As articulated by the bloggers, the issues related to extremism and terrorism are often misunderstood by those who are considered experts on these issues. These are namely academic, political and religious ‘experts’, whose power and privilege, granted to them by their credentials, fundamentally exclude the voices of those living the realities of the hijab and terrorism, for example. Guyatri Spivak (1988) has famously asked in her seminal text of the same name, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ While the blogosphere evidences that Pakistanis have found their own spaces in which to speak, as Frantz Fanon (1963) points out, these Pakistanis (the masses) may not be interested in engaging with those in positions of traditional authority, power and privilege. Bloggers are not only empowered by creating their own multilogues, but they also act to de-position and de-power those whose oppressive ‘expertise’ has systematically belittled their voices. In rendering the ‘expert’ voice irrelevant, the people of Pakistan find significant capacity for self-renewal.

My name is Khan and I am a terrorist

http://www.dawn.com/news/813516/my-name-is-khan-and-i-am-a-terrorist

On 8 November 2010, Sheikh (2010) posted online ‘My name is Khan and I am a terrorist’, a satire piece about youth radicalization in Pakistan that sparked 133 animated, thoughtful and passionate responses. An abridged version of the blog reads:

That’s right, my name is Khan and I am a terrorist, but I wasn’t always one. In fact I wasn’t even that religious before, though born in a so-called Muslim family. According to my current understanding I was actually a ‘Kafir’ (infidel) although I preferred to call myself an atheist or agnostic at best. So what happened? How did a liberated soul like mine get warped into becoming a Muslim firstly and then a terrorist willing to unleash my wrath on the enemies of Islam? Let me explain … I was young when 9/11 happened and like any other normal person I was shocked beyond belief at what had occurred. However what was more shocking was the fact that a certain group of Muslims was being held responsible for the atrocious crime. I wondered what could trigger Muslims to commit such an evil act all the while calling it Jihad in the name of God. From then onwards I saw the media unleash its wrath upon the Muslims along with which the world was introduced to the ‘War on Terror’ phenomenon. In what followed I saw the US forces invade Iraq, ensue foolish military endeavors in Afghanistan, I heard about Guantanomo Bay, the killing of innocent people being termed as ‘collateral damage’, drone strikes in Pakistan and most recently the Wikileaks controversy. I also noticed that Muslims were being ridiculed all around the world and their faith was being attacked on international airwaves and their religion being portrayed as inherently evil … In search for answers I started going to the mosques to attend lectures putting all my hopes in our learned scholars. I was sure they would be able to outline a course of action for a young, energetic, religiously committed and zealous youth like myself. But boy was I disappointed! … Not finding any solace in the ramblings of the mainstream Mullah (religious preacher) I made a transition into the online world. It is here that I found my answers, my leaders, my heroes, my army, my ideals and my ideology … To sum it all up; I was young and the way events were unfolding around me got me really confused. I was concerned and had a will to change the world for a better place. Naturally I looked towards the mainstream scholars to provide me explicit solutions in the light of Islam regarding the current political and social struggles of the Ummah (Global Muslim community). Their failure to do so made me look elsewhere and that is where I found what you would call, ‘the radical camp’. They inundated me with real Islamic knowledge and solutions with the help of religious texts and thus provided me with a ticket to Jannah (heaven). Inspired by heroes that stood up against oppression in the history of Islam, (and believe you me, there are many such heroes) I too decided that if I was going to die then it would be fighting against the enemies of Islam. I am ready to give up my life for the cause and if a few hundred innocent people loose their lives in the process, so be it, call it collateral damage! (all parentheses added)

Sheikh playfully sheds light on the dissatisfaction many young Muslims have felt with dominant explanations of terrorism offered by both Western media and the traditional sources in the Muslim community. He bemoans the avenues available to Muslim youth seeking explanations of identity and religiosity in reconciling with 9/11, and the equally traumatic US campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and the drone attacks in Pakistan. He criticizes both the Western and Muslim world for their partisanship and inadequacy, neither ‘side’ having provided Muslim youth with cogent ways to navigate the post-9/11 world. Bewildered youth may drift towards charismatic and persuasive extremist groups that use certain interpretations of religion (Islam) to radicalize them. However, the online community is not entirely unaware of either the explanatory vacuum or the use of selective interpretations by those who want to pursue the extreme path. Muhammad, for example, invites his compatriots to consider Islam in its core message devoid of selective interpretations. Commenting on suicide bombings he writes:

Sucide in any form is Tabu (haram) in Islam or in any religion of Allah SBT like Judaism or Christinity. Your life is given to you to do good deeds in this world and pass on to eternity … You have no right to take any other life without a reason indicated. You need not be a scholler or a priest or a cleric to be a good believer … Please read your holy books, obey the basic principles of your religion and be cordial towards other faiths. Allah loves us all, muslims, christians, jews, even the non beleiver athiests and hindus as we all are HIS creation … Respect others and be good listeners.

AZAD says:

Thank you brother Mohammad, you are the first one to include all of God’s creations in the same paragraph!!! We need more like you. We must spread the message of all beliefs and faiths being Allah’s creations. That will help curb the crazies in our society.

Ali Ghafoor joins the multilogue and brings in what are not always considered causes of extremism. Missing the irony of the blog, he engages with the blogger to consider scarcity, starvations and lack of distributive justice as the real issues. He writes:

Great write Mr. Rashid, but i would still disagree. Being a Khan, doesnt mean that people are more proned to being terrorist. It means that they live in an area, where Government fails to function. But i am yet to see a place where our Government does function. Take the latest example of Karachi. I actually find it really hard to believe when some times DAWN pretends to induce this new idea in the mind of our people that we are really bad. But the fact is WE ARE STARVED. We are starved of our rights. Living in our country, we stay afraid. The constitution of our country which is held so high by the politicians also provide us our rights, which we dont demand. An empy mind is the home of the devil … You can extinguish the smoke, but the fire still remains. We have to agree that we are a crowd of ignorant people with little or no patience for each other … We have branded our selves as time passers and we would not chose to contribute to our systems.

While Asad Khan agrees with Ghafoor, ‘We dont suffer from Terrorism, we suffer from Starvation’, Muhammad contests his reading of the blog:

Dude, you missed the point! The author doesn’t blame the Islamic ideology. In fact, if you read his other article, he states that the Islamic way of dealing with such issues is not through violence, suicide bombings and killing of innocents. He is just pointing out that there are some scholars that encourage young Muslims to adopt these means that are against the principles of Islam.

Syed Rizvi, on the other hand, points to the complicity of external actors in the articulation of the discourse of extremism and terrorism by saying:

There is no doubt that the extremists and fundamentalists have hijacked the religion of islam and are incessantly violating the basic principles of islam and making a mockery of it in front of the whole world. They are the one who have always acted in the interest of american and other imperial powers and have caused maximum damage to the muslims. until and unless we will not get rid of these nomadic mullahs we cant compete with the world and for that we will have to work really hard.

From this brief sample of engagement in the Pakistani blogosphere, we can see that the same social media tools that lure youth to extremist groups online also provide the platform on which youth engages to (re)appropriate the meaning-making activity from the so-called scholars and experts. Engagements show how social media facilitates conversations youth want and need to have about the confusing post-9/11 conditions that impact Muslim identity, worldviews and action. People responding to Sheikh’s text often identify terms and themes traditional ‘experts’ have used as frames such as anti-Americanism and national security. Nonetheless, conversation participants want to rupture traditional discourse, and many note that, contrary to popular belief in the West, there are more urgent concerns in Pakistanis’ daily lives. Poverty, lack of development and political apathy are cited as some of the most pressing issues facing communities. Many also identify the ideological undercurrents of the media, education system and religious elite as one of the biggest problems they face. In this space, moral panics such as these are reevaluated. The people decide for themselves what issues are important, rather than being told by political, academic and religious authorities.

Lahore attack – Where do the real fault lines lie?

http://www.dawn.com/news/1248433/lahore-attack-where-do-the-real-fault-lines-lie

On 27 March 2016, a powerful bomb detonated by a suicide bomber killed around 75 people and injured hundreds. Many among those who were killed or wounded belonged to the Christian community that was out in the largest park in Lahore, Pakistan celebrating Easter Sunday. According to some reports (The Express Tribune, 29 March 2016), the dead included scores of Muslims as well. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack. The Easter carnage prompted widespread condemnation at all levels of Pakistani society. Social media were abuzz with all sorts of reactions that included confusion, frustration and the desire to understand.

Akhtar Abbas’s blog (Abbas, 2016), Lahore attack – Where do the real fault lines lie? provoked an energetic debate on the root causes of extremist acts, especially against minority communities in Pakistan. Publishing it on 30 March 2016, Abbas wrote in the wake of the Easter bombing in Lahore. The author describes himself as ‘an engineer by profession who, quite like Sarah O’Connor, is fed up with machines. Born in an analogue world, he quietly converted into the digital realm without changing his habits.’ An abridged version of the blog reads:

Gulshan-e-Iqbal is a big public park situated in Lahore’s Allama Iqbal Town. The place has long stretches of grass where families spend their leisure time eating home-made cuisines over a spread bedsheet, or go boating in the lake … As a kid, I lived in a house just opposite one of its main gates; the park is featured in most of my childhood pictures … Yesterday, the place where you could not touch flowerbeds without a guilty conscience was riddled with human flesh and blood. They chose the target carefully. Being Easter, the park was bound to be flooded with Christians. If their aim was maximum casualties, it was achieved without a doubt …

A year back, the Army Public School was attacked. The entire nation stood united in its message of fighting the war on terror. We even made songs promising retribution against those who carried out these attacks and a safe country for our children. Soon Zarb-i-Azab was declared a success and it seemed that issues like corruption in institutions and action against ‘rogue’ political parties would be the talk of town.

The Lahore attack reminds us that perhaps we were too quick in celebrating that victory … Are we still keeping the oven hot enough for others to take advantage? Where do the real fault lines lie? Can we ever make a critical analysis of the situation we are in? The biggest battle in this war is changing the mindset … Our across-the-board inability as a society to accept the opinions of others … and to some extent we all are guilty of it. Each layer is supported by the less violent one beneath it … If we have to fight terrorist networks, we must fight extreme opinions.

The tools in the immediate battle against terrorists might be the guns and sticks of law enforcement agencies, but ultimately, it is the pen of the writers, the mic of the anchors, the voice from the pulpit and the clicks of ordinary citizens that will dismantle it.

Users began engaging with the blog after one respondent located the fault lines for the Lahore atrocity in India’s machinations in destabilizing Pakistan. According to ‘farhan b’, ‘the fault line lies with india financing and sponsoring terrorism inside Pakistan for the past 12 years via Afghanistan. Unless and until we push india out of afghanistan, this war can never be won.’ While some members (@Khwarezmi) agreed with farhan b, ‘Tahir C’ responded:

@farhan b What on Earth are you talking about? Are you that myopic as to what is happening in our country? The fault lies in us; in our allowing extreme thought to exist in our country for the political gains of our overlords and masters. The fault lies in our inability to ask ourselves; maybe, just maybe we are the ones who are killing ourselves. Stop the blame game. It’s ridiculous to keep using the cold war with India as a way of avoiding the painful reality. We created this mess, allowed it to ferment for two decades and now the moldy crappy is blowing up in our face!

Others joined the conversation and engaged with farhan b to dispel the bogey of the ‘foreign hand’ that has been a part of the nation state discourse in Pakistan for many decades. ‘Tahir A’ wrote:

@farhan b fault lines lie in denial mode. Terror network in Punjab has to be dismantled for peace.

@farhan b, So what you may be inferring is the assault on Junaid Jamshed yesterday and the Mumtaz gathering in Islamabad are works of foreign hands. Time for retrospect and come out of denial please.

Zim Premji redirected the conversation inwardly, writing:

We (Pakistanis) are responsible for this carnage. It is time to stop the blame game and start promoting peace. Tolerance for other religions. One way to do it is through education. We can do it! Enough is Enough!

Some prescribed Western-style education as a solution. For example, one participant with the netname of VA who wrote:

Introduce science, Maths & logical studies immediately in Madrassas. Bar uneducated clerics with only Quranic know how from preaching as these are the hatred mongers inciting violence.

Others encouraged more agentic and proactive action by Pakistani citizens, illustrated in anon’s comments:

you all cannot remain as the silent majority and you have to take back your

country from these extremist types

Fostered by both the post-independence nationalist state in Pakistan and the national security state discourse in the post-9/11 international milieu, there is a tendency to blame the wrongdoings in Pakistan on the ‘invisible’ external machinations, whether they be from India, or the West in general. From downturns in the economy, through a bad crop season, to extremist acts, most, if not all, are blamed on conspiracy from the outside. In the engagement between the online blogger community members it is clear that while the influence of such blame game is still pervasive, the citizens of Pakistan are tired of it. It is also evident that they have the capacity to look beyond the explanations provided by the political elite, mainstream media and the intellectual experts. They call for a deep reflexive inward analysis of how and where things started to go wrong and the necessity of putting one’s own house in order before looking elsewhere for blame or solutions. The next blog that we analyzed invites online communities to engage in self-reflexivity on this issue.

Bringing our children home in shrouds instead of graduation caps

http://www.dawn.com/news/1248866/bringing-our-children-home-in-shrouds-instead-of-graduation-caps

Published on 30 March 2016, Maheen Usmani’s blog (Usmani, 2016), Bringing our children home in shrouds instead of graduation caps, brings into conversation the divided reactions among Pakistanis in the wake of the Easter bombings in Lahore that killed 75 and wounded 340, mainly Christian, people. Usmani’s blog generated a spirited and reflexive engagement on the issue of where to locate the source of such atrocities. An abridged version of the blog reads:

Apart from the drivel about soft targets tossed out to apportion blame elsewhere, have we failed our children post the APS tragedy? Televised songs of patriotism and jubilation with defiant marching kids in uniforms calling out to the terrorists to do their worst; newscasters reading the news clad in uniforms of the slain children, directing salutes to them as if they were warriors, not school kids racing in between classes. These children were not soldiers. They were killed in their classrooms, not on the killing fields … is this what we as a nation are expecting from our children; to come home in shrouds instead of graduation caps?

What of the increasing number who refuse to read the bloodied writing on the wall? After not owning the war on terror, they are now accusing the West for ignoring their tragedies. The dead are now a commodity for point scoring …

This has started becoming the petulant refrain – why do we look to the West for validation of our grief? … Let’s put aside this rather unhealthy obsession with the West and consider the scores of people who came out in solidarity to protest against terrorism in Paris and Brussels … do we really care when Muslims kill fellow Muslims? Why blame the West for not highlighting the loss of Muslim lives when we don’t shed a tear for them either?

Our outrage after every attack in the West is selective because when a great country mourns its dead and shows no mercy, it holds up a mirror to our hypocrisy. If the reflection is distorted, we need to look it in the eye and stop blaming the usual suspects … But for that to happen, we will have to step out of our comfort zone of venting against Jews, Israel, America, England, France … the evil West out to destroy Muslims, a job we have been doing very well ourselves, thank you very much.

From the first accolades, ‘Maheen, You just shown mirror to blinds’, the engagement soon reflects the deeper issue that the blogger wishes to raise, i.e. how do Pakistanis justify/deal with the atrocity that has almost become normalized, as have the reactions to it. Muhammad Zafar Ullah, commenting on the tendency of the Western media to obscure extremist atrocities in the Islamic world, wrote:

West have double standards. Bomb explosion and price of life differs from Paris to Brussels vs Ankara, Lahore Baghdad, Syria, Palestine or elsewhere in the Muslim world or 3rd world.

Faisal expanded the scope of Ullah’s musings by involving the reaction (or the lack thereof) of other Muslim states. He wrote:

When there was an attack in Paris and Belgium, Dubai showed solidarity with these countries by lighting up burj Khalifa in French and Belgian flag colors. But when there was an attack in Lahore this so called Muslim state didn’t even bother to mention a single word of condemnation let alone lighting up burj Khalifa in Pakistani flags.

Others in the community engaged with Zafar Ullah and Faisal by pointing to the need for reflexivity rather than shifting the blame to outsiders. Imran Malik reproached Zafar:

@Muhammad Zafar Ullah did u read the artical? The whole point is we expect west to care about it while we dont.

Another community member, who goes by the net name Liberal_Mind, pitched in with:

Let us help ourselves. Let’s not blame others for our own mistakes. No one will come to rescue us from to get out of this ‘jahaalat’. Let’s spread love in our country!!!

Other members of the community indicated specific factors internal to Pakistan’s institutions that need societal conversations and reflection. For example, ‘OBSERVER’ wrote (parentheses added):

The time is NOW; madaris (religious schools) curriculum should be reformed on war footing. Education in our public schools be reclaimed in real earnest.

Wazir wrote:

If we blame all our problem on others, then our problem solved temporarily. Army action will give only temporary relief, for permanent relief, we will need sociological, economical, educational, religious changes for long term.

Another community member, ‘Just honest’ noted:

Shows the values some people have. How did Pakistan come to this sorry state, why cannot we share our feelings, our thoughts about what Pakistan is really about. How can a small minority hijack the nation into believing what they believe. Why is the good majority silent, what should the majority do to turn the tide peacefully. Just think about the gross brainwashing that is going on day and night in the country.

These are only a few selections from the many discussions happening online about root causes of extremist acts, how to make sense of such ghastly behavior, and where to look for answers and solutions. Such engagement once again shows that Pakistani citizens are not only aware of the blame game that certain agents propose and perpetuate but also that they are willing to find solutions in multilogue with each other without the direction, guidance, expertise and gaze of the traditional authorities. The engagement reveals an urgent need for societal reflexivity in making sense of the collateral carnage of the US-led ‘War on Terror’, pinpoints the sources of atrocious acts of violence in the name of religion and comments on the way forward.

Conclusions

Since 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan has been in the proverbial eye of the storm. First, it allied with the US to train, equip and support what were known as the Afghan Mujahideen to fight the Soviet occupation. This alliance, on the one hand, gave a new lease of life to the military dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq and thus derailed the democratic process in Pakistan. On the other hand, it resulted in an influx of around three million Afghan refugees into the country. It also introduced access to combat weapons, and militancy, into Pakistani society. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988 and the resultant abandonment of Afghanistan by the US left a vacuum that not only gave the Mujahideen (now known as the Taliban) free rein in Afghanistan but also in areas bordering Pakistan. The US-led War on Terror to oust the Taliban once again saw Pakistan assume its contingent weight as a frontline state. This episode saw unprecedented levels of violence in Pakistan in the form of terror attacks on hapless civilians, use of Pakistani territory by the extremists, rise of domestic terror networks known as the Pakistani Taliban, and deepening religious, sectarian, ethnic and other social divisions. Events and developments in the last four decades, especially the changing role of the Pakistani elite, the schizophrenic relationship with the warring factions in Afghanistan and the post-9/11 international mediascape, left Pakistanis with a cognitive dissonance. In combination with the non-availability of any rational explanation as to why Pakistani society moved from being a relatively peaceful one (pre-1979) to a violent one (post-9/11), the cognitive dissonance created a perplexed mindset that is amenable to any and all explanations available. This, in part, explains the tendency of Pakistanis to blame the ills in its society on the West in general and the US in particular. The blogs under analysis clearly show the desire of Pakistani citizenry to find rational explanations and answers to their questions. Our analysis also shows that in the absence of explanations and answers from the traditional authorities (religious, political, academic) the citizenry found in social media (blogosphere in our case) a space in which they could engage with each other and arrive at organic understanding.

The blogosphere encourages voices that are typically excluded and marginalized to connect with one another and be heard. The participatory space invites people to hold counsel on the very issues that affect them but which they have been discouraged from discussing. Online, they are not policed by the ‘experts’ that have typically controlled the conversations. It is true, however, that access, language, technical expertise and education have all been limitations for users of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the developing world. Nevertheless, the potential for developing nation citizenry to harness the tools of social media and the larger Internet to reflectively and reflexively confront and work through sensitive and/or controversial issues is enormous. Spaces like the blogosphere empower people to take control of conversations that impact and involve them, but that have long been coopted by the academic elite, the knowledge brokers, religious scholars and the clergy, the politicians and the media. These spaces encourage alternative meaning-making processes that disrupt hegemonic understandings of the issues. Moreover, these spaces help transform individual voices into booming public ones. The activity online in the past few years has certainly shown how these conversations have kept issues, such as the Shahzeb case or the Massacre of the Hazara Shias, for example, relevant long after traditional authority sources would have wanted them to be. With issues like these being passionately and critically questioned and investigated, there is immense potential for societal self-renewal. This, in our opinion, is the potential of social media, especially the blogosphere. The potential of social media reflects that of the ‘town’ and the ‘factory’ that encouraged new ideas and meanings to be expressed and circulated in Asia and Africa at the beginning of the 20th century.