Thursday, November 25, 2010

Khaled Ahmed: Ideology as false consciousness

If you think through the implications of what Khaled Ahmed writes, they are not pleasant.

Khaled Ahmed wrote in The Express Tribune:
Pakistan began describing itself as an ideological state when the word had been made respectable by the Soviet Union through its planned economy and rapid growth. Ideology in the case of Pakistan was its religion.
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Ideology means that the state has an idea which it thinks is right, and will punish anyone who doesn’t believe the state.
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In his rejection of the Pakistan constitution, al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri questions Pakistan’s ‘incompleteness’. He wants the constitution to clearly ban bank interest, lotteries, insurance and stock exchange, etc, while clearly outlawing women as leaders of the state. His book The Morning and the Lamp is being distributed by the madrassas that agree with him.

As long as we are ideological, we have no business calling al Qaeda’s suicide-bombers non-Muslims. In fact, they are better Muslims killing lesser Muslims.

i.e., "better Muslims killing lesser Muslims" is an integral part of the state ideology of Pakistan.