Distressed souls grieving the dramatic passing of Junaid the preacher,
Have you ever mourned the loss of someone that you got estranged from several years ago? Someone you loved at some point, but some of their choices in life complicated how you felt about them. If you have, you might understand some of what I am going to say here, and what others – who were not excited about Junaid Jamshed’s career as a religious preacher, but valued his work as a pop artist – have said elsewhere.
You tend to view Junaid’s Tablighi career as virtuous, but you loved him for his past that you deemed sinful: his career in music. You loved him not because he was a good preacher. There are lots of good preachers that you do not care about. You loved Junaid because he was a pop star in the first place, and you love stars, especially after they convert to your religious sensibility and bring you lots of validation. Just as you have loved Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) and Muhammad Ali for their iconic status. Because these celebrities bring you validation, they make you feel good about your religion and ultimately yourself.
You loved Junaid Jamshed because he embodied the tension that you experience yourself. He embodied your love for music, which you think is sinful, and your desire to be devoted to God, at once. His conversion to Tablighi religion was a story of spiritual success that you wish you could replicate in your own life: Renounce ‘sin’ and devote yourself to God.
Yet there are people including myself who do not see his career in music as a bad thing. Music and poetry are essential means for us to capture our humanity, and share our experience with fellow humans. Junaid’s music was among the limited means that were available to me as I grew up the in the 90s and early 2000s. His songs were the voice of my heart.
Junaid Jamshed’s renunciation of his past and conversion to Tablighi faith was alienating, but I respected the choice he made for himself. Later on, his overt sexism, and eventually polygamy, that he assumed and practiced as a normative aspect of my religion was very troubling. But most fans of Junaid the preacher do not seem to have any problem with that. You would like to hush any talk of your hero’s sexism. You think it is passing ‘judgment’ on him after he has died. No – it is scrutiny of his influence as a public figure and his representation of my religion!
While I appreciate Junaid’s spiritual striving and I wish him well in the afterlife, I do not see him as my role model. I cannot quite appreciate his pendulum swing, much less his understanding and representation of my faith. People who are too religious then too worldly, or too worldly then too religious are very human – I do not ‘judge’ them. They are certainly deserving of God’s favors as anyone else, but I do not relate with their experience. I do not like the idea of renouncing part of yourself in favor of another.
I am inspired and intrigued by people who excel in the middle path, who perfect moderation to an art, who are at peace with their humanness and connected with God at once. Those are my role models, and they are often not stars.
Junaid bought into a religious sensibility that denies human nature. Where making peace with God means that you renounce your humanity in a certain way. Thus, you appreciate a bird dancing to impress another as a marvel of God’s creativity. You appreciate the pufferfish carving beautiful patterns deep down the sea to find a mate. But if a man danced for a woman, or a woman sang to a man, you are outraged. You think it is sinful.
Such conception of religion is not native to God’s creation. It is not the din al-fitrah that many claim it is.
The poetry and music that many of us view as sinful do not compete with God’s word. The texts and traditions that have become sacrosanct do. The people that we honor side by side with God do. They are idols that we are unable to break. And that is why religion has become so much more than oneness of God and becoming one with zir creation.
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People wanting to hush critiques of Junaid’s religious legacy say it is about respecting the dead. I am afraid it is not. We tend to spare our heroes necessary scrutiny when they are alive and when they are dead.
Fans of Junaid wanting to hush critical voices that do not resonate with them is a sign of the dominance and the privilege that certain people enjoy in the Pakistani social-religious world.
While Junaid was alive, his fans urged people to forgive him after he issued an apology for the alleged blasphemy against the prophet’s wife. But how many advocated for Aasia bibi and other voiceless people accused of blasphemy to be forgiven after they apologized or pleaded not guilty? I suspect that many people in the country who defended Junaid against blasphemy accusations silently watched or cheered the murder of Governor Taseer for seeking pardon for Aasia bibi, an underprivileged woman from the marginalized Christian community.
When the “righteous” assassinated the characters of Taseer, Edhi and Qandeel Baloch postmortem, how many posted on Facebook and Twitter asking people to stop?
As a nation, we only care to rescue privileged religious celebrities, our lesser gods that we worship but we acknowledge not.
We ask critics to not ‘judge’ them. Their account is closed when they die, and ours is still open. We speak of their weaknesses as very personal in terms of their harm. We wish away their influence as public figures, or we assume it was entirely good. Because our heroes reflect our own thoughts, we are baffled when others call them out for normalizing sexism and misogyny.
As a people, we are obsessed with protecting ‘impressionable’ minds who apparently cannot think for themselves. Yet we want Junaid Jamshed’s ignorant talk on TV shows and interviews to be excused. Few are alarmed when Maulana Tariq Jameel says the prophet sent him a message that Junaid was doing ok in his company. Anything goes so long as it is coming from people that work within a certain framework that we honor and privilege. On the other hand, righteous guardians of faith are ruthless in scrutinizing someone like Javed Ghamidi. And we will turn a blind eye when people write awful things about his legacy after he dies, and some will take pleasure.
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Check your privilege, folks. And the privilege of those that you defend: the Sunni male privilege compounded by stardom. Who deserves your sympathies has really become a function of gender, religious affiliation and ostentatious symbolism, and social and cultural status. You are being selective, to the advantage of the privileged, in who you care about and who you speak up for.
Check your own privilege and that of a religious celebrity that lets you turn a blind eye to what others are describing as normalization of sexism and misogyny by a public figure. Check the privilege that makes you want to hush critical voices and police the parameters of the discourse.
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