Newspapers today abound with news in which doubts are raised by various political agents and political analysts over the confession of the killer of Salman Taseer. In his confession, the accused cites his religious convictions as the motive for the act. On the other hand, critics argue that the roots of this murder run deeper than the obvious and call it a “political murder”.
Can a murder motivated by religious conviction not be a political act? For an action to be political does it have be expressed and spoken in a particular language or do all human aspects contain the characteristic of being political? Is political a terrain of a specific language and vocabulary, where political expressions have to subscribe to certain rules and laws?
For the last two questions, if we assume that the political is a specific language (excluding every element outside of the set of the political as non-political), then the implication of it for human society and political institutions can be imagined to be tragic. If the political is to vote yes and no to the propositions presented by a bureaucrat, then every spatial and social organization, except the site of voting, is de-politicized. Popular politics occur not even at the office of the bureaucrat but only at the site of the voting booth (the adjective popular is a deliberate insertion to separate the politics of deliberation over the proposition by the bureaucrat from the politics of acceptance and rejection by the popular voice or subject population).
In the science-fiction movie “Matrix”, the only politics available to Neo was to choose between the two pills. Every other political choice was taken for him by the machines when there was an illusion of choice for Neo. The result of whatever choice he takes, except choosing between the pills, would be pre-determined by the machine as well.
For there to be dialogism (idea developed by Paulo Friere in his thought on radical pedagogy. It is different from dialogue. As opposed to a dialogue, it advocates cultural synthesis of the oppressed and oppressor for human liberation for both of these social classes) between the forces of antagonism at the social level and at the level of the community rising up to the institutions of social organization (for example modern state and parliament as its concrete expression), politics should be recognized at every spatial and social space. Every discourse and every idea should be allowed a dialectics (understood here as the connection between objective events and to the method of knowing and fixing these events) of development, confrontation and expression in the space of the political.
For the politicians to call the murder of the Governor of Punjab as “political” as opposed to motivated by religious convictions, excludes the discourse and language of religion from politics. The element of religion either exists in the set of theological understandings or outside the set of the political. The politics of discourse and its exclusion of religion from the murder of Salaman Taseer reflects the basic vacuum in Pakistani politics. The sphere of the religious is not understood and read as political. The political touches but dares not enter the terrain of the religious.
For as long as this binary exists (commonly thought of as the separation of Church and State. However, “Political Theology” as academic discipline argues that even the basic tenets of liberal thought such as Human Rights emerge from and retain the language of Christian theology – as secular theology), the definition of the religious shall be undertaken by social organizations commonly labeled as “religious extremists”. As Carl Schmitt argued more than half a century ago, liberalism by its very functioning produces its own nemesis. Similarly, the liberal thought in Pakistan by producing an artificial binary is producing political forces which define the religious as violence to the liberal thought.
