By Sapna Zaidi
Tashbih Sayyed spent his lifetime being different. He began skipping school and running to the radio station in Karachi at ten years of age with dreams of being on the radio. In his twenties he wrote plays, filmed documentaries in Europe and did a stint at the BBC. In Tashbih's thirties he traveled as a news anchor to Ethiopia, interviewed Khrushchev and pushed for uncensored programming on Pakistan Television where he Controller of News & Current Affairs and then was General Manager of the state run television station.
Tashbih left Pakistan in 1981 after a decade of fighting the ever increasing influence of religion over politics due to the Cold War's reach into neighboring Afghanistan and with the inflow of petro dollar, Wahabism controlling the minds of masses from Peshawar to Karachi. Since there was no democratic movement in Pakistan to counter Political Islam, liberals like Tashbih, became socialists, progressives or atheists. Most such men and women left Pakistan in the 60s and 70s after admitting that only the top 1% could not be touched by the government. Tashbih followed the stream reluctantly.
In America, unfortunately, Tashbih found even less tolerance than the country he had left. Ironically, the industrialized West, allows Muslims, as well as men and women of all faiths, free license to practice in as orthodox a manner as they wish, or none at all. Yet, it is in America that the majority of Muslims have found comfort in dogma and the tyranny of the majority rather than tolerance and respect if not love for the diversity that the Federalists and Deists who founded the United States had hoped for. Consequently, Tashbih remained in island unto himself. At least when it came to his faith, which he refused to denounce like so many other liberal intellectuals born Muslim.
September 11, 2001 became a turning point for not only Tashbih, but the community from which he refused to leave. A "moderate" Muslim, Tashbih founded a newspaper, and eventually a think-tank to announce to the world, and especially his fellow Muslims that there was a platform that, while not a mosque, honored his heritage by being an example of everything positive from it. Constantly frustrated, often under pressure, he always held his head high as the counter-point to the negative diatribes against Islam as a faith v. the nightmare of Political Islam. He died with nothing having changed in his own world or the one outside. And with pulse that things are at least moving in the right direction.
As, his child then, I have to ask whether there was a point to his unwavering effort in speaking out. The effort seemed so futile and tiring, but when I think about it more, I know there was more than just a point because society, civilization, and any other word that one wants to interject here that is inevitably so overwhelming, daunting, and unchangeable begins with one, an individual, and is internal.
I was taught and still believe that we, by our mannerism, speech and actions represent what we believe, be it political, social or religious. And no matter how strongly we believe that our worldview is infallible, humanity requires us to be tolerant. Not because we put up with others in a condescending manner, but because respect, which is a necessary tool for nation building requires it. Tolerance is only possible in a nation that separates church and state. Thus, respect for every citizen is established.
It does not matter whether Tashbih reached any one through his career, newspaper or think-tank. This is because at the end of the day, May 23rd to be precise, he lived by his principles. And what was one man became three through his children, and later more through his grandchildren. And it is a start. Another beginning.
