Maulana Bijlighar, his Political Background, and His Disrespect for Women

Maulana Bijlighar

Maulana Bijlighar has passed away. I wasn't a regular listener of his--and if I had been, it would not have been to get a laugh (I don't think sexist jokes or mockery of women is something to laugh about) or to increase my little knowledge of Islam; it would've been to understand what it is that makes Mullah Bijlighar so popular and appealing to his listeners, or something like this. I do this with Zakir Naik, too. Preachers and the idea of preaching fascinate me, you know.

On Dec. 30th, 2012, famous Pashtun preacher Mohammad Amir, popularly known as "Bijlighar Mullah" (also known as Mullah Bijlighar and Maulana Bijlighar), passed away at age 85. Thousands are reported to have attended the funeral. He was named after his village, Bijlighar, in Charsadda, although his main base and appreciation was in the Peshawar Valley. His sermons are shared widely on DVDs, CDs, flash drives, and now Youtube.

I can't claim to know how influential he was or what sort of reverence he enjoyed among his audience; but I do know that he was a remarkably popular figure in Pashtun circles, and a random Youtube search for his videos reveals the high number of men listening to him and supporting him. Some Pashtuns on Twitter attribute his popularity to the sexual references he frequently makes in his lecture; these mentions are often jokes about women's sexuality, their private parts, and the clothes they wear (or don't wear). Vulgarity is thus an important theme in almost all of his speeches--and his audience is expected to (and they do) applaud and laugh at it all.

Background and Political Context

Born in Darra Adamkhel, Maulana Bijlighar was a strong supporter of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and an adviser and friend to Maulana Mufti Mehmood (died 1980), who was president of right-wing political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) in 1970 and formerly the Chief Minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. As Dr. James Caron, lecturer in Islamicate South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), tells me in a personal conversation, "Mufti was patronized in a sideways fashion by Bhutto I [Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto] to politically defeat Pashtun nationalism through religion; and [he] transformed the Jamiat al-Ulama-i Islami from an ineffectual fringe party that actually often-times cared about social justice, into the right-wing masculine-populist phenomenon we know it as today." Maulana Bijlighar, who was also "the main source of Mufti’s communication with PPP founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto," was a critical part of the Shari'a campaign in Pakistan and enjoyed immense fame in 1993 when Sufi Muhammad, father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, started his movement--the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammad (TNSM), a militant organization working towards enforcing its version of the Shari'a in Pakistan. Until 1993, Maulana Bijlighar also actively supported and campaigned for Fazl-ur-Rehman's election, who was Mufti Mehmood's son and is currently the president of JUI; it was under Fazl-ur-Rehman's supervision that the Taliban were trained and nourished: "he went often to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to enlist their financial support and military help for the Taliban, which was forthcoming" (Fundamentalism Reborn?: Afghanistan Under the Taliban,  p. 76). In 1993, however, when Fazl-ur-Rehman made alliances with Benazir Bhutto during her second term as Pakistan's prime minister, Maulana Bijlighar lost support for Fazl-ur-Rehman and actively condemned him in his speeches. Bijlighar was, after all, known and widely appreciated by his audience for speaking against the Pakistani government, although he was imprisoned several times for doing so.

The political context in which preachers in general and Maulana Mufti Mehmood and Maulana Bijlighar in particular were able to create an authoritative space for themselves after the fall of Ghaffar Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servant of God") movement needs to be discussed as well. Caron tells me in a personal conversation:

"They [the preachers] were able to do that [step in and colonize the less formal ... political space, taking over some of the  same social networks that were left over from the tattered remnants of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement] because the Khudai Khidmatgar movement itself would not have succeeded prior to independence to the extent that they did, without the help of Marxist Deobandi scholars such as Maulana Popalzai. So there was already political/social space for this religious scholars' party to take over discourses of social justice, even critical activism, and convert it into populism once it served Islamabad's needs. Maulana Mufti Mehmood was all too happy to do so."

This background is important because his chances at success would have been unlikely had the above political context been nonexistent. Why exactly he was popular remains to be understood, although, as noted earlier, some believe his vulgar humor allowed him to easily earn himself a loyal audience. While the vulgarity in his speeches appears to have been unique to him, he draws on older forms of Talib  and Mullah satire in Pashto that have been popular for around a century, as Caron discusses briefly in his Chapter "Taliban: Real and Imagined" in Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands, edited by Shahzad Bashir and Robert D. Crews.

The Misogynistic Nature of the Mullah's Sermons

The Mullah's speeches are replete with misogyny, which is generally defined as the hatred, dislike, and mistrust of women. Most misogynists are unlikely to explicitly state that they "hate" or "dislike" or "mistrust" women, but their attitudes towards women--and in Bijlighar Mullah's case, his teachings about/against women--illustrate their attitude towards (against) women rather clearly. Throughout his sermons, he regularly mocks women's leadership, abilities, skills, and actions, and he takes time out of his sermon to curse women, wish them death or otherwise their demise or their families' demise, and he puts to shame men who are associated with the women he openly condemns and insults. 

Importantly, the Pashtun society, like all other societies, claims that it respects women, and one way it shows this respect is by avoiding making any references to the female body or female private parts in public or at least in front of women. Mullah Bijlighar, however, never shied away from making these references, often reducing his humor to the mention of the female private body parts in an attempt to be funny. Using words like "mangotee" (literally, round water pitchers), for instance, are commonly used in his speeches; they refer to the female's "behind."

Although the Mullah clearly mistrusts, hates, and disrespects all kinds of women, he particularly enjoys insulting and discussing the ones he identifies as "barbandey," which literally means naked but generally means immodest, shameless. An immodest woman in many South Asian cultures includes a woman who does not cover her head, but for Maulana Bijlighar also includes the following women: those who think for themselves; those who ride motorcycles; those who do not cover their faces; those who are involved in the public sphere, especially in politics; those who challenge their husbands and other men around them; those who leave their home for any reason at all--since all women obviously have at least one male member at home who can take care of non-domestic chores.

Examples of some of the different kinds of women appear throughout his lectures. It seems that in any random lecture of his, no matter the subject matter of the sermon, he finds a way to bring women into the discussion. Particularly the barbanda woman.

For example, here, he discusses three types of women--in terms of weight. They are: fat, extremely fat, and a huge box. It is these kinds of women who commonly accompany men on their motor bikes -- and, says the Mullah, "Have you noticed how and where her hands are wrapped on the man?" He goes on to wish death upon the woman who does this. The video ends with his expressing gratitude for the death of another woman, apparently a politician or otherwise a political leader, who died from an electric shock. The Mullah says, "She was a politician. Thank God we've been rid of one - now pray that we get rid of all the other ones, too!" (Khaza wazira wa - shukar dey che da yawey na kho khlaas shu; dua kawai che da noro na hum khlaas shu) The audience responds with, "Aameen." He goes on to say, "May God put to death all barbanda women, may their husbands become widowers!" The rest of his video condemns women who ride motorcycles with their husbands and puts to shame any man who rides his motorcycles with his wife.

In another speech, he confidently exclaims that any destruction (azaab) that the nation of Pakistan faces is because of women (2:50-2:55). He explains that, literally, anyone who can afford to feed himself has his wife roam around barbanda. In the past, he says, it was clean-shaved, beardless men doing these kinds of things, but now even bearded men do it. He thus especially speaks evil of the bearded man who has his wife ride with him on a motorcycle--and the tail of a dog, the Mullah tells us, is better than the beard of such a shameless man.

Even when he's talking about issues that generally men face, such as that of sud, or interest, he finds a way to center them around women and curse them for using sud and not being fearful of God.

In other sermons (07:50-08:00), he makes references to the woman's breasts by holding and lifting up his own to demonstrate why women should not be allowed to be involved in politics. "Today," he says, "60% candidates are women. Mufti Mehmood, may he rest in peace, asked me once why I don't run for office. What would I do in an assembly full of women [breast demonstration here]? On one hand, these women will be in my company; on another, I'll be giving a speech - I'll be so distracted by the women that I won't be able to concentrate" (07:39-08:15). For him, then, women are a source of distraction for men and should therefore not be allowed to be involved in politics.

Needless to say, Pashtuns are not the only people to have found humor in the mockery and demonization of women. MTV permanently banned Andrew Dice Clay, an American misogynistic comedian, in 1998 from ever appearing on the network because of his careless use of profanity during his speech.

[I will continue the misogyny theme of the mullah's sermons in a part 2 of this discussion.]

Misogyny, Sexism, Discrimination Are Never Funny.

Sexist, misogynist jokes are never funny. Just as racist jokes are always unacceptable and should never be laughed at, so, too, are misogynistic jokes never a thing of laughter. They are an insult to not just women but to men as well. Over half the population of the world is being mocked, and we are expected to find humor in it. No respectable man ever reduces himself to making a mockery of women. At the very least, he is insulting the mothers, sisters, daughters, and other important females of our nation and of this world.

Most importantly, jokes are never just jokes; they are always more because they reveal significant information about what a society finds humorous and at least one way through which a people entertain themselves. And then to joke about an entire group of people or to make profane references to their bodies or private parts should be completely unacceptable. I find it ironic that the Mullah speaks consistently of hell--of how we're ALL (all of Pakistan) going to hell because we're not Islamic enough while he objectifies women and makes references to them that are easily considered indecent in Islam. That Maulana Bijlighar enjoyed such a large following and that many believed he was "funny" and made good jokes is telling of the general attitude towards women in our society.

To be Continued.