Black Magic and Witchcraft in the Islamic Republic

 

 During the last more than three years, a slanderous campaign, bordering on vulgarity, went on in the Pakistani media. It was sparked up by a journalist who had written a scathing indictment of the exPM Imran  Khan's wife, accusing her of interfering in the affairs of the state through witchcraft. Not to be left behind, Shehbaz Sharif - the post - Lettergate PM of Pakistan, once slandered Imran Khan's wife with burning chicken meat at Bani Gala as part of black magic rites. The slanderous campaign continues to date. By ridiculing IK's wife, the Sharifs and Zardari hide their superstitions.

Sages, clairvoyants, mystics, and psychics are not uncommon in the Subcontinent. Pakistani society is deeply superstitious. People from all walks of life and social classes believe in jinni, fairies, witches –with or without broomsticks, magic concoctions, blood rites, devil worship, evil eye, etc., etc. 

Superstition is not restricted to the illiterate and lower strata of society. The more educated and wealthier they are, the greater they believe in chudails and evil spirits. Benazir, educated at Oxford, and Nawaz Sharif, who at least had spent some time at the Aitcheson College, had been regularly paying homage to one Dewana Baba of Dhanaka Sharif in Mansehra District. 

He was called Dewana Baba because he remained naked, oblivious to his surroundings, did not eat, and would drink tea only which he soon vomited. His followers believed that anyone who got beaten by the naked mystic would get his/her heart’s desire. It was, for this reason, Benazir and Nawaz, when in and out of power, visited the Pir and got beaten by him. Reportedly, during one of Nawaz Sharif’s stints in power, Dewana Baba had shifted, bag and baggage, to the Prime Minister’s House. He died in 2008. 

Benazir, it is said, would travel to Mansehra where the Baba lived, holding a danda to beat his VVIP guest. Whereas Nawaz had acknowledged this Dewana’s spiritual powers by billeting him in the Prime Minister’s House, Benazir expressed her gratitude by having a helipad constructed in the vicinity of the Pir’s house. On Benazir’s orders, a paved road was also constructed to connect the Baba’s village with the outside world. This was not all. The Pir also accompanied the Zardaris during Benazir’s official visit to the United States. 

Multani Baba was another holy man to whom the politicians, landlords, businessmen, and civil/military bureaucrats paid homage during the 1980s. Interestingly, many Arab diplomats were also his ardent followers. Dressed in dhoti and kurta, Multani Baba would go into a feigned or real trance (depending upon his disciple's level of superstition)and make predictions. Benazir would often visit him and, as a gesture of respect, sit on the floor at Multani’Baba’s feet. 

Pir Ejaz, a resident of Gujranwala, was the spiritual guide of the not-very-educated Asif Ali Zardari. Mixing mysticism with the occult, Pir Ejaz would tell his disciple, the then incumbent of President House, which moment was auspicious for Zardari to perform a certain act, what clothes, and of which colour he should wear, whom to meet, and whom to shun. Ejaz also, like the Dewana Baba before him, accompanied Zardari on his visits to important places. 

On one occasion, eight ambassadors, waiting to present their credentials to Zardari, had the ceremony cancelled because Pir Ejaz advised Zardari that the moment and the place, i.e Islamabad, were not auspicious for holding the credentials presentation ceremony and that Zardari should leave the mountains, and till the casting away of the evil eye, should stay near the sea. The poor ambassadors were then told by Farhatullah Babar, the special assistant to Zardari, that the ceremony will be held in Karachi.

 Whereas the Sharifs flaunt their religiosity by holding the Nikah ceremonies of their children at Masjid- e -Nabvi, and whereas Zardari, when president, would have a black male goat slaughtered every day at the President House (on taxpayer’s money), this did not stop them from fornicating and indulging in all sorts of lechery which include seducing their party workers, breaking the homes of their beneficiaries, living in sin, and all this while posing themselves as saints. Lastly, a few words about Maryam Nawaz, the woman holding a steel tumbler as a talisman. She believes that her talisman is her passport  as future PM  to the PM House. What nerve she has to accuse IK's wife of practising sorcery!

Saleem Akhtar Malik

8 August 2022