Power finds religion particularly useful when it can persuade the dispossessed that obedience is virtue and the privileged that charity is sufficient restitution. The arrangement becomes more profitable when those interpreting religious duty also control the institutions receiving donations. Wealth acquires respectability, authority acquires sanctity, and the poor are offered consolation where they should have enforceable rights.
Two provocative observations capture this danger. One, attributed to Mike Hermann, compares organised religion with organised crime: both can exploit vulnerability, enrich their operators and develop formidable means of survival. The other suggests that religious organisations seek control of the establishment and, when unsuccessful, accommodate themselves to it, whether feudal or capitalist.[1]
These propositions invite scrutiny rather than unquestioning acceptance. Religious history also contains resistance to tyranny, solidarity with workers and service to the abandoned. The stronger indictment concerns identifiable institutions and conduct: the conversion of spiritual authority into material advantage, political influence and immunity from scrutiny. Pakistan’s experience provides ample grounds for examining that conversion.
A sermon at the revenue office
Consider an episode preserved in the Federal Board of Revenue’s own institutional record. In May 2015, Maulana Tariq Jamil addressed revenue officers in Karachi on morality, ethics and public service. Officers elsewhere could follow through a video link. FBR’s announcement celebrated the occasion as an initiative to improve the organisation’s ethical culture.[2]
Fairness requires acknowledging what he actually said. According to FBR, he condemned sycophancy, urged honesty and emphasised that officers’ character and benefit to the public mattered more than the amount collected. These were worthwhile sentiments. The institutional question, however, remained unanswered: how would these virtues become enforceable obligations?
A taxpayer facing an arbitrary demand needs an effective remedy. An officer pressured to manufacture collection needs protection. A citizen confronting bribery needs a complaint mechanism that works without connections. None of these safeguards emerges automatically from an uplifting address. The lecture may have encouraged individuals; the official account supplies no evidence that it changed the incentives governing their conduct.
A sermon is inexpensive in political terms. Reform threatens interests. It requires restricting discretion, exposing preferential treatment, enforcing consequences and allowing citizens to challenge authority. An institution can applaud honesty in the morning while leaving untouched the arrangements that make dishonesty rewarding.
Our engagement with this contradiction predates that event. In “Learning taxation from clergy?”, published in Business Recorder on October 10, 2008, Huzaima Bukhari and me examined FBR’s invitation to Mufti Munib-ur-Rahman and Mujeeb Baig to discuss Islamic financial instruments. We questioned the coherence of invoking religious principles while the tax system imposed burdens that, in our assessment, conflicted with the justice those principles proclaimed. Our criticism demanded research, democratic deliberation and substantive reform.[3]
The question remains relevant: what changes for the citizen after an institution receives religious endorsement? Does the burden become fairer? Does an ordinary person gain protection against abuse? Does financial power become more accountable? Unless these questions are answered, religious language merely decorates existing authority.
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The price of moral respectability
The relationship becomes more troubling when money flows in the opposite direction—from commercially powerful patrons to religious institutions. In our January 2015 article, “Terrorism, traders and taxes”, we examined the contradiction between resistance to taxation and willingness to finance religious establishments. The central issue was the political and moral permission that patronage could purchase.[4]
Imagine a businessman who underpays workers, deceives customers or conceals taxable earnings, then receives public admiration for a substantial donation. The donation may finance useful services. It cannot extinguish the claims of those wronged in acquiring the money. Charity becomes morally compromised when it offers reputation without restitution.
This is where the pursuit of money and the pursuit of power reinforce each other. A patron provides resources. An institution supplies prestige, access and a constituency. Neither side needs to express the bargain openly. Its character becomes visible when demands for accounts are treated as hostility, when the donor’s conduct escapes examination, or when religious standing is invoked to obstruct ordinary scrutiny.
My March 2023 article, “Bazaar Merchants and the Challenges of Fair Taxation in Pakistan”, returned to this relationship. It examined the strength of organised traders, resistance to documentation and the support flowing from the bazaar to clerical interests. The larger argument concerned bargaining power: influential groups can resist obligations that citizens without comparable organisation cannot escape.[5]
The answer cannot be indiscriminate taxation or another campaign to squeeze small livelihoods. Fair taxation must distinguish modest earnings from substantial economic capacity. Equally, criticism of government waste cannot become a permanent exemption available to the powerful. Those demanding accountability from the state must accept accountability for their own institutions and finances.
Dependence becomes authority
State failure also creates the conditions in which clerical patronage expands. In “Wages of appeasement”, published in November 2018, this author connected the growth of such influence with failures to provide basic services, particularly education.
Where families lack credible public provision, an institution offering food, shelter and schooling acquires authority extending far beyond the classroom.[6]
That authority can support humane service. It can also turn dependence into obedience. The decisive question is whether the beneficiary gains the education, security and freedom to become independent, or remains bound to a patron whose decisions cannot be questioned. A society committed to dignity should judge welfare by the autonomy it creates.
The same test applies to religious participation in finance. Expertise deserves compensation, but arrangements for certification and advice should disclose remuneration and conflicts of interest. When the institution seeking approval also pays those granting it, independent scrutiny becomes essential. Religious terminology cannot settle questions about costs, risk, fairness or who ultimately benefits. Our October 2008 article, “Nowhere in sight”, similarly challenged the distance between the promise of an equitable Islamic economic order and prevailing financial practices.[7]
The demand should be concrete. Institutions collecting public donations should publish intelligible accounts, disclose governance arrangements and demonstrate how resources reach beneficiaries. Public subsidies and concessions should carry transparent conditions. Commercial activities should face the applicable rules. Evidence of wrongdoing should be investigated through due process, without either religious immunity or sectarian targeting.
Revenue administration needs equally measurable standards: timely decisions, reasoned orders, accessible remedies, reliable accounts and consequences for misconduct. Its legitimacy depends on fair treatment and public benefit. Inviting a preacher does not discharge these obligations, just as inviting a management consultant does not discharge them.
The second quotation offers a useful warning about accommodation with power, but the first goes too far in suggesting near-permanence. Institutions change when their privileges become contestable. Education, public services, financial transparency and freedom of criticism can weaken the dependence on which unaccountable authority feeds.
Pakistan needs the confidence to ask every claimant to moral leadership the same questions it asks of political and commercial power: Who finances you? Who benefits from your decisions? Who can challenge you? What happens when you misuse the trust placed in you?
The poor should not have to finance the comforts of those preaching sacrifice. Nor should the wealthy be permitted to purchase moral absolution while withholding what they owe to workers, customers and society. Piety earns public respect through justice. When it becomes an instrument for protecting privilege, exposing that bargain is a public duty.
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References and endnotes
- Quotation provenance. The Hermann attribution is reproduced in Syed Ehtisham, “Role of Religion in violence: A Historic review of its Genesis”, Countercurrents, 31 March 2021. The second proposition appears beneath Dr S. Akhtar Ehtisham’s name in the Thinkers’ Forum USA September 2013 archive. Neither establishes original authorship; the article paraphrases both as propositions for examination. Countercurrents reproduction | Thinkers’ Forum archive
- Federal Board of Revenue, “Maulana Tariq Jameel delivers motivational lecture to FBR officers”, press release, 19 May 2015. Primary source for the lecture, video link and substance of the remarks. The release describes the event as occurring on Monday; the publication date is not the event date.
- Huzaima Bukhari and Dr. Ikramul Haq, “Learning taxation from clergy?”, Business Recorder, 10 October 2008. Discusses FBR’s August 2008 consultation with Mufti Munib-ur-Rahman and Mujeeb Baig; this is distinct from the 2015 Tariq Jamil lecture. Read article
- Dr. Ikramul Haq and Huzaima Bukhari, “Terrorism, traders and taxes”, The News on Sunday, 18 January 2015. Cited for the authors’ earlier analysis of donations, tax resistance and patronage; historical claims and figures should not be read as current measurements.
- Dr. Ikramul Haq, “Bazaar Merchants and the Challenges of Fair Taxation in Pakistan”, The Friday Times, 11 March 2023. Cited for the analysis of organised commercial influence and resistance to documentation. Read article
- Dr. Ikramul Haq, “Wages of appeasement”, Daily Times, 4 November 2018. Connects state appeasement and failures of public provision with the expansion of clerical influence.
- Huzaima Bukhari and Dr. Ikramul Haq, “Nowhere in sight”, with the standfirst “An equitable Islamic tax system remains a distant dream”, The News on Sunday, 5 October 2008. The archive contains several articles; locate this title within the page.