Recently, a 40 year old male tourist was lynched by a mob after allegations of blasphemy. According to reports, the hotel management had discovered a few burnt pages of the Quran from the victim’s room. Following this, the subject was detained by the police for investigation. During the ordeal, announcers of some mosques disclosed the information of where the subject was held. A mob gathered and demanded the police entry into the police station. When it was refused, the mob broke in, found the subject in the servants’ quarters and subsequently killed him.

Lynchings are regrettably becoming more common in Pakistan. In May (2024) a Christian man was lynched in Sargodha. The failure of the state to provide some protection to these victims is striking. However, I argue in this article that mob lynching is a product of many psychosocial issues.

Mob lynching has three major facets. The first is cognitive dissonance, wherein an event in the external world clashes with a personal, widely held belief (Festinger, 1962). Secondly, there is group action, unified by certain characteristics or beliefs. The third is use of violence, a product of aggression and the circumstances the group has or is in.

In the following sections, a social model of mob-lynching compiled by Baig and Ahmad (2020) would be used to understand this recent incident. I will look at this model through the psychosocial facets described earlier.

The Psycho-social Model of Mob-Lynching in Pakistan

Baig and Ahmed (2020) argue that there are 4 levels of analysis of mob-lynching. These are:

• Individual
• Process
• Society
• State

Individual Level

The tourist was lynched by human beings. They were of the locality of Madyan. They had human motifs. Plus, they lynched at an individual level. So, the first level of analysis has to be at the individual level. Baig and Ahmed (2020) discuss that human actions have two categories:

• Reflective
• Reflexive

Reflective Actions

The reflective actions are where the character knows ahead of time what he wants to achieve. It could be a means to an end (instrumental). Or it could be an end in itself (value).

Reflexive Actions

The acts that are reflexive do not involve the person thinking ahead of time. Emotional actions are rapid bursts of certain behaviors, like when someone is angry or excited. Another thing is that the character does some things automatically, without giving them much thought.

Psychological Aspect

Swat is inhabited by many people. Religious extremism, while found across the country, is more weaponized in some areas. Since Swat has been a focal point of major security issues, this weaponization is obvious.

Beliefs. When popular beliefs are challenged the result is often emotional distress in many individuals. Groupthink by the members of the mob allows the mob to be cohesive in beliefs.

Circumstances. The staff of the police station refused entry to the mob. However, the mob disregarded this refusal and forcefully entered the establishment. If the culture of the area is permissive of popular beliefs, this allows the group more moral freedom to act. At an individual level, the circumstances allow more autonomy to a mob rather than the actions to one single person.

Violence. After breaking in, the mob forcefully found out the accused blasphemer and murdered him. The community at large did not rally to punish this mob. So, it could be seen that the circumstances were favorable to lynching. Extreme actions thrive in communities with extreme beliefs.

The Process Level

Randal Collins (2012) broke down the process of a mob killing into 4 steps:

• Find a weak target, preferably one who is emotionally controlled.
• Aim for an audience that supports a small group of violent artists.
• Stay far away so that weapons can be fired without having to face the enemy
• A secret motif that acts like there is no conflict until the very end;

Psychological Aspect

Collins’ model, while insightful, cannot be perfectly mapped to the Madyan lynching. For example, there was no attempt by the mob to mask their intentions of violence. They broke in to the police station and lynched the person fairly quickly.  Thus, the process could be better understood using a psychological framework.

The beliefs of the group along with the precipitating incident dictate the possibility of violence. On the other hand, the circumstances – including the culture, strength of law enforcement and cohesion of a group – affect the intensity of the violence. So, the causal event, beliefs of the mob, and circumstances allow violence. As a result, both the possibility and intensity of the violence increase

The Society Level

Max Weber came to some very interesting conclusions about modernity (Weber 1979; as cited in Baig & Ahmed, 2020). Weber says that modernity is made up of three main currents: rationalization, disillusionment, and bureaucratization.
In effect, after detention, the police send justice problems to the courts, where they are settled based on “merit.”

Traditional justice, on the other hand, did not have fixed officials to understand and implement it. Most of the time, it happened quickly. When deciding what was fair, people usually looked at the masses of the time. In this way, it was a group effort based on agreement. In these kinds of structures, everyone felt like they had to take part in the process of sentencing and justice.

According to this view, the lynching at Madyan could be viewed as an expression of justice by a traditional society. A traditional society is not simply a conservative society. A traditional society is a pre-modern society that does not follow the rational and bureaucratic model of authority.

So, one could conclude that lynching occurs more when at a societal level, bureaucratic processes are not followed.

Psychological Aspect

The lynching of the 40 year old tourist could be facilitated by the societal traditions. Swat has a conservative culture and the valley is situated in an area which has a tribal history. Located in the province sharing a volatile border with Afghanistan, the place also has had security issues. Indeed, in an earlier historic account, Stein (1942) admitted that the area was deeply tribal.

Unfortunately, these security issues, along with poor socio-economic prowess mean that trust in the state is low.

So, one common assumption that could be inferred is that authorities are not trustworthy. This allows the tribal system of justice to override the legal system. I would argue that mobs gather to build the strength of force to challenge the legal system. The reason, I argue is the erosion of trust in the legal system.

The State Level

Thomas Hobbes (1985, quoted in Baig & Ahmed, 2020) says that the main reason people want peace is because they are afraid of dying. In order to stop this deadly possibility, people make states, which are a single power hub where people can’t use their own. The only valid group that can use violence against people is the state. That’s why Hobbes called the state “a monopolizer of violence in a territory.” This description is at the heart of modern nation-states, and it’s now a part of almost every meaning of politics (Weber, 1979).

Hobbes said that if a state doesn’t take control of violence, people’s lives will become “short, nasty, and brutish.” If there is no government, other people and groups will use violence for their own reasons, which will lead to a society where everyone works together.

Psychological Aspect

For the lynchers at Madyan, the ego ideal seems to be in clash with the state’s procedures. The ego ideal is a complex of ideals that one has (Rosenfeld, 1962). For example, one could say that personal responsibility is the ego-ideal that trumps ideal of state responsibility. It could also be the case that the mob’s ideals were specifically different in the area of religion.

Whatever the case might be, it appears that the ego-ideals of a mob are not in alignment with the state’s ideals. The mob wanted the accused to be dealt with regardless of the legal process. The state, on the other hand, desires to be held responsible for dealing with the accused.

This appears to be a major psychological conflict of the collective mob with the state.

Solving the Issue of Mob Lynching

Mob lynching is a tricky phenomenon. There are multiple people in a mob. Plus, this group of people has an aggressive stance. It is very easy to see examples of how even the writ of the state does not contain collective anger.

So, to deal with the issue of these mass demonstrations of violence, one has to tackle multiple levels. As offered by this essay, corrective action and awareness has to occur at all the levels of analyses:

• The Individual Level
• Process Level
• Society Level
• State level

I propose that the individual and process levels could be targeted through better engagement between the residents of the area, and the state. If this is done, the locals could trust the authorities more to conduct due process.

To target the society and state levels, opinion-makers could be addressed. They could be briefed about how to behave in a particular situation. The Imams of the mosques could be educated by like-minded religious scholars about due process. Furthermore, they would have to be assured that the state is there to help.

To target the state level is the job of the policy makers and implementers. This would involve maintaining a healthy socioeconomic status and literacy rate so that these incidents could be prevented from the get go.

Conclusion

What happened at Madyan was condemned by many people. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) took almost instantaneous notice of this tragedy. Furthermore, Pakistan Ulema Council (PUC) also condemned this attack. This shows that religious and human rights leaders in contact with the state oppose what has happened.

However, I argue that the issue is much deeper. If the socioeconomic and psychosocial conditions of various areas of Pakistan are not improved, distrust of the state will continue to prevail.

References

• Baig, K. A. S. T., & Ahmad, M. A. (2020). Mob lynching in Pakistan: an integrated conceptual model. Pakistan Social Sciences Review, 4(1).
• Collins, R. (2012). Entering and leaving the tunnel of violence: Micro-sociological dynamics of emotional entrainment in violent interactions. Current Sociology, 61(2) , pp.132–151.
• Festinger, L. (1962). Cognitive dissonance. Scientific American, 207(4), 93-106.
• Hobbes, T. (1985.) Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books
• Stein, A. (1942). From Swat to the Gorges of the Indus. The Geographical Journal, 100(2), 49-56.
• Rosenfeld, H. (1962). The superego and the ego-ideal. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 43, 258.
• Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. London: Univeresity of California Press.