Gentelmen i m sorry for being involved in to your topic.i know this is something should be discussed between you brothers from pakistan.but let me add my thoughts.
As a Turkish;my country is a republic.but till 1928,there was a hint on the religion of the goverment.but this hint was removed in 10 april 1928.so our country became a secular country.
if we ask why it was done;our country had a ''nation building phase''.Turkey was founded as a muslim country,but later it was named as a secular-nation state.the positive sides and negative sides of this matter can be discussed later.let me get back to our topic about Pakistan.
Pakistan was founded as an Islamic republic.An islamic republic because the referance point of the republic is Islam.
lets have a look at the ethic form of the pakistan;
% 60 Pencabi (i hope i write correct.please correct me if i m wrong brothers...)
% 11 Sind
% 10 Pestun
% 8 Urdu
% 8 Jat
% 2.5 Beluci
% 1 others
Brothers;all these ethic groups are Muslim.if we remove the Islam tag from the name of the country,what will be the main idea to hold all these groups together?How will these groups stick together?also it is too late for Pakistan to start building a nation state like Turkey and other European countries.
as a Turkish,i can say that we have some problems because of the misapplication of the secularism and nation state.(but i hope all these problems will be solved very soon.)
for this reason,the removal of Islam from the state tag ;may cause many problems.Our beloved founding father Muhammed Ikbal's way is the correct way.another option may cause a civil war in Pakistan.
so,lets keep saying: Pakistan, ke matlâb ya? Lâ ilâhe illAllah
My Greetings
Kansu
Hon Kansu,
Your sentiments are appreciated. Our brother country Turkiye is predominantly a Muslim country. The case of Pakistan is however different. Since you may not be fully aware of Pakistan movement, I will give some details of the Pakistan creation process.
Ottoman State had been in a steady decline since the era of Sultan Ahmet III at the beginning of the 18th century. From 1850 onwards it was known as sick man of Europe. During one of the discussions forums in London during my student days; one fellow Turkish student explained that Mustafa Kamal Pasha (Ata Turk) came to the conclusion that the reason of decline in the fortunes of Ottomans was decadence of the later Sultans ( Khalifas) and too much influence of the mullahs. Even 50 years of reforms (Tanzimat) couldn’t stem the decline in fortunes. Ata Turk decided upon fundamental reforms whereby Roman Script was adopted and the State changed to a secular state without too much internal opposition.
Muslim League founded in 1906 had very little following among the Muslim masses; popularity was limited to the landed gentry and upper middle classes. It was only after military occupation of Istanbul by Allied powers in 1919 and subsequent Turkish national movement that prominent Muslim leaders (Ali brothers, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, Abul Kalam Azad & Hakim Ajmal Khan) started the Khilafat movement. Khilafat movement died out with the abolition of Khilafat in 1924, but Muslim masses became politically active as result.
In his presidential address at the Lukhnow session of Muslim League in 1930 Allama Iqbal for the first time presented the idea of two nation theory. For the benefit of the members I post the relevant excerpt.
Quote
Communalism in its higher aspect, then, is indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India. The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries. India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages, and professing different religions. Their behaviour is not at all determined by a common race-consciousness. Even the Hindus do not form a homogeneous group. The principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India without recognising the fact of communal groups. The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified. The resolution of the All-Parties Muslim Conference at Delhi is, to my mind, wholly inspired by this noble ideal of a harmonious whole which, instead of stifling the respective individualities of its component wholes, affords them chances of fully working out the possibilities that may be latent in them. And I have no doubt that this House will emphatically endorse the Muslim demands embodied in this resolution.
Personally, I would go farther than the demands embodied in it. I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. The proposal was put forward before the Nehru Committee. They rejected it on the ground that, if carried into effect, it would give a very unwieldy State. This is true in so far as the area is concerned; in point of population, the State contemplated by the proposal would be much less than some of the present Indian provinces. The exclusion of Ambala Division, and perhaps of some districts where non-Muslims predominate, will make it less extensive and more Muslim in population – so that the exclusion suggested will enable this consolidated State to give a more effective protection to non-Muslim minorities within its area. The idea need not alarm the Hindus or the British. India is the greatest Muslim country in the world. The life of Islam as a cultural force in the country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory. This centralisation of the most living portion of the Muslims of India, whose military and police service has, notwithstanding unfair treatment from the British, made the British rule possible in this country, will eventually solve the problem of India as well as of Asia. It will intensify their sense of responsibility and deepen their patriotic feeling.
Thus, possessing full opportunity of development within the body politic of India, the North-West Indian Muslims will prove the best defenders of India against a foreign invasion, be that invasion one of ideas or of bayonets. The Punjab with 56 percent Muslim population supplies 54 percent of the total combatant troops in the Indian Army, and if the 19,000 Gurkhas recruited from the independent State of Nepal are excluded, the Punjab contingent amounts to 62 percent of the whole Indian Army. This percentage does not take into account nearly 6,000 combatants supplied to the Indian Army by the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. From this you can easily calculate the possibilities of North-West Indian Muslims in regard to the defence of India against foreign aggression. The Right Hon'ble Mr. Srinivasa Sastri thinks that the Muslim demand for the creation of autonomous Muslim states along the north-west border is actuated by a desire "to acquire means of exerting pressure in emergencies on the Government of India." I may frankly tell him that the Muslim demand is not actuated by the kind of motive he imputes to us; it is actuated by a genuine desire for free development which is practically impossible under the type of unitary government contemplated by the nationalist Hindu politicians with a view to secure permanent communal dominance in the whole of India.
Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states. I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism. The character of a Muslim State can be judged from what the Times of India pointed out some time ago in a leader [=front-page article] on the Indian Banking Inquiry Committee. "In ancient India," the paper points out, "the State framed laws regulating the rates of interest; but in Muslim times, although Islam clearly forbids the realisation of interest on money loaned, Indian Muslim States imposed no restrictions on such rates." I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interests of India and Islam. For India, it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times.
Unquote.
Three years later a Cambridge student Ch. Rahmet Ali proposed the name Pakistan for the new State. This was followed by the Lahore declaration in 1940 and in 1947 Pakistan was born.
Mullahs and the Khilafat movement leaders were against this separation, mainly having no faith in the secular outlook of leader ship of the Muslim League (HH Agha Khan). Some went to the extent of calling them kafirs (unbelievers). However, from 1946 onwards, once it became clear that Pakistan was on the cards; mullah parties such as Jamaat Islami tried to hijack the Pakistan movement. The slogans such as ‘Pakistan ya mout’ and ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya, la illaha illallah;’ were coined during the heady days of Khaksar Tehreek, primarily movement of volunteers in Punjab who rendered yeoman’s service to Pakistan’s cause. Khaksar Tehreek, though based entirely on Muslim volunteers, was totally non sectarian and even asked to serve non Muslims. It is a pity the services of Allama Mashriqi are now largely forgotten.
Main purpose of this longwinded explanation is to point out the while present day Turkey is remnant of a primarily Muslim (not wholly Turkish) empire (Only European parts of the Ottoman Empire such as the Balkans) were non Muslim. Pakistan on the other hand was carved out of a majority non Muslim British India. The Raison D’etre of Pakistan is that Muslims in India had a separate identity. It is therefore not easy to declare Pakistan a secular state. Pakistan was however meant to be a Muslim State as against an Islamic theocratic state. The objectives resolution was added as an after thought in 1948.
Following the Iranian Revolution, Saudi Arabia and USA with the collusion of the bigot Zia gave us the gift of Sectarian fratricide. In an effort to curb the power of PPP, Zia and the agencies helped formation of the ethnic MQM.
CIA funding in the Afghan war and subsequent ISI interference in Afghanistan spawned the madrassahs and the Taliban movement. Musharraf ‘s U-turn after 9/11 caused mullahs to gain power in the NWFP. Now the genii is out of the bag with Pakistan polity split down the middle between liberals like me on one side and supporters of the mullah parties on the other side. Renaming Pakistan as a secular State would only strengthen support for the mullah and the suicide bombers.
Besides, Islamic nature of the State is enshrined in the 1973 Constitution.
When we see at "Kashmir's Moment", it's also based on this fact. Muslims are 95% of the population of Kashmir. The slogan which Kashmiris shout is "the Relation with Pakistan is: La ilaha il Allah". This ideology also connects Kashmir and Pakistan.
