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VIEW: Stop blaming the West Shahid Ilyas
The only legitimate and viable way of existence for a state is that it is based on the idea of public welfare, democracy, pluralism and the rule of law
Whereas sovereignty over
the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust... This is a citation taken from the Objectives Resolution the guiding principles for lawmaking in Pakistan that was presented by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, the right-hand man of Jinnah, before the constituent assembly in 1949.
In our anti-American and anti-West zeal, we have forgotten to appreciate that, though the West did play a part in pressing Pakistan deeper into the pit of religious bigotry, thanks to the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s, the causes of religious extremism and terrorism need to be explored further and much beyond the Afghan jihad. No matter how Jinnah lived his personal life, we have to acknowledge that he organised different sections of the Muslims of India for the achievement of a state solely based on their faith, Islam. No wonder, then, the country soon came to be known as the Fortress of Islam and its objective became Pakistan ka matlab kia? La Ilaha IlAllah (What is the meaning of Pakistan? There is no god but Allah).
General Mohammad Ayub Khan, tacitly recognising that Pakistan indeed represented a religious ideology, gave in to the demand of Islamic fundamentalists that the name Republic of Pakistan in the 1962 Constitution be prefixed with the word Islamic. The Objectives Resolution was accepted as the guiding principles of the constitution. Religious bigots in Pakistan have always been successful in pressuring governments into passing retrogressive laws because of their conviction that Pakistan was made in order to make sure that the word of Allah prevailed. It was this inherent conviction and belief that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had to bow down before to declare Ahmedis as non-Muslims.
Ziaul Haq explicitly not implicitly like his predecessors advocated the fact that Pakistan had been created in the name of Islam and needed to be ruled accordingly. Therefore, he shared governance with pan-Islamic religious parties, made the Objectives Resolution a substantive part of the constitution, brought school syllabi in line with what his religious partners told him was Islam, introduced Islamic laws, established tens of thousands of religious seminaries, incorporated in the constitution the definition of a Muslim and a non-Muslim, made prayer compulsory during office hours and last, but not the least, joined jihad in Afghanistan.
It is in this context that we need to try to understand the prevailing religious bigotry in Pakistan. Holding the west responsible for our daily miseries and putting all blame into the wests basket is neither constructive, fair nor just. Nor are our claims on western aid justifiable on the basis of the logic that the latter was responsible for our descent into chaos.
It has become fashionable in Pakistan for liberal columnists to condemn acts of extremism and terrorism, but they are very quick to add that the Western-supported Afghan jihad led to the scourge of extremism in the country. They fail to realise that this kind of qualified condemnation of extremism strengthens the hand of extremists by way of conferring a sort of legitimacy upon their ongoing anti-western struggle in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Secondly, this kind of qualified condemnation points to their lack of understanding and non-recognition of the presence of extremism in the decades-long official narrative that predates the Afghan jihad. That narrative necessitated the addition of the prefix Islamic to everything Pakistani.
There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand and recognise that the faith-based narrative, that ultimately brought Pakistan to where it is today, dates back to the struggle for the creation of this country. There is abundant literature available in libraries that can help us understand that the makers of Pakistan relied heavily on Islamic rhetoric. After the creation of Pakistan and through its political development, there are hundreds of instances that show that Pakistan has always followed the path that was shown to it by religious parties, including the present-day Taliban sympathisers the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam.
We also need to understand that the modern-day world is not conducive for ideology-based states. States that were based on communism could not sustain themselves and collapsed under their own weight. Nazism that believed in the superiority of the German race and that pursued cross-border ambitions faced devastation. Iran which is struggling to exist with a cross-border agenda is neither an ideal case to be followed, nor can Pakistan be compared to that country in terms of wealth, geography, strategy and population.
The only legitimate and viable way of existence for a state is that it is based on the idea of public welfare, democracy, pluralism and the rule of law. All developed and developing states that are based on these principles are prospering.
The writer hails from Waziristan and can be reached at ilyasakbarkhan@gmail.com
The only legitimate and viable way of existence for a state is that it is based on the idea of public welfare, democracy, pluralism and the rule of law
Whereas sovereignty over
the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust... This is a citation taken from the Objectives Resolution the guiding principles for lawmaking in Pakistan that was presented by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, the right-hand man of Jinnah, before the constituent assembly in 1949.
In our anti-American and anti-West zeal, we have forgotten to appreciate that, though the West did play a part in pressing Pakistan deeper into the pit of religious bigotry, thanks to the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s, the causes of religious extremism and terrorism need to be explored further and much beyond the Afghan jihad. No matter how Jinnah lived his personal life, we have to acknowledge that he organised different sections of the Muslims of India for the achievement of a state solely based on their faith, Islam. No wonder, then, the country soon came to be known as the Fortress of Islam and its objective became Pakistan ka matlab kia? La Ilaha IlAllah (What is the meaning of Pakistan? There is no god but Allah).
General Mohammad Ayub Khan, tacitly recognising that Pakistan indeed represented a religious ideology, gave in to the demand of Islamic fundamentalists that the name Republic of Pakistan in the 1962 Constitution be prefixed with the word Islamic. The Objectives Resolution was accepted as the guiding principles of the constitution. Religious bigots in Pakistan have always been successful in pressuring governments into passing retrogressive laws because of their conviction that Pakistan was made in order to make sure that the word of Allah prevailed. It was this inherent conviction and belief that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had to bow down before to declare Ahmedis as non-Muslims.
Ziaul Haq explicitly not implicitly like his predecessors advocated the fact that Pakistan had been created in the name of Islam and needed to be ruled accordingly. Therefore, he shared governance with pan-Islamic religious parties, made the Objectives Resolution a substantive part of the constitution, brought school syllabi in line with what his religious partners told him was Islam, introduced Islamic laws, established tens of thousands of religious seminaries, incorporated in the constitution the definition of a Muslim and a non-Muslim, made prayer compulsory during office hours and last, but not the least, joined jihad in Afghanistan.
It is in this context that we need to try to understand the prevailing religious bigotry in Pakistan. Holding the west responsible for our daily miseries and putting all blame into the wests basket is neither constructive, fair nor just. Nor are our claims on western aid justifiable on the basis of the logic that the latter was responsible for our descent into chaos.
It has become fashionable in Pakistan for liberal columnists to condemn acts of extremism and terrorism, but they are very quick to add that the Western-supported Afghan jihad led to the scourge of extremism in the country. They fail to realise that this kind of qualified condemnation of extremism strengthens the hand of extremists by way of conferring a sort of legitimacy upon their ongoing anti-western struggle in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Secondly, this kind of qualified condemnation points to their lack of understanding and non-recognition of the presence of extremism in the decades-long official narrative that predates the Afghan jihad. That narrative necessitated the addition of the prefix Islamic to everything Pakistani.
There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand and recognise that the faith-based narrative, that ultimately brought Pakistan to where it is today, dates back to the struggle for the creation of this country. There is abundant literature available in libraries that can help us understand that the makers of Pakistan relied heavily on Islamic rhetoric. After the creation of Pakistan and through its political development, there are hundreds of instances that show that Pakistan has always followed the path that was shown to it by religious parties, including the present-day Taliban sympathisers the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam.
We also need to understand that the modern-day world is not conducive for ideology-based states. States that were based on communism could not sustain themselves and collapsed under their own weight. Nazism that believed in the superiority of the German race and that pursued cross-border ambitions faced devastation. Iran which is struggling to exist with a cross-border agenda is neither an ideal case to be followed, nor can Pakistan be compared to that country in terms of wealth, geography, strategy and population.
The only legitimate and viable way of existence for a state is that it is based on the idea of public welfare, democracy, pluralism and the rule of law. All developed and developing states that are based on these principles are prospering.
The writer hails from Waziristan and can be reached at ilyasakbarkhan@gmail.com
