Had Islam not been central to the
creation of Pakistan, Zaid Hamid and Hamid Gul would not have been able to
invoke it for garnering support for a Muslim caliphate and they would not have
been the darlings of our middle and upper class educated youth, we would not
have had the Objectives Resolution as a guiding principle of our constitutions,
Ziaul Haq would never have been able to pass retrogressive laws against women
and minorities, our intelligence agencies and army would not have been suspected
of links with the various jaishes and lashkars — not to speak of their
well-documented grooming of the Taliban, our public schools would not have been
a tool of retrogressive propaganda and we would not have had tens of thousands
of religious seminaries, many of which produce violent jihadists. -- Ilyas Akbar
Khan
By Ilyas Akbar Khan
June 21, 2010
Had Islam not been
central to the creation of Pakistan, we would not have had the Objectives
Resolution as a guiding principle of our
constitutions
Without recognising that a
problem is widespread and deep-rooted, efforts towards resolving it are likely
to have only partial success. Although the myth of ‘a silent majority’ of
moderates in Pakistan gained currency during the period of General Musharraf,
the same has existed for decades. Indeed, it was not entirely a myth until the
early 1970s when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave in to Islamic fundamentalists’ demand
for Islamisation. General Ziaul Haq’s 11-year rule completely changed the
landscape of Pakistani politics and society in terms of the worldview of its
population. In the 1990s, both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif co-opted the
clergy and both abstained from taking measures towards stopping the growing tide
of religious fundamentalism. Thus, the assumption that there is a small minority
in Pakistan that subscribes to pan-Islamist, anti-American, anti-Indian and
anti-Israeli ideas of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) has
become a myth. Now the reality is the other way around — Pakistan today has ‘a
loud minority’ that publicly condemns all streams of Islamist violence and sees
fighting extremism and normal relations with India and the US to be in the
national interest.
The JUI — known for its
sympathies with the Taliban — is presently part of the PPP-led coalition
government in Islamabad. The party runs thousands of Islamic seminaries across
the country. Its declared aim of politics is the imposition of shariah in the
country. The ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami — a fiercely anti-American and
pan-Islamist political party — is widely respected and held true by the middle
and upper class educated youth and by mid- and top-level military officers.
Indeed, it is considered to be an important component of the legendary
‘establishment’, a euphemism used for the Pakistani military.
What led to the transformation
of a silent majority of moderates into a minority? To begin with, the signs can
be traced back to the rhetoric of some Muslim leaders in pre-partition India.
These included, among others, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Sir Muhammad Iqbal and
Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It was in the latter part of the 19th century that Sir Syed
Ahmad Khan emphasised that Muslims stay away from the Indian National Congress,
on the basis of religion. He established educational institutions aimed at
educating the Muslims as a ‘community’. Chief among these was the Mohammedan
Anglo-Oriental College, which soon developed into the Aligarh Muslim University.
The Muslim graduates of this university were to later claim a state — a
political entity — for a portion of the Indian population on the basis of their
faith, Islam. Thus the seeds of an evolving Islam-based politics can be
discerned in the developments that were taking place in the latter half of the
19th century. This is not to say that the process of Muslim leaders working for
the Muslims of India started with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. There were many before
him, but they worked for the moral reformation of the Muslims. The process of
politicising Islam started only with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. A detailed narrative
of his services for the Muslims and his contribution to the ‘idea’ of Pakistan
constitutes an important part of Pakistani schools’ curriculum.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal — the
philosopher who shaped Jinnah’s views vis-à-vis a state for the Muslims of India
— was a staunch supporter of political Islam and abhorred western nationalism.
He frequently dismissed the separation of religion and state. In his famous
Allahabad address in 1930 he stated, “Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man
into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam, God and the
universe, spirit and matter, church and state, are organic to each other.” He
believed that secularism would morally corrupt Muslims. He stood for closer
cooperation among Muslims around the world. His philosophy constitutes an
integral part of Pakistani schools’ syllabus.
Many of us, under the burden of
‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’, fiercely argue that Jinnah stood for a secular
Pakistan. To justify their stand, they often cite his speech of August 11, 1947
in which he said that everybody was free to go to their respective religious
places. Unfortunately — thanks to our poor education system — we conveniently
ignore the dozens of occasions before and after the creation of Pakistan when
Jinnah clearly stated that Islam was going to guide the policies of the new
state. In a message to the Frontier Muslim Students Federation on June 18, 1945
he says, “Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim
ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and
treasure and which, we hope, others will share with us.” In his presidential
address to the All India Muslim League on March 23, 1940, he invokes Islam as
the basis of inspiration for action. He stated, “Come forward as servants of
Islam, organise the people economically, socially, educationally and politically
and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by
everybody.”
It is not to say that Jinnah did
not have economics on his mind while struggling for Pakistan. It is to say,
however, that he did invoke Islam as a central element of justification in his
demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of India.
Thus the context being conducive
for pan-Islamists and religious bigots, it was only a foregone conclusion that
they would succeed in forcing the Objectives Resolution to be passed by
parliament, prefix “Islamic” to everything Pakistani, pressure successive rulers
into passing retrogressive laws and, ultimately, convince the state to pursue
cross-border agendas based on the ideology of Islam. No wonder then that senior
retired military officers including the Taliban’s mentors General Hamid Gul and
the so-called Colonel Imam loudly support al Qaeda, the Taliban and the many
Islamist jaishes and lashkars without any fear of punishment from the state,
which itself is controlled by their former colleagues.
Had Islam not been central to
the creation of Pakistan, Zaid Hamid and Hamid Gul would not have been able to
invoke it for garnering support for a Muslim caliphate and they would not have
been the darlings of our middle and upper class educated youth, we would not
have had the Objectives Resolution as a guiding principle of our constitutions,
Ziaul Haq would never have been able to pass retrogressive laws against women
and minorities, our intelligence agencies and army would not have been suspected
of links with the various jaishes and lashkars — not to speak of their
well-documented grooming of the Taliban, our public schools would not have been
a tool of retrogressive propaganda and we would not have had tens of thousands
of religious seminaries, many of which produce violent
jihadists.
The writer is a freelance
columnist hailing from Waziristan. He can be reached at
ilyasakbarkhan@gmail.com
Daily Times,
Pakistan
9:55 PM
Sultan Shahin
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