Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight

YLH

fine - add a few more months to that - what's the difference? the guy high-tailed out of pureland when he realized it was freaking mistake... J-man mis-calculated big time... you can't piggy-back secularism on top of "la illah allah hillah" and "Koran is the best book"...

But then J-man was already dead... too bad, the guy didn't live to see the cr@p unfold - it would have been quite a spectacle - both J-man and his "law minister" high-tailing together out of pakiland via wagah border :)

bulleya # 107 - What you have managed to articulate in your one post is what perhaps it would have taken me 10 posts. Yours are EXACTLY the points I have been making over the last few weeks...that Jinnah's legacy has been hijacked and vandalized by a special interest group.

But I think blame lies with the rest of the pakistanis for letting it happen. Either we were indifferent, lazy, or just not armed with facts. But thankfully, like every cause these "enlightened" elites take, they ruined this one too. I guess being "enlightened" and being "competent" can be mutually exclusive.

Still, their incompetence is not a laughing matter...it has had bloody results through out the history of Pakistan (East Pakistan, Baluchistan, Waziristan). Since these "enlightened" elites cant make their arguments based on vandalizing history, they often resort to making their points by perpetuating and cheering mayhem and killings of people who beg to differ. And hence it is no surprise then that most of the people on this board who are the cheerleaders of "secularism" and "compassion" towards minorities, are also the same people who cheered loudest when their enlightened moderate leader massacred more than 300 people in lal masjid using army apparatus.

Now that these bearers of Jinnah's alleged "secularism" have been thoroughly discredited (at least on chowk), it is time for a new breed of pretenders to pick the torch of Jinnah's "secularism"...at least they will be starting with a clean state.

Re: # 130

"few months later"

You do know he was the law minister till 1950 right? He resigned in protest of Objectives resolution.

#126 Posted by MantoLives on August 15, 2007 5:13:06 am


I have quoted 15 from the last year alone


you don't get it, do you? What jinnah wanted has become irrelevant...you could find a recording of jinnah saying "atif, manto is right..I wanted a secular state" and it wouldn't alter the reality on the ground..the reality that pakistan today is, in your own words, a theocracy...

ironically - the only place muslims still have "constitutional, religious, cultural freedom" is Congress's India... :)

#131 Posted by MantoLives on August 15, 2007 5:38:14 am


It is actually claimed that Pakistan Ka Matlab kiya ironically was a slogan that came into existence much later than the Pakistan movement.


fine...the pork eating j-man wasn't down with that..we can agree on that..

nevertheless, that IS your slogan TODAY and that is your reality...regardless of what j-man wanted...

#125 Posted by bulleya on August 15, 2007 5:02:51 am



there is absolutely nothing in the social, political, constitutional (or any other al) history of pakistan, which includes the concept of mullah


And yet you have the blasphemy laws, certain maybach owners being declared non-muslim and the whole 4 witnesses to a rape thing...

ergo..it's the non-mullah pakis who support the law...

you can't have it both ways...either the mullahs make the rules or the rules, as they exist, are set by the non-mullah class...

Mohar mian,

It is actually claimed that Pakistan Ka Matlab kiya ironically was a slogan that came into existence much later than the Pakistan movement. I certainly haven't found any evidence of this slogan in the movement itself but I have seen sme people claim it. And no Muslim League leader uttered the words "Islam in danger" though they repeatedly said "Muslims were in danger".

At the height of the Pakistan Movement Jinnah declared:
What are we fighting for? What are we aiming at? It is not theocracy, not for a theocratic state. Religion is dear to us. All the wordly goods are nothing when we talk of religion. But there are other things which are very vital—our social life and our economic life, and without political power how can you defend your faith and your economic life.


http://www.bitsonline.net/eqbal/articles_by_eqbal_view.asp?id=6&a mp;a mp;cid=2

I think it makes it abundantly clear that religion per se was simply a determinant of the group and not the master signifier of the Pakistan Movement... No matter what the Mullahs who opposed Jinnah say now.

Folio

J-man was trying to be too clever by half... pandering to islam while trying to piggy-back his secular ideas on top of that...

He would have realized that such stuff doesn't work but unfortunately there wasn't enough time... it all happened pretty quickly, within space of a few years... Congress didn't want to fight his cr@p longer than necessary - so they called the bluff... Suddenly J-man had millions of unwashed wannabe-bedouins and he has no idea to handle them... so he came up with a speech and a stunt... make a hinud the law minister... the guy who quit a few months later and got the heck out of there...

Like they say in india - if you eat fire - you will pass charcoal... J-man was eating islamic fire and produced a lump of ugly useless charcoal called pakiland... :)

The writer Pervez Hoodbhoy is a brave and courageous man to speak the truth so candidly without fear. I hope Pakistani future generations would learn from such honest talks.
Kamath

freozk
[...Pakistan was created in the name of a religion, but it was not...]

come on dude - who are you kidding?... "Pakistan ka matlab kya - there is no other god but allah"... "islam is in danger"..."koran is the best book"... and yet you say - pakiland was not created in name of religion...

if it wasn't - then pakiland would not be where it is today... the proof is right there in the pudding... :)

J-man may have had all sorts of ideas in his mind - but on ground - it was all about islam... otherwise the masses would not have gone with him... abdul didn't really care about "consitutional, economic and religious, cultural freedoms"... neither did the feudals and other assorted folks of J-man's party... abdul cared about islam and allah... that's what he fought for - not for "consitutional freedom"...

ferozek #: "In the end, one has to look at Jinnah's personal believes on the role of the state and not what his religious believes were in the role of the state to finally decided what form; Islamist or secular he supported for Pakistan.......Jinnah, then, was neither a secularist or an Islamist as much as he was a meritocrat..."

...these two statements are somewhat contrdictory.....

i think there is enough in jinnah's personal life, to indicate that, personally, he prefered secularism.......and i assume meritocracy.....

......however, when one studies political history, one looks at the public statements of politicians, for policy guidelines.......not their private life......

.......i am quite sure obama and hillary support gay marriage personally.....however their political statements do not support gay marraige......they only support gay unions...........

....it is their political and public statements that define the future direction of any government they may lead......and the direction of their party policy....

.....public and political statements are greatly influenced by the voters and the public one is leading....this is why, in many cases, they are contradictory to one's personal beliefs.....

....in that sense, one could argue that jinnah was a hypocrite.....he personally believed in secularism, but publically never used the word, and in fact, used islam and quran much more.......i wonder if he had even read the quran......

.....or one could argue that he was a politician leading a group of people and gave the desires of the people precedence over his own personal beliefs......

but the fact remains that, from his public and policial persona and statments, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that he was pushing a secular state.......he removed the word, "secularism" from his public vocabulary.....he also did not want a theocratic state.....

i suppose, he was ok with anything but a theocratic state, and left his comments in a blur.......he opposed a theocratic state.......and neither opposed nor supported (this is important to note) a secular state.....and pushed islam and quran here and there also.....

Re: # 121

On the contrary the Islamic quotes produced by Atif2 and company.. (at most 6 or 7 quoted by people here about Islam) are few and far between Jinnah's quotes regarding democracy equality etc... I have quoted 15 from the last year alone... and there are many many more I have quoted over the years. So the "few" acts actually far out number the so called "many".


However that is not the point.... ferozk has summed it well in his post and I will let people read it.

laddu #: "Mullahs have first claim over Pakistan , just as they have the first claim over Islam."

......this is incorrect.......there is absolutely nothing in the social, political, constitutional (or any other al) history of pakistan, which includes the concept of mullah...

as i always say, as long as people try to portray history, through their agenda-based coloured glasses, they will twist it to suit what they believe in........

interestingly the two groups that distort the facts the most - mullahs and secularists - are the two groups, which have absolutely nothing to base their stands on.......

....the historical speeches, documents, resolutions related to pakistan seem to paint pakistan as a state which will have islam as its moral compass, both in public and personal life, with all minorities getting equal rights.....

on the whole the objectives resolution maps the views of the leaders of those times (including jinnah) quite well......

now how this was to be achieved was never articulated by anyone.....i think everything happened so quickly, that no one had the time to philosophise on the above.......

re: Hoodbhoy

I will defer to MantoLives, on the topic of Jinnah, but I believe that Manto's interact # 1 said it all. The constitution of Pakistan will be decided by the people of Pakistan regardless of what Jinnah may have wanted for Pakistan. The only condition is that it is done in an open and demcoratic manner and is not forced upon the people.

Jinnah was a meritocrat and he was neither an Islamist or a secularist. My inference is made on a telling point by Jinnah, in his August 11, 1947 speech, which was the reference to the religious wars between the Protestants and Catholics in English history. Religion to Jinnah, was a personal affair and it had nothing to do with the affairs of the state. Jinnah must have realized from the experience of the English religious wars that a nation, where two or more religions exist should favor all religions equally and to make sure that it happened this way, the state should not get into the business of deciding religious issues.

Secularism does not make a nation into an atheist, but it does make the tolerance of all religious believes possible and in a nation with multiple religious believes, each religion must be provided with the space to exist without being dominated or persecuted by one particular religion that has the offical patronage of the state.

In the end, one has to look at Jinnah's personal believes on the role of the state and not what his religious believes were in the role of the state to finally decided what form; Islamist or secular he supported for Pakistan. Regardless of his personal opinions, his choice of a Hindu as the first law minister of Pakistan proved that Jinnah favored the latter not because of his western education and liberal intellectual thought, but because he realized the pitfalls for Pakistan if one religion was favored over the rest of the religions in Pakistan and instead opted for a choice based on the qualifications of the person, for a task, and not his religious inclinations.

Much has been said about Jinnah and his reasons for creating Pakistan, but it still does not negate the fact that what made Jinnah great to the Indian Muslims despite his lack of Islamic knowledge or his westernized outlook, was the single minded sincerity of purpose he brought to the cause of the Muslims of India. Having said, one would expect nothing less from Jinnah once Pakistan was created and in the interests of Pakistan, Jinnah would have supported a secular form of government. He would have done so not because he was anti-Islam, but because he must have realized that Pakistan being a multi-religious state could not be single religion dominated state and still endure.

The argument, whether Jinnah was secularist or Islamist only makes sense if point was that Pakistan was created in the name of a religion, but it was not. Pakistan was created to ensure the consitutional, economic and religious, cultural freedoms of Indian Muslims and had Congress agreed to these demands, Jinnah would not have pursued the case of the Indian Muslims to the point of partition in 1947.

Jinnah, then, was neither a secularist or an Islamist as much as he was a meritocrat, who believed that meritocracy in the service of Pakistan was the best option for the new nation.

Ciao

mullah32 is freaking dense... All these years at chowk - and only now he realizes this :)