Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight

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

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... :)

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.

#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...

#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...

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

#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...

Re: # 130

"few months later"

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

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.

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 :)

Re: # 137

You still don't have the facts. You have emotive arguments that don't make sense.

Jinnah's vision of the state as an inclusive democratic impartial state is a fact. You guys can go on jumping about assuming that Jinnah's references to Islamic democracy and Islamic principles of equality fraternity and justice... but in the end unless you are arguing that Jinnah's ideas of equality of citizenship and state's indifference to personal faith is an Islamic vision you don't have a point. This Islamic vision thus fits the definition of a secular state.

I for one don't have a problem with you calling Jinnah's inclusive democratic state which keeps faith out of major policy considerations an Islamic state... it might be true that Islam actually envisages such a state... Holy Prophet's Mesaq-e-Medina certainly did... to me this constitutes secularism.

Resorting to simple arguments like ... Jinnah didn't use the word secular in public... is ironic because in that case neither the US nor France are secular because their founding documents don't use the word secular either.

At the root of all this is this belief that secularism is inherently anti-religion... the principle of state's impartiality - in Jinnah's view clearly- was not anti-Islam.


Mohar11,

Read my post 131...

YLH

Read my 138, 134, 130, 121... also - read the reality - pakiland is a theocracy, you are a non-muslim being a qadiani, and J-man is dead... :)

Manto thunders in #139 "Resorting to simple arguments like ... Jinnah didn't use the word secular in public... is ironic because in that case neither the US nor France are secular because their founding documents don't use the word secular either."

One thing that internet has done is that it has made the cost of obtaining information affordable to masses. And hence, the "enlightened" elite and other pretenders can no longer have a free run at creating smoke screens to make their arguments appear grand.

If the american and french founding documents do not contain the term "secularism", then there is a good reason for it. The term "secularism" was first coined and used by the British writer George Holyoake in 1846 (as per wikipedia)...a full 70 years AFTER the founding of America.

But what is more damaging to your (left over) credibility is the fact that the term "secularism" was coined a full 101 years BEFORE the creation of Pakistan. Not only that, Ataturk had went ahead and even IMPLEMENTED it, thus giving Jinnah good rational, opportunity and plenty of excuse to use the word "secularism", if he so desired.

Unfortunately for you, he never did.

But more appropriately for you, the term "vandal of history" was coined by Atif2 on August 12th 2007.

atif #141 any thoughts on my post #117?

1. This is an academic discussion.

2. The issue is not what Pakistan is but about the historical figure called Jinnah.

3. Since I don't ascribe to Ahmadi beliefs I am not an Ahmadi Muslim.

Yes Atif yes you are a vandal of history indeed.

So if Ataturk implemented it... and Jinnah described Ataturk as the greatest Musalman of the age and an example for Indian Muslims .... what does that mean?

Don't tell me that Jinnah didn't know anything about Turkey because you just said that Jinnah had enough rationale after Ataturk's implementation.