In Jinnah’s view, religion had nothing to do with the business of the state because he envisioned Pakistan as a liberal muslim country. Has there ever been a moment in the past six decades when nation has done justice to its founder’s vision?
Is Allah the Almighty, the Creator and Judge of humankind, Omnipotent, Compassion-ate, and Merciful, the Allah of all humanity – the Rab ul Alameen; or of the Muslims only – the Rab ul Muslimeen? Similarly, do we refer to the Holy Prophet (PBUH) as Rehmatul lil Alameen or simply as Rehmatul lil Muslimeen?
These are the sort of questions that put into perspective our journey in history for over 6 decades during which we have distorted and disfigured the Pakistan of Jinnah into an unrecognizable entity with no national direction.
This is because we have not been led – we have been misled through all these years – by one leader after another, who clung to the seat of power and ruled the country according to his own whim and caprice, divesting the nation of all forward momentum and erasing all reference points of ideological direction.
There must have been times in those frenetic years, just before partition, when the founder of Pakistan must have wondered about the sort of ideological blue-print he would draw for his new nation. After all, he was demanding for a nation a territory that would be carved out from the greater Indian subcontinent, where the Hindus were in a large majority and the Muslims the largest minority. The divide was to be on the lines of religion, based on the premise that the Muslims of India by themselves constituted a separate nation and therefore deserved a homeland of their own.
What really was Mr. Jinnah's perception of the future Pakistan? What overall complexion did have in mind for the state he envisaged? Was it to be a nation inhabited only by the Muslim minority of India as well as indigenous ones, or would it also be home to people of other faiths, all treated as equal citizens, be free to pursue their religious beliefs in a pluralistic environment? Or would it be fashioned purely as an Islamic state, say, on the pattern of the Saudi Kingdom, the only difference being that Pakistan would be a democracy?
Jinnah was a man with a broad vision. He was clear in his mind that he wanted Pakistan to be an inclusive and pluralist democracy promising equal rights for all citizens, regardless of religion, caste or creed. And there is nothing that conveys his mindset better than the speech he made while inaugurating the country's constituent assembly on August 11, 1947, when he said: "If we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor... you are free – you are free to go to your temples, mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the state... in due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to Muslims – not in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual – but in a political sense as citizens of one state."
It was just too unfortunate that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was not around to oversee the formative years of the nation he had toiled so hard to win. This is where things started going wrong because it did not take very long for self-styled leaders and politicians – individuals who had not moved a finger in the country's freedom struggle – to jump onto the stage and impose upon the hapless people of the new-born and struggling nation all sorts of theories and ideas about what ideological direction it should take.
The politico-religious element, a force that Jinnah feared would put the brakes on progress by creating various confusions based on the interpretation of one religious thought or the other, had an open field right from the beginning. They were joined by other self-seekers who professed to be incomparable in their patriotism but were actually people who cared next to nothing about the future implications of giving the religious elements too much free rein, so long as their grip on power remained intact. All they wanted was some kind of legitimacy to continue ruling Pakistan into infinity and, therefore, had no qualms about encouraging the religious thekedars to do their own thing or allowing fake democrats to feed them with their sycophancy.
When crunch time came, even Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, with all his liberalism, was forced into acquiescing to the 'Islamic' line. Wasn't he the leading light behind the Islamic Summit held in Lahore in 1974? But it is not just summits that are Islamic. Pakistan has the distinction of having developed even the Islamic bomb. To be fair, though, it wasn’t Pakistan that dubbed its nuclear bomb as an 'Islamic Bomb'. This was the title given by the west when, back in the 80s, during Gen. Ziaul Haq's rule, they found out that Pakistan had a fairly advanced nuclear programme in place. But then it is only in the Muslim world that you find an Islamic Bank while you do not hear of any Hindu Bank, Jewish Bank or Christian Bank.
Christianity is a religion that has the most followers around the world than any other religion, but nations with predominantly Christian populations do not style themselves into groupings under a Christian banner. It is only the Muslims who have a body called the OIC – Organisation of the Islamic Conference – that professes to promote Muslim solidarity in economic, social and political affairs, but actually does nothing of the sort.
It is time the Muslims of the world stopped living in some kind of an 'Islamic' bubble of their own. There is no question that they are bound together by a common faith but this does not mean that they should harbour hostility towards other communities and see the rest of the world through the prism of religious belief. Islam teaches equality and dignity of man. It establishes freedom from discrimination and exploitation and encourages every believer to struggle against oppression and injustice. Rather than existing in and promoting a climate of fear and paranoia, there is a dire need for the world's Muslims to address such issues as democracy and separation of religion from politics so that they too can join the march of human progress. This is something that needs to be particularly addressed by the people and leaders of Pakistan as we are one country that was cut out right from the start as a modern Muslim state where religion and politics would function in their own separate spheres. Let us turn Jinnah's dream into reality. 
Syed Jawaid Iqbal is the Editor-in-Chief of Southasia Magazine. He is also the Founding Chairman of Moderates - a private sector think tank committed to strengthening tolerance, interfaith, harmony and democracy.
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