Time to repeal the blasphemy law

OPINION

Time to repeal the blasphemy law

Nasim Zehra
November 16, 2010

The writer is director current affairs, Dunya TV and a former fellow at Asia Center, Harvard University nasim.zehra@tribune.com.pk

In June 2008, Asiya Bibi, a Pakistani farm worker and mother of five, fetched water for others working on the farm. Many refused the water because Asiya was Christian. The situation got ugly. Reports indicate Asiya was harassed because of her religion and the matter turned violent. Asiya, alone in a hostile environment, naturally would have attempted to defend herself but was put in police custody for her protection against a crowd that was harming her.

However, that protection move turned into one that was to earn Asiya a death sentence. A case was filed against her under sections 295-B and C of the Pakistan Penal Code, claiming that Asiya was a blasphemer. Her family will appeal against the judgment in the Lahore High Court.

The Asiya case raises the fundamental question of how Pakistan’s minorities have been left unprotected since the passage of the blasphemy law. There may have been no hangings on account of the law but it has facilitated the spread of intolerance and populist rage against minorities, often leading to deaths. There is also a direct link between the Zia-ist state’s intolerance against minorities and the rise of criminal treatment of Ahmadis.

Cases have ranged from the Kasur case to the more recent Gojra case, from the mind-boggling row of cases between 1988-1992 against 80-year-old development guru Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan, to the case of the son of an alleged blasphemer, an illiterate brick kiln worker who was beaten to death by a frenzied mob.

Although doctor sahib faced prolonged mental torture, he was saved from the maddening rage that has sent to prison, and in some cases devoured, many innocent, poor and hence unprotected Pakistanis.

There is a long list, prepared by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, of unjust punishments handed down to Pakistani citizens whose fundamental rights the state is obliged to protect. Beyond punishments, minorities live in constant fear of being lethally blackmailed by those who want to settle other scores.

Yet most political parties have refrained from calling for the law’s repeal or improvement in its implementation mechanism. When, in the early 90s, I asked Nawaz Sharif sahib to criticise the hounding of Dr Khan, his response was a detailed recall of the story in which Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) went to ask after the health of a non-Muslim woman who repeatedly threw garbage over him. He condemned what was happening but said politics prevented him from doing so publicly. Later, General Musharraf, advised by other generals, reversed his announcement of changing the law’s implementation mechanism. Small crowds protested against it. Among politicians, very few exceptions include the PPP parliamentarian Sherry Rehman and, more recently, the ANP’s Bushra Gohar, who asked for its amendment and repeal.

Already sections of the judiciary have been critical of flawed judgements passed by lower courts in alleged blasphemy cases. Recently in July, Lahore High Court Chief Justice Khawaja Sharif quashed a blasphemy case against 60-year-old Zaibunnisa and ordered her release after almost 14 years in custody. According to the judgment, the “treatment meted out to the woman was an insult to humanity and the government and the civil organisations should be vigilant enough to help such people.” Surely the Bench should know the plethora of abuses that Pakistan’s minorities have suffered because of an evidently flawed law.

A message more appropriate, perhaps, would be to repeal the black law that grossly undermines the Constitution of Pakistan and indeed the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, one of the most tolerant and humane law-givers humankind has known. This environment of populist rage, fed by the distorted yet self-serving interpretation of religion principally by Zia and a populist mixing of religion and politics by a politically besieged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, must be emphatically challenged. A collective effort to roll back these laws must come from parliament, the lawyers’ forums, the judiciary, civil society groups and the media.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17th, 2010.

URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/78368/time-to-repeal-the-blasphemy-law/

Pakistan’s Religious Minorities Face Persecution by the State

July 08, 2010

Pakistan’s Religious Minorities Face Persecution by the State

Just a month ago, at least 95 members of the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect were killed and nearly 100 injured in attacks on their places of worship in Lahore, in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The attacks were part of a campaign against Ahmadis by Islamist groups openly sympathetic to terrorist groups, including the Taliban.

Politicians have been strangely silent on the attacks. Punjab’s chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, has not shown his face at either Ahmadi mosque targeted in the attacks, despite living down the road from them.

Mohammed Hanif, a journalist, wrote: “When the funerals of the massacred Ahmadis took place there were no officials, no politicians present.”

Several days after the attack, former Pakistani Prime Minister and Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif said the members of the Ahmadi sect were his brothers and sisters and that militants should be flushed out wherever they were active.

His comments drew sharp criticism from religious parties like the Khatm-e-Nabuwat Movement, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami.

Maulana Ilyas Chinioti, the head of KNM, a member of the PML-N and the Punjab provincial assembly, also condemned Sharif’s statement.

Maulana seems to be openly preaching that non-Muslims are lesser humans, despite the fact that Ahmadis profess that they are Muslims.

Those who dare to defend the rights of religious minorities in Pakistan are usually labeled as being “anti-Islam.”

Ahmadis have been under widespread attack by increasingly violent Islamic fundamentalists across the planet.

The movement was founded in India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908 and who claimed to have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the religion and who would bring about the final triumph of Islam as per Islamic prophecy.

According to a June 4 story in The News, a surviving attacker of the Lahore carnage, Abdullah, alias Muhammad, said he was misled into believing that Ahmadis were involved in drawing blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, so their bloodshed was a great service to Islam.

The campaign against the sect began a decade ago in Pakistan. Before the 1947 partition of Pakistan and India, anti-Ahmadiyah agitation was instigated by the Majlis-i-Ahrar, a lower-middle-class party.

In 1934, Ahrar set up an anti-Ahmadi movement after the Ahmadi community supported a demand for a Pakistan. In 1953, six Ahmadis lost their lives when an anti-Ahmadiyah wave swept the newly founded country.

According to Waqar Gilani, in 1973 the then president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Sardar Abdul Qayyum, declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. In the same year, a Saudi Arabian conference also agreed to oust Ahmadis from the circle of Islam.

In 1974 they were declared non-Muslims by the Pakistani Parliament. In 1984, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq promulgated a martial law ordinance containing blasphemy laws that undercut the activities of religious minorities generally, but struck at Ahmadis in particular.

Since then, they have been arrested frequently for greeting someone with the traditional Islamic Assalam-o-Alaikum, reciting Muslim prayers or reading the Holy Koran.

In the period 1984-2009, 105 Ahmadis were killed in Pakistan, according to two authors writing in Viewpoint, a Pakistani online magazine.

“During the same period, 22 Ahmadiyah mosques were demolished, 28 were sealed by authorities, 11 were set on fire and 14 were occupied, while construction of 41 was banned. In at least 47 cases, burials were denied in common graveyards while 28 bodies were exhumed,” the two wrote.

Since 2000, an estimated 400 Ahmadis have been formally charged in criminal cases, including blasphemy. Many remain imprisoned.

Both printed and electronic Pakistani media have played a scandalous role in spreading hatred against the community.

Recently, the Muslim Canadian Congress blamed major media outlets in Pakistan for inflaming rhetoric against Ahmadiyah, Ismaili and Shia Muslims.

In particular, the MCC pointed out that GEO Television had become the voice of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and had spread hatred against these communities as well as against non-Muslims.

Religious minorities in general and Ahmadis in particular are not treated by the Pakistani state as equal citizens. They are routinely intimidated and persecuted because of their faith.

Unless the state changes its mind-set about minorities, they will live under constant threat, which is against international human rights laws and the constitution of Pakistan.

Aftab Alexander Mughal is the editor for a Pakistan-based nongovernmental organization, Minorities Concern of Pakistan.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe

URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/pakistan...cution-by-the-state/384885

Religious fundamentalism main root of violence in Pakistan

Religious fundamentalism main root of violence in Pakistan

By Mahfooz Kanwar, For The Calgary Herald July 6, 2010

In a little more than a month there have been two major terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims against other Muslims at mosques in Lahore, Pakistan.

This past Thursday, two suicide bombers blew themselves up killing at least 42 people and injuring a minimum of 180 people at the Data Darbar shrine, where a famous Sufisaint is buried.

On May 28, fundamentalist Muslims massacred more than 90 Ahmadiyya Muslims at their two mosques in Lahore and injured hundreds more.

When these events occur – and their have been many more in this Punjab region of Pakistan – the world wonders: why do Muslims kill other Muslims?

Not only did some Muslim fundamentalists armed with suicide vests, guns and grenades kill and injure dozens of worshippers, but they also took a large number of Ahmadis hostage.

This appalling, murderous act is not unusual in the history of Pakistan. In 1953, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, a fundamentalist religious and political party in Pakistan, created a murderous upheaval against Ahmadis in the same city of Lahore. Jamaat’s hooligans killed approximately 2,000 innocent Ahmadis. Now, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are suspected in this sectarian violence.

During my schooling, I minored in Islamic studies, and have published a book on Sociology of Islam. I have studied Islam further and have published my research in two other of my books as well as columns in newspapers and I have discussed those results in three of my 21 documentaries over the years.

Many Muslim fundamentalists are semi-literate, and some of them totally illiterate mullahs. The Holy Book of Qur’an makes it very clear that those Muslims who kill or commit suicide will be condemned to hell. Yet, some of these ill-informed Muslim extremists, such as suicide bombers, commit both murder and suicide. And they believe they are acclaimed to go to heaven in their life here after.

Pakistani Islamists always have had issues with the Muslim sect of Ahmadis. Along with the Islamic fundamentalists, some prominent secular politicians have also played the card of religion in Pakistan. The former prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims in the early 1970s.

Bhutto’s government introduced a column for religion on the national identity cards as well as passports in singling out the Muslim sect of Ahmadis along with the rest of non-Muslims in Pakistan. This was designed basically to create a system of religious apartheid in Pakistan. That act smacked the basic Islamic principle of tolerance.

In Pakistan, Ahmadis are often barred from praying in their mosques. To preach their faith is considered to be a crime under Article 295 of the Penal Code of Pakistan. The federal sharia Court of Pakistan has ruled that preventing Ahmadis from preaching their faith is no violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution of Pakistan. This is akin to the system of apartheid which was once practised in South Africa.

Although Bhutto was overwhelmingly supported politically by more than two million Ahmadis in Pakistan, he declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Bhutto, a secular political leader, betrayed Ahmadis big time. However, the vile fundamentalist and ruthless military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq expanded the system of apartheid for Ahmadis in Pakistan.

What makes Bhutto, Zia and many mullahs qualified to decide who are or aren’t Muslims? It is supposed to be God’s business to judge His creatures.

In my research for my forthcoming book, Addiction to Religion, I note, among other things, that Islam means peace and Muslims are supposed to adhere to peace, but that does not seem to be the case for decades now.

Islam is a religion but Islamism is an addiction to religion that leads to terrorism. Fundamentalism is a gateway to addiction to religion which blinds people to become suicide bombers who commit two sins in Islam that will take them to hell.

Unfortunately, Pakistan is ruled by five pillars of corrupt establishment. They are: unpatriotic feudal landlords turned politicians (they, along with the Jamaat-e-Islami, were opposed to the creation of Pakistan), cruel military dictators (who have ruled Pakistan ruthlessly for more than half of it’s history), corrupt politicians, depraved bureaucrats, and fundamentalist mullahs.

This last pillar is perhaps the most key. Until the idea of freedom of religion becomes accepted in Pakistan, Muslims will keep on killing each other. That’s because they believe that there is only one way to practice Islam – their way. They are taught no tolerance to other faiths or even to those who share their faith but practise it differently. That’s why Shiites kill Sunnis, Sunnis kill Shiites, both kill Ahmadis and these groups – with the backing of the government and Pakistani law – all persecute and attack Christians and Hindus.

Until and unless something revolutionary happens, Pakistan will continue facing drastic, murderous problems.

Mahfooz Kanwar is Professor Emeritus at Mount Royal University

Copyright © The Calgary Herald

URL: www.calgaryherald.com/news/Religious+fundamental...00/story.html

The embrace of insanity

	Friday, June 28, 2010, Rajab 15 ,1431 A.H.
The embrace of insanity

Monday, June 28, 2010
Sherry Rehman

The writer is an MNA and former federal minister for information.

The nexus between state identity and religion is always a dangerous link. When citizens are massacred and abused on the status of their religious identity, then the slide into bestiality is no longer a heartbeat away. It is firmly among us. At this point only unmitigated public outrage and a matching state response puts us back in the league of the civilized and therefore, human.

The massacre of Ahmadis in Lahore is not the first event to have exposed fault lines in the crafting of a national identity in Pakistan. The Christian pogrom at Gojra in 2009 where the police provided impunity to the attackers, instead of protection to the victims, did just the same. Equally disturbing is the level and scale of ambiguity from several political parties on the action that governments need to take to protect their citizens.

Of course many voices were raised at the brutal attack on May 28, but a religious party actually had the audacity to exhort minorities to live within their implicitly secondary status in Pakistan. Eleven of them condemned the Punjab leadership for declaring solidarity with the Ahmadis, in an act of state contrition. The parliament rallied eventually to voice their condemnation, but even among the heartland of non-denominational parties from Punjab the reluctance exposed the rot at the heart of the promise. One public official from Punjab actually said on a live public transmission that he could not even remove the banners inciting hate against the Ahmadis. We cannot handle the repercussions of that, he openly confessed. Several politicians from across the political divide held their peace as many retained links to extremist and sectarian parties for their votes, mainly again from Punjab.

This admission of state inability to punish minority-haters is no small event. It reinforces the belief that like the murderers at Gojra, the Ahmadi-killers too will remain unpunished. It tears the mask from the conceit that in Pakistan, despite its contested identity, the government will at least strive to adhere to some of the fundamental rights of equal citizenship enshrined in the Constitution to all minorities.

Of course these notional equalities too were brought into challenge by the 18th Constitutional Amendment, which despite its welcome thrust at restoring many entitlements, including the right for minorities to worship “freely” reversed some critical ones, by creating an obligation to be Muslim to be president or prime minister. This clearly states that according to the Constitution now, the right to represent Pakistan in its top elected offices can only go to Muslims. Will we one day only allow a particular sect of Muslims to represent Pakistan? Because if we continue on these lines, that is the next logical step on a slippery slope of concessions that began with the Objectives Resolution. No one should be surprised that Shia doctors are the target of another grisly round of planned exterminations in Karachi.

There can be no right to worship “freely”, if a community is made to carry its denomination on its sleeve, like a star of David in Nazi Germany. To qualify for a Pakistani passport, that ultimate marker of citizenship, all Pakistanis have to sign a disclaimer confirming each person’s commitment to condemn the Ahmadis, and this continues even today. Other than the anti-Ahmadiya Ordinance passed in 1984, which has not been allowed to lapse, the Zia government took several steps to marginalize and persecute this largely educated community. In order to forswear their citizenship, Pakistan has forgone its only Nobel prize-winning laureate, Professor Abdus Salaam, who accepted his physics prize in national dress. Vicious anti-Ahmadiya propaganda was inculcated in classrooms, and there have been many episodes since then, when Ahmadi students were beaten, tortured and hounded on false charges of blasphemy under the black laws introduced in 1986. The list is long and shameful.

Violence gains velocity in an atmosphere of impunity. Quite simply, in the absence of state action, there is little opposition to the narrative that always shifts the debate off-centre from the rights of Pakistani citizens. On all the television channels, religious leaders pop up to cite the primacy of religious law, undeterred and possibly spurred on by the fact that there is no one single codified Islamic law, to subvert the polar axis of the discourse to a privatized view of justice. The rights of citizens as guaranteed under the Constitution get left far behind, while the counter-narrative from civil society and isolated political voices based on recourse in the Constitution, remains un-buttressed by support from the state.

Inertia at a time when moral and political choices have to be made amounts to complicity with turpitude. The government has a unique opportunity to begin incremental reversals of this embrace of insanity. The Constitution, battered as it is, protects minorities very explicitly. While it can certainly do more, even a token adherence to a slew of clauses, particularly Article 20, which allows “each citizen to have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion” can go a long way in shutting down vitriol against citizens who peacefully worship according to their faith. The courts too can and should use these provisions to take suo moto notice of such outrages in the name of religiosity. So far the superior courts have remained silent on the flagrant violation of the Constitution.

In order to confront this political Islamist lobby it would be useful to remind all concerned that in Islam the core idea of justice is seen as the highest moral path to practical proximity to God. As for minorities specifically, the government can exhort detractors by iterating the words and deeds of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) when he says: “Beware! If anyone dare oppress a member of a minority or has usurped his or her rights, or tortured, or tool away something forcibly, I will fight on behalf of the minority against the Muslim on the day of Judgement.” (Sunaan-i-Abu Dawood).

The government can start by following up on the review of the Blasphemy Laws promised last year. If the debate is given priority, this parliament will provide the majority needed, and it must act fast to block reactionary hangovers from past governments to challenge the emerging national consensus against extremism and terrorism. There can be no equivocation on the truth that militancy, extremism and terrorism are explicitly connected in Pakistan. We wilfully embrace insanity if we provide impunity for persecution of our minorities, if we pamper militancy on the one hand, and denounce it on another. If the provincial budget of the Punjab government grants money to banned terrorist outfits, even if it is to their charitable wings, then we are truly embracing insanity. Because this is no political leader using extremist votes to buy power. This is institutionalized support to the same outfits we have banned.

Such actions will empower the very forces the Pakistan government and army is engaged in fighting at a very heavy cost. It is a negation of the tremendous sacrifice we as a nation are making, of 3000 people killed in the name of terrorism since last year, of the children still living in refugee camps in their own country, of the fear that stalks our streets after thousands of bombs detonate in reprisals to state operations against militants. It is a negation of the democratic, humane identity of Pakistan.

Our post-colonial state identity may be ambiguous, but it is precisely this space that can be used as an opportunity to steer our fragile nation-hood in another direction.

Email: sherryrehman@jinnahinstitute. com

URL: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=247575

Still no counterterrorism strategy

	Wednesday, June 02, 2010, Jamadi-us-Sani 18 , 1431 A.H.
Still no counterterrorism strategy

Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Mosharraf Zaidi

One of my closest friends has never once, in more than fifteen years, ever responded to my salaam with a salaam. I have never held it against him. If he did, and a budding Mullah Chinioti heard him say it, he could be imprisoned for three years. I don’t blame my friend for never wanting to take the risk. Being risk-averse is not a choice made when you reach adulthood for Pakistani Ahmedis. It is a way of life. Every murdered Ahmedi in Pakistan helps reinforce the fear and the stoicism of this patriotic community of Pakistanis. And every murdered Ahmedi is a stain on Pakistan’s rich canvas of disgrace and guilt.

The press in Pakistan is awash in self-conscious hand-wringing about the massacre of Ahmedis by the TTP in Lahore. No such trepidation or nerves were on display at any previous point in this bloody and unending war between the TTP and the Pakistani people. Pakistanis that aspire for a “liberal” social and political space are incandescent with rage about the blasphemy law, about Zulfi Bhutto’s kneeling before the “mullahs” and about Zia’s escalation of state-sponsored, legal and constitutional hostility towards Ahmedis. Most Pakistanis, however, far and widely disconnected from what has come to represent “liberal” in Pakistan, would rather stay silent. There is surely a degree of shame and guilt for living in a country that has, even if it is by some degrees of separation, essentially participated in ghettoising an entire community. For most Pakistanis, however, there’s something more important than this shame. There is a fierce commitment to Islam.

This narrative of overarching religious devotion needs to be understood for what it is. Most Pakistanis are not particularly religious, but are very, very particularly devoted to the symbols of their religion. There is scarcely a symbol more central to Pakistani Muslims than the life, times and person of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him. The flat and comprehensive finality of the Holy Prophet is non-negotiable.

Of course, that commitment does not, under any moral, legal or political framework, justify the way that Ahmedis are treated in Pakistan. In fact, the real outrage may be that Pakistani Muslims allow themselves to live in a country where religious fanatics posing as vigilantes see it fit to distribute their twisted version of justice on the lives of the innocent minorities of Pakistan.

The religious issue of the status of the Ahmedi faith in Pakistan is further complicated because it is also a legal issue. If Pakistanis, whether they call themselves liberal or not, are interested in beating the fanatics, and making Pakistan a safe place to live for all Pakistanis, then remembering certain facts is central to the project of fixing Pakistan.

The religious identity of Pakistan’s Constitution was the product of a democratic discourse. It is easy to demonise Zia, particularly given his government’s slavish pandering to a tiny sliver of mullahs. But frankly, reality also requires us to remember that Bhutto’s own rhetoric and most of the mainstream discourse preceding Bhutto (notwithstanding Ayub’s colonised vision for Pakistan) was not uncomfortable with Muslim identity. To the contrary, it had a healthy mix of political Muslimness, without any of the political Islamism that infected Pakistan under Zia.

That middle-of-the-road approach to Islam in the public space has not turned out very well. Arguably, it has bequeathed to Pakistan the TTP and its various components, and affiliates, including the increasingly brazen Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. But the emergence of Pakistani soil as the birthing place of so many terrorists is not solely a product of the Pakistani political conversation, and Islam’s place in it. It is also a product of the Pakistani military elite’s insatiable appetite for shiny new weapons.

The success or failure of the PPP- and Muslim League-dominated mainstream politics of Pakistan – which has always absorbed “Muslimness” into the discourse – can be argued about. There is no argument, however, about one fact. Since well before Bhutto, one bankable reality in Pakistani politics is that so-called Pakistani liberalism will always score high with the west and fail spectacularly at home. The righteous indignation of Pakistan’s “progressive” and “liberal” elite – whenever Pakistani extremism or fanaticism rears its ugly head – has very little bearing on what takes place in this country. Of the most important issues to any sincerely progressive person in Pakistan – such as how women are treated, how the powerful are unaccountable and how minorities are treated – it is the Pakistani fanatic that has won every single argument since 1947.

As children of Jinnah’s Pakistan, perhaps aspiring liberals and progressives need to start to ask questions about the nature of our citizenship, the nature of our engagement, and the nature of our politics within the broader canvas of realpolitik in Pakistan. The most important paint on this canvas is the green-coloured traditional South Asian Muslim sentiment of the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis. Pakistan’s central conversation is not a Sufi rock concert. It is a race for the next rupee, whilst carefully stepping over a cocktail of Barelvi, Deobandi, Wahhabbi, post-modern, Salafi and Shiite veritable “landmines”. Pakistani Muslim orthopraxis is diverse and contested – but it is central to defining the lowest common denominator in Pakistan’s issue-politics.

Asking questions about how to improve the rate of success of liberal causes in Pakistan requires us to take a break from mullah-bashing, and introspect. It is a political minefield if you’re a reformer interested in stripping Pakistan’s Constitution of its Muslim identity. It is an orchard ripe with fruit if you’re interested in exploiting existing religious stereotypes and biases in Pakistani society. Where can we reasonably expect every politician to eventually land every single time?

A transformed political landscape is a long-term project. Without substantially more grounded and active participation of Pakistani liberals in mainstream politics, it has no chance of fruition. In the meantime, Pakistanis, like the ones at Ghari Shahu and Model Town, are dying. I’m not interested in the guilty pleasures of trying to figure out if they were Muslim or not. I’m interested in catching the murderous criminals that did this, and making sure they don’t do it again. We can have all the uncomfortable religious conversations we like once we’re all secure from these bombs and bullets.

Let’s not forget that Benazir Bhutto is among the thirty thousand victims of terrorism in Pakistan since 2001. Since the TTP came together in December 2007, they have killed indiscriminately at mosques, at schools, at universities and in markets. Every law – both written and unwritten – in Pakistan is used to protect its VIPs, and yet the TTP got to Shaheed Mohtarma, and killed her.

We are too self-conscious as a nation. Too beholden to mullahs on the one hand, and too dislocated from our own culture and context on the other. The terrorist attacks in Lahore were more of what has become a standard part of life in Pakistan since 2007. The TTP may be ceding ground to the Pakistani Army and the friendly skies that US drones explore on a daily basis. But they are winning the war. The longer we remain stuck in a useless ideological conversation, the more ground the TTP will gain.

The most important tribute we can pay to those that were slaughtered by the TTP in Lahore is to formulate and execute a transparent and comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. Anything less would be a continuation of the failed politics of Pakistani liberals, and the unchallenged run of success enjoyed by Pakistani fanatics. Of course, many of us have been advocating a CT strategy now for the better part of three years. I am not hopeful.

In the meantime, I will continue to be ashamed every time I meet my Ahmedi friends. Whatever religious disagreements we may have, Pakistani Muslims should have been protectors of the weak, not spectators to their torment. The TTP’s bloodlust does not abdicate us from that responsibility.

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy. www.mosharrafzaidi.com

URL: www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=242541

Bring back Jinnah’s Pakistan

---Daily Dawn, Pakistan

Bring back Jinnah’s Pakistan

By Ardeshir Cowasjee
Sunday, 01 Nov, 2009

Of late, amidst the murder and mayhem accompanied by an absence of government or any signs of governance, a group of citizens has been circulating an email message exhorting whoever to ‘bring back Jinnah’s Pakistan’.

Now, to bring back something that existed for a mere moment in the life of this nation is more than difficult at a time when the national mindset is what it is.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan was denounced six months after his death when the Objectives Resolution was passed, negating the words he had so eloquently spoken to his constituent assembly on Aug 11 1947: ‘… You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state.’ Thus, willy-nilly, the state was made the custodian of religion.

In the early 1950s, the British writer Hector Bolitho was commissioned by the government to write an official biography of Jinnah. It was published in 1954. Such was the moral dishonesty and hypocrisy that had taken a firm hold and rooted itself in the country’s psyche that the ruling clique of the day perverted Jinnah’s words, and printed in the book was this version of the quoted sentence: ‘You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state.’

In April 1962, the days of President Gen Ayub Khan, came a lessening of the prevailing hypocrisy and the government press department published a collection of Jinnah’s speeches as governor general of Pakistan. The Aug 11, 1947 speech was printed in full in its original version. (These speeches were reprinted by the government of Benazir Bhutto and released for sale in 1989.)

In 1984, when wily Ziaul Haq ruled, came the finest biography of Jinnah so far written. Prof Stanley Wolpert’s well-researched book, Jinnah of Pakistan, was published in the US by Oxford University Press and 500 copies were sent to Pakistan to be released for sale.

Prior to its release, two copies were sent by OUP to the information ministry seeking permission to reprint locally. The minions of this pernicious ministry, which should not exist, took exception to certain passages in the book in which our founder-maker’s personal tastes and habits were mentioned.

The 498 copies of the book lying with OUP were removed from their storeroom and reprinting of course denied. To top this crass idiocy, Wolpert was approached and asked to delete the offending passages so that it could be reprinted and sold. Naturally, Wolpert’s response was that as a scholar he was unable to compromise on basic principles and any deletion/amendment was out of the question.

Thus the book effectively remained banned in Pakistan until in 1989, when, to give full credit to Benazir and her government, permission was given to OUP to reprint and the book was released for sale. Zia’s was an exercise in pure futility.

Our large neighbour also has blinkered intolerant elements in its midst. There is a long list of books that are banned in India, amongst them Stanley Wolpert’s ‘factional’ novel on the assassination of Gandhi, Nine Hours to Rama, which was banned by the government in 1962. And now, this August, two days after its release the government of the Indian state of Gujarat saw fit to issue a notification ‘forfeiting’ and ‘prohibiting’ Jaswant Singh’s Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence (Mr Singh was also expelled by his party, the BJP).

The book was banned with immediate effect and in the wider public interest because it was alleged that its contents are highly objectionable, against the national interest, misleading, distort historical fact and that it is defamatory in regard to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who is largely regarded as the architect of modern India.

Mr Singh swiftly approached the Indian Supreme Court challenging the ban on the grounds of the violation of fundamental rights. The court issued a notice to the Gujrat government. In the meantime, an appeal was submitted to the Gujrat High Court which struck down the ban. With the Gujrat government prevaricating, the matter remains before the supreme court.

Now, to the bringing back in totality of Jinnah’s Pakistan — that we can never do as half of his Pakistan was shorn by the collusion of our politicians and army generals, the deadly mixture of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Gen Yahya Khan who threw away East Pakistan through a lust for power coupled by incompetence and insensitivity. What can be saved, if we had the leadership to do so, is the spirit of Jinnah’s Pakistan as expressed by him on that distant August day.

Had a large part of the Middle Eastern region and parts of South Asia been able to heed Jinnah’s words that religion, caste and creed ‘has nothing to do with the business of the state’ the world may well have been in better shape today. It is possible that the extremism that has galloped away in these areas would not have taken root had various states not been allowed to force upon the world their dangerously distorted version of a religion.

As for Pakistan, the Objectives Resolution forms the preamble to ZAB’s constitution and was additionally inserted as an annex by Ziaul Haq. Then we have ZAB’s second amendment to his constitution which reinforces bigotry and intolerance. No government has been strong enough to take on the mullah fraternity whose grip has strengthened with the years. To bring us back to Jinnah’s Pakistan, we must have a revolution — a revolution of the national mindset and a latter-day Ataturk to ensure that it is successful.

arfc @ cyber.net.pk

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