Pakistanis Must Remain Rooted In The Vision Of the Quaid-e-Azam
By
Junaid Jahangir, New Age Islam
7 May 2021
Pakistani
Muslims Better Appreciate The Qur’an Perspective That People Were Created In
Separate Tribes So That They May Know One Another And Compete In Good Works
Main
Points:
1. Indians who
elected Modi hold on to a narrative where they harbour animosities on six
hundred years of Muslim rule.
2. Faisal Edhi
offered a fleet of 50 ambulances and assistance with personnel.
3. It manifested
the Prophetic teaching to offer a date even if that is all one has to offer
4. Today, India
enjoys good relations with Iran, Afghanistan, and even Uzbekistan, which is
where the founder of the Mughal dynasty Babur hailed from.
As India
suffers from COVID-19 and as horrific images from India were broadcast on
Pakistani media, many Pakistanis reached out to their neighbours on social
media with prayers. Faisal Edhi offered a fleet of 50 ambulances and assistance
with personnel. That a country multiple times smaller and economically weaker
than India was able to offer this much speaks of volumes. It manifested the
Prophetic teaching to offer a date even if that is all one has to offer. The
overwhelming response from the Indians who engage in mindless worship of Modi
and his far-right party that has overseen pogroms of Indian Muslims, rejected
the offer out of spite and arrogance. Some mentioned that all this was for
publicity stunts, that 50 ambulances were puny compared to the thousands of
ambulances running in each of the Indian cities, and that Pakistan would
smuggle terrorists in the guise of such help. If such Indians, despite immense
suffering of their people, spurn an outstretched hand then this does not bode
well for those Pakistanis and Indians who keep posting emotional outbursts of a
united India in online spaces.
It seems
that the large swathes of Indians who elected Modi hold on to a narrative where
they harbour animosities on six hundred years of Muslim rule. This point was
made in the movie Jinnah with Christopher Lee, where he is shown to have
expressed that with the awakening of the Indians, the British would have their
island to go back to, but Muslims don’t have such an island. Indeed, the old
warlords from Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan that attacked India are long
dead and those who stayed in India long assimilated into the local tradition
and culture. Today, India enjoys good relations with Iran, Afghanistan, and
even Uzbekistan, which is where the founder of the Mughal dynasty Babur hailed
from, but directs its intergenerational trauma against Muslims in India or
neighbouring Pakistan. This ire seems misplaced, and it seems to have been
fomented by a far-right party. Such
parties across the globe are noted for turning the attention of the people away
from pressing economic issues and towards divisive targeting of immigrants in
the west, communists, Christians and Dalits in India or Ahmadis, Hindus and
Christians in Pakistan.
On their
part, Pakistanis have also crafted a narrative based on the past. The very fact
that Pakistani missiles and tanks are named after regional Muslim warriors that
attacked India is a testament that Pakistanis strayed far from the vision of
their founding father, Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Picking a fight with a
neighbour much larger and superior in might through the decades of ill-fated
wars instead of investing in education, healthcare and poverty alleviation has
inflicted tremendous harm on Pakistan. Much like the U.S. where poor Americans
were shipped off to Vietnam and relatively recently to Afghanistan and Iraq,
Pakistan has seen the loss of lives of so many young Jawans (junior soldiers),
who have been used as cannon fodder to serve the strategic interests of the
privileged establishment. It is the confluence of Pakistanis nurturing a
narrative of past warriors and the superiority of Islam, and Indians feeding a
similar narrative of the superiority of Indian culture and Dharmic religion
that has led to the present situation where even honest sentiments expressed by
ordinary everyday people are spurned. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find
Pakistanis telling Hindus to “revert” to Islam when the latter express an
appreciation of Sufi music and Indians equally telling Muslims to return to
their original Dharmic faith when they express an appreciation of Hindu
devotional hymns in the YouTube comment section.
This
exaggerated expression of emotions on converting others to one’s narrative and
emphasis on religious fervour was precisely what was rejected by Jinnah, who
instead favoured a more rational approach to addressing issues. Indeed, Jinnah
is neither respected by the Islamists nor the hardline Hindutvavadis, for both
groups have sought to infuse mindless religiosity into the affairs of the
state. He is not properly understood by Pakistanis who want an ever-elusive
Islamic state, or the Indians who believe in the myth that India was a united
whole and not a loose mish mash of princedoms and empires with ever changing
borders. If one were to pull one’s head
out of emotional theatrics, it is not difficult to understand that the demand
for a Muslim majority nation is not equivalent to the demand for an Islamic
state. Throughout Muslim history, the
Caliphs and the clergy were at odds. The fact that Ahmad Ibn Hanbal was
whipped, and that other prominent jurists kept a distance from the Caliphs is a
testament to this very fact. In a similar vein, Jinnah rejected Gandhi’s
drawing of religious symbolism in the struggle for independence. He was the one
politician who understood a basic truth that would be echoed by Rekha in the
1987 movie Sansar, that instead of living under the same roof, they
would live separately but visit on Sundays for it would be better to stay far
but remain close instead of living together but remaining distant.
Pakistani
Muslims can better appreciate this perspective hailed by Jinnah through the
Qur’an when it teaches that people were created in separate tribes so that they
may know one another and compete in good works, and that every human being has
their own sharia (path) to tread so that each one of them would have their
reward with Allah. Indeed, pristine Islam never laid down the conditions to
“revert” as it has become ubiquitous in contemporary Muslim circles whose
brains are so fried by anime, video games and bodybuilding that they have no
reflection left for religion save parroting the views of their favourite
clerics and religious cults. What all this means for Pakistanis commenting
online is that they need to forgo excessive sentimentality and exaggerated
emotions and instead focus on their rational faculties. In short, they need to
remain rooted in the vision of the Quaid e Azam that Pakistan is a separate
nation, it is neither Arab nor is it entirely Indian, but it draws its strength
from the best values of both traditions. They don’t have to concern themselves
with either reunification or with “reverting” others but help others whilst
keeping their distinct identity intact, which is possible when they focus on
the vision of the Quaid e Azam: to make Pakistan one of the greatest nations of
the world.
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Junaid
Jahangir is an Assistant Professor of Economics at MacEwan University. He is
the co-author of Islamic Law and Muslim Same-Sex Unions. With Dr. Hussein
Abdullatif, a paediatric endocrinologist in Alabama, he has co-authored several
academic papers on the issue of same-sex unions in Islam. He contributed this
article to NewAgeIslam.com.
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/pakistani-muslims-jinnah-shariah-quran/d/124798
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