Religious Bigotry in Islamic Republic - Pakistan Embarked On the Islamic Republic Project In 1956
By
Yasser Latif Hamdani
February 8,
2021
Last week
during the hearing on Punjab’s dissolution of local bodies, Justice Qazi Faez
Isa made a number of damning observations on the conduct of not just the
Government of Punjab but also the conduct of the Federal Government vis a vis
freedom of the press. He said in clear language that media in Pakistan is not
free. To back this up he asked the media persons to raise their hands if they
think media free in Pakistan. No hands went up. When he asked them to raise
their hands if they think media is not free, all hands went up. It was a very
embarrassing moment for the Federal Government, which for the last two and a
half years has held no punches to ensure that the media is made compliant to
their whims and sensitivities. Without a free media there can be democracy.
Justice Qazi made another astute observation: While a person is free to dislike
some provisions of the Constitution by right, the constitutional framework and
method is supreme. It is this part – the right to dislike some provisions- that
was the most important part of His Lordship’s observations.
There is
much that one dislikes about the present Constitution i.e. its discrimination
against Non-Muslims and its theocratic undertones. Still this is the
Constitution we have and we must work within its framework to deliver a
democratic society.
Extreme
right wing only sees those clauses that benefit them but forget that the
Constitution provides fundamental rights of freedom of speech and religion. The
same Constitution also provides for minorities the right to freely profess,
practise and propagate their faith while being allowed to freely develop their
culture. However consider for example the case of Ahmadis. Declared Non-Muslim
by this Constitution in 1974 (a provision they dislike as is their right),
since 1984 they are not allowed to free profess, practise and propagate their
faith or develop their culture freely. In fact they are routinely imprisoned
for their faith or even reading the Holy Quran. As if that was not enough they
are not allowed to even publish their own books for their own consumption. This
is championed as a constitutionally sanctioned discrimination when the
Fundamental Rights, both Article 19 and Article 20, say otherwise. These
Fundamental Rights are immutable and cannot be made subject to Ahmadis agreeing
to their classification as Non-Muslim. Constitution declares them Non-Muslim
for the purposes of law and constitution but it does not make it obligatory on
them to consider themselves Non-Muslim.
Pakistan
had embarked on the Islamic Republic project in 1956. The makers of the first
constitution were mindful of the fact that the very nature of the Islamic
Republic will come to be contested between the modernists and the orthodoxy.
The framers of 1956 Constitution were not outright secularists – though it
would have been better if they were- because if they had been they would not
have wanted an Islamic Republic. Therefore they ensured that other than the
office of the president, there were no bars against any community. The office
of the Prime Minister was open to every community and more importantly the
Republic had no state religion.
The 1956
Constitution had no religious oaths and unfettered fundamental rights of
freedom of speech and religion. By and large the Constitution of 1962 – which
unlike the 1956 Constitution was not framed by a Constituent Assembly and was
presidential in nature- followed the tradition of keeping religion and state
had somewhat a distance. Indeed initially the 1962 Constitution had named the
country Republic of Pakistan, something, which was changed back to the Islamic
Republic by first amendment.
All of this
changed in 1973. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a towering political figure but he was
driven by this mad notion that the constitution must be made by the consensus
of all sections including the religious right. He had come to power defeating
the parties of the right and the main opposition to him the NAP was also
secular. What drove him to seek the consensus of the religious right is one of
life’s great mysteries as are his actions in 1974 because he was no bigot-
indeed far from it. These are questions only Bhutto could have answered but
providence did not give him the opportunity to right the wrongs.1973 could have
been Pakistan’s moment but it was blown and is now a cautionary tale.
1973
Constitution was further mangled by General Zia’s bigoted dictatorship and now
enables the kind of ruthless denial of fundamental rights that we see. Consider
for example the judgment by Islamabad High Court in the now famous Allah
Wassaya Case, PLD 2019 Page 62, authored by the now disgraced “Justice” Shaukat
Aziz Siddiqi. It builds on Zaheeruddin v State, 1993 SCMR 1718, which had
upheld the persecution of Ahmadis as being constitutional. The Allah Wasaya
Case went further.
First it
repeated the propaganda against Ahmadis declaring them enemies of the state.
The thrust of it was that no Ahmadi should hold an office in the state. Clearly
the disgraced judge either had no idea or deliberately chose to overlook the
fact that the reason Pakistan today has UNSC Resolutions on Kashmir was the good
work of an Ahmadi. Zafrullah Khan, appointed Foreign Minister by none other
than Quaid-e-Azam Mahomed Ali Jinnah himself, had gotten the resolutions we
wave in India’s face. The last official action by the Quaid-e-Azam was to give
Zafrullah Khan the plenipotentiary powers on the Kashmir issue. The disgraced
Judge also forgot to mention that an Ahmadi General who was on the verge of
taking all of Kashmir before he was replaced by Yahya Khan in 1965 who went
ahead and blew that great opportunity. It was an Ahmadi Mirza Muzaffar Ahmad as
the Federal Finance Secretary who got the Tarbela and Mangla Dams made. Earlier
he was instrumental in getting the Indus Basin Treaty being signed which
protected Pakistan’s rights as the lower riparian state.
It was an
Ahmadi, Dr Abdus Salam, who founded SUPARCO (and sent a satellite into space
long before most countries in Asia) and then led the famous Multan Conference
where the idea of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb was born. My guess is that the now
disgraced judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqi is too ignorant to know these facts or too
much of bigot to appreciate the salience of these contributions.
The
judgment did not stop here. “Justice” Siddiqi also ordered that Ahmadis should
be stopped from calling themselves Ahmadis and also forced to add “Qadiani”
“Mirzai” or “Ghulam-e-Mirza” to their name. The ignorant disgraced judge thus
wanted to replicate the Nazi model in Pakistan. Thankfully his big mouth got
him into trouble soon enough and Pakistan was rid of General Zia junior before
he could become the Chief Justice of Islamabad High Court. One wishes that
Pakistan had more of Justice QaziIsas and fewer Justice Siddiqis.
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Yasser
Latif Hamdani is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan
Original
Headline: A short history of religious
bigotry in our Islamic Republic
Source: The Daily Times
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/religious-bigotry-islamic-republic-pakistan/d/124247