The whole administration, inter alia, of law department of the Punjab government headed by the minister himself has been all out to strike conciliation between a Muslim and a Sikh family of District Nankana over marriage of a Sikh girl with a Muslim boy allegedly contracted forcibly by the Muslim boy under girl’s forced conversion to Islam. This is not the first ever allegation on a Muslim boy but the latest and hence fresh. Such episodes have been appearing on the surface for quite some time in various parts of the country including the multi-community areas, especially the interior Sind. Recently, an episode of two Hindu sisters was erupted having its final manifestation in the Islamabad High Court where the two girls deposed that they had got married to the Muslim boys out of their free will and love and hence no one had forced them to conversion to Islam.
Apart from the main discussion and argument on the subject, the fact remains that our judicial records are full of cases involving the elopements followed by the court marriages by the Muslim boys and girls of their free will as opposed to their parents and family as part of our rural culture wherein no such conversion is involved at all. However, the same cultural dilemma is rendered to be sold out in the name of forced conversion by certain groups where the girl mostly belongs to any minority. Most often the cases are either lodged with traditional image saving measure and reported without any investigation of the facts or highlighted to achieve certain respective ulterior motives. The lower judiciary, however, has its own constraints and limitations out of security fears or the sensitivity of situation and hence the cases are seen with certain unexpected convictions or otherwise which lead up to the level of apex court. This all unfortunately results in disturbance of peaceful co-existence of the various communities.
Astonishingly, however, the docile conduct and behavior of the Punjab administration in the aforesaid case of marriage of the Sikh girl with the Muslim boy under alleged forced conversion of religion is not tenable. Instead of dealing with the case on merit and consequences thereof accordingly for the parties, whatsoever, the efforts of the administration for obtaining a compromise between the parties, scaling obviously in favour of the Sikh family is hardly acceptable for the people of Pakistan in general and the people of Kashmir in particular where the Kashmiri Muslim girls’ life and honor is at stake at the hands of Hindu community.
True that Islam is a religion of peace. It rarely encourages committing any first casualty of sensibility and blood. However, simultaneously, it abhors any inaction or omission on the part of its members which is necessary and incidental to counter and curb any aggression crusaded by the non-Muslims against the unarmed, unsupported and helpless Muslims, nay the human beings, who call for help from Allah Almighty in the eventuality of any such oppression of the mighty and cruel.
Islam not only persuades but also makes it mandatory upon its members to fight where it becomes incumbent for the survival of its state and the weak. It then believes in avenge and revenge wherein, in its wisdom, lies the revival against perpetual death of a nation. At such point of time, it does not believe in the availability or lack of its resources rather enjoins strength in conviction.
Paradoxically, from the current situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir and elsewhere in India, it seems that though misinterpreted, it is the Hindus under BJB and RSS who have adopted the instructions as laid down by the Holy Quran instead of the Muslims in almost all the Muslim countries with no exception of Pakistan. Taliban, perhaps, at some length could be justified for some reasons to have frustrated the US forces in Afghanistan despite having scarcity of resources and direct support from any other forces at their credit.
The concept of religious war as commuted by the Hindus in India is altogether distinct from the concept of Jihad in Islam. Jihad in Islam is initially taken as defense measure and subsequently converted to the offensive to counter and curb the peace disturbing evil forces so as to establish eternal peace in region, nay in the land.
It is, unfortunately, seen that the Muslims in India in general and in Kashmir in particular are being persecuted even in the streets publicly by the Hindu extremists under the active connivance of Hindu pundits, BJP leadership and the state machinery. Hindus are not only manufacturing but also publicly displaying swords by social media viral. The world in general and we in particular has to locate the reasons as to why once the most cowardice creature on the earth, the Hindu, in the shape of the only Hindu state in the world, is being imposed upon the other non-Muslim regional states but also Muslim states in the world. Is it the very commercialism, the borrowed religious wars or the combination of the both that has gripped the world in general and the OIC countries in particular to its favour out of financial benefits or the Hinduistic scare? Is it a paradigm shift?
To be out of fallacy and not to be miscalculated for Pakistan that it seems to be written on the wall that US will join India in strategy and proxy support to India to revenge its defeat in Afghanistan and what to talk of support to Pakistan in the event of any war. Tribes as in 1948 and religious parties are not actively available to support Kashmiris in their agony. The people of Azad Kashmir may have a public support but are not familiar to the war situations. Muslim world did not support adjacent Palestine against Israel and what to talk of support to the distant Kashmiris. Financial balance between Pakistan at one hand and UAE and Saudi Arabia on the other lies in latter’s favour. Israel once planned to attack Pakistan’s nuclear installations through India and still using its land. China is not that speaking if not silent. The options left with Pakistan are the strategy, wisdom and skill which it has sufficiently shown in the past but, somehow, it succumbed to the international pressure and compromise in the opportunities, when it was, perhaps, a crime. Be that it may, Kashimiris themselves may be a great direct potential and a proxy for Pakistan coupled with anti-Modi Indian public stance.