Nawaz Sharif said, “Quaid-e-Azam is indeed ranked amongst the most visionary politicians and great statesmen of the world. The Quaid successfully led the freedom movement of the Muslims of the Sub-Continent and established the first Islamic ideological state of the world.”
What utter rubbish. Quaid-e-Azam said clearly, “Pakistan is not going to be a theocracy to be ruled by priests with a divine mission.” It was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto & Zia ul Haq who made Pakistan into a two-bit theocratic ideological state. The whiskey drinking barrister, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be a secular, liberal democracy, where religion was not the business of the State. Barrister M.A Jinnah did not want the wars of religion, that had been fought in Europe 430 years ago, to be replicated on Pakistani soil, which is why he favoured the secular, liberal democratic model for Pakistan. Unfortunately, wars of religion are being fought between various extremists on Pakistani soil today.
The root cause is that these people think that they can take over the ‘Islamic’ state in the name of their own brand of fanatical Islam because Islam affords them legitimacy as it is the State religion. They were coddled by the State and some still are.
Secularism is an ideology that treats everyone equally before the law, regardless of their religion. Whereas, in an ideological and theocratic state some are more equal than others before the law, like women’s testimony is equal to half that of a man’s testimony in court, which is sheer injustice and an anachronism. Minorities are marginalised and openly discriminated against, forcibly converted, like Hindu girls in Sindh, then forcibly married off to Muslims and even killed in the name of religion. This then is the ‘Islamic’ model as it has been tried in Pakistan since the 1973 Constitution. Me, I personally like my whiskey mixed with sour mix. What Islam needs is an ‘Age of Reason, Enlightenment, Protestant Reformation and Renaissance,’ in order to adapt to the modern world.
Free your minds, then free the country from the vice like grip that Mullah-ism and its mentality has on Pakistan’s legal culture since 1973.
OMAR MIRZA,
USA, September 29.
