here than Karachi".
hindsight 20/20 vision, without any suggesteted alternate name for
Islamabad. Has Mr. Piracha ever written about Hindus' proclamations
after religious riots in India "Hindustan Hindu Ka - Nahee Kisi Ke Baap
Ka". Did they make minorities feel like First Class citizens?
Mr. Piracha's rendition seems merely a rationalization of the failures
of Pakistanis in particular. Have they done anything so far in a
professional manner? Even the "lafanga" business of film industry they
have botched up and now languishing in ignominy. On the other extreme
end likewise, even the highest achievement with the efforts of Dr. A.Q.
Khan was botched up politically!
For the name of Islamabad, I was in Gordon College when Islamabad's
foundation was being laid. Never before these belated intellectual
derivations we heard from even the minorities. The only complaint heard
was from families of civil servants and beaurocrats "It is too cold
here than Karachi".Does Mr. Piracha have an issue with the city called
DarEslam as well?
As for the mention of Armed forces in the article, the complaint should
be that everytime they stepped in to save the country from unscrupolous
civilian politicians, they stabilized it only to give it bach to the
same thieives. They ought to have instituted the Armed forces
stewardship just like that in Turky who have gained acceptance and
respect in Europe, at least more than many other nations. Rememer that
Ayub had to take over shortly after Pakistan's wretched democrats had
killed the Assembly speaker on the job. And the last one handed over
the country through the intrigue of NRO to the same renowned thiefs and
artisans of unsscupulous legal trickery - Benazir & Company and
especially Sharif Brothers (who manipulated to make Ishaque Khan,
Leghari resign turning on a dime, later Gen Karamat, and then,
miscalculating his skills, cooked up the elaborate scheme to fire
Musharraf, but got picked up like a mouse by the tail in two hours).
It is quite understandable Mr. Piracha's article coming from
"asiapeace" (on India's terms, of course).
A.M.
by the secular military dictatorship of Ayub Khan — is also a
prominent reason why the military and the establishment were left
stumped by the religious parties' mantra in this respect.
establishment was the glaring fact that Pakistan, even as a Muslim
country, was a land of great ethnic and sectarian diversity...>>
From: omarali502000@yahoo.com
To: asiapeace@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 12/7/2009 3:15:02 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: Asiapeace (ACHA) Fw: Nadeem Paracha: One-unit-faith
--- On Mon, 12/7/09, New Pakistan <newpakistanblog@gmail.com> wrote:
From: New Pakistan <newpakistanblog@gmail.com>
Subject: Nadeem Paracha: One-unit-faith
To: "New Pakistan" <new-pakistan@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 9:36 AM
http://www.new-pakistan.com/2009/12/7/nadeem-paracha-one-unit-faith
Recently, while giving a speech to the Peshawar police, General Ashfaq
Parvez Kayani said that no one could separate Islam from Pakistan. One
wonders what prompted the army chief to digress, and start assuring
his audience about Pakistan's Islamic credentials.
I guess he chose the occasion to comment on the military's take on a
(albeit unsubstantiated) news report stating that the Awami National
Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) wanted to change
the country's name from Islamic Republic of Pakistan to People's
Republic of Pakistan. Even though both the ANP and MQM were quick to
refute the news, General Kayani's reassurance in this respect yet
again underlines the dilemma the military and the state of Pakistan
have been facing for years.
The dilemma constitutes political and ideological factors in which the
military has had the biggest stakes; but unfortunately it is also a
dilemma which the military has been rather reluctant to resolve.
According to respected historians, like the late K. K. Aziz and Dr
Mubarak Ali, the whole idea that 'Pakistan was made in the name of
Islam' and/or as an 'Islamic state', was nowhere to be found in the
ideological discourse of the state before 1962, when it was first
raised by the Jamat-i-Islami — a party that was opposed to the
creation of Pakistan.
Though the civil-bureaucracy conglomerate that presided over the
affairs of the state and the government in the 1950s decided to
officially start calling the country an 'Islamic Republic' (in 1956),
there was really no mention of such a republic in the early years of
the new country. Scholars like Aysha Jalal and Pervez Hoodbhoy suggest
that right from the beginning the concept of Islam being a part of
Pakistan's nationhood and the state carried contradictory messages.
The country's founder was a secular Muslim, married to a non-Muslim
and a strong defender of the notion that the state should confine its
authority to the secular sphere. Throughout the Pakistan Movement, Mr
Jinnah's party, the Muslim League, overwhelmingly had secular-minded
leaders who treated the Muslims of the subcontinent as a separate
cultural (as opposed to a strictly politico-religious) entity. Their
demand was for a separate Muslim state and not an Islamic state.
There is no way that Pakistan was conceived as an Islamic state by its
founding fathers. This becomes apparent by the way orthodox Islamic
parties like the Jamat-i-Islami reacted to the creation of Pakistan.
Had Jinnah pictured the new country as an Islamic state, there was no
reason why parties like the Jamat would oppose its creation. It's as
simple as that.
However, unable to convincingly define its ideology, the state started
to capitulate in the face of the mounting pressure exerted by the
religious parties. Thus, from 1962 onwards, the largely synthetic
ideological construct of Pakistan being an Islamic Republic requiring
an Islamic state began taking shape.
The lack of democracy and its many institutions — initially discarded
by the secular military dictatorship of Ayub Khan — is also a
prominent reason why the military and the establishment were left
stumped by the religious parties' mantra in this respect. What was
being repressed in the discourse by the military and the civil
establishment was the glaring fact that Pakistan, even as a Muslim
country, was a land of great ethnic and sectarian diversity.
Its people constituted Urdu-speakers (Mohajirs), Sindhis, Pathans,
Siriakis, Baloch, Bengalis, and many others; and also people belonging
to various Islamic sects and sub-sects. By imposing the ruse that
Pakistan was 'one unit' (a collective body of homogenous Muslims) was
a naïve evaluation that only ended up alienating the many ethnically
distinct strains of Muslims and the minorities that made Pakistan
their home.
In other words, Pakistan's identity and ideology should have been
squarely based on a democratic acceptance of its ethnic, religious and
sectarian diversity, instead of the establishment's rather convoluted
'one ideology for all' brand of Islam. We are not an ethnically and
culturally homogenous nation following a singular version of Islam, or
of the state for that matter as far as religious minorities are
concerned.
We are a nation of various groups of diversified people who can remain
united as a country with the help of democracy alone. Only democracy
can achieve such a state of unity. But such a state usually has not
gone down well with Islamists and the military — even after years of
ethnic, political and religious turmoil and cleavages that the one-
unit-Islam has caused across the long dictatorships Pakistan has had
to suffer.
It is time our military and religious parties let go of the fear of a
democratically accepted, diverse Pakistan; especially the military,
which is now fighting a vital battle in the northwest — ironically
with the monstrous pitfalls of the synthetic state-sanctioned Islam
imposed through years of undemocratic rule and a crass undermining of
what Pakistani nation and society are really about: i.e. ethnic and
religious diversity requiring an uninterrupted stretch of democracy.
So what if some Pakistanis want to change the name of the country? It
is only the synthetic nature and fragility of the one-unit-Islam that
causes hearts to flutter, because state-sponsored Islam is not an
organic construct. Thus, it is an insecure ideology that continues to
blame outside forces, secularism and democracy for its own, very
obvious, failures.
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