The Rise of Religious Extremism in Pakistan In Pakistan, the relation between Islam and state has been a matter of great controversy. From the time of its inception, the opinion in the country has remained divided as to whether Pakistan is to be an Islamic/‘shariah’ state or a ‘modern’/‘secular’ Muslim-majority state. The roots of this controversy could be traced to the various statements of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, which he gave during the independence movement and at the time of the emergence of Pakistan. For example, in his 1940-article entitled “The Constitutional Future of India”, Jinnah stated: “The British people, being Christians, sometimes forget the religious wars of their own history and today consider religion as a private and personal matter between man and God. This can never be the case in Hinduism and Islam, for these religions are definite social codes which govern not so much man’s relations with his God as man’s relations with his neighbor. They govern not only his law and culture, but every aspect of his social life, and such religions, essentially exclusive, completely preclude that merging of identity and unity of thought on which Western democracy is based, and inevitably bring about vertical rather than the horizontal divisions democracy envisages.” [1] In marked contrast to the opinion expressed in the above-mentioned article, Jinnah as the designated Governor-General stated in the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August 1947: “ . . . You may belong to any religion or caste or creed . . . that has nothing to do with the business of the state . . . We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state.” He added, “. . .you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in political sense, as citizens of the state.” [2] The ‘two-nation theory’ had served its purpose and was duly repudiated. The two ‘nations’ __ Hindus and Muslims ___ were once again to be regarded as two ‘communities’ after independence. Jinnah’s pronouncement of 11 August 1947 explicitly envisaged creation of a secular state in Pakistan. In doing so he was representing religious diversity of Pakistani society and plurality of Pakistani culture. But the Ulema (Clergy) considered it a betrayal of the cause for which the South Asian subcontinent was partitioned into two sovereign states. Since then the ‘Objectives Resolution’ of 1949, the 22 Points of the Ulema framed in 1951, the anti-Ahmediya agitation of 1953, the ‘Islamic’ provisions of the Constitutions of 1956, 1962 and 1973, including the declaration of the Ahmediya community as being outside the pale of Islam through a constitutional amendment in 1974, General Zia’s ‘Islamization’ program and the ‘jihadi’ culture have reflected the conflicts and compromises between the adherents of diverse opinions as to the role of Islam in Pakistan. Notwithstanding popular aspiration to establish some form of Islamic polity___ a legacy of the freedom struggle ____ the ethos of Pakistani society did not reflect religious extremism, at least till 1979. READ FULL ARTICLE :- ismica/2009/04/the-rise-of-religious-extremism-in-pakistan/
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 10:20:49 +0000