Home >> History, Ideology & Science >> Political Theory

     Email   Print 

Chronicle Of A New Wave Of Narrow-mindedness and Fanaticism

Iqbal Latif - 4/19/2007

During the fall of Rome there were attacks made at different times from different places all around the border of ancient Rome. There were many barbarian invaders such as the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Huns. They settled in many different places along the border. The Roman way of life collapsed quickly. The Western Roman Empire was invaded by barbarians and then it collapsed.

Identical variety of baton/stick brandishing Vandals have descended these days on the capital city, it was this variety of fanatical narrow-mindedness that led to demise of the Golden era in its formative years and helplessness of Islam to produce its Da Vinci´s and Bach´s from the likes of Al Kindi and Al Farabi! It is not an exaggeration to say that Pakistan has been hi-jacked in an ideological sense by various forms of theocracy.
Citizens! If you consider yourself imbued nay the ideals of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, now is the time to stand up and be counted.

We are caught amidst intellectual vandalism inspired by a new gang of danda-carrying girls, who want to rob the freedom of the nation. As if ideological polarisation has not done enough harm to the fabric of our society, the new invasion of vandals at the doorstep of our capital city is a clarion call for sensible people to raise their voices and stop them at the door.

The kind of EDUCATIONAL AND ECONOMIC model these ideological demagogues want us to follow leads us to medieval seminaries and devastated countries like Chad , Somalia and Afghanistan . Dubai today has become the ' New Granada .' It does not adopt the policies of medievalism, rather, it accepts meeting of minds and encourages coexistence, cohabitation and emerges as a foremost new oasis of stability within a turbulent Islamic world. None of the oil-rich Arab nation plots the course of Islam or interprets Islam in a manner the way the ideological vandals in Islamabad are carrying out.

Dubai lies only 45 minutes flying time from the restless metropolis of Karachi ; but the distance in prosperity and open-mindedness, lenience and acceptability of minority cannot be any further. In terms of economic prosperity and in terms of attracting global investments, Dubai 's economy attracts 50 times the inward investments than the entire Pakistani economy. Is the Sheikh Rashid bin Muhammed of Dubai, a real pedigreed Arab, an inferior Muslim than the bunch of 'ideological hooligans' that are trying to gulp our capital city?

Visionary people have led time and again the Islamic societies that have excelled; that vision always included tolerance, shunning of bigotry. That is how the Golden Age, if it flourished, ever flourished. It was nourished by seeds of non-judgmental attitudes and charitable versions of ideology. Economic progress today is not about cement, mortar or labour or capital; that whole old definition of economic vitality has become subservient to perception of a society. On that count, we are drowning in the sea of mediocrity. For the sake of our children's career, for the sake of our future, stand up and be counted and say no to vandals at the doors. This is the death of a dream!

In this modern day and age, where connectivity is of utmost important and our children have to see the full blossoming of their talent by competing with the best of the world, self-imposed shrouds decreed by these medievalist over our minds and thoughts will be akin to stepping backward into stone age. This was not the vision of our Quaid; let's repel this onslaught on the civic society by going back to basics.

A Constitution(Amendment) Bill,2006 (Private Member Bill) has been introduced by A.P.Bhindara in the national Assembly to incorporate either the entire or salient feature of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah's address of August 11, 1947 to the Constituent Assembly Pakistan on the eve of Pakistan's creation as a substantive part of Article 2A of the constitution.The Quaid's vision for Pakistan was of a modern, progressive Muslim state imbued by the lofty ideals of Islam.


The speech of 11 August 1947 is the true "ground-norm" of Pakistan as envisaged by its Founder. Much that has gone wrong in Pakistan since 1948 is because we have eroded Quaid-e-Azam's vision of our destiny. We stand divide by religio-fannticism. Tolerance is the hallmark of Islam, which is the essence of our Quaid's Vision.There is a clear and demonstrable nexus between Mr. Jinnah's politics from 1920 to his famous speech of 11th August 1947 viz constitutionalism, rejection of mullaism, tolerance and the rejection of religion "in the business of the State"

The Quaid 'inter alia' declared...

You are free; You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan . You may belong to any religion or cast or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State".

"Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time, Hindus and Muslim would cease to be Muslim, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizen of the state".