Daily Times

While the world believes that the greatest achievement of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the creation of a separate and sovereign state for the Muslims of the subcontinent, some commentators believe that his biggest failure was his inability to inculcate a secular spirit within the new nation.

In his first address to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, he shared his vision of Pakistan as a secular state where everyone irrespective of religion, caste or creed would enjoy freedom, equality and the rule of law. However, his principles could never be materialised. Ignoring the founding father’s framework, his successors passed the 1949 Objectives Resolution and the Quaid’s vision died there and then. Jinnah’s ideal asserting the separation of religion from citizenship and the state has been violated time and again to appease the religious groups in the country.

Yes, we have betrayed our Quaid’s wishes and messages, which is a severe injustice to his memory. The domination of theocracy, extremism and intolerance has infected us with the cancer of religious fanaticism. Jinnah’s Pakistan has turned into a land where minorities and even moderate Muslims are being treated as pariahs.

It is deplorable that despite having a sizeable portion of religious and sectarian minorities who are inhabitants of the subcontinent for many centuries, the constitution of Pakistan defines its population on the basis of faith. A non-Muslim cannot hold the highest offices. The state, which calls itself an ‘Islamic Republic’, has draconian anti-blasphemy laws, repeatedly being used against the minorities and dissidents. Christians, Hindus, Sikhs are treated as second-class citizens and face discrimination in all spheres of life while the Ahmedis have been declared non-Muslims by the religious majority.

There are numerous instances of attacks on minorities’ worship places and their homes by Muslim mobs often instigated by mullahs. The attack on a Christian colony, Gojra in 2009 is quite fresh in the memory. The helpless Christian families had to withdraw the cases against 150 perpetrators who burnt their houses and killed their loved ones. Non-Muslim women are often forced to marry Muslim men and convert to Islam as it is considered an immense religious benefit. Religious intolerance has grown to the extent that the police refuse to register the complaints of the victimised minorities. Lawyers fearing a backlash by mullahs hesitate in taking up such cases and judges are threatened to give unfair judgements. Even those Muslims who stand by the victims are threatened with severe consequences and sometimes even murdered in broad daylight. Salmaan Taseer’s brutal murder and the garlanding of his murderer say it all about religious extremism, deep-rooted prejudice against non-Muslims and the criminal silence of the government. What will become of a society like ours where difference of faith decides life and death? Today’s Pakistan is in total negation of Jinnah’s vision. *