Daily Times

To start with let me wish a very merry Christmas to all Christians celebrating all around the world and in particular to our Christian brethren in Pakistan who are as much Pakistani as anyone else. This being the commemoration of the birth of great Prophet Jesus, or as the Muslims refer to him Hazrat Isa AS, is a holy occasion for all of us, for even in Islam Jesus or Hazrat Isa AS is a revered Prophet. This is why Christians were so dear to the heart of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Those familiar with Islamic history would know that the persecuted Muslim community in Mecca before Hijrat openly sided with Heracles of Byzantium against the invading Sassanids despite persecution by the Quraish who had thrown in their lot with the Sassanids. We are also aware of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)’s letter to St Catherine’s Monastery, which promised complete equality and full religious freedom to Christians till the end of time in Muslim majority areas. On this Christmas Day, let us as Muslims recognise that in our country and in the Muslim World at large we have betrayed our own most sacred personage in our treatment of Christians.

Today is also the birthday of the great and immortal Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, who will always be remembered and who will always remain relevant in the history of this subcontinent not just for his role as the founder of Pakistan but because of the many services he rendered to India as well as a legislator and politician who struggled for self rule in British India. Even though he is reviled by many in India for having ‘vivisected’ the country, but there are many Indians who recognise his contributions to their laws and to institutions in that country. Even Dhera Dun Academy, where the Indian Army trains its officer corps, was founded as a result of the Quaid-e-Azam’s efforts. After having convinced the British that Indians deserved to serve as full officers, Jinnah toured the military academies in Europe and North America, including West Point in the US, and is, whether Indians are generous enough to concede this or not, the father of Indian Military Academy in Dhera Dhun.

Let us, as Pakistanis, as Muslims, Christians, Hindus and whatever else we are, pledge ourselves on this Christmas Day and Jinnah’s birthday to a pluralistic Pakistan where every citizen would have equal rights and to quote Jinnah, there would be no bars against class or community whatsoever. This would be Jinnah’s Pakistan

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah is the only politician in the subcontinent to be called the Best Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity. Even the great Mahatma Gandhi, whose belief in Hindu Muslim Unity was no less than Jinnah’s, was not called that. However it was Mahatma Gandhi’s use of religious symbols and his encouragement of what Jinnah called ‘unwholesome elements’ that caused the break between these two great Gujurati scions. While Jinnah was perturbed by Gandhi’s increasing reliance on Hindu symbols (just as Pandit Nehru was as well), his greatest anxiety arose from Gandhi’s encouragement of Muslim religious clerics during the Khilafat Movement. Jinnah as a modern liberal Muslim leader, who at that time saw himself as an Indian first second and last, feared that bringing the religious element in politics would make religious identities non-negotiable. He further feared an alienation of modern Muslims whose concerns were not otherworldly but things like jobs and share of the economic pie.

Truth be told Jinnah was as secular as they come, whether some sections of our religious right and indeed self professed Pakistan-bashers want to accept it or not. He did not see a conflict between his faith as a Khoja Shia Muslim and his secular politics because other than being inspired by British Liberalism, which he imbibed from his time in England, Jinnah had a very enlightened view of Islam. To some this meant he was a bad Muslim who did not always follow the dietary restrictions and conventions of the faith. This says more about their own view of Islam rather than about Jinnah’s faith. Throughout the Pakistan Movement Jinnah remained adamant that it was not a theocracy he was fighting for. The very idea of theocracy was alien to Jinnah’s conception of Islam, which had no place for professional clerics of the kind we see today. The opposite of theocracy is always a secular state- a fact Jinnah understood as a lawyer. A secular state is merely a state where there are no second-class citizens and where the state is absolutely impartial to the personal faith of an individual who is an equal citizen regardless of religion. This is something that Jinnah promised repeatedly in no less than three dozen speeches and statements.

Right-wingers as well as some latter day critics of Jinnah get really upset when one quotes the 11 August 1947 speech. Well too bad for them, Jinnah did make that speech on the most important occasion in our history — the inauguration of the Constituent Assembly — in which he did clearly and without any hesitation declare that religion was a personal matter and that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims not in a religious sense, for that is the personal faith of an individual, but in a political sense as citizens of the state. This was no negation of the Two Nation Theory that had been posited as a consociational counterpoise to get Muslim community in India an adequate share of power and the economic pie. Anyone who reads the Lahore Resolution and Jinnah’s pronouncements on it can see that Jinnah always spoke of reciprocal arrangements to ensure equality of citizenship to all minorities. This was a consistent position. To argue otherwise is sheer dishonesty.

Unfortunately people who view secularism as anti-religion or view it as absolutely alien to Islam have neither understood the spirit of Islam nor secularism. At the time when Jews were being persecuted all over Europe, they sought refuge in Muslim lands where they lived freely and unfettered. Here they thrived and produced great philosophers and polymaths like Maimonides. This tolerance and equality was the spirit of Islam. Similarly anyone familiar with the history of secularism as it developed in Europe cannot overlook the contributions of the great John Locke, the father of modern society. John Locke in propounding his ideas of religious toleration and equality of citizenship regardless of religion was entirely inspired by the Christian tradition and wrote about the perfect Christian commonwealth. It was John Locke who inspired the founding fathers of the US like Thomas Jefferson. Thus the father of secularism itself was a deeply religious man driven by his correct interpretation of the great Christian faith. Therefore religion and secularism are not binary opposites as some have tried to present them falsely in our times.

So let us, as Pakistanis, as Muslims, Christians, Hindus and whatever else we are, pledge ourselves on this Christmas Day and Jinnah’s birthday to a pluralistic Pakistan where every citizen would have equal rights and to quote Jinnah, there would be no bars against class or community whatsoever. This would be Jinnah’s Pakistan. It would also be faithful to the very ideals that Islam, the faith of the majority in this country, stands for. Let us reject the naysayers and reclaim both Pakistan and Islam from those who seek to pervert them in their eagerness to forward their own petty agendas.

The writer is a practising lawyer. He blogs at http://globallegalforum.blogspot.com and his twitter handle is @therealylh

Published in Daily Times, December 25^th 2017.