Daily Times

The country had been through difficult times on many occasions since its independence: the untimely death of its founder, Jinnah, the assassination of its first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, a long delay in framing a constitution that could provide a legal framework for administering its sovereignty, military rule and even the tumultuous period of dismemberment when it lost its eastern wing. Yet, through all this, the character of the state remained unchanged as it remained like a mother for all its citizens whom it treated equally for all legal purposes. Generally in line with Jinnah’s vision, the state’s treatment remained fair towards its citizens and it did not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed or religion. It never became a party in religious disputes and sided with no particular community.
This was despite the fact that political expedience had made its leaders conveniently forget Jinnah’s speech to the constituent assembly, to pass the Objectives resolution in 1949, a resolution that was carried despite the voicing of legitimate concerns by such members who could foresee its negative consequences. Ironically, this resolution was forcefully supported by Mr Zafrullah Khan, the country’s first foreign minister, who must have regretted his support for the resolution in the later years of his life. Even the act of Islam being declared the state religion did not change the state’s treatment of its citizens, definitely due to the fact that Islam respects all viewpoints and does not impose just one. However, those who made Islam the state religion would have failed in any attempt to point out if the State of Medina formed on the basis of the Charter of Medina had named any state religion, religion by its very nature being for humans and not for any state. The first two covenants of the Charter are enough for the state religion argument: “(1) This is a document from Muhammad the Prophet between the believers and Muslims of Quraysh and Yathrib, and those who followed them and joined them and laboured with them. (2) They are one community to the exclusion of all men.”
September 7, 1974, saw all this change with the passage of the Constitutional Second Amendment. That fateful day the politicians and more so the governing party, the secular PPP, to gain the support of the clerics, made the state side with a particular party in a religious dispute and thus degraded the state’s status. The fact that religion is between man and God and the principle that faith was not something which the state should meddle in, were forgotten. The state went on to supra define a religion and declared an Ahmedi “not a Muslim for the purposes of constitution or law”. It thus became a party to a religious conflict and acted against a particular group of people who were its loyal citizens and whose interest it had to equally watch over. In a way this amendment made the state act like God.
History only provides a single example of such an action, that too way back in 85 AD when the religious assembly of the Jews, who were under Roman occupation and did not have a government of their own, declared Christians to be not Jews.
Hitherto Pakistan had strongly dealt with pseudo-religious miscreants, be they the ones who had orchestrated the anti-Ahmadyya riots of Punjab in 1953 or the anti-Shiite riots in Sindh. However, in this particular case the state was made to succumb to the demands of the clerics who had orchestrated the riots.
In hindsight it can be said with surety that this first taste of blood by the clerics changed the direction Pakistan was taking. Pakistan had legalized intolerance. There has been no turning back since then. This change of character made Pakistan softer for the clerics to mould. Pakistan was becoming less tolerant day by day. It was not to be long before intolerance was to find its ablest prodigy, the terrorist. When the military dictator General Zia took power, the intolerance legalised by the second amendment gained momentum. Changing the name of the country’s third largest city from Lyallpur to Faisalabad was an indicator of the direction he wanted the country to take. This pseudo-religious dictator carried the clerics’ wishes as commands and passed anti-women laws, promulgated the Nizam-e-Salat Ordinance that tried to regulate prayers, man’s most personal relationship with God. He went on to promulgate the most repressive anti-Ahmedi law of Pakistan, Ordinance XX of 1984, which took away from them their right to call themselves with the name they consider a part of their faith and even denied them the right to reply to any accusation about their belief. It was similar to calling a human being a dog and then demand of him to start barking as well. The west remained silent as human rights were being violated in Pakistan and the country was being taken on the path of intolerance and extremism because of the west’s interests in the first Afghan war. The west had always engaged pseudo-religious elements to counter the rising Soviet influence in the Middle East since the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser. This time around it chose to make Pakistan a breeding ground for pseudo-Islamic mercenaries from everywhere to fight their war in Afghanistan. Zia’s policies fuelled anti-Shia hatred here and fragmented the social fabric of the country. While all this was happening in Pakistan, the west turned a blind eye as they did not want to offend their ablest assistor who was running the show here. Perhaps they considered Pakistan a faraway land and were naive in thinking that hate could be contained. The character of the country changed so badly in Zia’s era that when subsequently an oblique legal challenge was thrown up against the discriminatory anti-Ahmedi laws, the courts of the country assigned proprietorship of religion that rests with God to those in the majority.
Now the outfits the west deliberately or unknowingly assisted create have bred profusely. Initially these outfits sent offshoots into Pakistan but have now developed sympathisers and operatives in western lands too. As a consequence there is terrorism all around and now the west complains. However, the brunt of hatred and terror related activities has been faced by Pakistanis. The west’s unfortunate military involvement in Iraq, Libya and Syria have yielded similar results there. The whole region is in the grip of bloodthirsty machines of hatred that tarnish the image of the religion of peace by their un-Islamic actions. Doesn’t the west need to apologize? Apologize they won’t. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings also remain a no-burden on their conscience. The hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who lost their lives or properties in those cities never got that. Will the innocent Muslims, Christians and others being butchered or dispossessed of their properties by pseudo-Islamists be treated differently by the west and tendered an apology? This is highly unlikely.
Pakistan has started to reflect on the course it adopted over decades after the Peshawar massacre by the pseudo-Islamists and the terrorists are being actively hunted countrywide. The military establishment has taken the lead and is doing its part ably and the facilitators of terror are also in line to be nabbed. However, real victory requires winning the ideological war as well. Despite the military operation, there will still remain a group of people who need to be reformed from their current position of desiring others to share their beliefs, even if it involves the use of intimidation or violence. This legalized intolerance also needs to be dealt with at the soonest. This is something the politicians will have to address. Their capitulation to extremist demands in 1974 started this rot and they must now act to rid the country of its laws of intolerance. It can be said with some degree of surety that even Z A Bhutto would have done it had he been around. Thus the second amendment and other laws of intolerance should no more be treated as sacred cows and need to be reviewed and done away with constitutionally. It is not about anybody’s beliefs. It is about whether man can transgress his limits and act to try to usurp the exclusive right of God.
The fruits of good deeds can only be a blessed life. People must ask of themselves whether the majority’s treatment of those that believe differently had been virtuous. If so, the fruits that the country received should not have been hatred and mayhem but should have been love and peace. Was acting like God in 1974 virtuous? This is the fundamental question. The past cannot be changed but we do have the ability to use our options in the present wisely so that the future generations of Pakistan live with peace and achieve the prosperity the founder of the nation Jinnah dreamt for them.

The writer can be reached at thelogicalguy@yahoo.com