To repeat (and it bears repetition ad nauseam), when Jinnah addressed the first constituent assembly of the country on August 11 1947 he embodied in his speech the core of his philosophy, his ideas, and his vision for the state he had founded. It was a fine piece of rhetoric; too fine, too moral, too democratic, too liberal, too full of justice, too idealistic for the Philistines. This speech has been interpreted in many different ways, it has been subject to distortion, it has inspired fear in successive governments, which would have been far happier had it never been delivered. It is to the misfortune of the people of this country that their so-called leaders have refused to live with, or up to, the principles by which Jinnah wished them to be guided. It is a matter of national shame that, from top to bottom, the citizens of this country live in dread of contamination by the truth - such is the measure of self-deception, insecurity, disunity, indiscipline, and faithlessness.
On August 11, 1947, before the flag of Pakistan had even been unfurled, Jinnah told his people and their future legislators:
"You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions some time ago were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some states in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the nation. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal.....".
[This particular passage has been subject to deliberate distortion and misinterpretation, inspiring the dishonest dogmatists who misappropriated the country after his death with such fear and unease that in the official biography of Jinnah commissioned by the Government of Pakistan, written by Hector Bolitho, published in 1954, it was censored to falsely read: ".....You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State..... Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal....". (Most of the above passages were ommitted).] REFERENCE: The sole statesman BY ARDESHIR COWASJEE (18-06-2000)
http://www.dawn.com/news/1072301/the-sole-statesman
Pathological lying (PL) is a controversial topic. There is, as yet, no consensus in the psychiatric community on its definition, although there is general agreement on its core elements. PL is characterized by a long history (maybe lifelong) of frequent and repeated lying for which no apparent psychological motive or external benefit can be discerned. While ordinary lies are goal-directed and are told to obtain external benefit or to avoid punishment, pathological lies often appear purposeless. In some cases, they might be self-incriminating or damaging, which makes the behavior even more incomprehensible. Despite its relative obscurity, PL has been recognized and written about in the psychiatric literature for more than a century. The German physician, Anton Delbruck,1 is credited with being the first to describe the concept of PL. He observed that some of his patients told lies that were so abnormal and out of proportion that they deserved a special category. He sub-sequently described the lies as "pseu- dologia phantastica." Reference: Pathological Lying: Symptom or Disease? By Charles C Dike, MD, MPH, MRCPsych June 01, 2008 http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/pathological-lying-symptom-or-disease
For sake of clarity a full paragraph from Will Durant's voluminous Story of Civilization is reproduced here from which OMJ picked up a quotation: "Writing continued, even to the nineteenth century, to play a very small part in Indian education. Perhaps it was not to the interest of the priests that the sacred or scholastic texts should become an open secret to all. As far as we can trace Indian history, we find a system of education, always in the hands of the clergy, open at first only to the sons of Brahmans, then spreading its privileges from caste to caste until in our time it excludes only the Untouchables. Every Hindu village had its schoolmaster, supported out of the public funds; in Bengal alone, before the coming of the British, there were some 80,000 native schools — one to every four hundred population. The percentage of literacy under Ashoka was apparently higher than in India today." Will Durant in this section was discussing the education system in ancient India but OMJ picked up a Bengal-related sentence and forcibly linked it with the Mughal period to create a misleading impression. Intellectual honesty demanded that OMJ should have also told his readers what Will Durant wrote in the same book about the Muslim rulers in India. For instance, Durant writes about our hero idol-smasher: "Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill; each spring he returned to his capital richer than before." We are told that the idol breaker would sometimes spare the population of the ravaged cities and "took them home to be sold as slaves; but so great was the number of such captives that after some years no one could be found to offer more than a few shillings for a slave." Similarly referring to other rulers of the pre-Mughal era, Durant writes, "There was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging the victims and putting them to death in crowds." OMJ fondly mentions Firoz Shah about whom Durant writes, "Firoz Shah invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves." Similarly, Sultan Ahmad Shah is said to have feasted for three days whenever the number of defenceless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached 20,000. Based on such numerous examples, Durant says, "The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilisation is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within." Durant in his work appreciates the art and sculpture of India. However, he laments, "We shall never be able to do justice to Indian art, for ignorance and fanaticism have destroyed its greatest achievements, and have half ruined the rest." OMJ in his concluding lines makes a passing reference to Lord Cornwallis, accusing him of establishing a religious seminary in 1781 to destroy educational system of Muslim rulers. Interestingly, in 1781, Major General Cornwallis was in America with a mixed record against rebel colonists culminating in the capitulation of his force at Yorktown and came to India in 1786. Cornwallis, however, is credited with establishing an institution that OMJ never found detestable: the Indian Civil Service. Hope our former deputy commissioner would be more careful with both dates and facts of history. The writer teaches public policy in the UK and is the founding member of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan. REFERENCES: OVER A COFFEE : Postcard for Orya Maqbool Jan — Dr Haider Shah October 27, 2012
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/27-Oct-2012/over-a-coffee-postcard-for-orya-maqbool-jan-dr-haider-shah OVER A COFFEE : History telling the Nasim Hijazi way — Dr Haider Shah December 01, 2012
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/01-Dec-2012/over-a-coffee-history-telling-the-nasim-hijazi-way-dr-haider-shah Orya Maqbool Jan on Jinnah's 11 th August 1947 Speech (Daily Dunya)
http://dunya.com.pk/news/authors/detail_image/x5529_16461313.jpg.pagespeed.ic.pvzOK79idJ.jpg
Mr. Jinnah has been the subject of onslaught by both the right and the left- both want to paint a beard on Jinnah. Both have repeatedly failed. But the difference between the left and the right is that the left at least does not deny facts. For example a leftist will not claim that Jinnah’s 11 August speech never existed or that it did not speak of a secular state. Not true of Orya Maqbool Jan, a right wing crook and liar who is also in the civil service. In his most recent column, the Orya claims that Jinnah in fact never made the 11 August Speech because he could not find any reference in the newspapers. Typical. First a civil servant Ch. Muhammad Ali stopped it from being released and now a civil servant claims – see it never existed. Well here is the problem for crooks and liars like Orya Maqbool Jan – the Pakistan Constituent Assembly record DOES exist. I refer to Jinnah Papers Volume IV Appendix IX, Item 4: President’s address. Reference: Lying Orya Maqbool Jan caught with his pants down December 30th, 2013 By Yasser Latif Hamdani The 11 August speech is there in full as is precisely how it is quoted. And since Mr. Jan goes by media coverage here is
http://pakteahouse.net/2013/12/30/lying-orya-maqbool-jan-caught-with-his-pants-down/
Professor Hassan Jafar Zaidi on Pakistan: Why & How ? (BBC)
Professor Hassan Jafar Zaidi on Pakistan: Why... by SalimJanMazari
Hassan Jafar Zaidi, a renowned historian, is professionally an engineer, yet his passion is history and political analysis. He graduated from UET, Lahore in Electrical Engineering in 1974, but started contributing political analysis in the weekly Nusrat in 1970, and then on continued to write for many Urdu and English newspapers like Daily Musawat and Dawn. He served as Joint-Secretary of Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zouq, Lahore, a renowned literary forum of Pakistan from 1974 to 1976. Then he devoted to a multi-volume project of research on history of Pakistan and Muslim history. Twelve volumes on Political History of Pakistan; and four volumes on Political History of Muslims have already been published from this project. Another fifteen volumes on Muslim History and ten volumes on the history of sub-continent are under publication. He has been delivering lectures almost every year in LUMS since 1999, on subjects of current interest on politics in international and regional context, and history of sub-continent with special focus on Pakistan. He appears in discussions on different TV channels of national repute. Hassan Jafar Zaidi
http://tehqeeq.org/people/
My interpretation of Islam is quite Literal and I follow the Literal Interpretation of Islam , now lets have a look at the claim of those who quote Jinnah's Vision of Islamic Democracy and love to mix Islam with Democracy and I would rely on a Saudi Fatwa (Religious Edict) on Democracy & Democratic System,
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Democracy is not an Arabic word. Rather it is derived from the Greek, and it is a composite of two words: demos, meaning the masses or the people, and kratia, meaning rule. So what is meant is the rule of the masses or the rule of the people. Democracy is a system that is contrary to Islam, because it gives the power of legislation to the people or to those who represent them (such as members of Parliament). Based on that, in democracy legislative authority is given to someone other than Allah, may He be exalted; rather it is given to the people and their deputies, and what matters is not their consensus but the majority. Thus what the majority agree upon becomes laws that are binding on the nation, even if it is contrary to common sense, religious teaching or reason. Read More Concept of democracy in Islam https://islamqa.info/en/98134 Democracy is a man-made system, meaning rule by the people for the people. Thus it is contrary to Islam, because rule is for Allaah, the Most High, the Almighty, and it is not permissible to give legislative rights to any human being, no matter who he is. It says in Mawsoo’at al-Adyaan wa’l-Madhaahib al-Mu’aasirah (2/1066, 1067): Undoubtedly the democratic system is one of the modern forms of shirk, in terms of obedience and following, or legislation, as it denies the sovereignty of the Creator and His absolute right to issue laws, and ascribes that right to human beings. Read More Ruling on democracy and elections and participating in that system https://islamqa.info/en/107166
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Leonard Binder wrote,
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The leaders of the Muslim League hoped for much too, but whether through the operation of Islamic law is questionable. Many persons thought they saw an opposite tendency in Jinnah's words at the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan:
. . . you will find that in the 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 the political sense as citizens of the State.
However Jinnah may have felt in August, 1947, the atmosphere had so changed that by the end of January, 1948, he felt compelled to say:
I cannot understand why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Sharl'at Law? There is one section of the people who keep on impressing everybody that the future constitution of Pakistan should be based on the Shari'ah. The other section deliberately want to create mischief and agitate that the Sharl'at Law must be scrapped.
Reference : C.A.P. Debates, Vol. I, no. 2 (Aug. 11, 1947), Dawn, Jan. 26, 1948 (from an address before the Sindh Bar Association, on the occasion of the Prophet Day). Religion & Politics in Pakistan by Leonard Binder (Published 1963, University of California, Los Angeles USA)
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Ayesha Jalal wrote,
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"So long as Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan remained at the helm, the ideologues of an Islamic State in Pakistan had to rest content with symbolic gestures. As a politician who knew the importance of playing to the gallery, Jinnah made references to Islam that were compatible with his secular & democratic vision of a Pakistan with opportunities for all, regardless of caste, community or creed.
Reference: The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics By Ayesha Jalal
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Renowned Secular thinker and Liberal Pakistani Philosopher Mr Khaled Ahmed wrote in his book, Pakistan: Behind The Ideological Mask (Facts about Great Men we dont want to know) Published by Vanguard Press Lahore) that in 1989 the Punjab Government awarded Ghulam Ahmed Perwez posthumously The Tehreek Pakistan Gold Medal, citing his close relationship with Quaid-e-Azam & his contribution to the scheme of Pakistan. There are letters from Quaid testifying to Perwez's advisory capacity to the Quaid.
Ghulam Ahmed Perwez important books were Did Quaid-e-Azam Want to Make Pakistan a Secular State, Finality of Prophethood and Ahmadiyya Movement, Reality of Sufism & countless others attacking Several Schools of Thought's very basic beliefs particularly against Deobandis, Shias, Barelvis and Ahl-e-Hadith but his main target was Jamaat-e-Islami, quite an Irony that the man who was with Jinnah later became and Un-Official adviser of General Ayub Khan who declared Ms. Fatima Jinnah an Indian Agent.
I fully understand the concern of a whole range of intellectuals representing an assortment of liberals and leftists who steadfastly and heroically keep writing that Jinnah was a secularist, he wanted Pakistan to be a secular state or at least an inclusive Muslim state. As far as an inclusive Muslim state is concerned they are right to a point, but they are dead wrong when they assert that Jinnah was a secularist or that he wanted Pakistan to be a secular state. A secularist being defined in terms of a western life style and unorthodox dietary habits is a loose and poor use of the term and concept of secularism. Secularism is a political term which means a separation of religion and state. Except for the 11 August 1947 speech which can reasonably and legitimately be read as one based on secularism there is no such vision or argument in what he said before that day or afterwards that suggests that Hindus and Muslims can be equal citizens of Pakistan. Therefore, one sunny day does not make a summer or more accurately one swallow does not make a summer. In other words, exceptions are not the rule. Jinnah was not in favour of a Muslim state which would institutionalise discrimination against minorities. He thought that Pakistan could be an inclusive Muslim state. Reference: Jinnah’s prerogatives Jinnah enjoyed unique power and authority and thus unique prerogatives. He could make decisions and appointments which other Pakistani leaders would have hesitated to by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed DECEMBER 10, 2017
https://dailytimes.com.pk/156051/jinnahs-prerogatives/
Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed's Lecture on Jinnah, Secularism and Pakistan (Part - 1)
Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws?… Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago…. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. Islam has taught equality, justice and fair play to everyone’(Ibid). In the same speech he said: ‘Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a code for every Muslim which regulates his life and his conduct in even politics and economic and the like…’ (Ibid). Speaking at the Edwards College, Peshawar on 18 April 1948 he described Pakistan’s distinctiveness as ‘Islamic, Muslim rule, as a sovereign independent state’ (Ibid), On 1 July 1948 at the opening ceremony of the State Bank of Pakistan in Karachi he emphasised the importance of, ‘an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind’ (Ibid). The religious minorities in Pakistan are not a conquered minority and therefore the jizya does not apply them technically. We need to examine how their rights can be guaranteed by an inclusive Muslim state which was enunciated in the Objectives Resolution. Religious minorities in Pakistan are not a conquered minority and therefore the jizya does not apply to them technically. We need to examine how their rights can be guaranteed by an inclusive Muslim state which was enunciated in the Objectives Resolution. Reference Jinnah, Muslims and minorities On 14 August 1947 a distinct shift in Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan from an ostensibly secular to an Islamic was made explicit in his speech to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed December 14, 2017
https://dailytimes.com.pk/158815/jinnah-muslims-minorities/
Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed's Lecture on Jinnah, Secularism and Pakistan (Part - 2)
There is enough evidence that Jinnah made contradictory promises just because he wanted to maximise Muslim support. To keep harping on one speech of August 11th 1947, while ignoring how in 1940-47 Jinnah relentlessly kept saying that Hindus and Muslims can never be one nation is wrong. I have already quoted Jinnah in previous articles where he had termed Sharia as the primary source of law for Pakistan, and this was after his August 11th speech. Unless we speak the truth, we will not be able to make Pakistan an inclusive Muslim state. There is ample literature to show how the British master-minded the partition of India, Bengal and the Punjab — a partition which caused the deaths of at least one million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Reference Jinnah’a multifarious pledges To keep harping on one speech of August 11th 1947, while ignoring how in 1940-47 Jinnah relentlessly kept saying that Hindus and Muslims can never be one nation is wrong by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed DECEMBER 23, 2017
https://dailytimes.com.pk/158815/jinnah-muslims-minorities/
Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed's Lecture on Jinnah, Secularism and Pakistan (Part - 3)
Jinnah has become such a symbol of wisdom in the Pakistani society that people visualize Pakistan with his reference. His vision, his agenda, his dream and his ideals, all.remained unaccomplished because he died soon after the independence. It is commonly believed that had he lived some more years, history of Pakistan would have been different. There are few nations who rely so heavily on one individual. No doubt, Jinnah was a great leader of his people. He was a man of integrity and honesty, but to make him an idol and not allow anybody to emerge out of his shadow is pathetic. Every generation has its own dreams and vision which it wants to accomplish without interference. Not imitation but freedom is required to build a new world. Therefore, attempt should not be made to repeat but to make a new history. People should be liberated from the shadow and allow them to flourish in a free atmosphere. Great leaders should be respected but not worshiped. Reference: Jinnah: Making a myth
by Mubarak Ali (2 October 2000)
http://www.sacw.net/aii/MakingJinnah_a_myth.html
