Pakistan of 2007: What Would Have Quaid Wanted?
Understanding Pakistan Project Team September 11th, 2007
By: Athar Osama
Today, Pakistan solemnly observe Quaid-e-Azam’s 58th death anniversary. I am taking on the challenge of writing this piece with great trepidition, but utmost sincerity, and would like to state upfront that I truely believe that all of us, Pakistanis, including myself, owe a mountain of debt and gratitude to Qauid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah for giving us our freedoms in this country we call our homeland. Having said that, though, I would also beg to venture a bit further to say that while it was our solemn duty to establish the Pakistan of Quaid’s dreams in 1947–for that was the Pakistan for which hundreds of millions rallied behind him and over a million of us died, it is perhaps time now to dispassionately re-evalute that aspiration and take a more realistic view of our circumstances.
In the intervening 60 years, the reality of Pakistan’s politics and society has turned out to be everything but Quaid’s dream. We, as a nation and as people, have wandered around aimlessly looking for an identity and a raison detre for our existence and our quest to find our destiny has often been hijacked by unscruplous politicians, religious leaders, and miltiary dictators luring us with their own versions of Quaid’s dream. All political leaders–from the extreme right to the extreme left, from the theocrats to the democrats, from Islamists to the secularists–claim to be the custodians of Quaid’s Pakistan.
While nobody really knows what Quaid’s vision for Pakistan actually was for he said many things, on many occasions, and for many different audiences and it is easy to distort what he said to support one’s own version, we know one thing for sure. Quaid’s vision could not be all of what it is claimed to be at the same time. The struggle to interpret and re-interpret what Quaid may have said continues to this day…
Ever since the Lal Masjid Saga ended, there have been a large number of opinions and analyses of what went wrong and perhaps how to fix it. Different commentrators have termed the post-Lal-Masjid era as a manifestation of a society on a collision course with itself. It has been termed, repeatedly, in the media as a “Battle for Pakistan’s Soul”. It is not clear whether and what this battle is? Who is going to fight it? and How will it be fought? It is not even clear (
These are hard–very hard–questions. But one thing is certain that, sooner or later, we will have to address these questions for ourselves with utmost honesty and sincerity. In order to promote this debate, Understanding Pakistan is presenting four different viewpoints on this issue:
In this piece, witten in the immediate aftermath of the Lal Masjid Episode but being published for the first time, Khuldun talks about the challenges posed by the dual extremism of Taliban-style theocrats and the promoters of Enlightened Moderation who are tearing the Pakistani society apart…. 
It did, however, once again put Musharraf and his brand of “saviors” firmly in charge of the “savage” millions in Pakistan and has established, in the eyes of the West and its media, the often-repeated (by his government) “indispensibility” of his dictatorial rule in Pakistan. Add on top of that the fact that there are serious allegations that the two brothers in Lal Masjid had been in the pay of the agencies, and that it is next to impossible for anybody–no matter how slick or smart he was–to operate with such imputiny in the heavily “watched and monitored” city of Islamabad for years, and the conincidences just get too many for most of us to digest. 
If there is an address, an exact location for the rift tearing Pakistan apart, and possibly the world, it is a spot 17 miles (28 kilometers) west of Islamabad called the Margalla Pass. Here, at a limestone cliff in the middle of Pakistan, the mountainous west meets the Indus River Valley, and two ancient, and very different, civilizations collide. To the southeast, unfurled to the horizon, lie the fertile lowlands of the Indian subcontinent, realm of peasant farmers on steamy plots of land, bright with colors and the splash of serendipitous gods. To the west and north stretch the harsh, windswept mountains of Central Asia, land of herders and raiders on horseback, where man fears one God and takes no prisoners.
Many well-known Pakistani political commentators seem bent upon trivializing Lal Masjid. Although its bloody siege now enters into its fifth day, for them the comic sight of the bearded Maulana Abdul Aziz fleeing in a burqa is proof that this episode was mere puppet theatre. They say it was enacted byhidden hands within the government, expressly created to distract attention away from General Musharraf’s mounting problems, as well as to prove to his supporters in the West that he remains the last bulwark against Islamic extremism. The writers conclude that this is a contrived problem, not a real one. They are dead wrong. Lal Masjid underscores the danger of runaway religious radicalism in Pakistan. It calls for urgent and wide-ranging action.
That the crisis could have been averted is beyond doubt. The Lal Masjid militants were given a free hand by the government to kidnap and intimidate. For months, under the nose of Pakistan’s super-vigilant intelligence agencies, large quantities of arms and fuel were smuggled inside to create a fearsome fortress in the heart of Pakistan’s capital. Even after Jamia Hafsa students went on their violent rampages in February 2007, no attempt was made to cut off the electricity, gas, phone, or website – or even to shut down their illegal FM radio station. Operating as a parallel government, the mullah duo, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Maulana Abdul Aziz, ran their own Islamic court. They received the Saudi Arabian ambassador on the mosque premises, and negotiated with the Chinese ambassador for the release of his country’s kidnapped nationals. But for the outrage expressed by China, Pakistan’s all-weather ally, the status quo would have continued.
Concerns over Islamic extremism, extensive in the West even before this month’s terrorist attacks in London, are shared to a considerable degree by the publics in several predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. Nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries. At the same time, most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam.
In non-Muslim countries, fears of Islamic extremism are closely associated with worries about Muslim minorities. Western publics believe that Muslims in their countries want to remain distinct from society, rather than adopt their nation’s customs and way of life. Moreover, there is a widespread perception in countries with significant Muslim minorities, including the U.S., that resident Muslims have a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity. For the most part, this development is viewed negatively, particularly in Western Europe. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, those who see a growing sense of Islamic identity among resident Muslims overwhelmingly say this is a bad thing.
While we should all be thankful to Allah Almighty for giving us this piece of land, that we can call our home, and its people, our people, we should also not leave any stone unturned to make this piece of land the envy of the world. We are far from that aspiration and there is a long way to go. In fact, some of us may argue that we aren’t even moving in the right direction. Ironically, Pakistan is a country that has not yet come to terms with some of the most important questions that must define a country’s march into the future:
to create in 1947? Surely I cannot say anything new on this venerable and much-discussed historical subject; the experts know much more. But, as we approach Pakistan’s sixtieth anniversary, the matter of Jinnah and the Islamic State is still a hot one. It is confounded both by the wishful thinking of my well-meaning liberal friends, as well as conveniences invented at different times by Pakistan’s military, political, and religious establishments. Therefore, it seems to me that objectivity, honesty, and clarity are still desperately needed if we are to clean out old cobwebs and chart a new course for the future of our country.
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