The biggest irony of Pakistan’s history is that Islam, which was supposedly the raison d’être of Pakistan, not only failed to hold the country together, but also became the biggest source of its identity crisis. It is in the name of Islam that the country has suffered some of its worst internal conflicts in the last 10 years. And it is in the name of Islam that the country has created an image of being the most potent source of religious terrorism, which poses a threat to peace and stability in large parts of the world.
The founders of Pakistan had set out to create a separate nation for all the Muslims of the subcontinent. But the number of Muslims who chose to stay back in India was more than the Muslims who opted to join Pakistan. Among those who joined Pakistan, 55 percent decided to quit in 1971 to form a separate state. In 1974, under the prime ministership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, an influential section of Pakistani Muslims called ‘Ahmediyas’ was declared as non-Muslims, mainly on doctrinal grounds, i.e., differences on who constitutes a real Muslim. The last 20 years have witnessed accentuation of conflict between different Muslim sects, i.e. between Sunnis and Shias on one hand, and on the other between Sunnis themselves.
These political conflicts were manifestations of a deeper philosophical confusion as to what constitutes an Islamic state is structured. There is no uniformity even among the so-called Islamic states. Within Pakistan, the debate as to how the Islamic state of Pakistan should be structured, or what the role of Islam should be in this state, goes back to the days of its birth. While the ulema and the religious community in general were always keen that Islam should play a dominant role in Pakistan, they were never clear about what the role should be. Against this view, the modernists, i.e., the Western-educated political leaders, intellectuals, civil servants, and even the army officers in the first three decades wanted the Pakistani state to be run on Western parliamentary lines, with Islam playing a role only in the personal lives of the people.
http://newageislam.com/militant-islam--the-nemesis-of-pakistan--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1326
No comments:
Post a Comment