Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Jinnah-Iqbal Bill: A Response to the Kerry-Lugar Bill
To implement the ideology of Pakistan purported by Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal, to promote an enhanced relationship of this nation with its ideology and for no ‘other’ purposes.
Be it enacted by General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani and the Armed Forces of Pakistan as a Representation of the Will of the People of Pakistan.
SECTION 1:
TITLE
This Act may be cited as the ‘The Sovereignty and Dignity of the People of Pakistan Act of 2009’.
SECTION 2: FINDINGS
We, the people of Pakistan, make the following findings:
(A)
(1) The people of Pakistan have a long history of being used by the Unites States as a pawn in its plans for world domination. It is clear to us now that the Pakistani interest is not well –served by the meddling of the United States in the affairs of our state.
(2) The people of Pakistan will never give up their sovereignty, their dignity and will not let their government sell the country for so called financial ‘aid’.
(3) Despite the fact that Pakistan has been a major ally of the U.S in the so called ‘war on terror’ , the U.S continues to kill hundreds of Pakistani citizens in drone attacks which are seen as a major onslaught on the sovereignty of the Pakistani nation and a violation of our international borders.
(4) The U.S support for terrorist activities inside Pakistan, compounded by the hostile Indian presence on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has led to the deaths of several thousand Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces of Pakistan over the past 8 years and any more of this outrage is unacceptable to the people of Pakistan.
(5) Despite the sacrifices and cooperation of the security forces of Pakistan, the United States continues to support and fund separatist movements in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), parts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan.
(6) The continued hostility of the United States towards the Armed Forces and Intelligence Agencies of Pakistan, as well as the spread of disinformation regarding the Nuclear Assets of Pakistan.
(7) The ultimate U.S goals of destroying Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons and to exert complete control over the military institutions of Pakistan have now become very clear from the Kerry-Lugar Bill.
(B)
(1) In the long political history of Pakistan, Pakistanis have often been deceived by corrupt politicians in the existing ‘democratic’ structure. Section 62 and 63 of the Constitution of Pakistan clearly define that each candidate applying as a potential candidate for the Parliament needs to be someone who is honest, sagacious, righteous and ameen. It is quite evident that this section of the Constitution has not been implemented in the past as well in the current government.
(2) The current regime has failed to run the country and look after its people and has not been able to make timely decisions in order to protect the sovereignty of the Pakistani nation. Also, this present regime has been found to be in cohorts with elements that are hostile to the Pakistani State.
SECTION 3: OUR MESSAGE TO GENERAL KAYANI AND THE ARMED FORCES OF PAKISTAN: NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENT WITH U.S AND NATO FORCES
(A)
(1) We support the patriotic elements in both the civilian and military establishments who have demonstrated the wisdom and courage to oppose the Kerry-Luger bill.
(2) We assure Gen. Kayani that he has the unequivocal support of every concerned citizen of Pakistan in taking a firm stand to protect the ideological and physical borders of Pakistan.
(3) The Pakistani nation is not for sale and we once again reiterate the resolve that this nation has had since its inception: that we will eat grass but we will stand on our own two feet and not bow to imperial masters.
(4) Based on the findings in Section 2, it is imperative that the current regime is forced to reconsider Pakistan’s Foreign Policy in terms of engaging with the Americans and other actors in the so called ‘theatre of war’ created by U.S presence in this region.
(5) We demand that the current U.S diplomats in Islamabad including the ambassador be expelled on grounds of interference with internal matters of Pakistan.
(6) We also demand the deportation of U.S contractors and mercenaries currently operating on Pakistani soil.
(7) We demand that the U.S embassy in Pakistan is reduced to 10% of its current size, both in terms of area and personnel.
(8) No Visas be issued to any American citizen without clearance from Pakistan’s security agencies.
(9) Pakistan does not need aid from the U.S or any other country. It is time that we used this opportunity to take a stand against corruption and injustice in Pakistan. The Kerry-Luger bill is a challenge to the Pakistani nation and it shall be met with dignity and honour.
It is time for the Pakistani nation to remember who we really are and our real potential. This bill is an attempt to subdue us into slaves of imperialist forces and is a bait to harness the ‘shaheens’ of this dignified nation.
Aye Taair-e-Lahooti us rizq say Maut achheeJis rizq say aati ho parwaaz mein kotahi
Let us join hands and implement the ‘Jinnah-Iqbal Bill’. This is what the people of Pakistan want and this is what the father of this nation strove for.
Pakistan Payendabad!
Monday, October 5, 2009
US Ambassador Patterson MUST be EXPELLED
Written by : Ammar Faheem
You cannot tolerate vipers in your bosom without getting bitten,’ Ambassador Patterson said. ‘Our concern is whether Pakistan really controls its territory. There are people who do not threaten Pakistan but who are extremely important to us.’’
After controlled media leaks about US concerns of a Taliban ’safe-haven’ in Quetta, the US Ambassador in Pakistan has come out and spoken to the media about it. Instead of a denial of reports that the US might attack the provincial capital of Baluchistan with drones, she says the US will have to do what it has to do to take out terrorists.
Enough is enough, Ms. Patterson. The outrage the Pakistani nation will come up with if anything as such happens will really be very painful for US interests in the region.
Ms. Patterson says several Pakistani officials have made it ‘crystal clear’ to her that the Taliban are a strategic asset to Pakistan in case the US has to withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban come into power; now implying that Pakistan is supporting insurgency in Pakistan or anywhere.
The United States really will never stop whining. After a major counter-insurgency operation in Swat, they still express their lack of trust over Pakistan’s ability to contain and crush terrorism.
It leads one to believe that it really is not about terrorism. It really is not about insurgencies. It is actually about the dirty US goal to destabilize and colonize Pakistan. It is about having put the Frontier province on fire and now to support anti-state elements in Baluchistan. The US wants to provide opportunities to them amongst all the mayhem that drone attacks here shall bring with them.
We also have to understand the significance of Quetta as a strategic military base of the Pakistan army. The command and staff college is situated there. And now of all times, the so called ‘Quetta Shura’ of the Taliban tops the US agenda and not Waziristan/FATA.
Will it not give confidence to anti-state elements to take-on the Pakistan army openly in the very heart of the province with US support? Will it not send a signal to them that not even the Pakistan army is secure in its own country?
I believe it is time to crush US war-hysteria in the region once and for all in Pakistan; diplomatically or militarily. Ms. Patterson has so wrongly been led to believe that she enjoys absolute authority over Pakistan and she can come and say whatever she wants to the Pakistani media. She must be told she is an Ambassador and nothing more and nothing less. She must also be told that she is an Ambassador of what every Pakistani believes is a ‘Hostile’ country.
We, I believe, should now go on the offensive and we should deliver selective strikes inside Afghanistan destroying drones and whatever equipment is to be used against Pakistan.
Ms. Patterson – Who are you to tell us we have no control over our territory? Who are you to tell us what we have to do with the insurgents inside?
I urge the Pakistan army to take strict notice of any suspicious military movement across the Pakistani border near Quetta. I urge the government of Pakistan to expel Ambassador Patterson for crossing the line one time too many.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Jinnah: Secular Or Islamist?

By TALHA MUJADDIDI
Book Review at Amazon.com
Product Description
One of the most famous books in Pakistan, the late Chief Justice Muhammad Munir's From Jinnah to Zia (1979) has finally received the ultimate rebuttal from a British-born Asian - using only one piece of evidence. Saleena Karim tells the story of how a point of curiosity - based on little more than an issue of grammar - led her to the startling discovery that a quote used by Munir and attributed to Jinnah is in fact a fake. Furthermore this quote has also been used by a number of Pakistani professional writers and scholars, none of whom have thought to check the original transcript of the interview Munir supposedly quoted from.
Over twenty-five years after the release of From Jinnah to Zia, the author shows us how much damage the 'Munir quote' has done - not only in terms of twisting the facts of history, but now in exposing the intellectual dishonesty of Pakistani scholarship. Saleena Karim names those who have quoted Munir, as well as discussing the other myths about the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and sets the record straight.
“The new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of religion, caste or creed.” Mr. Munir claims that these are the words of the Quaid from an interview to Reuters’ Doon Campbell. In reality these words appear nowhere in that particular interview, and in fact they appear nowhere at all (I spent years checking)”
Q) Please tell us briefly about yourself, your education and background.
A) I am a writer born and brought up in the UK. Almost as soon I learned to read, I wanted to write. When I went to Loughborough University I wanted to take a degree in publishing, but for reasons that are not worth mentioning here, I ended up studying Human Biology and obtained a BSc. I had no interest in pursuing a career in my subject area, so I followed my instinct and began writing part-time. At first I was mostly translating short articles mostly on Islam (Urdu-English), and also started a work of fiction, but I became a full-time writer after I wrote Secular Jinnah: Munir’s Big Hoax Exposed in 2005. As a child I was brought up with religious values and always considered myself a spiritual individual. As I grew older I began to question some of our traditional religious teachings and began to study Quranic principles in depth. I became very interested in Islamic philosophy and in particular, ethics, and this study helped me in ways I cannot even begin to describe.
Q) How did you get interested in the life of Quaid-e-Azam, and what inspired you?
A) Until a few years ago I knew relatively little about the Quaid-i-Azam but accepted he was a hero of Islamic history by default. My father got me interested in his life originally, but I only learned about him in detail after I began work on Secular Jinnah. I was inspired in the first instance by Mr. Jinnah’s speeches, which I later referred to as a first-hand resource on his thinking.
Q) The readers want to know what is it that Justice Munir has said in his book that is either wrong or controversial about Quaid-e-Azam?
A) In short, there is a statement that the late Chief Justice Munir quoted in his book From Jinnah to Zia. It reads:
“The new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of religion, caste or creed.” Mr. Munir claims that these are the words of the Quaid from an interview to Reuters’ Doon Campbell. In reality these words appear nowhere in that particular interview, and in fact they appear nowhere at all (I spent years checking). In the first edition of my book I explained that since 1979 (when Mr. Munir’s book was released) right up until the present no one had spotted that the quote was a fake. Since then I have learned that the quote has its origins not in 1979, but in the famous Munir Report of 1953. That’s the short story, but in my book I went into much more detail about how this quote has became the favourite amongst even the best-known commentators on Mr. Jinnah to try and undermine his stated cause.
Q) What inspired you to write a rebuttal to Munir’s book?
A) It may sound trivial to go after just one fake quote, but I was inspired to write my rebuttal because of it. When I first encountered the Munir quote in From Jinnah to Zia, I did for a short time wonder whether the Quaid was a true secularist after all. I pursued the original source of the Munir quote purely to find out the truth. But this was before I obtained the original transcript of the interview. If the Munir quote had turned out to be real, I would definitely have accepted and argued that Mr. Jinnah was a secularist – but that would still have had no bearing on my personal thoughts regarding the Pakistan idea. In the beginning I intended to write just a short article detailing the finding, but my research soon showed that Mr. Munir’s quote (which I now call the ‘Munir quote’) has had an astonishing impact on scholarship. Admittedly, I myself found it difficult to believe at first, but I knew I had to write a book.
Q) Tell us about your book. How come it got such high praise from various sections of the readers’ community?
A) Other than exposing the damage done by the Munir quote, my book argued in favour of a ‘Muslim’ rather than a ‘secular’ Jinnah. I have put quotes around these words because I’m aware that they tend to mean different things to different people. The biggest problem in fact, is the meaning and use of words like ‘secularism’, ‘Islam’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘ideology’, etc. But insofar as there are two broad camps arguing over Mr. Jinnah, my research convinced me to side with the much-misunderstood ‘Muslim Jinnah’ camp. To my mind Quaid-i-Azam does not fit into the ‘secular’ category, and I explained why in the first book. I also discussed some of the myths surrounding Mr. Jinnah. The number of people actively backing the ‘Muslim Jinnah’ argument is currently dwindling. This I suspect is part of the reason that my book was well-received by the readership, who probably felt that a new entry from this side was long overdue.
Q) Did Quaid-e-Azam want to create a secular Pakistan or a Pakistan based on Islamic principles?
A) This is the big question. Mr. Jinnah certainly did not tire of talking about Islamic democracy and Islamic socialism. In my book I showed that there are literally hundreds of references to Islamic terminology and principles in Mr. Jinnah’s speeches. Additionally, whilst he stressed the absolute equality of non-Muslim citizens in Pakistan, he never once used the word ‘secular’ to describe the country. There is also some evidence lying around which shows that there were non-Muslims who properly understood Mr. Jinnah’s view of Islam, if you know where to look. These facts should really speak for themselves. People arguing for ‘secular Jinnah’ tend to get upset by this argument because they assume that I, or whoever else, is trying to imply that the Quaid was pro-theocracy. They think for instance that we support a class distinction between religious minorities and majorities, or that we advocate the idea of legislation either being written or authorised by ulema. Yet, as every sensible Muslim and especially Pakistani Muslim knows, a state truly guided by Islamic principles is as far removed from theocracy as is an ideal secular state (I might add that there is not one example of either of these states in existence today). The Quaid himself made this point about theocracy versus Islam, which again I showed in my book. The few people who do support such ideas – taken, unfortunately, from fundamentalist literature, rather than the Quran – usually belong to parties that historically were opposed to Partition and Pakistan. So why give their views special attention, and why assume that every ‘non-secularist’ agrees with them?
Q) How would you describe Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan? How far are we today as a nation from Quaid’s Pakistan?
A) ‘Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan’ as such never had a chance to establish itself. At any rate, it is not right to speak of ‘Quaid’s Pakistan’ when Mr. Jinnah said that it was up to the people and the Constituent Assembly to decide the form of their constitution. But we can safely say that the main difference between Mr. Jinnah’s time and now is that back then, a majority of people truly believed that they would rise out of poverty, be given the chance to educate themselves and then make a positive contribution to the international community, in the name of Islam. Pakistan appeared on the map at a time when the Muslim world was facing a political identity crisis, following the abolition of the Caliphate in Turkey. The end of the Caliphate was necessary, but this left the Muslim world in a void. Many people saw the creation of this new Muslim country as a laboratory where Islam would be established afresh, so to speak, taking account of contemporary political and sociological conditions. For this reason Islam in Pakistan was described as the ‘third way’, representing neither capitalism nor communism, but a form of socialist democracy conforming to Islamic (and thus universal) principles of liberty and justice. There was no question therefore, of recreating an early form of Islamic state which may have had merits in its time but could not be made to work in the twentieth century. Again, exactly how this would work was left up to the people and the Constituent Assembly. The Quaid’s sheer integrity and strength of personality was enough to keep the early leaders of Pakistan together – just. Within a few years of his death however, personal rivalries and a lack of intellectual unity between these same politicians came out into the open, marking the end of ‘Quaid’s Pakistan’ practically before it had begun. Today we see nepotism, despotism, jobbery, and discrimination running rampant in Pakistan – all qualities of the worst type of secular state (not to mention the worst of a theocracy). To even begin to undo all of this, will require first and foremost that the people look within themselves and make a concerted demand that they want things to change. Unity must come first.
Q) What do you think about the new book on Jinnah that Jaswant Singh has just written? Have you read that?
A) I have not read the book, but I have seen the interview in which Mr. Singh described its contents. From what he said there seems to be nothing remarkable or new that hasn’t been said by someone else already. There was an interesting article on this subject by Dr. Waheed Ahmad in Pakistan’s News International recently. He suggests on the one hand that Mr. Singh had courage for challenging the wisdom of certain Congress leaders before Partition. On the other, he mentions that some cynics might question the motives of the author, who is after all a veteran member of a far-right political party. Whom does it suit to be told that Mr. Jinnah never really wanted Partition? Is it not suggestive of a wish to see the two countries reunited as one India? I admit to being one of the cynics.
Q) What is the Jinnah Archive? Is it just a website or some project?
A) The idea behind the Jinnah Archive is to make the speeches of the Quaid-i-Azam easily available online. Most collections of speeches have short print runs and they end up in a few university libraries in random places across the globe. My own difficulty in obtaining collections of speeches when researching Secular Jinnah gave me the idea to try and create a searchable database on the Net. Thereafter I began tracking down and purchasing all the printed collections that I could find, and then I built the website. Some distinguished academics kindly helped by giving permission to make full use of their collections. The whole project is privately funded, is non-profit, and is entirely free to the public. Unfortunately it has been neglected of late because I was working almost completely on my own from the beginning, and other unrelated projects have taken up my time in between. This is however, something I will rectify in the very near future.
Q) How do you want to contribute to Jinnah’s Pakistan?
A) That’s an interesting question. We all should utilise our individual talents to the best of our ability. Mine is writing. I hope that my use of the pen will at least get people to think about the Pakistan idea, and not to give up on it.
Q) How would you describe Jinnah?
A) How does anyone describe an awesome personality such as Mr. Jinnah? He was evidently a man of unswerving integrity, high intelligence, pride, conviction, strength, and with more than a smidgen of dry humour. A true example of a Muslim leader, certainly one of the finest of the twentieth century, if not the finest.
Q) When is the second edition of your book coming out?
A) Soon, though I can’t promise a particular date. It’s close to completion and has already been picked up by a publisher. Unlike the first edition, this one should be made available in Pakistan as well as internationally, in both Urdu and in English languages. It contains much more on the story of Mr. Munir’s literary legacy, and in it I reveal one or two other surprises as well. But I can say no more for now.
This interview is originally posted at PakistanKaKhudaHafiz.com