Secular Or Islamist Jinnah?

In countries like the United States, Israel, and Britain, modern states were established by fallible men who created nations that fulfilled religious and historical destinies.

The same thing happened in Pakistan when its independence movement was spearheaded by a westernized man who spoke English but nonetheless believed in his nation's manifest destiny.  All his sayings, writings and actions indicate he was not confused about who he was and where he came from.

Unfortunately, a minority of inferiority-complexed Pakistanis refuse to let die a silly debate over whether Pakistan's founding father, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular or an Islamist, and whether he wanted a Muslim Pakistan or a secular Pakistan.

Who cares. He was a Muslim. He said it. His nation is predominantly Muslim and it exists because of this fact.  Otherwise there would not be a Pakistan today, the manifest expression of a history, culture, language and arts that took shape over at least ten centuries, in terms of immediate influence, and more if one is to go deeper in history.

And as in everywhere else, Pakistan too had and continues to have its share of enemies and detractors.  But they wouldn't have found a fertile ground if the Pakistani intelligentsia had put its act together and got down to the business of building a nation.

This is why it is heartening to see the fourth and the fifth generation of Pakistanis take charge and settle these nonissues once and for all.  This book is one example of this.

Click here to read more.

The Amazon.com has described this book like this:

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.