How US Policy Created An 'Imported' Debate Of Sufi vs. Wahabi And Religious vs. Secular In Pakistan; Nation Needs Unity And Not Divisions That Serve Foreign Interests

I don't know why some of our 'liberals' love to confuse our national debate. [So do some of our religious extremists].

Foreign commentators [Read: Americans] decide that our national battle should be Sufi saints vs. Wahabi Saudi Arabia [to borrow from the 'imported' vocabulary, because 'Wahabi' is used in the US and the UK media, but never in Saudi Arabia], and our liberals adopt this line without questions.

Our foreign well wishers also decide to limit the entire great and magnificent reality of Pakistan into one single speech by our Quaid on 11 August 1947. Which is a great speech. The objection is that US's Pakistan policy has hijacked this speech to support its agenda of how the government should look like in Islamabad.

Our Quaid, God bless his soul, was a well versed man and had the courage of his convictions. He, and we, want Pakistan to be a modern state. Pakistan is a modern state barring some deformations that occurred after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Our Quaid was great at expressing his thoughts but he never used the word 'secularism'. And so the insinuations that US policymakers and their Pakistani poodles are trying to inject into his 11 Aug. 1947 speech should end. It's none of their business anyway.

Who says that Sufi vs Arab and 11 Aug speech vs. everything else is our main battle in Pakistan?

If some Pakistani citizens want to follow Sufi saints, that's their right. If some Pakistanis want to follow Arab schools of thought in Islam, that's their right too. If somebody here wants to be a westernized liberal Pakistani, that's their choice.

More divisions in a nation exhausted by fake political and linguistic divides are not welcome. A war between these fake divides is certaily not Pakistan's battle, regardless of what American think-tank types suggest.

The Pakistan of Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal can accommodate the Sufis and others, as well as those who are westernized or, to be more accurate, our version of 'liberals'.

Pakistan's real battle is to create and strengthen Pakistani Nationalism. And this nationalism covers our multidimensional identity that spans the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of India/South Asia.

Our challenge of rebuilding the Pakistani State consists of many smaller challenges. Religious-liberal divisions are not one of them. Let's not get behind this ridiculous recipe offered to us by American think-tank types. If these think-tank types and their recipes were any good, they would've handled Iraq and Afghanistan better and prevented their nation from squandering their wealth and reaching the point of default in less than a decade.

   

Pakistani Professors Must Stop Pakistan-Bashing

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, teaching defense and strategy to Pakistani students, calls Pakistan's Founding Father and the national poet 'homosexuals'.

And Prof. A. H. Nayyar, an alumni of the largest university in Islamabad, is asking followers to fake evidence against Pakistan's founder in order to show him to young Pakistanis as someone who ate ham, which is prohibited for Muslims and Jews.

What's eating Prof. Nayyar and Dr. Siddiqa is that there is a revival taking place among young Pakistanis, the single largest group in a population of 170 million. The revival is unprecedented and seeks to renew faith in Pakistan.  It is a reaction to anti-Pakistan reports and think-tank findings mainly in the United States over the past three years that sought to dismiss Pakistan as a nation on the verge of collapse. Pakistanis have also been galvanized by evidence showing Indians exporting terrorism into Pakistan from US-controlled Afghanistan.

The evidence against both teachers, presented here for the first time, indicates a major problem facing most Pakistani colleges and universities. A small but noisy group of professors is encouraging students to attack the very foundations of the Pakistani state.

This is alarming considering the timing and the regional instability resulting from America's Afghan war.

Both Dr. Siddiqa and Prof. Nayyar have access to one of the most influential Pakistani seats of learning, the Quaid-e-Azam University in the heart of the Pakistani capital. Both of them are also known to hold what many describe as views more sympathetic to Pakistan's regional detractors.

Dr. Siddiqa's statement was part of a discussion she had with an Indian journalist on Facebook on Feb. 10, 2010.  A screen shot can be seen with this report. [Click here to see the actual conversation on Facebook].

Prof. Nayyar's statement came in a discussion on Feb. 8, 2010 by members of an Internet mailing list called Socialist Pakistan News. A screen shot is provided.

Bashing Pakistan, its history, the Pakistan Independence Movement, the Founding Fathers, and the country's military are common themes among some of these university professors. Coincidentally, most of them also happen to be very supportive of American and Indian criticism of Pakistan.  In Dr. Siddiqa and Prof. Nayyar's cases, both of them are active members of so-called peace groups that explicitly embrace Indian hegemony in the region.

[If you are a student and have information about anti-Pakistan activities on your campus, please email details to PakNationalists@gmail.com . All emails will remain confidential.]

Big India's Small Heart

[in response to a respectable Indian journalist in a private mailing list]

Dear Mr. Bharati,


The fact remains that Pakistan and the Pakistani government are more magnanimous in allowing Indian channels and content here than the Indian government and Indian channels are in reciprocating.

More Indian channels are shown in Pakistan. Very little of Pakistani channels is allowed in India, and this is a matter of policy that the Indian government imposes. At least we in Pakistan permit non-political Indian content. In India your government considers anything Pakistani as suspicious.

Mainstream Indian news organizations that have websites routinely block Pakistanis who register to post comments, including the majority that posts polite and academic comments. The issue is that your media outlets won’t allow Pakistanis to say anything on bilateral relations that is different from the official Indian position. The other opinion is not allowed. Compare this to Pakistan where Indian writers get away with much more on the pages of Pakistani newspapers [unfortunately, an Indian writer was allowed recently to call Quaid-e-Azam a ‘separatist’, with everything that the word implies, on the pages of a national Pakistani daily]. I dare any ‘liberal’ Indian newspaper to publish an article by a Pakistani offering an opinion that goes against the official Indian policy.

Javeria Jalal wasn’t interested in the legal aspect of the story. She wanted to highlight how small-hearted and insecure Big India is. And her point stands. You are free to spin and defend Indian image but facts speak for themselves.

PakNationalist Jinnah

A book in India that praises Pakistan's founder is being celebrated in Pakistan. Pakistani commentators appear apologetic in trying to seek approval. The book argues that Mohammad Ali Jinnah did not want Pakistan as a first choice. This is a common mistake made both by Indian and western writers, and even some Pakistani intellectuals. Pakistan was destined to happen, a result of ten centuries of Pakistani cultural, political and military presence in the region located between India, Iran and Afghanistan. The Quaid-e-Azam, as Pakistanis reverently call their Great Leader, understood this and became the instrument for a cause larger than him. The Indians need to correct one more fallacy: there was no 'partition' in 1947.

While we should thank India's former foreign minister for his courage in praising the charismatic leader of Pakistan's independence movement, we should stop behaving as if we are seeking validation and vindication. Mr. Jaswant Singh's book is not a Pakistani victory. It is a sincere attempt by an Indian citizen to probe what is commonly known as partition, which itself is based on the false notion that a sovereign India was wrongly divided. For us in Pakistan, we should realize that our independence – and not 'partition' – is steeped in both modern and old histories and requires no explanation.

Pakistani intellectuals continue to be afflicted with low self-esteem that prevents them from fashioning an interpretation of history supportive of the idea of Pakistani nationalism. In this, our intellectuals are far behind the thinkers in Israel, for example, who achieved the impossible by reviving a 2,000-year-old dead language to gel a nation of diverse peoples.

Our politicians and thinkers failed to make something out of Pakistan in the past six decades mainly because of the lack of pride that comes from a sense of being, a sense of destiny, a sense of history. This discussion is also important because we have seen brazen attempts during the last two years, especially in the US media, to promote the idea of Pakistan's balkanization.

Finding a nationalistic motivation, a sort of PakNationalism, is essential.

The first thing Pakistanis need to know is that Pakistan was destined to happen. Our leader, Mr. Jinnah, made it happen through his sheer brilliance because he was there. But Pakistan was going to happen anyway, in some shape or form and at an opportune time, because of the force of history. Pakistan was not a historical coincidence that the common historical version suggests and which Mr. Singh reinforced. There is no coincidence in the fact that a quarter of a century before Quaid-e-Azam's rise, a poet who wore a Turkish tarboosh (hat) and wrote Persian poetry predicted such a country. Pakistan's rise came exactly 90 years after the formal fall of the Mughal empire, Pakistan's predecessor, which was the only India the world had known for centuries. Except for that 90-year-long gap, Pakistan had existed in several shapes and forms and for at least ten centuries or more.


Pakistan's Quaid-e-Azam was a Pakistani nationalist. He was the istrument that helped Pakistan fulfil its destiny, a destiny preordained by the force of history.

Our Indian friends have the right to debate the question of India's supposed division. But today’s India, born in 1947, was never divided or partitioned. It a historical fallacy to think that Pakistan was ever part of any united and sovereign Indian state. The only thing that was divided in 1947 was a British colony that in turn was based on a defunct Muslim empire. The Indian grievance about the 'partition' that is at the core of Indian animosity toward Pakistan is without base.

What is more surprising is how Pakistan's intellectuals were drawn by Mr. Singh's book to conclude that Pakistan's founding father was an 'Indian nationalist' who did not want Pakistan as a first choice. This is incorrect because it negates the force of history that favored Pakistan. Tens of millions of people wanted to be future Pakistani citizens before the country even existed. The timely and superb leadership of Mr. Jinnah was an instrument, not the cause.

Sixty-two years later, Pakistanis shouldn't be discussing details. We know there was a Pakistan independence movement. We know it was anchored in history. We know that the fourth and fifth generations of today's Pakistanis are more integrated than ever, sharing similar ethnic and cultural roots spread over three dynamic regions that surround Pakistan.

This is the reality of Mr. Jinnah's PakNationalism. And this is the only thing that matters.

A Word On Bhutto Celebrations

As a Pakistani citizen, I find the exaggerated government attention to former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's death anniversary tasteless and disturbing. And I have a strong reason for this. Before explaining it, let me just say something about Mr. Bhutto. I respect Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto because he was the prime minister of my country. I disagree with most of his policies and political style. He supported Pakistan's strategic programs and he brought the Arab and Muslim countries together. For this I am grategul to his memory. At the same time, I cannot but regret that ZAB played a major role, along with Mujib Rehman and Gen. Yahya Khan, in paving the way for India to violate international norms and intervene in East Pakistan. His economic policies destroyed a rising Pakistan and we haven't been able to recover ever since. The manner of Mr. Bhutto's execution after a court found him guilty of ordering the murder of one of his political opponents was not right. I emphasize the manner and not the execution itself because, althoug I wish he was pardoned, I have not seen any evidence that suggests that the court did not conduct a fair trial. President Zia ul Haq should have been fairer than he was in treating a former prime minister. Not exercising his power to pardon Mr. Bhutto is debatable. But not letting his family meet him before the execution was unnecessary harshness and reprehensible. The murder case itself, however, has been politicized in the debate that resulted from the harsh manner of the execution. There is evidence that Mr. Bhutto did resort to unusual tactics to deal with his opponents toward the end of his rule when he had also become authoritarian. I have not read for any lawyer who presented any evidence that the trial itself wasn't fair. But overall, I am proud of Mr. Bhutto as I am of most of the men, and one woman, who came to lead Pakistan after Independence. They were all unique and strong personalities with a mixed record. While there is nothing wrong if the PPP government wants to mark the execution of its founder, the exaggerated manner in which this is being done in tasteless to say the least. I object to placing the pictures of Mr. Bhutto, or his daughter Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, or the party flag, at equal level with the portraits of the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Only the Quaid's portrait and the flag of Pakistan should adorn the walls of the federal and provincial government offices. No political party should be permitted this violation that the PPP is committing. State-run PTV and almost all the private television channels have never celebrated the Quaid-e-Azam and his life the way they're doing now with Mr. Bhutto. Again, nothing's wrong if the PPP wants to mark this anniversary. But there should be a law that defines where a sitting government should put the memory of the Quaid-e-Azam and the other Founding Fathers and where it should place the memories of their party founders and heros. Party founders cannot be national heros. The Founding Fathers are, undisputably. I understand the tragic way in which Benazir Bhutto died. And I have no doubt that her brutal murder was part of a larger scheme to destabilize Pakistan, a scheme whose marks lead to 'non-state actors' in Washington and London. That's why I understand if the Information Ministry under Sherry Rehman arranged in 2008 for the PTV to produce an extravagant week-long event marking the life of the late Mrs. Bhutto-Zardari. This event was lavish and unprecedented. The PTV in its entire half a century never celebrated the life of the Quaid-e-Azam and the other Founding Fathers of Pakistan in the same way. Some PTV officials privately complained at the time that the extravagant celebration of a party leader was not the work of Ms. Rehman or the PPP itself but a desperate attempt by the director of PTV [Mr. Yousaf Baig Mirza, now the director of Dunya TV] to save his job. Needless to say, it didn't work and he was booted out. The point is this: All parties are free to eulogize their party heros the way they see fit. But a party in government cannot glorify a party leader in a way that overshadows the Quaid-e-Azam.