I very well understand the pain and agony of Naeem Sadiq in expressing his disappointment with his homeland, Pakistan. When nations grow old they are showered with wisdom but that unfortunately did not happen to Pakistan. This is a unique situation how the lust for power and politics can ruin and corrupt a nation’s future. The creation of Pakistan or the division of India on the basis of religion is a long debated question. The vision of Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah for a secular Pakistan was never understood or appreciated by the later Pakistani politicians and the dream of a democratic state remained always elusive from the very beginning. The politicians of Pakistan took religion as the driving force to run the affairs of the state thereby missing every opportunity to create a trustworthy mechanism on the basis of popular consensus. This created a vacuum and which resulted in a recurrent take over by the military. That gradually eroded the real nation building ideals and a void was created. This void was used by the religious zealots to create an unnecessary phobia against India which culminated in costly wars, depleted valuable resources. The crisis Pakistan facing now is not one day’s creation. Why we blame only Gen. Ziaul Huq for the mess? He was a cunning power hungry military man without any political wisdom. His unholy alliance with vicious religious forces made an already bad situation worse. He just injected more saline into the sleeping Frankenstein of the religious extremism and left it to play havoc on the nation. The name of Islam was not used to create a society based on justice and equality. It was used to destroy the fabric of everything good and lasting for a nation’s survival. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was too much idealistic in thinking that Islam could be secular too. Islam does not accept the notion of secularism. You take Islam with its blind faith conditions otherwise be sincere to decline it. There are apologists who are hypocritical enough to talk about many things to soothe the recalcitrant views but sincerely they never meant it. The lethal brew of religion and politics will bring more pain to Pakistan but an epoch is fast approaching when pragmatic ideals will reign and the bogie of Islam will run to the bushes.

Akbar Hussain