The State of our Affairs
We believe — on the basis of the sayings of Prophet
Muhammad (SAW) and
also because of
the fact that
the revivalist efforts of the last four hundred years have largely been
concentrated in the Indian subcontinent — that the process of the global Islamic
Revolution is going to start from our part of the world. Despite these high
hopes and optimism, however, one must
admit that the
conditions are extremely depressing and almost totally
hopeless at the moment.
As far as our own homeland is concerned, the history of
the last half a century is clear proof of the truth that we have done
everything in this country except what we were supposed to do in order to
promote and substantiate its Islamic ideological character. We have followed
every ideology except the one we should have. We have utterly and completely
failed to live up to the claims and promises made during the struggle for
independence in the 1940’s.
During the years just prior to independence, we openly
made solemn promises with Allah (SWT) that Pakistan will represent a
true Islamic State.
This meant that
we had recognized Islam not just
as a system of beliefs and individual morality alone, but also as the only
sources and criterion for our social,
legal, cultural, economic,
and political systems.
The sense of a separate identity that became the basis of the idea of Muslim Nationhood was neither racial or linguistic in origin, nor based upon a common homeland, but it was founded upon our unique ideology, viz., our deep affiliation with and commitment to Islam.
The most crucial purpose behind the idea and struggle
for Pakistan was Islamic renaissance and revival. As the ideologue of Pakistan
Allama Muhammad Iqbal explained in his famous presidential address at Allahbad,
a Muslim state was meant to be “for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the
stamp that Arabian imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilize its law, its
education, its culture,
and to bring them into closer contact with its own original
spirit and with the spirit of modern times.”
This means that today we are living in a paradox.
Although our country owes its existence to the Islamic ideology, we have so far
failed to make any meaningful progress towards the implementation of that
ideology. This also means that by refusing to honor our pledge with Almighty
Allah (SWT), we are ourselves responsible for inviting His anger and His
retribution. The pathetic state of our affairs is, therefore, nothing but a
manifestation of Divine punishment.
At an ideological level, our intelligentsia is almost
completely in the favor of liberalism and permissiveness, a point of view based
upon the materialistic and atheistic frame of mind which has been imported from
the West. Thus, immodesty and licentiousness is being promoted in the name of
entertainment and culture as the ideal standards of behavior for our young men
and women. Morally, we are probably the worst group of people on the face of
the earth. What to speak of Islamic ethics, we are even devoid of basic human
values, as lying, cheating, and hypocrisy have become integral parts of our
national character.
As for Islam itself, the majority of our uneducated and
semi-educated population tend to treat their faith as only a set of dogmas
which has nothing to do with a person’s value structure. Among the educated
classes, most are suffering from various degrees of atheism, skepticism, and
agnosticism. A big chunk of our religious community is busy running after
wealth and power, and the menace of sectarianism, which is continuously being
fueled by them, has added another ominous dimension to the already worsening
national chaos. And those who should help stop this madness — our political
leaders — are themselves busy competing for their domination. The dangerously
irresponsible and often illogical rhetoric that appears regularly in our
national press is ample evidence that most of them don’t care about anything
but power. They make lovely promises of prosperity for the common man, but that
poor fellow is often the last person on their list of beneficiaries.
