I found the article to be off the mark and rather confused.
LAHORE: This is in response to Dr Ayesha Siddiqa's article of January 9 titled “This is Jinnah’s Pakistan” which contained several errors, both conceptual and factual. First of all, Governor Salmaan Taseer was martyred on January 4, not December 4. Jinnah’s famous speech was delivered on 11th August, 1947 and not 11th August, 1948.
More importantly however, I found the article to be off the mark and rather confused. At one point the writer accuses the elite of hiding behind secularism and at another point clothing themselves with religious legitimacy. Then she goes on to repeat the myth that Pakistan was created in the name of religion.
Jinnah repeatedly described the issue of the Muslim minority as a political one and not based on religion. Responding to Gandhi, he had explained that the matter of Muslim demands was historical and social and not religious in nature.
It is well known that Jinnah did not grow a beard, did not stop wearing suits and did not hide his drinking preferences. He repeatedly said that he was a political and not a religious leader. Jinnah's ideal was England which, though, self- consciously Protestant, emerged as a practically secular state. Secularism has historically emerged in confessional societies. In the wake of Governor Taseer's brutal murder, it has become obvious that the same struggle has now begun in the Islamic world as well. Out of it will emerge a secular democratic and liberal Pakistan which Jinnah would have approved of.
Yasser Latif Hamdani
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2011.
