Not the primrose path

Maulana Maududi was the firebrand who set alight the Ahmadi issue which now obsesses many a good Muslim of Pakista

It is no longer “a funny old world” (as Margaret Thatcher put it in her long past era) that we inhabit. It is a highly complex and troubled world with more than its fair share of trials and tribulations, much bloodshed and much destruction both of mankind and the oceans, land and air that mankind has so greedily and thoughtlessly appropriated for its own furtherance.

Over the past few decades, Pakistan has made its own contribution to what is now almost an international scenario of murder and mayhem. Our establishment has created and nurtured monsters which have unsurprisingly turned against it with the result that it inevitably finds itself in dire straits when it comes to reining-in and controlling. The worst fallout of the terrorism perpetrated in Europe and the US will be on the unfortunate Muslim immigrants and their descendants — amongst them hundreds of thousands of Pakistani origin — the larger majority being law-abiding citizens, getting on with their lives, educating their children and contributing towards the economies of the countries to which they chose when fleeing their homelands. They suffer, and will continue to suffer on account of the totally irrational and wicked beliefs of a few thousand young Muslims, brainwashed and deranged.

Over the past year, figures have been trotted out blithely and yes, it is a fact that Pakistan at large, and Karachi in particular, have seen a reduced amount of killings and bloodshed, but it is all there, somewhere, simmering below the surface. The Taliban and their offshoots are alive and kicking in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan as we have seen this week in the by no means remote city of Mardan. Yet more parents and relatives are left to mourn and weep, largely abandoned by a government that can but ‘condemn’ for the sake of PR, as abandoned are the hundreds of parents of the ‘nation’s children’ murdered in Peshawar in 2014. Our political classes are obsessed with their own safety and survival so well illustrated by the death of a child due to VVIP (why VV, is V not enough?) movement last month in Karachi.

And Daesh, or the Islamic State as many term it, continues its insane march against what is now accepted as civilisation. Pakistan has made its own little contribution towards the madness. It was a citizen of Pakistan, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi who in his book, The Islamic Law and Constitution, coined the phrase ‘Islamic State’. His ‘State’ is all-embracing and will eventually ‘rule the earth’. The ‘State’ was to be judged by it adherence to the Islamic system and not democracy. His system was unforgiving. If people refuse to take the right path, they must be shocked into conversion by spectacular acts. Thus the ideological soil, in which groups such as al Qaeda (still with us) and Daesh grow, can, however loosely, be attributed to Maududi of Pakistan.

He was the firebrand who set alight the Ahmadi issue which now obsesses many a good Muslim of Pakistan. Perfectly rational beings have been known to become violent on the subject. As did the non-rational who sit on the CII when the subject arose in their meeting. The CII, Maududi would be happy to know, is enshrined in our Constitution, a thorough mish-mash, imbued with contradictory articles and amendments, too many dear to the hearts of Maududi and his ardent supporter, General Zia ul Haq, creator and maker of our present prime minister who famously in the second of his three comings as our dear leader did his damnedest to step firmly on the Maududi-laid path.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2016.

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