Politicians From Pakistan

"The principle that each group is entitled to its free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism. There are communalisms and communalisms. A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities. Nay, it is my duty, according to the teaching of the Quran, even to defend their places of worship, if need be. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and behaviour; and which has formed me what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its culture, and thereby recreating its whole past as a living operative factor, in my present consciousness. Even the authors of the recognise the value of this higher aspect of communalism."

"It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own."

""Muhammad of Arabia ascended the highest Heaven and returned. I swear by God that if I had reached that point, I should never have returned.” These are the words of a great Muslim saint, ‘Abd al-Quddūs of Gangoh. In the whole range of Sufi literature it will be probably difficult to find words which, in a single sentence, disclose such an acute perception of the psychological difference between the prophetic and the mystic types of consciousness. The mystic does not wish to return from the repose of “unitary experience”; and even when he does return, as he must, his return does not mean much for mankind at large."

"Ends and purposes, whether they exist as conscious or subconscious tendencies, form the warp and woof of our conscious experience."

"To this convention you must re-state as clearly and as strongly as possible, the political objective of Indian Muslims as a distinct political unit in the country. It is absolutely necessary to tell the world both inside and outside India that the economic problem is not the only problem in the country. From the Muslim point of view the cultural problem is of much greater consequence to most Indian Muslims. At any rate it is not less important than the economic problem."

"The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience."

"Would we have played with our lives for nothing but worldly gain? If our people had run after earth's goods and gold, Need they have smashed idols, and not idols sold?"

"You tell us who were they who pulled down the gates of Khyber? Who were they that reduced the city that was the pride of Caesar? Fake gods that men had made, who did break and shatter? Who routed infidel armies and destroyed them with bloody slaughter? Who put out and made cold the 'sacred' flame in Iran? Who retold the story of the one God, Yazdan?"

"And even the Angels could not tell what was that voice so strange, Whose secret seemed to lie beyond Celestial wisdom’s range."

"Let the lament of this lonely bulbul pierce the hearts of all, Arouse the hearts of the sleeping, with this my clarion call. Transfused with fresh blood, a new compact of faith we'll sign. Let our hearts thirst again for a sip of the vintage wine. What if the pitcher be Persian, from Hejaz is the wine I serve. What if the song be Indian, it is Hejazi in its verve."

"This is not a letter on Pakistan. If it were, I could have written a small book entitled "Glimpses of Pakistan's history". Time does not permit it. The nation is gripped in her worst crisis, standing in the middle of the road between survival and disintegration. Since the birth of Pakistan, crisis has followed crisis in rapid escalation. Millions of lives were sacrificed to create this country. Pakistan is said to be the dream of Mohammad Iqbal and the creation of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam. Was anything wrong with the dream or with the one who made the dream come true? Opinions have differed and continue to differ. The next few years will most probably decide the issue, perhaps once and for all, and not without bloodshed. This process is not inevitable but the present policies of the ruling junta are driving this country towards a sad inevitability"

"Iqbal is one of the eminent personalities in the history of Islam. His is such a profound and sublime personality that it cannot be described and measured by only one Dimension of his life. Iqbal was a scholar and a philosopher, but at the same time other dimensions of his life are also so bright that if we consider him to be just a philosopher and a scholar, we feel that we have belittled him. Undoubtedly Iqbal is a great poet and is reckoned among the greatest. Those who know Urdu very well and have written about Iqbal’s Urdu poetry maintain that Iqbal's Urdu poems are among the best in Urdu. Of course this may not be a great tribute to him as the poetic Tradition of Urdu is not so rich. But it cannot be disputed that his Urdu poetry made a great impact on large numbers of people, on Hindus and Muslims equally, living in the Subcontinent during the early decades of the twentieth century, and motivated them to participate in the struggle (for freedom) that was reaching its climax."

"Iqbal is buried in the grounds of the Shah Jehan Mosque in Lahore; and soldiers watch his tomb. Rhetoric or sentimentality like that is invariably worrying; it hides things. And the tomb, with its Mogul motifs, would be a kind of artistic sacrilege if, just across the way, the great Mogul fort of Lahore (the emperor’s window there recorded in some of the finest Mogul pictures) wasn’t falling into dust; if, in that same city of Lahore, the Mogul Shalimar Gardens and the tombs of the emperor Jehangir and his consort were not in absolute decay; if, going back four centuries, the delicately colored tiled towers of the thirteenth-century tombs of Uch in Bahawalpur, one of the finest Islamic things in the subcontinent, were not half washed away; if, going back further still, the land just around the Buddhist city of Taxila, known to Alexander the Great, and with once fabulous remains, wasn’t being literally quarried; if Pakistan, still pursuing imperialist Islamic fantasies, hadn’t been responsible for the final looting of the Buddhist treasures of Afghanistan. In its short life Iqbal’s religious state, still half serf, still profoundly uneducated, mangling history in its schoolbooks as well, undoing the polity it was meant to serve, had shown itself dedicated only to the idea of the cultural desert here, with glory—of every kind—elsewhere."

"AND yet it was strange, the Arab tilt of Pakistan: the little boy in Arab clothes, the Pakistan Steel project given the name of the Arab conqueror. The poet Iqbal, putting forward his plan for an Indian Muslim state in 1930, had said that the Islam of India was special, “a people-building force … at its best.” “I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state in the best interests of India and Islam,” Iqbal had said. “For India, it means security and peace …; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian imperialism was forced to give it.” But the world had changed since 1930; Arabia had some say in the world again. Pakistan had changed since 1947. Seeking more than Iqbal’s Muslim polity now, seeking in failure an impossibly pure faith, it called up its Arabian origins, mystical but at the same time real. At Banbhore, a remote outpost of the earliest Arab empires, you walked on human bones."

"Why must I forever lose, forever forgo profit that is my due, Sunk in the gloom of evenings past, no plans for the morrow pursue. Why must I all attentive be to the nightingale's lament? Friend, am I as dumb as a flower? Must I remain silent? My theme makes me bold, makes my tongue more eloquent. Dust be in my mouth, against Allah I make complaint."

"The history of the preceding Muslim dynasties had taught Aurangzeb that the strength of Islam did not depend ... so much on the goodwill of the people of this land as on the strength of the ruling race."

"[Iqbal elaborated that nationalism came into conflict with Islam] only when it begins to play the role of a political concept and claims to be a principle of human solidarity demanding that Islam should recede to the background of a mere private opinion and cease to be a living factor in the national life. ... In majority countries, Islam accomodates nationalism, for there Islam and nationalism are practically identical, in minority countries it is justified in seeking self-determination as a cultural unit."

"O water of the river Ganges, thou rememberst the day When our torrent flooded thy valleys..."

"China and Arabia are ours, India is ours, Muslims we are, the whole world is ours..."

"Our India is the best of all countries in the world."

"Overflowing with the wine of Truth is the cup of India All philosophers of the Western world have acknowledged India It is the result of the elegant thinking of Indians That higher than the sky is the position of India This country has had many people of angelic disposition On whose account world renowned is the name of India India is proud of the existence of Rama Spiritual people consider him prelate of India This alone is the miracle of this light of righteousness That brighter than world’s morning is the evening of India He was expert in sword craft, was unique in bravery Was matchless in piety and in the enthusiasm of love."

"Shah Alamgir, that high and mighty king, Pride and renown of Gurgan Timur’s line, In whom Islam attained a loftier fame And wider honour graced the Prophet’s Law, He the last arrow to our quiver left In the affray of Faith with Unbelief ; When that the impious seed of heresy, By Akbar nourished, sprang and sprouted fresh In Dara’s soul, the candle of the heart Was dimmed in every breast, no more secure Against corruption our Community Continued ; then God chose from India That humble-minded warrior, Alamgir, Religion to revive, faith to renew. The lightning of his sword set all ablaze The harvest of impiety ; faith’s torch Once more its radiance o’er our counsels shed."

"Heart – “It is absolutely certain that God does exist.” Head – “But, my dear boy! Existence is one of my categories, and you have no right to use it.” Heart – “So much the better, my Aristotle!”"

"Every land which belongs to God is our land."

"It must now be obvious that the objective of the Islamic jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system, and establish in its place an Islamic system of state rule. Islam does not intend to confine his rule to a single state or a hand full of countries. The aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution. Although in the initial stages, it is incumbent upon members of the party of Islam to carry out a revolution in the state system of the countries to which they belong; their ultimate objective is none other than world revolution."

"It [Jamaat-e-Islami] is not a missionary organisation or a body of preachers or evangelists, but an organisation of God’s troopers."

"Human relations are so integrated that no state can have complete freedom of action under its principles unless the same principles are not in force in a neighbouring country. Therefore, a, ‘Muslim Party’ will not be content with the establishment of Islam in just one area alone –both for its own safety and for general reform. It should try and expand in all directions. On one hand it will spread its ideology; on the other it will invite people of all nations to accept its creed, for salvation lies only therein. If this Islamic state has power and resources it will fight and destroy non-Islamic governments and establish Islamic states in their place."

"Jihad Fee-Sabilillah," or "Jihad in the way of God," a 1939 essay by Sayyid Abu A'la Mawdudi, argues that the pursuit of political power-rather than what he called "a hotchpotch of beliefs, prayers and rituals"-was integral to the practice of the Islam.14 "Islam," he insisted, "is a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals." It was therefore imperative for Muslims to "seize the authority of state, for an evil system takes root and flourishes under the patronage of an evil government and a pious cultural order can never be established until the authority of government is wrested from the wicked." Indeed, Mawdudi insisted that the word "Muslims" referred not to a religious community but to a politically-bound "international revolutionary party." "The party of the Muslims," Mawdudi concluded, "will inevitably extend the invitation to citizens of other countries to embrace the faith which holds out the promise of true salvation and genuine welfare. At the same time, if the Muslim Party commands enough resources, it will eliminate un-lslamic governments and establish the power of Islamic government in their place." He concluded: "Hence it is imperative, for reasons both of the general welfare of humanity and for its own self-defence, that the Muslim Party should not be content just with establishing the Islamic system of government in one territory, but should extend its sway as far as possible all around." It is worth noting, parenthetically, that these ideas resonated in the works of Islamist movement elsewhere. Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Said Qutb's work drew extensively on Mawdudi; indeed, he liberally acknowledged the debt. Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Azzam, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden's ideological mentor and co-founder of arguably the largest terror group in the world, Lashkar-e-Taiba. In this view, "jihad is incumbent on the Islamic state," he stated, "to send out a group of mujahideen to their neighboring infidel state. They should present Islam to the leader and his nation. If they refuse to accept Islam, jizyah (a tax) will be imposed upon them and they will become subjects of the Islamic state. If they refuse this second option, the third course of action is jihad to bring the infidel state under Islamic domination."

"[The Islamic State] cannot…restrict the scope of its activities….It seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity in consonance with its moral norms and programme of social reform. In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states."

"The power to rule over the earth has been promised to the whole community of believers; it has not been stated that any particular person or class among them will be raised to that position. From this it follows that all believers are repositories of the Caliphate."

"(The) materials for the constitution of an Islamic state are to be found in four principle sources, the Koran, the Sunna of the Prophet, the conventions and practices of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, and in the rulings of the great jurists of the Islamic tradition."

"The reforms which Islam wants to bring about cannot be carried out merely by sermons. Political power is essential for their achievement."

"“God has prohibited the unrestricted intermingling of the sexes and has prescribed purdah [a word of Persian origin meaning the religious and social practice of female seclusion]” recognizing “man’s guardianship of woman,” for Muslims must guard against “that satanic flood of female liberty and licence which threatens to destroy human civilization in the West.”"

"Finally, no less a figure than Sayyid Abu ’l-‘Alā’ Mawdūdī, one of the major thinkers behind modern Islamist ideology, said that in an Islamic state as envisioned by him, “no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect, the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.”"

"Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which nation assumes the role of the standard-bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet .... because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare programme [of Islam] … Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution and a composite term for the use of all these forces is ‘Jihad’. .... the objective of the Islamic ‘ Jihād’ is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule."

"In the jihad in the way of Allah, active combat is not always the role on the battlefield, nor can everyone fight in the front line. Just for one single battle preparations have often to be made for decades on end and the plans deeply laid, and while only some thousands fight in the front line there are behind them millions engaged in various tasks which, though small themselves, contribute directly to the supreme effort."

"[Muslims (of the right-thinking kind) constitute a Revolutionary Party whose objective] is to expend all the powers of body and soul, your life and goods in the fi ght against the evil forces of the world, not that having annihilated them you should step into their shoes, but in order that evil and con- tumacy should be wiped out and God’s law should be enforced in the world."

"Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals."

"It is made clear that one need not guard one’s private parts from two kinds of women – one’s wives and slave-girls."

"[Unbelievers] “have, however, absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines. For if they are given such an opportunity, corruption and mischief will ensue. In such a situation the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”"

"The Afghans have stood firm in the face of all odds and pressures and have indeed made the greatest of sacrifices. They have sacrificed a million and a half people. They are no longer afraid of death. The truth is that when death seems far away then fear of it is magnified, but this fear disappears for those who see it close to them. For the Afghans, death is no longer something to be avoided!"

"As the scholar Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr observed, Mawdudi's position was "closely tied to questions of communal politics and its impact on identity formation, to questions of power in pluralistic societies, and to nationalism." His worldview, Nasr notes, was "informed by the acute despair that gripped the community [Muslim]" in the early decades of the twentieth century. Mawdudi saw the Hindu revivalism of the Arya Samaj as an existential threat to Muslims, "a proof of the inherent animosity of Hindus towards Islam." Mawdudi would die in 1979, a relatively marginal figure in Pakistan's politics and all but unknown outside Islamist circles in his homeland of India. However, inside a decade Mawdudi's ideas would give birth to a cult of the bomb-led, improbably, by a man with only one hand, a rudimentary knowledge of bomb-making acquired from making fireworks, and no organizational resources behind him."

"The most important of the fundamentalist groups was the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Assembly of Islam. It had been founded by a religious teacher and zealot, Maulana Maudoodi. Before partition he had objected to the idea of Pakistan, for strange reasons. The poet Iqbal, presenting the case for a separate Indian Muslim state in 1930, had said that such a state would rid Indian Islam of the “stamp which Arab imperialism was forced to give it.” Maudoodi’s ambitions were just the opposite. He thought that an Indian Muslim state would be too limiting, would suggest that Islam had done its work in India. Maudoodi wanted Islam to convert and cover all India, and to cover the world. Iqbal had said that an important reason for the creation of Pakistan was that Islam had worked better in India than in other places as “a people-building force.” Maudoodi didn’t think so. He didn’t think the Muslims of the subcontinent and their political leaders were good enough, as Muslims, for something as precious as an all-Muslim state. They were not pure enough in their belief; they were too tainted by the Indian past. Maudoodi had died in 1979. But the attitude of the Jamaat was still that the people of Pakistan and their rulers were not good enough. If Iqbal’s Muslim state had had its calamities, it wasn’t the fault of Islam; it was only the fault of the people who called themselves Muslim. In the fundamentalist way of thinking this kind of failure automatically condemned itself as the failure of a false or half-hearted Islam. And the Jamaat could always say—its cause ever fresh—that Islam had never really been tried since the early days, and that it was time to try it now. The Jamaat would show the way."

"The patron saint of the Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan was Maulana Maudoodi. He opposed the idea of a separate Indian Muslim state because he felt that the Muslims were not pure enough for such a state. He felt that God should be the lawgiver; and, offering ecstasy of this sort rather than a practical programme, he became the focus of millenarian passion. He campaigned for Islamic laws without stating what those laws should be."

"At the end of his long and cantankerous life the maulana had gone against all his high principles. He had gone to a Boston hospital to look for health; he had at the very end entrusted himself to the skill and science of the civilization he had tried to shield his followers from. He had sought, as someone said to me (not all Pakistanis are fundamentalists), to reap where he had not wanted his people to sow. Of the maulana it might be said that he had gone to his well-deserved place in heaven by way of Boston; and that he went at least part of the way by ."

"Mawdūdī declares: Islam has no vested interest in promoting the cause of this or that Nation. The hegemony of this or that State on the face of this earth is irrelevant to Islam. The sole interest of Islam is the welfare of mankind. Islam has its own particular ideological standpoint and practical programme to carry out reforms for the welfare of mankind. Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which nation assumes the role of the standard-bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet—not because the sovereignty over the earth should be wrested from one nation or several nations and vested in one particular nation, but because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare programme or what would be truer to say from “Islam” which is the programme of well-being for all humanity. Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution and a composite term for the use of all these forces is “Jihād.” The message could not be clearer: Islam must conquer the globe, and the purpose of jihād is totalitarian—it demands the engagement of all Muslims until Earth is ruled according to the precepts of Islam. All other ideologies, as systems where man-made laws rule, are enemies. Mawdūdī wishes to replace them with God-made laws: the Shari‘a."

"Introductory books on Mawdūdī rarely refer to his views on jihād. These views are uncompromising, unapologetic, and very disturbing in their implications. Mawdūdī begins his short treatise, Jihād in Islam, with a definition of religion and a definition of nation: But the truth is that Islam is not the name of a “Religion”, nor is “Muslim” the title of a “Nation.” In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. “Muslim” is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And “Jihād” refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective."

"Mawdūdī also clearly did not accord women a sociopolitical role equal to men. Fearing that greater interaction of the sexes would lead to immorality and undo the Islamic State, he “comes close to characterizing women as an insidious force whose activities ought to be regulated and restricted before they could wreak havoc.”"

"He argued that the Islamic state was an ideological one, and the preservation of its ideological purity was therefore the condition sine qua non for its survival and development. Extended rights for minorities would undermine the Islamic state as they would diffuse its ideological vigilance. Therefore limiting their rights to those of zimmis in Islamic law was a matter of national security and self-preservation."

"“Mawdudi’s revivalist position was radical communalism as it articulated Muslim interests and sought to protect their rights, and demanded the severance of all cultural and hence social and political ties with Hindus in the interests of purifying Islam.”"