English and Nordic Models of Secularism

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

My earliest understanding of secularism was rooted in the first amendment to the US Constitution while studying in the US. It is the most impressive dictum - a wall of separation between religion and state. The US never had a state church. Its tradition of separation of church and state went back to the founding of Rhode Island which was based on this principle. The Turkish model - especially after Kemal Ataturk's famous 6 day speech - which abolished state religion in 1928 (though initially the Turkish Republic defined Islam as the state religion at Ataturk's behest) also seemed to follow the American and more closely the French models of secularism. The difference between American and French (and Turkish) models was that the latter was an ideology of the state whereby religion was pushed out and not left alone.

Secular Pakistan as the only viable option

The secularism debate has taken off in recent days. An increasingly diverse group of people drawn from almost all walks of life have begun to agitate for a secular state. The violence against religious minorities as well as sectarian minorities has convinced many people that secularism in Pakistan is the only option left.

Secular Jinnah: A rebuttal to Hamid Mir, Orya Maqbool Jan and Selena Karim

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Our Urdu press, conspiratorial, nationalist and rightwing, is full of nazriati (ideological) warriors. This article is a rebuttal of two of the most popular standard-bearers of the ghairat brigade and the so-called Nazaria-e-Pakistan (idea of Pakistan).

In one of his recent columns (because in our country it is perfectly alright for in-service civil servants to moonlight as columnists), Orya Maqbool Jan has taken to task those misguided souls — such as this writer — who believe that Mr Jinnah wanted a secular Pakistan. Apparently, ‘secular’ is some sort of a bad word and anyone using this word in connection with Quaid-e-Azam is automatically a traitor. In this particular article, Orya Maqbool Jan relied on the ‘research’ of one Selena Karim who wrote a book called Secular Jinnah: Munir’s Hoax Exposed several years ago. The entire issue revolves around a quote attributed to Jinnah dating to a pre-partition interview.

Partition of Punjab II : Jinnah's so called Islamic pronouncements

Continuing from last week, we come to Jinnah’s so-called Islamic pronouncements, which matter, at best, is an incidental tangent from the main issue but since it was raised by Mr Shakil Chaudhry in his article (Daily Times, July 26, 2012) , it needs to be addressed. 

The claim that Jinnah was secular needs to be understood before it can be argued for or against. The claim that Jinnah was secular does not necessarily pre-suppose that all utterances of Jinnah the politician were consistently secular, especially when put against secularism as we understand it today. That Jinnah used the Islamic idiom on occasion is a fact and not necessarily an inconvenient fact for those who argue for Jinnah’s secular vision. Substance not form trumps rhetoric.

Did Jinnah want a secular state?

By Yasser Latif Hamdani


 Taimoor Ashraf made a number of patently inaccurate claims, based on a flawed and utterly misdirected rendering of facts about Jinnah, partition and the making of Pakistan. The gist of his convoluted piece was this: Jinnah might have been secular, but did he want a secular Pakistan? 

Mr Ashraf claims that Jinnah was not secular because the August 11, 1947 speech was made as a consequence of terrible sadness on his part because of the communal bloodletting. By August 11, 1947, there were communal disturbances, but the communal bloodbath, largely, happened in late August and September. Then he claims that Jinnah was not secular because he was a pluralist. So in other words being ‘secular’ and ‘pluralist’ are mutually exclusive? There are no qualms with the fact that Jinnah’s secularism was more of the British variety than the strict French laicism of Kemal Ataturk. Does that mean Jinnah would have approved of ‘priests with a divine mission’? That incidentally is one of the more famous Jinnah quotes: “Pakistan shall not be a theocracy to be run by priests with a divine mission.”

Is secularisation of Pakistan possible

In view of the Constitution of 1973 and the many authoritative pronouncements of our judiciary regarding Pakistan’s status as an Islamic state, it is logical to question whether secularisation of Pakistan is possible. Opponents of a secular Pakistan claim that since the state itself was founded in the name of Islam, secularisation is antithetical to it. This post hoc view on the raison d’etre of Pakistan is inconsistent with the historical facts leading to the partition of India and should have been void ab initio. However, the enactment of the 1973 constitution has given it the cover of legal fiction, i.e. Islamic ideology, which is said to be the grundnorm of the state. 

Our stock myth is that our society was largely moderate until it was radicalised by the state’s Islamisation in the last few decades, when the reality is the opposite. The state’s Islamisation 1970s onwards was a faithful reflection of the bigotry that was ingrained in our society. The famous Munir Report in 1954 details instances of religious extremism and fanaticism not just in the early years of the new state but also during the British Raj. Parties like the Majlis-e-Ahrar, who paradoxically wanted a united India under the banner of the Congress Party and were dead set against the creation of Pakistan, had been involved in numerous incidents of religious violence in Punjab against Ahmedis, Shias and non-Muslim communities. The urban centres of Punjab had witnessed religious violence between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims since the early 1900s. The decade of the 1920s saw further deterioration of the communal situation, where firebrand Muslim and Hindu orators were at each other’s throats in public and involved in the so-called ‘pamphlet wars’. The Ahrar particularly benefited from the Shahid Ganj dispute in the 1930s politically. 

Similarly, the anti-Ahmadiyya movement started by the Ahrar was wildly popular in Punjab. Ahrar had used the anti-Ahmadiyya movement both before and after partition primarily to attack the Muslim League that allowed Ahmedis to be members of the party. Shias were also attacked, especially because the key leaders of the Muslim League were and historically had been Shias.

The Punjab Muslim League was not blameless either. In the 1946 elections, it too sullied its good name by resorting to abrasive religious rhetoric against the Unionist Party, which on its part also utilised clerics to denounce Muslim League leaders as kafirs (infidels). After partition, Punjab Leaguers actively encouraged the Ahrar against the central Muslim League leadership in Khawaja Nazimuddin’s tenure. All this is documented in the previously mentioned Munir Report. 

The key difference is that Pakistani leaders before 1970 — more or less unanswerable to the electorate — were better placed to withstand populist sentiments. Very logically, the necessary empowerment of the common people that accompanied Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s rise to power also meant those in power could no longer afford to remain ambivalent to the ideas of these new participants in national life. Therefore, since the 1970s, Pakistan has seen a more vocal religious right with greater mob support. The ill-advised Afghan jihad and the state’s co-option of the Islamist sentiment to create warriors of Allah added to this radicalisation. 

“Islamic Secularism”?

 By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Reformulating the Ground Rules

The definition of modernity expressed in political science terms is a system of state and society whereby social justice is aspired to, freedom of belief, ideology and conscience is fully protected and where rule of law reigns supreme.  As the Islamic World increasingly finds itself confronted with modernity in these terms, there are two responses that have been recorded  as two opposing currents – first response is to accept modernity without any discounting for Islamic principles or any attempt to reconcile the Islamic identity of the Muslims world -wide and the second response is to reject it so completely that the room for negotiation between this response and modernity ceases to exist.  Both these responses ignore one basic fundamental contention that most Muslims have i.e. Islamic principles are universal in so much as that they can be adapted to the time and age through the internal process of Ijtehad. Therefore the standoff between Islam and modernity that seems to preoccupy the intelligentsia of the Islamic world need not be a zero-sum game. Indeed there is enough room to incorporate the fundamental perimeters of modernity within an Islamicate culture without compromising either.