Latest interview of
Saleena Karim on SJ2, given to Talha Mujaddidi, 3 December 2010:
http://pak1stanfirst.com/201012022943/think-tank/leaders/interview-of-saleena-karim.html
or:
http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2010/12/09/islam-is-about-life-jinnah/
Interview to Talha Mujaddidi at Pakistan
Ka Khuda Hafiz, 18 September 2009:
http://pakistankakhudahafiz.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/jinnah-secular-or-islamist/
LATEST INTERVIEW EXCERPTS:
TM: What inspired you to write a book setting
the record straight with respect to Justice Munir?
SK: My original research began with an accidental
discovery that a certain speech of Jinnah (the Munir quote) could
not be traced to any of Mr. Jinnahs speeches but could only be
found in Munirs From Jinnah to Zia (1979) or so I thought at
the time. I had simply intended to write an article explaining the
issue with the quote. In fact I almost didnt even write the article
as I had not grasped the significance of what I had found. My research
took me in unexpected directions and I began to see there was much
more to the story of the quote than I had first realised, but I
kept the book relatively short. Sometime after SJ1s (Secular Jinnah,
2005) release I discovered that the Munir quote actually had its
origins in the Munir Report of 1954 i.e. same author, but different
publication. Interestingly, the Munir quote was first used to deadly
effect in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly debates of 1954, shortly
before Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Assembly. I have reviewed this
in detail in SJ2, but otherwise my book is not centred on Justice
Munirs quote.
TM: Some people in the Pakistani media have said
that Quaid-e-Azam was not a democrat but was a dictator. Was he
a dictator or a democrat, or was he in favor of a Khilafat System?
What did Quaid-e-Azam think of an Islamic system of governance?
SK: The Quaid was a strong leader and he often
had to make tough decisions. But in no way was he a dictator. Throughout
his career he always respected and represented the interests of
his people, even when he did not personally agree with them. He
is one of the few true democrats of recent history. I have discussed
this at length in SJ2.
The Khilafat by which I assume you mean the Khilafat of the last
millennium no longer exists with good reason. It self-destructed
because it was no longer Islamic. The original Khilafat in early
Islam had started out as possibly the earliest known precedent to
a modern presidency. It had taken the political system in fashion
at the time monarchy and reinvented it within the dictates of
Islamic idealism. Instead of being passed to family members, the
new Caliph was elected with no regards to his socio-economic status.
Unlike the kings of old, the Caliph did not enforce a despotic rule,
and instead consulted with his people on equal terms. But within
a few decades this system had gradually declined back into a monarchy
combined with theocratic elements. It survived for a time, but its
annihilation was inevitable.
There is no crystallised system in the Quran, but every Quran-based
system must follow the same core principles or it will fall, whether
it calls itself a Khilafat, or a presidency, or a parliamentary
democracy, or anything else that we could conceive of. I doubt that
Mr. Jinnah would have called for the revival of the Khilafat, even
though he spoke often of Islamic socialism and Islamic democracy.
He never offered his own blueprint for a constitution, but rather
he said that the millat and the people would be responsible for
putting it together. In this he followed the Quranic democratic
principle of mutual consultation (he himself referred to this
Quranic principle). From everything I have read, it is far more
likely that Mr. Jinnah envisioned a democratic political system
that could operate within todays global environment, but, just
like the original Khilafat, it would be one that was founded upon
the universal ideals of justice, liberty and unity hence his term,
Islamic democracy. This is in keeping with the timeless spirit of
Islamic idealism, which transformed the monarchy into the Khilafat
during the Classical era. I have gone into some detail on Islamic
idealism in SJ2.
TM: In SJ2, what do you mean when you say that Quaid-i-Azam
is neither secularist nor religionist nor a product of synthesis
(secular-Islam)?
SK: Quaid-e-Azam seems to have been misunderstood
because many commentators, Muslims included, have not viewed Islam
as he did, and so they look at his personality and career through
their own prisms. His speeches and writings provide clear and definitive
evidence that he was neither a secularist in the technical sense
any more than he was a religionist in the technical sense. The same
is true for Iqbal, who is wrongly accused of being the leading light
in favour of what is sometimes called secular-Islam a supposed
mix of old religious concepts and present-day political theories.
Without getting too philosophical, Islam and secularism are based
on completely different views of the universe, which is why combining
them is absurd. Islam is neither a religion nor a polity but a code
of conduct that influences our every action. Jinnah said it best
when he said that Islam was about life. Both he and Iqbal understood
this, and I have provided ample proof from their own statements.
I have spent a long time looking at the peculiar syntax of the Quaids
statements, and have concluded that he belongs to a distinctly different
category of thought, as does Iqbal. I have shown that Mr. Jinnahs
choice of words and phraseology changes in a particular manner from
the mid-1930s onward. It is for these reasons that I have said that
the Quaid was neither a secularist, nor a religionist, nor a secular-Muslim.
I have also outlined in SJ2 what he really stood for, and again
have provided documentary proof. Hopefully readers will see that
it is necessary to re-evaluate the Quaids so-called ideological
leanings before we can find clear-cut answers to other seemingly
difficult questions, such as the actual meaning of the Two-Nation
Theory.
|