The Pakistani nation is shackled by ‘political Islam’ even after 60 years of independence, Individual-Land stated in a report on the Jamia Hafsa issue. The NGO said: “It is interesting that Asma Jehangir is beaten black and blue on the streets of Lahore when she protests against human rights violations and Masood Janjua has his pants pulled down by the police as he protests against his father’s disappearance, but the Jamia Hafsa get Chaudhry Shujaat as a negotiator when they openly create a state within a state.”
“Today we [Pakistanis] have the Jamia Hafsa fiasco. Yesterday we had the religion column drama. Tomorrow there will be something else, all because of subjective interpretations of religion and its role in public life,” the report added. It said the prevailing state-of-affairs was because of the political abuse of religion in United India to date and cited Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah as saying during his speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, “You are free: you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in Pakistan. This has nothing to do with the business of the state.”
“Whether or not we admit it, most of our present problems stem from the institutionalised abuse of Islam,” the NGO said. It also said that on one hand, the religious affairs minister described the girls of Jamia Hafsa as “our daughters”, but on the other the Jamia Hafsa’s administration was openly setting up Sharia courts and challenging the government’s writ by noting down the number plates of cars driven by women, threatening barbers and music shops’ owners in Islamabad and declaring that they had weapons to use against the government in self defence. “There were statements from the government side declaring that the Jamia Hafsa’s brand of Islam was untrue and that enlightened, moderate Islam should be advocated. Then there were statements from the MMA leaders declaring that this was not the brand of Islam supported by them, and instead Islam is all about peaceful jihad,” the report said. |