Secularism in Pakistan

http://gupshup.org/gs/archive/index.php/t-124620.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20101218140921/http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_4-11-2003_pg3_4
After the failure of the Khilafat movement, the Deobandis, with some notable exceptions, increasingly moved closer to the Congress. Many Deobandis thought the Muslim League’s politics were neither Islamic nor in the best interests of the Muslims. Leading Deobandi scholars bitterly critiqued the League’s two-nation theory. The rector of the Deoband madrassah, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani (d.1957), wrote a lengthy polemical tract targeting the League. He argued that in Islam nationality (qaumiyat) was determined by common homeland and not by religion. Madani believed that in a free and united India Muslims would be able to lead their personal lives in accordance with the shari’ah, while also cooperating with people of other faiths in matters of common concern. 

This does not mean, however, that the pro-Congress Deobandis accepted the principle of secularism in the sense of a strict division between religion and the state. Although strict conservatives, they were pragmatists in politics, realising the impossibility of an Islamic state in India as long as Muslims remained a minority. The immediate task before the Muslims, as they saw it, was to join hands with the Hindus to free the country from British rule. Once India won independence, they believed, Muslims would be able to work for the propagation of Islam, and then, finally, a day might dawn when it might even be possible to establish an Islamic state in the country. Till such time, however, they insisted, Muslims must remain content with having their personal affairs governed in accordance with the shari’ah, while in other affairs being dutiful citizens of a joint Hindu-Muslim state. Relations between the different communities would be governed by a pact ensuring peaceful and friendly ties to the extent permitted by the shari’ah. As long as the other parties abided by the terms of the pact, Muslims would remain loyal citizens of the state. The free India that the Jami’at envisioned would be a federation of a number of culturally autonomous religious communities. Each community would administer its own internal affairs in accordance with its religious laws. The federal government, which would have adequate Muslim representation, would pass no laws that might seem injurious to the religious interests of any community. 

Leading Deobandis thus went on to play a crucial role in the struggle for India’s independence as allies of the Congress party. They were not the only ulema to support the Congress, however. The renowned reformist scholar, Shibli Nu’mani, an ardent supporter of the pan-Islamic cause, also welcomed the Congress and its demand for a broad-based unity among all religious communities in India. He was bitterly critical of the Muslim League for its ‘narrowly conceived political base’, dismissing it as a poor imitation of the ‘House of Lords’. Shibli managed to win the support of some other Nadwi ulema in his opposition to the British. Several Nadwa students joined local Khilafat committees, and Sayyed Sulaiman Nadwi, one of Shibli’s favourite students, went so far as to declare that if Muslims wanted to liberate the Ka’aba they should liberate India from the British first. Although the Congress thus won the support of many of several leading ulema, there were others that fiercely opposed it. The ulema associated with the Barelvi school declared the Congress to be an ‘enemy of the Muslims’. They opposed the Khilafat movement, supported the British and lent whole-hearted support to the Muslim League. 


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So forceful was Mawdudi’s charge against Madani and the Jami‘at-i Ulama that Mufti Kifayatu’llah, a senior Jami‘at-i Ulama stalwart, advised his colleagues not to engage Mawdudi in embarrassing debates.^[6] These debates had already prompted Muhammad Iqbal to remark, “Mawdudi will teach a lesson to these Congressite Muslims,”^[7] and had led some enthusiastic Muslim League workers to refer to Mawdudi as “our Abu’l-Kalam [Azad].”^[8]

Desperate to attract some support for its two-nation platform from the religious quarter, the Muslim League developed a keen interest in Mawdudi’s anti-Jami‘at-i Ulama crusade, which gave it a religious justification for rejecting the Congress’s plea for a united stand against colonial rule. Muslim League speakers borrowed such terms as hukumat-i ilahiyah (divine government) and khilafat-i rabbani (divine caliphate) from Mawdudi’s repertory, and his contribution to the Muslim League’s political agenda was often cited and acknowledged in private along with those of Iqbal and Mawlana Hasrat Muhani.^[9]

Mawdudi’s writings were widely distributed in Muslim League sessions between 1937 and 1939.^[10]League workers found this effort especially productive in Amritsar in 1939, when scores of copies of the Musalman Awr Mawjudah Siyasi Kashmakash were distributed.^[11] A similar attitude was evident in the League’s central committee, which authorized the widespread circulation of Mawdudi’s religious decrees against the Jami‘at-i Ulama leaders in 1939.^[12] Mawdudi’s usefulness to the League, however unintended, was nevertheless significant.^[13] One Muslim League leader wrote of Mawdudi in retrospect that “the venerable Mawlana [Mawdudi]’s writings in Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an greatly furthered the League’s religious and national demands.”^[14] The Jama‘at’s contribution to the League’s enterprise is perhaps the best example of an aspect of the growth of support for Pakistan in north and northwest India that has not thus far received its due attention.

So favorable was the impression that the Muslim League had of Mawdudi in 1939 that Mawlana Zafar Ahmad Ansari, then the secretary of the central parliamentary board of the Muslim League, who was at the time advocating the party’s cause before the senior ulama, took it upon himself to approach Mawdudi with a view to officially enlisting his support for the Muslim League. Mawdudi, not unexpectedly, turned down his offer, for he saw his contribution to the League and his success in stemming the tide of Muslim religious fervor for the Congress as a sign not of the confluence of his views and those of the Muslim League, but of the fundamentally religious nature of the Pakistan movement, his own inherent qualities as a leader, and his ultimate destiny to lead that movement. The nature of relations between the Jama‘at and the Muslim League was not decided by Mawdudi’s opposition to the Congress alone, but involved the competition between the two for power.

 

http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/21-Dec-2004/comment-jinnah-s-august-11-1947-speech-ishtiaq-ahmed
"Jinnah deliberately kept his idea of Pakistan vague and undefined. This becomes evident even from the statements of top Muslim League leaders. Thus, for example, the governor of Punjab, Sir Evan Jenkins, wrote in his confidential fortnightly report of February 28, 1947 to Viceroy Wavell about his meeting on February 18, with the Bengali Muslim League leader Khwaja Nazim ud Din, who was visiting Lahore at that time:
"In our first meeting Khwaja Nazim ud Din admitted candidly that he did not know what Pakistan means, and that nobody in the ML knew, so it was difficult for the League to carry on long-term negotiations with the minorities"."


http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/11-Jan-2005/comment-jinnah-s-august-11-1947-speech-and-secularists-ishtiaq-ahmed
"But the most powerful secularist challenge in intellectual terms came during the period of General Zia ul Haq (1977-88). It was launched by no other person than the former chief justice of Pakistan, Muhammad Munir. In his book, From Jinnah to Zia, (1978), Munir referred to the August 11 speech and asserted that reasons for the creation of Pakistan were social and economic. Jinnah wanted to create a secular state. Munir described the ascendance of the theocratic vision of the state as a 'quirk of history', alleging that the ulema who had opposed the creation of Pakistan had subsequently become its ideological custodians and thus subverted the original vision on which Jinnah wanted to base Pakistan.
The author argued in support of secularism by quoting a famous saying or hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), "When I enjoin something respecting religion receive it but when I counsel anything about the affairs of the world, I am nothing more than a man" (Mishkat Book 1, Chapter VI, 145-6). Munir remarked that this saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him) clearly showed that he did not have authority over matters relating to worldly affairs and that in fact his statement introduced secularism in Islam."


http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/04-Jan-2005/comment-jinnah-s-august-11-1947-speech-and-islamists-ishtiaq-ahmed
"The Muslim League allied itself to the largest group among religious leaders, that of the Brelavis who controlled thousands of mosques and Sufi shrines in the Muslim majority provinces such as Punjab. Some dissident Deobandis, such as Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Shabbir Ahmed Usmani and their factions also entered the Muslim League fold. These clerics were won over because an understanding was given that Pakistan will be a state based on Islamic values and laws.
A problem that the Muslim League had to deal with from within the Muslim community was the fact of bitter sectarian divisions. For example, the Shia minority was wary of a Muslim state coming into being that might be based upon Sunni principles. This is evident from the correspondence between the Shia leader Syed Ali Zaheer and Jinnah (who was a nominal Shia himself) (Bakshi, SR, The Making of India and Pakistan, Select Documents: Ideology of Hindu Mahasabha and other Political Parties, New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publication, 1997).
The Ahmadiyya group was also reluctant to support the demand for a separate Muslim state because of fear of persecution. (Report of the Court of Inquiry, 1954: 196). It was only when a leading Ahmadi, Sir Zafrullah, was won over by Jinnah (he later very ably pleaded the Pakistan case before the Punjab Boundary Commission) that the Ahmadiyya leadership started supporting the demand for Pakistan. To all such doubters, Jinnah assured that Pakistan will not be a sectarian state. Consequently the majority of Shias and the Ahmadiyya as a whole supported the Pakistan demand."