Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight

Zeemax:

"How does any of this contradict the Islamic Shariah-based system?"

Can a Kafir lead and formulate laws on shariah? Jinnah thought Kafirs could do a better job then ulema-e-Islam and so appointed Mandal as the Law Minister. I think Jinnah's actions contradict shariah laws.

Secondly, no Ismaili-Shia in their right mind would risk annihilation at the hands of Maududi-ites and fight for the implementation of shariah laws which proclaim many Shia and Ismaili practices as shirk and deserving of a penalty. And Jinnah, being an Ismaili-Shia wasn't stupid.

Dear Folio,

You will appreciate that a Mullah cannot be liberal simply because he sided with Gandhi... and liberal is not necessarily a Mullah simply because he opposed Gandhi.

That is all I am saying.

Re: # 215


The problem as I have said... is not whether one thinks it is a secular or Islamic vision ... but whehther it is being followed.

The essential issue is the substance of the vision i.e. inclusive pluralistic state with equal rights for all and state's impartiality towards faith.

Mantolives,

'It seems to me that Indians here seem to judge a person's "liberalism" or "secularism" by how subservient he was wlling to be to the Caste Hindu leadership.'

Did u expect us to be the other way? i.e.

..to judge a person by how subservient one was wlling to be to the communal Muslims and their ideologues and leadership?

MantoLives,

Perhaps you would attempt the following questions on behalf of the good professor, which have gone unanswered:

But some serious comments now, and some questions for the uninformed professor:

“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State…. You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.� [Aug 11, 1947, Jinnah’s address to the First Constituent Assembly]

How does any of this contradict the Islamic Shariah-based system?

"Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsis – but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan." [Feb. 1948, Jinnah’s broadcast address to the people of the United States of America]

Ditto as above.

The above speeches unequivocally demonstrate Jinnah’s strong sense of justice and secular leanings at a personal level.

Total BS as shown above.

Even when confronted by journalists, he would avoid giving a straight answer.

Attacking Jinnah for not being a slave and appeasing secular thought.

Jinnah continued to hedge:

Ditto as above.

"Then it seems to me that what I have already said is like throwing water on duck`s back (laughter). When you talk of democracy, I am afraid you have not studied Islam. We learned democracy thirteen centuries ago."

And he calls this statement of fact gleaned from very early Islamic History of the Prophet's time as 'hedging'.

Mr. Jinnah is evasive about what place Islamic law would have in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly.

Again attacking Jinnah by calling him 'evasive' when Jinnah did not want to dictate to the constituent assembly. In the author's mind he should have said "Hell no. I want no part of Islam"

Mr. Jinnah consciously seeks to articulate and protect this ambiguity.

Another attack on Jinnah for his diplomacy in getting Pakistan and not wishing it as a dictatorship of his views. And the author calls it 'ambuiguity'.

Mr. Jinnah left a legacy of ambiguity on what he wanted Pakistan to be.

Ditto as above.

“He was from first to last a constitutionalist who had argued at the time of the debate on the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1930 that if there was a clash between a so-called religious and public morality, then morality had to prevail, mullah or no mullah. There was no change in this basic outlook even as he made tactical adjustments in his later years to accommodate new political exigencies. When asked to discuss the future constitutional framework for the Muslim homeland he was demanding, he insisted that it would be up to the people of Pakistan to decide what sort of a state they wanted even though he had no doubt that their choice would be for a moderate, democratic and forward-looking state.�

This is correct. Ayesha Jalal has a better view on who Jinnah was compared with all these amateurs, but being the Islamophobe she is, she still misses the point. The 1300 year old democracy Jinnah spoke about (quoted above) and the Islamic values (also quoted above) incorporate all this stuff. That's what Jinnah wanted.

Jinnah was no enigma. It's just that the libero-fascists are trying to use his Savile Row suits and his peg of Whiskey (not the ham sandwich which this author and others pick up from a single source of Wolpert while his closest companions with whom he regularly stayed on visits, deny) to convince people that "That's what Jinnah had wanted for Pakistan".

Arrey Bhai, Jinnah made Pakistan by hook or by crook single handedly, but refused to give it any ideology - unlike the comparable carved out state of Israel - being the utterly principled person he was, who made his exit when it was time, and left it upto the people to decide for themselves.

PS: It seems to me that Indians here seem to judge a person's "liberalism" or "secularism" by how subservient he was wlling to be to the Caste Hindu leadership.

That Jinnah after 1940 championed the cause of Muslims alone is a FACT. We are actually quite proud of it. The argument is not that Jinnah continued to be an Indian nationalist or the best ambassador of hindu muslim unity after he took up the Pakistan case... the argument is his vision for independent Pakistan.

I don't care if you wish to call it Islamic, secular blah blah .. the point is that Pakistan is a far cry from his consistent and conclusive statements about equal rights to minorities and an egalitarian society for all.

And lets not distort what Hoodbhoy has written either.

Pervez Hoodbhoy's wonderful article actually conclusively argues that Jinnah's vision was essentially a secular one and that his statements and allusions to Islamic state or Islam did not mean anything substantially different from the secular state he had in mind.

I therefore suggest that everyone here reads the article again and understands it...

Re: # 172

Tejpal,

Refer to my post #1. Jinnah's vision of the state as an inclusive pluralistic state is to my mind a secular vision.
Others seem to think that it was an Islamic vision. The issue here is not how secular you think he was or not. This is about whether Pakistan can become that inclusive pluralistic democracy?

I am bit more perplexed by your sudden reference to Faiz. There are many people in Pakistan who are highly critical of the Quaid... but Faiz Ahmed Faiz was not one of them... he remained a Jinnah-admirer and this is the obituary he wrote for Jinnah:

Jinnah's obituary by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

“The Quaid-i-Azam has passed away, after long years of toil and sacrifice and service in the cause of his people, his frail body has at last been gathered unto rest and his soul called back to the abode of the eternally blessed. No name in the history of Indian Muslims has been loved and acclaimed as the name Muhammad Ali Jinnah. No man in living memory evoked such unquestioned loyalty, such unqualified devotion, such unbounded faith; for the one-time oppressed, rejected and broken Muslim nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was much more than a political leader. He was the father and the brother, the friend and the counsellor, the guide and confidant, the comrade and leader all combined into one. . . We can show no greater devotion to the beloved leader and give no greater proof of our loyalty to his memory then to base our conduct on the pattern that he has immortalised and to conduct ourselves in a manner that accords with his life-long preaching. From the great grief that envelops the nation today, must emerge a new courage and a new determination to complete the task that the Quaid-i-Azam began, the task of building a free, progressive and secure Pakistan, to restore to our people the dignity and happiness for which the Quaid-i-Azam strove, to equip them with all the virtues that the nobility of freedom demands and to rid them of fear, suffering and want that have dogged their lives through the ages.� (13th September 1948)

think

#210 by MantoLives

Do you really thing one gives a damn about your opinion...

Umm..did you just say that Yasser?

bjkumar,

Do you really thing one gives a damn about your opinion... when you follow Gandhi who declared that Black people were subhuman and genetically inferior? Talk about bigots from down south... Gandhi would have been a Mahatma in South Carolina even in the 1860s....

Get a life.

Ranjit you are a good man below is not for you

Important point: All of this was done while police, government and society was supporting this. Laddu says hindus don’t believe this will lead to retaliation and bombs but only hindus can be so good at logic no one else in the world is such a genius. We will always help our muslim brothers against such heinous crimes and genocide.

Stupid muslims you are always criticizing Islam, muslims and Pakistan see how hindus like always defend India, Hinduism and hindus learn from them how to be nationalist.

They will deny any crticsm of India and hindus and point out how wrong Pakistan and muslims are even if they support a good cause like poor kasmiris or bomabay muslims they will call them terrorits and you join them and abuse ur country and fellow muslims, shame on you and shame on this Busharraf

You can see yourself the hate in their heart fror muslims, and Pakistan from this web site if not convinced read the articles I posted you will see these hindus in UK and USA are funding Gujarat, VHP, BJP and Shiv sena

And in the end thanks to Quaid whose shukrguzaar we are

Important point: All of this was done while police, government and society was supporting this. Laddu says hindus don’t believe this will lead to retaliation and bombs but only hindus can be so good at logic no one else in the world is such a genius. We will always help our muslim brothers against such heinous crimes and genocide.

Stupid muslims you are always criticizing Islam, muslims and Pakistan see how hindus like always defend India, Hinduism and hindus learn from them how to be nationalist.

They will deny and ignore any crticsm of India and hindus and point out how wrong Pakistan and muslims are even if they support a good cause like poor kasmiris or bomabay muslims they will call them terrorits and you join them and abuse ur country and fellow muslims, shame on you and shame on this Busharraf

You can see yourself the hate in their heart fror muslims, and Pakistan from this web site if not convinced read the articles I posted you will see these hindus in UK and USA are funding Gujarat, VHP, BJP and Shiv sena

And in the end thanks to Quaid whose shukrguzaar we are

#202 by rashid_s


Jinnah was a visionary. If it was not for him, all the Muslims of Pakiland would be in India. What a horrible thought!

Jinnah should get a posthumous Nobel Prize. It is true that he failed in getting ALL the Muslims out of India, at least, he gave us Hindus some breathing space.

#202 by rashid_s

Jinnah was a post-enlightened person and an eminent Lawyer and therefore the principle of Justice must have been paramount to him.

Yeah, and so paramount it was to him that he thought Hindus and Muslims could not live together. Some sense of justice it was!!

here is where I got the below report:

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa200012005

Calls to rape Muslim girls and women were contained in pamphlets produced by the VHP and RSS and distributed in Ahmedabad months before the violence started.(46) A VHP leaflet called Jihad (holy war), signed by VHP state general secretary Chinubhai Patel, calls on Hindus: “"We will cut them and their blood will flow like rivers. We will kill Muslims the way they destroyed Babri mosque�". It goes on to spell out the sexual nature of their communal hatred:
“"The volcano which was inactive … has erupted, it has burned the arse of miyas [Muslim men] and made them dance nude. We have untied the penises which were tied till now. We have widened the tight vaginas of the bibis [women]�"(47)

Medico Friends Circle (MFC), a voluntary organization of Indian health professionals, similarly observed, “"as pamphlets by the Sangh Parivar indicate, women’s bodies were turned into battlefields in order to perpetrate hate and dishonour and assault the pride, dignity and integrity of the whole community�".(48)

Women have been raped and sexually humiliated the world over in clashes between communities as a mechanism of dishonouring their entire community which becomes impure and polluted by the rape of an outsider. Most observers agree that rape and other forms of sexual humiliation and assault were used in the Gujarat violence as an instrument of systematic “"subjugation and humiliation of [the Muslim] community�".(49) The means and methods of assault bore a deliberate and open Hindu imprint. Women were raped while the rapists chanted Hindu slogans; the weapons with which women’s wombs were cut open were trishuls and swords; the bodies of the victims were not left where they fell but burned in the way Hindus cremate their dead. Witnesses reported that in some cases, the syllable “"Om�" which has religious significance in Hinduism, was cut into the bodies and skulls of victims.

Evidence of the systematic sexual assault on Muslim girls and women is well documented and overwhelming.(50) Girls’ and women’s bodies were subjected to “"almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture … their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with special savagery�".(51) A doctor who examined victims in a local hospital reported injuries inflicted with a brutality he had not seen before. Women working in a relief camp in Ahmedabad reported to the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat: “"There were many women bleeding, injured, naked. Many women had bite marks on their breasts. Three women were raped with wooden rods inserted in their vaginas. They were bleeding. We cleaned these women’s wounds after removing the objects inserted into their bodies�".(52) Reports on the violence in Gujarat concur on the pattern of violence inflicted on women. It was not only deliberate but designed to inflict maximum suffering. It was long-drawn, intended to kill not outright but, almost identically everywhere, involving a prolonged gradually increasing pain and humiliation.

Muslim girls’ and women’s sense of shame was deliberately outraged by stripping them in front of relatives and the mob. In Fatehpur, young girls were paraded naked and subjected to verbal sexual taunts, humiliation and threats of sexual violence. When an ambulance finally rescued them, they had nothing to cover themselves with. In all the cases in which groups of people were killed, several women underwent this ordeal. In an attack in the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on 28 February 2002, at least 10-12 women were raped and over 30 killed.

While some Muslim survivors reported that rapists had shouted that they intended to impregnate them with “"little Hindus�", the target of particular rage were pregnant women. Several eye-witnesses testified before human rights groups that a young woman, Kausar Bano of Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad, who was nine months pregnant, was gang-raped and had her womb cut open with a sword; her foetus was ripped out, hacked to pieces and flung on the fire. The mother’s body was thrown on the fire as well. Police in Vadodara were reported by several witnesses to have hit the bodies of pregnant women with rifles shouting “"kill them before they are born�".

The logic of hatred against Muslims also explained the attacks by Hindu mobs on children, both born and unborn, which added another layer of extreme suffering to their parents. Such attacks would remove the future of the community and was certain to profoundly devastate Muslim women and the entire community. Numerous accounts show that women’s main concern during the attacks was for their children’s lives and safety. There are moving accounts of mothers describing the violation of their young daughters. One woman reported, “"I recognized two people from my village … pulling away my daughter. She screamed telling the men to get off her and leave her alone. … My mind was seething with fear and fury. I could do nothing to help my daughter from being assaulted sexually and tortured to death. My daughter was like a flower, still to experience life. Why did they do this to her?�"(53) Children of all ages were deliberately and mercilessly threatened, beaten, cut with swords and killed by Hindu mobs in front of their mother’s and other relatives’ eyes. In Naroda Patiya, a Muslim area of Ahmedabad, new born infants were torn from the arms of their mothers and thrown on the fire. Also in Naroda Patiya, mothers were reported to have pleaded with police to save their children. Some women reportedly laid their babies at their feet begging, in vain, for their protection. Bilqis Yakoob Rasool from Randhikpur village, Dahod district who was five months pregnant when a violent Hindu mob caught up with her and her family was violently gang-raped and made to watch as her three-year old daughter was killed.

Being forced to witness the fear and humiliation, gang-rape, burning to death of mothers, sisters and other female relatives has left deep scars on hundreds of children who survived the violence. At least 33,000 children, many of them orphans, lived in Gujarat’s relief camps after witnessing some of the most brutal forms of violence on their relatives. The Concerned Citizens Tribunal stated, “"They are mute witnesses to gross gender crimes perpetrated on their near and dear ones – sisters, mothers, aunts and even grandmothers – with gory and military precision, evidence of some sick minds and a vicious ideology�".(54)
The intentional sexual humiliation of girls and women is also evident in several reports of police officers exposing themselves to Muslim girls and women and waving their penises at them. A head constable of Gomtipur police station is reported on several occasions to have successfully used this technique to frighten women and cause them to run away. On 2 March 2002, Muslim women in Patel ki chali, a neighbourhood in the Gomtipur area of Ahmedabad, gathered outside the closed main entry gates to their areas to protect the men who had hidden in the houses from both the mobs and police. Two days earlier Muslim neighbourhoods had been burned down. They protested when police entered the area by jumping over the walls. In response, the head constable and his fellow policemen reportedly pulled down their trousers and exposed themselves to the women shouting obscene insults. The mob outside the gate took their cue from the police and did the same. Similar incidents are reported from other areas of Ahmedabad where Hindu men, including police officers, exposed their penises and shouted, “"your men are weak, we’re strong, you’re not strong enough to fuck your own women�".(55)

Many women victims of gang rape and other sexual assault were killed, most frequently by burning them, often while still alive. The burning of victims had the effect of depriving victims’ families of the ceremonies surrounding burial and mourning prescribed by Indian Muslim culture. Muslims bury their dead, whereas Hindus cremate them. By burning the dead or dying, the Hindu mobs enforced a cultural form of disposing of the dead that is alien to the victims’ families and deprived the already traumatized minority community of the important coping mechanism of culturally sanctioned customs of burial and mourning. Hindu mobs were clearly aware of and intended these effects. On 28 February 2002, a Hindu mob of around 25,000 surrounded a Muslim area in Saijpur Patia, Naroda, Ahmedabad, and stormed the lanes and raped girls and women in front of their male relatives. Among the victims were girls as young as 11 who were stripped of their clothes in front of the violent mobs who humiliated and gang-raped them, thrust swords and knives into their vaginas before burning them alive. They then killed Muslim men and women with swords before setting them on fire. They shouted that they would “"even spoil their deaths�". Arson and burning of the dead and the dying and living Muslim victims was clearly intended to “"obliterate a whole community�" by annihilating its culture and beliefs.(56)

The burning of bodies of women victims of sexual assault had the additional effect of destroying all material evidence. In Gujarat, the criminal justice system had been steadily communalized over several years which made it much harder for members of the Muslim minority to obtain justice. In such a context, to deprive victims’ families of the possibility to present material evidence for their complaints in court further diminished the slim chances they had to prove their cases in court.

Surviving girls and women victims of sexual assault have not had any official therapy or trauma counselling to help them cope with their experiences; in fact many had to immediately take on the new responsibilities of caring for other survivors who were equally traumatized and of tending to injured family members.

A unique feature of the sexual violence inflicted in Gujarat in 2002 was the participation of small but significant numbers of Hindu women who approved, instigated and encouraged it. Local human rights monitors have pointed out that “"women from all communities were affected by the fear and terror promoted by the state and the police�".(57) Many Hindu women were convinced of the likelihood of attacks by Muslim men as this prospect had been systematically spread in local media and numerous pamphlets.(58) Local observers have been alarmed by the “"level of hate�" among Hindu women resulting from such indoctrination. Many Hindu women during the violence stayed up at night with their male relatives to guard their homes against presumed assault by Muslims. It is a small step from such vigilante activities to joining men who went on the rampage against Muslims neighbours. Eye-witnesses have named several prominent women who took part in the violence.(59) Some were also reported to be involved in looting of Muslim properties. But many other Hindu women, resisting enormous pressure and braving personal risks, protected their endangered Muslim neighbours, sheltered and fed them and helped them escape.

They raped mothers infront of their children and killed them and children infront of parents

The Times of India -Breaking news, views. reviews, cricket from across India


'Women from minority community still traumatised'
16 Dec 2003, 0343 hrs IST,Piali Banerjee,TNN

SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
MUMBAI: In an unfair world, women have always been the spoils of war. And the post-Godhra carnage in Gujarat, in February-March, 2002, reiterated this with a vengeance.

A testimony of the extent of violence against women, mostly sexual in nature, in Gujarat, comes in the form of a report published by the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat (IIJG).

The report, titled 'Threatened Existence —A Feminist Analysis Of The Genocide In Gujarat', has been compiled by an international panel comprising feminist jurists, activists, lawyers, writers and academics, based on their interaction with women survivors, activists, doctors, etc.

"The deliberate shaming, especially of girls and young women, by raping them publicly or in front of other family members, including children, speaks of the intentional attempt to subjugate a community by attacking the female body," says the report.

And goes on to cite testimony after chilling testimony of women from the minority community, who were abused, violated, raped, and women who were forced to watch their daughters being abused, violated, raped.

There are testimonies of those who are living only so that they can see their attackers punished.

"I think the most chilling aftermath of the entire carnage comes in the third chapter of the report," says writer Shobhaa De, one of the "chilling first to read the report.

"I got gooseflesh when I read, 'In Gujarat, as in Bosnia or Rwanda earlier, the widespread and furious attacks against women of the minority community were regarded as legitimate not only by male attackers but also by women belonging to the majority community. We heard from testimonies that in some places the rapists were actively supported or even instigated by women of the majority community.' It indicates the complete breaking down of basic humanity."

Documentary filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, Sharma, who has covered much the same ground as the IIJG panelists for his film on the post-Godhra rampage in Gujarat, 'Final Solution' feels that the report will help to remove the misconception of the public that what happened in Gujarat last year was a momentary burst of madness which has now subsided.

"The report will definitely help to put Gujarat back on the agenda, when it comes to public memory," he says.

"We like to live in denial. This will at least jolt us into realising that there has been severe delay, if not complete denial of justice for hundreds of women, who are still living traumatised traumatised lives today, forced to cohabit with their violators who never lose a chance to taunt them whenever they swagger past them."

The trauma, for the women, is far from being over. Consider the example of Madina and her family, who hid in a field in Eral village in Gujarat for three days during the carnage. On the third day, the family was spotted by the mobs. Most of the members were pulled out.

The men were killed. Madina's two teenaged daughters were brutally gang-raped and then burnt to death. Only Madina remained unseen in her hiding place, clutching at her seven-yearold son. Today, when recounting her trauma, her most desperate refrain is, "Did I do wrong in not coming out when my daughters were being raped? Wouldn't they have killed my son too?"

"There are hundreds of women who haven't filed charges for fear of stigmatisation or further abuse. Those who have pressed charges, have begun to give up hope of getting justice," says Sharma.

"For instance, Sultana of Delol village, who was gang-raped has filed a complaint, but the police have claimed that the accused are absconding. Yet she pointed out a local paan-seller to me as one of the rapists."

In its final analysis, the IIJG report offers recommendations to the international community, the Indian government, the judiciary and civil society in India. It remains to be seen how seriously these recommendations are considered by any of the above sectors.