Humans are made neither of light (good matter) unlike angels nor of fire (bad matter) unlike genies, but of mud instead, which is in between light and fire with respect to its characteristics. As a result, the nature of humans is not completely good or bad. Half of human nature consists of good and the other half of evil, nevertheless, hate is still not a part of the half bad nature. It is an emotion developed later in life by subsequent bad experiences. It owes its existence to life’s experiences (in which the inherent ABILITY to hate is employed) and not to human nature as straightforwardly as love! So, it does not come as naturally to humans as does love.

In case of love, not only is the ability to love found intrinsically in human nature but also love itself. It is proven by the fact that a baby/small child only knows how to love, and love unconditionally. It is manifested in a pre-Islamic account of a little girl who was wiping the sweat from her father’s forehead while he was busy digging a grave to bury her alive (as was the custom in those days regarding female children)!! So love is certainly more natural to humans than its antonym—hate—which does not get born with a person, unlike love.

As indicated earlier, human nature only has the ability to hate, not hate itself, in the beginning of a person’s life. Afterwards, hate is developed as such a strong, full-fledged and proper emotion that it assumes a position opposite to nothing less than love, the greatest emotion! We must at all times try to control hate, and not let its tether so loose that it instead starts controlling us, by becoming very powerful! It must be kept leashed at all times, to the best of our ability. But as it is inevitably developed as a latent emotion so it becomes a part of the half bad nature. As we know, the half evil nature must be subdued and the half good nature must be fostered more and more for attaining a noble personality. Whether or not we do all this determines our being good or bad, overall, as persons.
Unfortunately in our society there is no dearth of those who have made the worse half nature (evil—that eventually comes to contain hate too) so powerful and dominant that it has ciphered the good part of their nature totally. It happens when the bad part overpowers the good one in such a way that the latter diminishes and finally disappears, by being overwhelmed by the former. They pay no attention to even slightly empowering the good part by ‘feeding’ the soul, let alone having a consistent internal tussle between good and evil! All they eventually come to embody is evil and just evil. They know nothing of basic humanity and humanism, let alone diversity and pluralism! In short, LOVE is absent from their blackened souls and spirits!

The greatest and most bountiful treasure i.e., love, is interestingly found closer to humans than they could imagine–right inside their nature! Apparently every human’s heart should have been so plentifully filled with love that they would distribute it to everybody and eventually have an aura of love surrounding them, but as paradoxical as it may seem, it is just not the case. Growing up in a world full of hate, love assumes the position of a locked treasure which requires to be unlocked! Having said that, not everybody has the good fortune to be able to receive its key from the Creator, for opening this treasure chest. Only those lucky ones in whom the Lord spots the required spark to divinely receive the bounty of unconditional, pure love are granted this key! Only by consistent good deeds can one prove oneself worthy of receiving the auspicious key! When that happens and resultantly when one is blessed with it, this treasure is opened, enlightening the human heart with its incandescent lucence of love upon its very opening. Apart from this warm light, a shimmering spring of unconditional, selfless love gushes from this treasure. The best part about this spring of love is that it flows right from a one’s heart until one’s last breath. The reason of its unstopped flow is that a person that tastes the love for humanity once will never ever sell it for any price. They will spread it by planting love in others’ hearts, thus serving to start springs of love from them too! They eventually find themselves spreading it greatly to humanity sans barriers. Such chosen people will not even think of letting go of this truly beautiful love, the essence of all good things! The spring of love that flows from their hearts is so lovely that it is equally beneficial for everybody. It does not benefit some more and some less! Persons so blessed will embrace every fellow human with open arms, be they Ahmadi, Christian, Shia, Hindu, Sunni, Zoroastrian, Baha’i or Sikh! Such a person becomes an epitome of noble values! Belief in respect, equality, tolerance, peace, harmony, open acceptance ooze from their beings! They enlighten everybody on their way whom they pass, with their superior humanistic values. True, lucky ones are those who think of humanity and whose rightly guided emotions have no room for any discrimination and bigotry for certain segments of humanity. Let us take the pledge to be humans first, prove ourselves worthy of having our hearts divinely filled with love, and give it out immeasurably to others after receiving it. Let us try to be selfless, and love humanity purely and unconditionally!

Peace and love!

If Pakistan was created for the sake of official implementation of Islam, then why did most mullahs of the time vehemently oppose Pakistan’s creation like Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam and Jamaat-i-Islami? Why did Maudoodi declare voting for Muslim League as ‘haraam’ (forbidden)? If Pakistan was associated with Islam by Mr Jinnah like what we are told, then why did non-Muslims participate in its struggle? Why did 10,ooo Hindus embrace martyrdom in the Pakistan movement? Why did 100 Christian youths sacrifice their lives right on the day of Independence? Why did the same religious group cast its vote in favour of Pakistan before the Boundary Commission? Why did the non-Muslim leaders of the time willingly join Mr Jinnah’s cause if it was a Muslim cause alone? It is about time we started knowing our real history, as that will help a great deal in bringing us out of the lies we have always been religiously fed and thus make us acknowledge our non-Muslims’ role in the creation of Pakistan. It is a de-radicalisation strategy!

Empathy is technically found in the very building material of humans. There is a reason I say that. It is because the substance that human beings have been created from i.e., mud, tends to behave in a way that gives us a feeling of ‘empathy’. As soon as it is poured into a container, it leaves its erstwhile condition and adopts the new shape of the container or gets molded into it. It assumes the configuration of that container unlike a solid substance, as it has softness in it! Whether the container is big or small, mud will adjust itself accordingly owing to its SOFT NATURE! We can also put it this way that mud has the inherent ability to induce the new shape on itself brought about by outside changes. This quality can be technically called as ‘empathy’, which literally refers to understanding and sharing the feelings of another. This is true in case of mud, as it ‘understands’ and then starts sharing the shape of its container upon being poured into it! It is therefore ‘empathetic’ in nature. The quality of empathy implies getting transformed into the condition in which the mate is, no matter if the mate is a container or another human being!!

The human heart has been created out of mud so it is bound to contain the qualities found in its building material. The heart, just like mud, positions itself according to the outer environment. Inherently, it understands, and gets so much impacted by the plight of other humans that it supposes the same state of emotion for itself! It shares the joys and sorrows of others and adopts them as its own.

This leads me to deduce that those that cannot empathize with others because of their deep-seated, harboured prejudices (like religious or ethnic bias) and believe that a suffering or dying person must not be helped and be allowed to continue in that miserable condition, have detached themselves totally from their own nature! Such persons have distanced themselves completely from their own building material, mud, by not practicing the innate trait found in it. Thus by disconnecting themselves from the substance of their formation by forsaking humanism, they remain no more deserving of being called human and therefore get out of this privileged category. Such bigots are not as frightening for others as they should be for their own selves as they should know that they have become something other than human!

If this worldly life were such that people’s bodies could have changed depending on their deeds, we would be witnessing these bigots turning into beasts in front of our eyes! But the law of nature does not allow this physical transformation to happen! However, the hearts of these ill-fated beings are dead and their souls black, because of what they believe in and preach and practice.

What is the pleasure in being devoid of empathy and sympathy for fellow humans?? What is the joy in being sadistic?? Those empty of such precious human emotions should be felt pity for and sympathized with, more than anybody else!! Empathy will make you cry but inside, it will reassure you that you are still human, capable of weeping when you see others in pain!! It will give you the feeling of satisfaction that your heart is still alive and is very much a human heart! It is the zenith of humanity. Sans empathy, even a breath is not worth taking! If the heart dies, that is a great death while being alive! A person with a dead heart (bigot) is most deserving of being condoled with than anybody else, as this ‘death’ is very phenomenal. Petty differences would no longer let them feel for others! They do not have the privilege any more to understand and share anybody’s grief. Their human honour is gone! Verily, they are the poorest and most wretched ones!!! True, only lucky ones chosen by God have this honour!

The bigots’ greatest joy lies in slaying a human being, but let us look at this disconsolate phenomenon with another perspective, that makes us understand the powerlessness and ultimate result of these unfortunate beings. They can only kill an innocent person at the most. As Jesus Christ (PBUH) said, “Moreover, I say to you, my friends, Do not fear those who kill the body and after this are not able to do anything more. But I will indicate to you whom to fear: Fear Him who after killing has authority to throw into Gehen’na. Yes, I tell you, fear this One.” This Biblical instruction makes it crystal clear that the GREATEST harm the bigots can inflict upon somebody is killing of their body and then cannot do anything beyond this or they become helpless after that. But in their own case, what will happen to them and what will be their own future?? This is where the greatest and most fair of all judges i.e., God, will play His role (whom the bigots do not fear in this life)! He will not only punish them with a painful death but also rightfully throw them into their well-deserved abode i.e., hell!!! All these are enough reasons that the bigots should feel frightened of their own selves and their suicidal tendencies that, in the next life, will be murderous not for their victims but for their own selves, making them land up where they struggled hard to be! As for the others, they need not be frightened or apprehended by the bigots’ temporary, short-lasting and apparent strength which will soon perish, as falsehood by its nature is bound to perish, which was announced by Quran more than a thousand years ago. Let us fear God alone and nobody else, as ordered by His mighty Prophet, Jesus Christ (PBUH). That is the only true path, rather than fearing cannibals and vampires, who are the poorest in true sense because of being devoid of any humanism and empathy!

Having had our ‘status’ decided by the bigots, now let us have a look at what they are themselves. Their reality is being predators—cannibals and vampires that feast on human flesh and blood! Nothing short of these would satiate their otherwise insatiable and beastly hunger and thirst. So for us being ‘dogs’ is much better than being cannibals and vampires! Our thirst is easily quenched by water but theirs will be slaked only by human blood! So then who is better?

A prime example of this phenomenon is Mumtaz Qatili. He is a living vampire that fired at Governor Taseer full 27 times, and immediately drank all the fountains of red blood gushing from the victim’s neck! He used his bullets as the pointed teeth of a vampire for piercing through the victim’s body to obtain fresh and warm blood! On the other hand, when was the last time that we, the proclaimed ‘dogs’, inserted our teeth into any human’s neck to drink their blood as the bigots do? They puncture their victim’s body with their carefully directed bullets just as a vampire’s long, pointed teeth would. So, we are much better off being called what we are called by them! At least, we do not act against nature by making a staple diet out of human flesh and blood!!! Moreover, brainwashing kids in such appalling ways that they grow up to become Vampire Qatilis and then at eyeing an opportune moment to kill, instigating the same Qatilis to shed blood in the most gruesome ways is not our bread and butter. Our bread is not tied to blood    so then who is better?

At the end, I quote Omar Khayyam who made a classic, timeless comparison, between a mullah and ordinary humanistic persons like me and my friends called as ‘dogs’ by the same mullahs! The following comparison is equally valid in all ages:-

“O Mullah, we (people) do much more work than you. Even when we are drunk, we are still more sober than you. You drink people’s blood and we drink the grape’s blood (wine). Let us be fair, which one of us is more immoral?” —— A Ruba’ee of Omar Khayyam

In 1998, in district Badin, Matli city, landlords Ghulam Qadir Mari and Mureed Khan Mari reportedly attacked a Hari camp (camp of Sindhi farmers who work for landlords) with their personal force and took back 108 workers in trucks on which the civil society launched a strong protest. International organizations also got involved and built pressure on the government for the release of the Hari’s. The then Senior Superintendent Police Hyderabad, AD Khawaja took a special team to district Sanghar and got 107 out of 108 Hari’s released. One of them who was vocal against the landlords was killed.

In the year 2009, inside Azadnagar Hari Camp, Tando Hyder, near Hyderabad, an influential landlord named Abdur Rahman Mari reportedly took his personal force and attacked the Hari’s living temporarily there. The Hari’s surrounded that force, captured his son and handed him over to the Police. The Police released him and did not issue any penalty for obvious reasons.

The above named Abdur Rahman Mari happens to be the same person who, in 1996, near Jhudo city, district Mirpurkhas, had abducted 13 members of the Mannu Bheel family who were farm workers, which was widely reported in the national and international media. Bheel was not present himself but his whole family had been abducted. He kept on protesting in Hyderabad Press Club for 8 years but to no avail as no whereabouts of his family have been found even until now. Some sources say all his family members have been killed. On the other side of the picture, Abdur Rahman Mari claims that Mannu Bheel was under a debt of 30 thousand rupees and to digest that amount he staged a drama of his family’s abduction!

Whenever one talks to the exploitative landlords about the issue of bonded labour in the province of Sindh (where it is most prevalent), they hold that the farmers working for them are under their debt so the former have a right to recover that loaned amount in any way. If the Hari’s are not in a position to pay back the money, they should continue working on the landlords’ farms and earn it off, which is a vicious circle!

How unimaginable it would be if our household electricity bill was to exceed a certain figure (shall we say 30 thousand rupees), and owing to our inability to pay it back, the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) would come and take away our children and keep them in confinement till the payment is made good! Landlords, businessmen and bureaucrats are mostly themselves under real debts of billions of rupees to agricultural and other banks and are also tax defaulters. Yet they would refuse to write off even a single penny out of the fake loans of amounts as meager as 30 thousand rupees reportedly borrowed by their farm workers. They will abduct their workers’ families for recovering those small, fake loans; but when it comes to their own persons, they wish to succeed in getting written off their own real loans of billions of rupees. In the case of their bonded labourers, they forget all humanism and break all rules in order to recover their fake loans. Imagine how the landlords would feel if their children were to be abducted and kept in virtual imprisonment for years for the recovery of their fathers’ loans!

If any social worker or human rights activist works to free these Hari’s then the landlords allege that those activists are foreign agents and want to damage the working relation between the landlords and Hari’s, are enemies of the country and wish to spoil the country’s economy. The majority of decision-makers and politicians are the same influential landlords.

The Bonded Labour Abolition Act was enacted in 1992 so almost 20 years have passed since this enactment but to this day no case has ever been registered under this Act. No implementation of it can be seen. In Sindh the present government has formed a separate anti-bonded labour ministry, but it has never handled any such case. The government has retained this ministry for no reason, at taxpayers’ expense, as it outrightly denies the existence of bonded labour in Sindh. Thus it refuses to even acknowledge this burning issue which has held millions of humans hostage to exploitative, wicked landlords for decades, what to talk of taking some step to resolve the issue! Those Hari’s who have been freed under the CrPC have never been rehabilitated by the state so they are victims of hunger and misery.

If they had been freed under the Bonded Labour Abolition Act as happens in other South Asian countries such as India and Nepal, then every family would have received 27 thousand rupees for its rehabilitation. When this law was enacted in Pakistan in 1992, then 100 million rupees were deposited in Sindh government’s bank account for the rehabilitation of erstwhile bonded labourers. This money could not lapse or be transferred to any other head. With the passage of time this amount has grown to nearly 200 million rupees. Not a single penny has been used until now for the said purpose. It has been learnt from reliable sources that the special anti-bonded labour ministry has started diverting the money somewhere else. It is feared that it might spend all the fund for some other purpose, instead of using it rightfully for its lawful purpose.

The persons stuck in bonded labour come from desert areas (Umerkot, Tharparkar and White Desert in Sindh, and Cholistan in Southern Punjab) who come in search of work on irrigated lands. They can never tell which particular landlord will pay them justly for their work and who would take them illegally into bondage. Thus they get stuck with wicked landlords. Some wicked landlords become known for their illegal activities through Police raids on their premises under Court orders. Hence no Hari’s would go to them directly for work. So then those landlords pay millions of rupees to smaller landlords (to whom Hari’s have gone as their repute is not bad) to BUY Hari’s. In this way a crime as abhorrent as human trafficking i.e., buying and selling of human beings, also takes place and continues, in the modern 21^st century.

Veerji Kohli, a social activist from Sindh, is a specialist in the issue of bonded labour having handled numerous such cases. He reports that in the condition of bondage, in any case, treatment worse than literal slaves is meted out to bonded labourers, but especially women in bondage undergo the kind of treatment which cannot be described in words. Physical abuse is unleashed upon everybody including women, but if we come to delineate the sexual abuse the women are subjected to, it sends shivers down one’s spine.

Baba Salahuddin Hari Camp’s dweller, 37-year old Shrimati Meeran Kohli narrated that she was 23 when she and her family got stuck with a huge landlord of district Sanghar. They had not even gone to him out of their own free will, but had reached him after being sold twice by two parties. Kohli narrated that the females had to work segregated from males. They were not even permitted to see their father and brothers for months. The landlord’s personal force guarded them vigilantly round the clock. It did not allow males and females of the same household to work together so that they do not escape after secretly planning to do so with other family members. Kohli had been engaged at the age of 20. After she and her family had reached the landlord, her father tried to marry her off when she turned 32 or 33. But the landlord’s managers deliberately did not allow the marriage to take place for fear of losing a labourer in Kohli’s form. When she was finally freed through the High Court orders under section 491 CrPC, she had turned 37 and the sexual torture she underwent at the landlord’s place had made her produce 3 sons without wedlock whom the rapists were not ready to own as their biological sons. The men got away with all their tyranny unleashed upon her without having to pay for it!

In another case of erstwhile bonded labour, Lali Kohli living in Azadnagar Hari Camp, Tando Hyder, near Hyderabad, narrated that she and her family lived in bondage for 8 years. During that period, if they ever received the news of marriage or death of their any of their relatives, they would never get the permission to visit their concerned relatives. If some relative ever came to meet them, he would be required to first go to the agricultural farm, have his name entered and deposit his identity card. He would have to declare the duration of his visit (the same way as done in prisons). Finally he would have to go back within the stipulated time period taking his identity card back.

This issue of bonded labour exists in Pakistan for many decades and more than 3 million bonded labourers have been freed until now and despite all this, why don’t our government and social and political systems take any solid step to settle this issue for good? It sounds more astonishing when we take into consideration the fact that a special law has been made against bonded labour, to prevent and eliminate it and rehabilitate bonded labourers! The Constitution of Pakistan, CrPC, United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO’s international conventions—all are anti-slavery. Especially ILO’s Convention 29 has been named as “Forced Labour Convention 1930”! Pakistan is a signatory to it (as it is to all of ILO’s conventions) while agreeing upon the abolition of bonded labour. It lays down minute details of the ways to tackle the bonded labour issue from the abolition of bonded labour to the future treatment of erstwhile bonded labourers. It also makes the exaction of bonded labour a penal offence whose adequate punishment has to be strictly enforced by the government. It states in its very first article that:-

“Article 1. (1) Each Member of the International Labour Organisation which ratifies this Convention undertakes to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period.”

In spite of that why doesn’t the state machinery (law enforcement agencies) take any action against the exaction of bonded labour in Pakistan? May be because the bonded labourers’ tribes are not influential ones, or their financial and social standing is low, or may be because the overwhelming majority of bonded labourers is non-Muslim!

Majority of Hari’s in camps are indigenous dwellers of Sindh and Punjab who have lived there for thousands of years and are affiliated with the agricultural sector, therefore they only know farming. Driving these farmers out of their lands to rid them of bonded labour and thus bringing their lives to a standstill is no viable and permanent solution to this long-standing problem. The government has utterly failed in facilitating them to achieve a just working relation with their landlords, so they have been forced to live like nomads after fleeing bondage. The government should make the working relation between the Hari’s and landlords so just that the Hari’s do not need to escape from the farms. It will improve their personal and social lives. They will be able to apply their farming knowledge and agricultural expertise to the benefit of the country and be able to work upto their fullest potential without any fears instead of sitting idly in Hari camps. This will result in increased agricultural production for Pakistan and since our economy mostly relies upon agriculture, it will be a great boost for the overall economy as well. All this will not only make Pakistan progress, but will also serve to increase revenue for the country. Our agriculture sector must be truly turned into and thus declared a bonded labour-free zone so that our reputation improves internationally. In this way we will have better trading relations with the rest of the world and be able to market our local goods in global markets. If we refuse to do this, we will have to face international isolation, as in today’s global village the world knows about our domestic bonded labour issue, no matter how much we deny it outwardly. Closing our eyes to problems will not conceal the reality from our nation and the rest of the world. As mentioned earlier, other countries are well aware of the gravity of the problem in today’s modern era of fast communication as they have received reports of bonded labour cases. The real thing to do for the government is that it must stand up and acknowledge and eliminate this problem. Only sincere attempts to resolve this issue will solve it, otherwise we will continue to lie to the world.

But in today’s modern era where we talk of developing new thinking, and of technological advancements, and try to be democratic and human-friendly; where we discuss the possibilities of discovering the bottom layer of the earth to the mighty height of the skies, in the same day and age if millions of human beings are being forced to live destitute lives in literal slavery, then it is a matter of great shame for us! In this fast-progressing world, Pakistan now has some 4 million people living in bonded labour, as consistent criminal negligence and denial of this gravest issue by successive governments has only served to increase the number of bonded labourers. Government of Pakistan, all political parties and democratic institutions like media and other forums have the prime responsibility to play their due role in rooting out the menace of bonded labour and freeing the labourers so as to prove themselves truly democratic. All concerned institutions must join hands to create such a society where all persons can lead truly free and independent lives.

All sensible, democratic citizens of Pakistan who are against the subhuman practice of slavery are requested to come forward to help permanently put an end to this issue. We all must work together to eradicate this prevailing shameful problem in which millions of people are trapped, to put the country on the real path of prosperity.

Also, upon further exploration we discover that the statement “Islam is my identity” normally comes from the mind that thinks one is superior to all other people because of being Muslim, without any good deeds to back up this claim. This means that no matter what one does, one will be blessed in the Hereafter and go straight to Heaven, escaping Hell altogether. Nothing will happen to a Muslim because their “identity” is Islam, which means they are fool-proof! This is contrary to how non-Muslims are perceived: they will never even receive any concession from God in the afterlife even if they have been very noble in their lifetimes.

We need to start differentiating between Muslimhood and Pakistaniyat. They belong to 2 different genres and have nothing to do with each other. Faith is a personal matter between an individual and God. We must adopt an all-inclusive approach, uniting our people on the basis of shared nationality. This means we are first Pakistanis and then Pukhtuns, Sindhis, Punjabis etc., while religion is a matter of an altogether different nature.

We should all think with a Pakistani state of mind because this is the only state of mind which can be adopted for thinking by ALL of us! If we think as Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Punjabis, Seraikis, Pukhtuns etc., then we all will reach different conclusions in important matters which will ultimately lead us nowhere. In order to be able to reach COMMON conclusions in important matters for the good of Pakistan we must adopt the state of mind which can be common among us all. We will start viewing things as one nation.

Shunning the Practice of Wearing our Faith on our Sleeve
Another thing that can help us create a unified nation is that most of us Pakistanis are recognized as religious people, but it should be confined to our homes only. In public we should stop announcing our religious affiliations and be Pakistani only so that all others can relate to us and we can create unity.

Nation-state identity (Pakistaniyat) and religious affiliation (Muslimhood) must not be mixed, confused or made to overlap. Both are entirely different having different meanings. They both should be kept at their own proper places. Both have their own respect attached to them.

Also the approach whether to rank Pakistaniyat or Muslimhood first is completely rubbish. It is plainly ranking one out of totally unrelated phenomena as first. It can be further clarified by citing the example of deciding what is more important, ears or eyes! As said earlier, religious affiliation is fundamentally different from national identity. The former is an ideological and abstract matter whereas the latter is a visible and concrete matter. Both are equally important in their own right. For a Pakistani Muslim, Islam is their ideology whereas Pakistan is their identity. You cannot say I am Muslim first and then Pakistani and vice-versa. There is no similarity between the two on the basis of which you could rank one as first and the other as second!

I disagree with people claiming Islam is our identity. Faith is an individual’s personal matter, between the person and God. It cannot be called one’s identity. Our primary identity is Pakistan and then come the ethnicities. We are not recognized as Muslims, but as Pakistanis, with our green passports.

Ethnic Division

We also need to raise our voice strongly against the division on ethnic lines. This is not only the faith/sect division but also the ethnic division that hinders our cohesion into one nation. All the time we are referring to ourselves as Punjabi, Pukhtun, Sindhi etc., but nobody is willing to embrace the true identity of being Pakistani that God gave us. It is only on certain occasions during the whole span of the year that we feel Pakistaniyat is in the air, like on Independence Day or Defence Day. To buttress my argument against ethnic division, I quote the highly respected Pakistani scholar based in America Mr Ahmed Rashid the author of masterpiece “The Descent into Chaos” in which he argues:”Pakistan’s inability to forge a national identity has led to an intensification of ethnic, linguistic, and regional nationalism, which has splintered and fragmented the country,” he argues.

The Real Binding Factors

Binding factors for all the Pakistanis are already there so we don’t need to look for them at all. These factors are that we are first humans and then definitely Pakistanis. They are much more important and stronger than any difference (religious or ethnic or linguistic). Now it is up to us how we treat our similarities and differences. A perverted mind will only emphasize the minute differences (yes, minute, as compared to the huge commonalities), so much so that they will make those differences appear even greater than the huge commonalities (that we all are human and share the same homeland too). Fortunately binding factors are not only there but actually greater than the differences also. It is just a matter of emphasizing them as much as they deserve to be.

For people of Pakistan, Pakistaniyat as our binding factor in a way becomes more important than humanity. Not that it becomes the sole binding factor but still it acquires greater significance than humanity as humanity is something which binds each and every human being on earth with all the rest, but what is so special about people living in a particular piece of land that they come to identify with that phenomenon and it becomes their most important binding force, differentiating them from their other fellow humans? It is their national identity, that is, Pakistaniyat in our case! So we should have emphasized this very most important all-encompassing term associated with all of us. It is the greatest binding factor we have to which we all can relate. We must go back to the concept of nation-state to forge unity among our ranks. Why on earth is it made to appear in so-called ‘textbooks’ that Pakistaniyat and Muslimhood are the antithesis of each other? That you have to put your national identity behind your back in order to be a good Muslim? In my humble opinion, one can be a devout Muslim and at the same time a staunch and assertive Pakistani too! We do need to forsake our national identity in order to become good Muslims.

Instead of laying due stress upon our truly common and shared national identity, we emphasized something (Muslimhood) which is never going to unite all the inhabitants of Pakistan, under normal circumstances. Seeds of disunity are found in ‘textbooks’ and sown in classrooms. While reading them, you repeatedly get the feeling that Pakistan is being multiplied with a big cipher! Children are falsely made into believing that, “All Muslims of the world are one distinct nation whereas all non-Muslims of the earth are another separate nation.” Imagine how would non-Muslim students feel at reading this and how much hate/feeling of being different from non-Muslims, would the Muslim students develop at studying the same things! Muslims are also told by the shamelessly lying clergy that, “Islam is our (Pakistanis’) ONLY binding force”. All this leads to narrow-mindedness and thus religious bigotry. Through this approach, first the self-proclaimed non-Muslims of Pakistan (like Christians, Hindus etc.) are alienated, dissociated and separated from their Muslim compatriots on religious grounds and after that the ‘million-dollar question’ arises that WHO is a Muslim (whom every Muslim could consider part of their nation)? Since countless Pakistanis don’t consider many other people claiming to be Muslims as Muslims, then it means those people on the receiving end will also be excluded from the ‘Muslim nation’. In these circumstances, who will be able to relate to whom?

For example, if Muslimhood as a binding factor between Pakistanis is emphasized, then many a Sunni will be able to only like-faithed people, because they would consider many others as unreal Muslims & the rest as simply non-Muslims. Such people would definitely relate to like-faithed people in other countries and consider them a part of their perceived ‘Muslim nation’ but would ironically find nothing in common between themselves and their own fellow Pakistanis (who are either avowed non-Muslims or are considered as such by themselves)! Such is the effect of false and mala fide propaganda on impressionable minds.

When children are told that ‘nations’ are made on the basis of a common faith and not on that of a common homeland, they grow up to be excessively intolerant. Humanity in any case is a lesson nobody bothered to teach the children (which is actually the very first binding force), then comes the deliberate non-advocacy of Pakistaniyat, and finally add to that the undue stressing of Islam as a binding force among Pakistanis (which makes something as basic as having shared nationhood judged by one’s religion) and you have a perfect recipe for a divided and bigoted nation! It is simply depriving the Pakistanis from their right to have one united and strong nation by not teaching the children about any of the above 2 binding forces! The standard (Muslimhood) in Pakistan we have for belonging to the same nation is very flawed and eternally confusing, according to our circumstances, as this concept of Muslimhood itself has been turned into an extremely controversial subject. Our people find it difficult to decide who is Muslim and who is not, because of venomous propaganda against certain sects and their beliefs. Today if you openly call certain sects as Muslim and tell the bigots they are part of your “Muslim nation” (whose idea the bigots are always seen propagating), they would declare you too as an infidel and come after you to kill you simply for calling those sects as Muslim!

A nation is like the human body. If you keep on chopping off parts of your body because of your dislike for them, what will you finally be left with? Nothing. On the similar pattern, if you keep on dissociating yourself with more & more groups of Pakistanis and continue to exclude them from your perceived ‘nation’, how many people will you be left with in the end, whom you will ultimately deem as your true ‘nation’? High time to think! Only those will be left who to a great extent or even 100% agree with you in faith matters (as faith is all that matters, ironically), depending on your level of religious bigotry. Such shameful is our criterion for nationhood!

When Pakistanis from different backgrounds feel there is absolutely nothing in common among them and fail to relate to their compatriots, and resultantly feel no attachment with one another, there should be no wonder that religious and ethnic minority groups are discriminated against and persecuted so often, even on a daily basis. There is no love for the country, no sense of belonging attached to fellow countrymen and hence the mess in Pakistan is the result. Religion has been unfortunately turned into the worst tool for dividing the Pakistani nation, and for eliminating or altogether not letting the love for their country to be born among children. All this poison comes straight from the ‘textbooks’, written with an evil intent, in Zia’s dark era.

According to UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2011, textbook content and production in Pakistan is negatively influenced by political and elite actors (p. 5).

According to a study by a U.S. government commission released in November 2011, “Textbooks in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of Hindus and other religious minorities, while most teachers view non-Muslims as “enemies of Islam”, said a Washington Post report.

Scholars in Pakistan have regretted what is being taught in schools and colleges in the name of history. A few years ago a book entitled “The Murder Of History” by K K Aziz said, “In Pakistani schools and colleges what is being taught as history is really national mythology, and the subjects of social studies and Pakistan studies are nothing but vehicles of political indoctrination. Our children don’t learn history. They are ordered to read a carefully selected collection of falsehoods, fairy tales and plain lies. Why and how has this come about? Who is reponsible for it? In what ways is this destroying the country? Why doesn’t anyone protest against it?”

Here is the depiction of Hinduism in Pakistani School Textbooks:- (Read and think the treatment of Pakistani Hindu minority)

Extracts (translated from Urdu to English) from the government-sponsored textbooks approved by the National Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of Education demonstrate the derogatory and inflammatory portrayal of Hinduism to the “MUSLIM” youth of Pakistan:[lxxxix]

Grade IV: “The religion of Hindus did not teach them good things, [and the] Hindus did not respect women.”

Grade V: “The Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.”

Grade VI: “The Hindu setup was based on injustice and cruelty.”

Grade VII: “Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation [and] several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase Muslim culture and civilization.”

Grade VIII: “Before Islam people lived in untold misery all over the world.”

Grade X: “Islam gives a message of peace and brotherhood. There is no such concept in Hinduism.”

Contrary to all this, in developed countries we see that their national identities are always stressed while religion is kept as a private matter and their national flags are seen fluttering on all important buildings and schools. Children from the very beginning in the USA are told that they are AMERICAN, which helps them forge a great, united nation and helps them relate to one another no matter how diverse backgrounds they might have! It all begins from the classroom! The same children who are taught bigotry in classrooms grow up to become intolerant adults.

Islamic Perspective on Nationhood

We have always been given this concept that nations are not founded upon geographical boundaries/regions but on a shared faith. We are also indoctrinated into believing that Pakistan and the feeling to be a fellow Pakistani of all the other Pakistanis, are all equal to cipher, as Islam and only Islam is our ‘identity’. This concept in itself is contradictory to the Holy Qur’an which clearly conveys in Chapter Al-Hujurat, verse 13, that all humans were created out of one man and woman and they have only been divided into nations and tribes so that they may recognize one another. This means that our respective nations and tribes, and NOT Islam, are our sole sources of identity! Even if this verse had not been revealed, it would still not have been technically possible for us to even refer to Islam as our identity, as there are over a billion Muslims in the world, so calling us as just Muslims would never have served the purpose of identifying ourselves and differentiating us from one another! This purpose is only served by nations and tribes as the Holy Qur’an puts it.

Of course it is the people hailing from single countries or regions that have been called as “nations” by God in the Holy Qur’an, then who on earth are the so-called ‘textbook writers’ to imply that our nation is not the one which lives in the same country as us but instead the MUSLIMS of the whole world? What authority do they have to change the very meaning of the word “nation”? Who are they to reduce our nation-state and and ethnic and finally tribal identities to nothingness, while going against the Holy Qur’an? Concept of nation on the basis of a shared national/regional background has been given by God Himself in the Holy Qur’an! When God conveys to us he divided us in nations and tribes for identification purposes, what does it mean? It means He created certain people in one particular place and made the other groups of people dwell in different regions! This is the real concept of nationhood: nation-state! But in Pakistan, this binding factor which transcends all faith differences, has been deliberately ignored and religion has been spitefully misused to create divisions among people of the same NATION (by telling them indirectly they are not one nation, linking all this to Islam)!! Qur’an is also testifying to the fact that the Prophets of God, in spite of having a faith diametrically opposed to those of their peoples, referred to them as “O (my) nation!” It clearly shows that shared regions, not religions, make nations! God also calls the infidels as His Prophets’ (respective) nations on multiple occasions. Also, God considers His Prophets as brothers of their respective nations!

The term “Muslim nation” cannot be used technically in the first place, as nothing like that exists. Nationhood is determined on the basis of your birth which means among what group of people you are born and what is your biological origin. Words like “millat”, “jamaat” and “ummat” can be used to refer to the Muslims of the world, but not “qaum” (nation).

Conclusion

In the light of all this, I can rightly assert that it is only time we laid stress on our most important binding factor i.e., Pakistaniyat. We must realize the truth that after humanity, it is only and only Pakistan and nothing else that has the real power to unite Pakistanis from all diverse backgrounds, like it does when some natural calamity hits us! Why should we always await  natural calamity like floods and earthquakes to unite us? So therefore, we all must get united on the basis of this God-given identity of Pakistaniyat.

Pakistan first!

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