Islam and Politics
Islamic Rhetoric in Pakistan – I by Hamza AlaviThis is but only one of many facets of a cascade of major contradictions that underlie any suggestion that the creation of Pakistan was the result of a struggle by Muslims of India to create an 'Islamic State'. We have to face up to the glaring fact that the Pakistan movement was vigorously opposed by virtually the entire Muslim religious establishment in India. The Jamaat-e-Islami itself was then of little consequence, for before the Partition it was a small and insignificant band of religious zealots. Far more significant was the opposition by the major authoritative Muslim religious bodies in India such as the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, the principal organisation of Sunni Ulema. It was only on the eve of Independence that Liaquat Ali Khan was able to win over a section of that great body who were to find their new fortunes in the new State of Pakistan. At another level, in terms of popular Islamic religious movements was the fanatical Majlis-i-Ahrar. A powerful populist movement of lower middle class and poor urban Muslims, mainly of the Punjab, the Majlis-i-Ahrar was implacably anti-colonialist and equally hostile to the Pakistan movement whose leaders they denounced as stooges of the British imperialists. After the Partition, Majlis-i-Ahrar ceased to be a political party and degenerated into a tiny extremely bigoted and fanatic religious sect.
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1:18 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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