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View Full Version : Pakistan-Bangladesh: The unfulfilled Muslim dream



islamirama
03-28-2010, 02:26 AM
Pakistan-Bangladesh: The unfulfilled Muslim dream Syed Ahmad Khan (born 1817) witnessed the brutality with which the British forces crushed natives, especially the Muslim whose forefathers ruled Hindustan for 1000 years during the Resistance War (Jung-e-Azadi) of 1857. He realized that the time was not on the natives’ side to win the war against the British imperialism. Though he tried to cultivate a friendly relation between Hindus and Muslims, he eventually came to the conclusion in 1866 that due to the emerging Hindu extremism among the western educated elites – it would be impossible for the two communities to live together peacefully in the long run and Muslims would need some form of protection to preserve their language (Urdu) and culture because many Hindus, being in majority, were adamant in replacing Muslim heritage from the Indian society. By 1890s Muslims were pressured to yield to the Hinduization of India and accept Hindu majority rule without exceptions by Hindu extremists leaders such as Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, etc. who openly preached the annihilation of Muslim minority. Under these anti-Muslim communal conditions, a group of Muslim elite under the chairmanship of Nawab Sir Salimullah Khan met in Dacca (now in Bangladesh) on December 30, 1906 and laid the foundation of All India Muslim League to represent the Muslim subjects of the British Raj. Sir Agha Khan (1877-1957) was appointed party’s first President, a position he kept for six years.

Another prominent young Muslim leader who supported a Hindu-Muslim unity – was Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948). In 1916, Jinnah was elected to serve as President of the Hindu-dominated All India National Congress (founded 1885). However, after being frustrated by the anti-Muslim stand of Congress leadership (Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, his father Motilal Nehru and Gandhi) he quit the Congress Party in 1920.

The Lahore Resolution (March 23, 1940) of the Muslim League unanimously demanded a separate homeland for the Muslim majority living in the Indian sub-continent, democratic rights, and freedom to establish and practice Islam as a system of life and to be progressive country in a global community of independent nations. None of it reflects from the half leftover Pakistan after India invaded the eastern part in 1970, and carved up Bangladesh, out of what was called East Pakistan. Ironically, the Lahore Resolution which was based on an autonomous republic, was proposed by no other than Maulvi A.K. Fazlul Haq, premier of Bengal (now Indian Bengal and Bangladesh) and seconded by another Bengali leader, Chaudry Khaliquezzaman. However, after the death of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the successive governments lead by colonial army and the fuedal landlords, refused to give provinces, especially the East Pakistan and Baluchistan, their due rights in the country’s affairs.

Both Syed Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Ali Jinnah believed Islam and the Urdu language as the unifying force within different ethnic communities in Pakistan. This is reason Jinnah, as the first Governor-General of Pakistan, proposed a Shari’ah-based Constitution and Urdu as the national language. These are two pillars of unity which were and still being attacked by the enemies of Muslims within Bangladesh and Pakistan and their foreign supporters in India, the US and Israel.

On the 70th Anniversary of the Lahore Resolution (March 23, 2010) – two articles caught my attention. One is written by Mahboob A. Khawaja PhD, titled Pakistan: Strange Celebration Day March 23, in which he wrote: “Leaders create leaders. The Generals, Bhuttos, Sharifs and Zardari are not the leaders but bootlickers of the West and by-products of the neo-colonialism. The British system produced subservient subjects, not visionary leaders for the Muslim nation. Those so-called self-appointed leaders who have been living on stolen wealth and borrowed time, how could they offer any proactive leadership vision for change, reformation and nation-building? There is nothing to celebrate except a time to reflect at our own wrong thinking and incapacitated state of the national affairs, so helpless that instead of being active reformers, most have succumbed to be pacifist spectators.“

The other article, titled Mullahs Are Coming: Cry Wolf in Bangladesh, by Taj Hashmi. Hashmi wrote: “Bangladesh is full of tragedies and ironies. Due to gross mismanagement and rampant cronyism, soon after the independence in 1971, average Bangladeshis started losing faith in socialism and secularism, two of the state-ideologies along with nationalism and democracy. Military rulers who ran the country upto 1990, taking full advantages of people’s disillusion with the so-called socialism and secularism, “Islamized” the country, the Constitution and the polity. Soon the Islamists defeated in 1971 (by Hindu-Israeli-secularist mafia) re-emerged thanks to both leading political paties, BNP and Mujib’s Awami League (AL). At the same time some ultra-radical activists started a vicious campaign not only against Islamism but also against everthing Islam and Muslims represented. Very much in tune with Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes and their ilk, Taslima Nasrin emerged as the most radical and controversial Islamophobe in the 1990s……. It seems the prospects of becoming a celebrity overnight as a “victim of Islam” with the blessings of Islamophobes everywhere (which she got a plenty) motivated her most to write against Islam. The aftermath of her ridiculous portrayal of Bangladeshi Muslims as anti-Hindu bigots in her novelette ‘Lajja (Shame)’ in 1994 is now history….”

The common Muslim in both Pakistan and Bangladesh is wondering what those one million Muslim men, women and children who scarified themselves in 1947 to fulfill the dream of a Muslim nation enshrined in the Lahore Resolution (March 23, 1940) would be thinking of the current pathetic situation in the divided Pakistan.

http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/03...-muslim-dream/
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