{EOP}Secularism & Pakistan

by Faz Zaman

Those who support secularism seem to conflate any idea of religion with “mullah”, thereby conveniently dismissing it. That makes them no different from the “mullahs” they despise for calling everybody they disagree with a kafir. If the agenda is to remove the word “Islamic” from the name of our country, The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the stated agenda of many in the secular camp, then let it be very clear that they constitute a fifth column in this country and are traitors.

These ’secularists’ and the anti-Pakistan Indians are often found on the same side on most discussion forums. The secularist is usually ready to ally himself with any foreign force and is cheering the use of drone strikes against helpless civilians, mainly because they are presumably of the conservative persuasion. In the war between secularism and Islam, the secularists have demonstrated that they don’t consider any action to be too extreme, because they perceive the “mullah” to be dangerous and necessary to eliminate. The secularist wants madrassas shut down and all religious curricula vetted by a secular government. Imagine the conservatives of this country wanting to shut down all secular schools and vetting all secular educational material by a group of ulema – The secular liberal elite would be up in arms about their oppressive behavior but they don’t see any irony in their asking for the same thing. They have such daring ambitions. Imagine if they actually had the power to implement their fantasies – it would be harder to be a Muslim in Pakistan than it is today in New York.

You won’t see secular liberals filling the ranks of our armed forces and security forces. You won’t see secular liberals being the back bone labor class of this country or even the middle class. Secular liberals simply are a marginal group that assumes that theirs is the only legitimate voice and all others are mullahs, army conspirators, or the people responsible for lawlessness in Pakistan. If this marginal group cannot see fit to tolerate the ideology of the mainstream, then why should the mainstream tolerate the hostile ideology of this marginal group?

Shia, Sunni, Bori, Ismaili, Barelvi, Deobandi, it does not matter – all of these groups want a mainstream Islamic state rather than a secular liberal state. This is evident from the fact that support for Taseer’s shooting is from across the religious and ideological (i.e. secular lawyers support) spectrum and is not confined to any one group. All of conservative Pakistan is against the secularist/kemalist fifth column. This is the group that everybody can agree that they are against.

The fact is that this country was made in the name of Islam and it has always been the religiously motivated people that have fought to defend this country and have been its backbone at every level. The slogan for our army is “Iman, Taqwa & Jihad fi sabiliLLAH”. You cannot use Muslim blood to build the country and then deny it from being an Islamic state. The rich secular elite should thank Allah for the piety of the poor labor classes whom they exploit; without their faith, these labor classes would murder the secular elite in their homes and take their money for all the inequality in the distribution of wealth.

Another cheap trick that these secular elites have kept on playing with Pakistan is to equate the leadership of the religious political parties with the conservative/religious majority of the country. The leaderships of religious parties do not constitute the conservative majority of Pakistani Muslims and should therefore not be associated to religious extremism.

My sincere advise to all patriotic Pakistanis is to work towards a future in which the Muslims of this country demonstrate to the world how our ideology is complete from birth to governance, and consequently to the hereafter. Our just economic system must be implemented in Pakistan as should a truly just legal system. These are the things we must focus on while building our model Islamic state. If the extremist bigoted secular fifth columnists insist on continuing to wage their war against the innocent conservative majority, they should be ruthlessly eliminated altogether so that this country can move on once and for all, towards the path that it is destined for.

SOURCE: