Why supporters of Pakistan should be Zionists

“Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which, we hope others will share with us.”

So said Muhamed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Along with others, Jinnah created a state designed specifically as a homeland - and protector - for South Asian Muslims. And Pakistan's constitution is very clear about its purpose:

Wherein the State shall exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people;

Wherein the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed;

Wherein the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah;

Wherein adequate provision shall be made for the minorities freely to profess and practise their religions and develop their cultures;

Now, I'm not going to examine the extent to which Pakistan has lived up to Jinnah's dream (although his views on women could do with a hearing - "It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live") but rather to draw a parallel with another place. Here's the opening of its Declaration of Independence:

WE HEREBY DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), and until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the National Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ ... shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel".

Just as Pakistan was created as a land of safety for Muslims and with laws inspired by Islam, Israel was created to provide a home - it was hoped a safe home - for the world's persecuted Jews. This is, in its simplest form, Zionism. As with any discussion of Pakistan, we have to set apart the purpose of its formation from the failings of Israel's subsequent leaders or government. Just as Pakistan struggles at time with Jinnah's ideals of democracy, pluralism and equality, Israel has often responded bluntly and aggressively to the legitimate grievances of Palestine's Muslim and Christian communities. But this doesn't alter the rightness of the two states' reason for existing - home, safety and a future for a persecuted minority.

So when I hear my Pakistani friends bemoan Israel with loud cries of righteous support for their Palestinian brothers and sisters, I think of why Pakistan exists and say to them - if you believe in Pakistan's right to exist as an Islamic state, you should also recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state - you should be a Zionist. Criticise Israels actions, how it treats Palestinians, but recognise too that it exists for the same reason Pakistan exists.

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There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don't say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/david_bengurion_182246

There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don't say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million.
Read more at http://izquotes.com/quote/76874

There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don't say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/david_bengurion_182246

There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don't say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/david_bengurion_182246

Is cousin-marriage bad for civil society?

Interesting how this question was asked in the first place but the answer is revealing:

This paper tests the hypothesis that extended kin-groups, as characterized by a high level of cousin marriages, impact the proper functioning of formal institutions. Consistent with this hypothesis I find that countries with high cousin marriage rates exhibit a weak rule of law and are more likely autocratic.

Democracy and a liberal society require family to be open not closed. If your culture deems family, and especially family honour as paramount and seeks to maintain family autonomy then you get more consanguineous marriage (with all the attendant issues). The authors here see how the ending of this pattern in Europe allowed strong non-family institutions including, in the end, democracy. This is a lesson that modern day Pakistan needs to learn:

Two months ago, a council of village elders ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl, whose brother had been accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in Raja Ram village in central Pakistan. Shocking though it is, the case is no aberration. Revenge rape, honour killings, and the exchange of women are some of the routine ways through which disputes are resolved.

Far from outlawing these councils, Pakistan’s National Assembly shocked the country by seeking to give these councils quasi-judicial powers earlier this year. It passed a Bill providing legal and constitutional cover to jirga and panchayat systems, in an bid to ensure speedy resolution for “small civil matters” and free the formal judiciary of some of its burden.

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How Pakistan lost the names of god....

A poignant article in Kashmir Monitor tells of when the name of God in Pakistan became Allah. And includes this quote from author Mohammed Hanif:

Author Mohamed Hanif, in his celebrated debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, says it best: “…All God’s names were slowly deleted from the national memory as if a wind had swept the land and blown them away. Innocuous, intimate names: Persian Khuda which had always been handy for ghazal poets as it rhymed with most of the operative verbs; Rab, which poor people invoked in their hour of distress; Maula, which Sufis shouted in their hashish sessions. Allah had given Himself ninety-nine names. His people had improvised many more. But all these names slowly started to disappear: from official stationary, from Friday sermons, from newspaper editorials, from mothers’ prayers, from greeting cards, from official memos, from the lips of television quiz show hosts, from children’s storybooks, from lovers’ songs, from court orders, from habeas corpus applications, from inter-school debating competitions, from road inauguration speeches, from memorial services, from cricket players’ curses; even from beggars’ begging pleas.”

So much is lost when religious orthodoxy - Islam in this case - destroys folklore. The efrits die, rakhshasa stop prowling, the fairies vanish, and the green god disappears back into his mossy home in the heart of the wood. In Pakistan, the diversity of our appeal to the spirit world is no longer. And the world is poorer.

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Pakistan, democracy and Islamism - time for a new strategy maybe?

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The reason for us crawling very slowly up Manningham’s White Abbey Road became clear – several young ladies plus a couple of bearded young men were waving buckets at passing cars to raise some cash for the relief effort in Pakistan. I wound by window down and dropped a couple of quid into the bucket wondering whether this was actually the first time I’d donated to an Islamic charity – in this case Islamic Relief.

This fact got me to thinking – not about whether Islamic Relief was any better or worse than other aid charities with in-your-face religious affiliation such as Tear Fund, Cafod or Salvation Army but about Pakistan, Islamism and the future for what is a pretty dysfunctional place. It seems to me that Pakistan is a nation going backwards – away from the goal of freedom, prosperity and happiness promised by Jinnah and the country’s other founding fathers.

We tend in our assessment of Pakistan’s travails to seek explanations in either geopolitics – the relationship with India, the ongoing problems in Afghanistan and the legacy of colonialism or the ‘Great Game’ – or else in what we have convinced ourselves is the malign influence of Deobandi and Wahhabi Islam. And the people running Pakistan, attached as they are to the clan-like elements of Pakistan’s politics, escape from criticism. These men and women –often corrupt and venal – are feted and protected on the increasingly thin argument that they stand as bulwarks against the triumph of radical Islamism.

Yet we never ask whether the rule of men like Nawab and Zahavi – and those before them like Zia and Bhutto – are ultimately the reason for the attraction of Islamism. And the aggressive – often violent – suppression of Islamist organisations and politicians legitimises the use of violence as a political tool by the Islamists. What Pakistan really needs is a moderate Islamist movement – a Muslim parallel to Christian Democracy rooted in the importance of Islam to national identity but recognising pluralism, choice and justice.

Rather than protecting the failing Pakistani state and through such actions further encourage violent Islamism, could we support the creation of a moderate Islamist movement similar to Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) or Morocco’s Justice and Development Party (PJD). Or will we continue to view – from our arrogant eyrie – Islam as inherently anti-democratic:

The motives of these parties are often doubted by some political analysts. They argue that the commitment of these parties to liberal democratic principles may be thin and of a purely instrumentalist nature. In other words, they may use the rules of the democratic game to ascend to power, but there is no guarantee that they will continue to play by them when they are established. The fear that the hidden Islamist agenda of moderate Islamic parties may emerge as soon as they gain control of their respective states haunts many European political actors and local secular liberal groups. Although these fears may not be completely unrealistic, the experience of recent years has shown that Islamic political parties that have entered the democratic political game by participating in the parliament or the government have tended to moderate their political agenda and adopt more circumspect positions on relations between Islam and the state rather than attempt to precipitate an Islamist takeover.

It may be too late for Pakistan – generations of corrupt, self-serving government and the use of appeals to Islam as some kind of political Pavlovian tactic may make it too hard to achieve moderate change. I hope not. I hope some of the fine, intelligent, well-educated men and women in Pakistan will take up the cudgel of justice on behalf of the millions sinking further and further into poverty – to a world where the afterlife seems more appealing than the depressing drudgery of subsistence. And I hope the Pakistani diaspora stands up too – making the case for pluralism and arguing strongly that democracy, liberty and justice can reach an accommodation with Islam just as they have with Christianity.

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Pakistan has nuclear bombs - and 80 million illiterates

The Telegraph has produced a very worrying article about illiteracy, corruption and a failed education system in Pakistan:

"About half of all the nation's adult men and two-thirds of women are illiterate, even though the authorities have set a notably low bar for judging literacy: the ability to sign one's own name. In a country that deploys nuclear weapons, most adults cannot even manage this elementary task."

What is worse is that Pakistan's education failure puts it below such paragons of good government as Zimbabwe and the Congo (where nearly 70% are literate despite a basket case of a government and decades of civil war). So is it any surprise that parents - desperate to get some education for their children, to give them some hope - turn to the religious schools, to the Taliban?

The failure of Pakistani politics, the corruption of its administration have failed ordinary Pakistani children. Yet the leadership remains complacent:

"Mohammed Aslam Kambo serves as the state secretary for schools in Punjab. Polite and businesslike, he holds court in a spotless, air-conditioned office in Lahore, surrounded by deferential functionaries. He is anxious to deny the existence of any serious problem. 'In Punjab, we don't have ghost schools. I'm sure there's not a single one,' he airily assured me a day before I visited the husk of the school in Gharayband. 'We have a sufficient level of primary schools,' he added. 'It's next to impossible that you will find a population of 100 houses and no state school.' "

There is a task for us in the west to tell Pakistan to sort out its schools - and I would suggest that the huge Pakistani diaspora across Europe, the Middle East and America have a big role to play in getting change in the country of their fathers.