PESHAWAR, April 12: Scholars on Thursday warned that the country would break up if the saner sections of society “did not resist the temptation of serving the ‘corporate’ interests of military rulers”.
They were addressing a seminar which was organised by the Journalist Help, a local NGO, here at the Peshawar Press Club to discuss the civil-war like situation facing the country.
Noted historian Dr Mubarak Ali, religious scholar Dr Mohammad Farooq, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s deputy secretary and MNA Qari Fiyyazur Rehman Alvi, Jamaat-i-Islami’s Naib Amir Senator Mohammad Ibrahim, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s vice-chairman Kamran Arif, Dr Iftikhar Ahmed and Dr Maqsoodul Hasan spoke on various aspects of the issue.
Dr Mubarak Ali said that at the end of the colonial era the newly-independent countries underwent the process of creation of nation-states. But the way the Asian and African countries were going about their affairs later made little sense on the political and cultural planes.
Because of their multi-nation composition, when they tried to set up a single nation-state, it promoted polarisation instead of national unity, he added.
The state had two faces in Pakistan. One had a national characteristic while the other was a religious one and the dichotomy was severe enough to plunge the country in an unending crisis.
He said that during a speech, the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, had claimed that the state should not behave like an impartial observer. Instead, it should reflect its true spirit (religion).
Commenting on Liaquat Ali Khan’s speech, a member of the Constituent Assembly from the-then East Pakistan, Sureshchand Chitupadhia, had said that he was hearing the voices of clerics instead of the views of a prime minister.
Mr Chitupadhia said that if things went the way they were going, one day an adventurer might say that he was the state. Later on, Gen Ayub and Gen Zia both claimed that they were the state, said the historian.
He said when Pakistan became a “theocratic state” after the passage of the Objective Resolution, the clerics started exerting pressure on successive governments to enforce Islamic laws.
He said religious forces were strong today, but the state was so weak that it could not force some Islamabad clerics to come to their senses.
MNA Qari Fiyyaz made a distinction between the ulema and the jihadi groups, saying people like him had got nothing to do with the groups that were operating all over the country.
Terming the jihadi groups the creation of secret agencies, he said the players who had initially been groomed by intelligence agencies were now challenging the writ of the government.
He said the ongoing war between militant groups in the tribal areas was nothing more than a reflection of the clash between various intelligence agencies operating in the area.
Senator Ibrahim said that tolerance and intolerance were mere concepts, adding that disorder, anarchy and vacuum caused by the collapse of the state’s writ gave birth to social evils like intolerance, which had ruined the lives of people all over the country.
He added: “Suicide bombers are being trained in the secret agencies’ torture cells. Ulema are opposed to them.”