Quaid-E-Azam's Dream

Jinnah was no doubt a great visionary who carved a separate state out of united and geographically contiguous India. He was not in the habit of enforcing his ideas on his colleagues but rather he wished them to peep deep into public affairs, analyze, compare and finally make a conclusion out of diversity of opinions. And he used to inculcate his ideas in an indirect way so that the audience may comprehend the solution fully and not merely jump to the conclusion. Quaid’s vision for newly established Pakistan does not offer any paradox, as it is believed by some pseudo scholars. After his demise a heated debate regarding politico-constitutional structure of the country was sparked. Unfortunately, the intelligentsia and literati left no stone unturned to make his vision incoherent, ambiguous or paradoxical. Such acrimonious drives were engineered by some vested interests who did not wish the Quaid’s vision to be implemented in its truest spirit. The foremost question, which was raised time and again by different sections of literati, was associated with polity of the new-born state. There was heated debate on whether country’s character would be theocratic or secular. The Quaid’s speeches show that his vision was neither theocratic in the traditional sense of the word, nor secular in the modern sense of the word. Traditionally, theocracy has never been present in the history of Islam but in the Christian Europe. The Theocratic government considers its laws as laws of God and the priests at the helm of power managed to persecute their opponents in the name of religion. The history of Islam is devoid of such kind of persecutions. The Quaid believed in Islamic democracy but not in any kind of theocracy. Unfortunately many thinkers either confused or misunderstood the vary meaning of theocracy. They perceived as if early Islamic Caliphate were theocracy because a religious caliph at the helm of affairs ran it.
A religious person at the helm of political power does not...