Jinnah ’s Pakistan
By Pro Bono Publico
Hempstead , New York
Supreme Court Advocate Hina Jilani on Dawn News Network on Jan 6, 2010 spoke out as a leader of the women’s movement against unjust laws including Zina and Hudood Ordinances, Law of Evidence, Qisas and Diyat Law and blasphemy law. On Sunday, January 31 , Dawn News Network had an "Open Forum" debate on Secularism vs. Shariat, and I would like to add my own views to that discussion.
The truth is that Jinnah’s Pakistan is dead. ZAB & Zia ul Haq buried it.
Pakistan owes its very existence to the struggle for Religious Freedom, so it comes as a double shock that the State and its apparatus are engaged in a fierce battle to destroy religious freedom. I define religious freedom as ‘freedom of and from religion’. Jinnah is on record as having stated that ‘ Pakistan was not going to be a theocracy to be ruled by priests with a divine mission’. He also stated that religion was not the business of the State. It was going to be a Muslim State, and a liberal democracy. Alas he died before his ideas could be codified into a Constitution. He would have been horrified at the establishment of a State religion: See CII and FSC, both of which I believe must be abolished as illegitimate vestiges of the Zia era.
I believe as a Pakistani-American lawyer that Pakistan has become a theocracy and a religiously totalitarian State. I believe in the freedom to fornicate without criminal sanction, I believe in the rights of freedom of speech, press and religion when it comes to criticizing or holding any adverse opinion about the Prophets without having to answer to the State or the people or the right to make cartoons about the Prophets as being my true God given rights. I don’t believe that women’s evidence should be considered as half that of a man’s evidence in court. I don’t think it is the business of the state to criminally punish adultery. I enjoy the freedom to choose whether or not to imbibe alcoholic spirits and don’t want a nanny state telling me I cannot drink alcohol. I don’t believe that anyone should be stoned to death or in amputations as part of the criminal law. This is not the way to spread Islam around the world as it makes it very difficult to convert people in liberal democracies to Islam if we tell them to support a medieval legal structure known as Sharia.
Jesus Christ himself is reported in the gospels to have said, when confronted by a case of adultery, ‘Let he who has no sin, cast the first stone.’
In short, I want the Zina and Hudood Ordinances and Law of Evidence repealed, and blasphemy law PPC-295B & PPC-295C to be repealed, thereby turning Pakistan into a normal secular state without any so-called ideological boundaries to defend. I want a State that focuses on allowing its people the maximum civil liberties and that does not unjustly oppress them and that separates Mosque and State.
There is a fundamental truth in International Relations, that Liberal democracies do not wage wars against each other. Pakistan is an illiberal theocratic state masquerading as a democracy. If we wish to avert nuclear wars in the future, the State of Pakistan must become a Liberal democracy like India and Western Europe and the United States.
