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Bigots and racists of all varieties showed up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They used obscurantist arguments and archaic crusader illogic. In the end the “Nation of Laws” won and the opinions of bigots lost the day in court. the good people of Tn are to be applauded for rejecting the out-of-state hooligans who had squatted in Murfreesboro and attempted to besmirch the good name of the state which is home to Al Gore and other great Americans.

Murfreesboro, Tennessee (CNN) — A Tennessee judge refused Wednesday to issue a temporary restraining order that would halt construction of a new mosque and Islamic center in Murfreesboro.

Rutherford County Chancellor Robert Corlew ruled that the county did not act “arbitrarily, capriciously or illegally” in approving the project.

In September, Kevin Fisher and three other Murfreesboro landowners filed a complaint against the Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission, claiming that it violated the Tennessee open-meetings law by failing to give adequate public notice of its May 24 meeting when it approved construction of a new Islamic Center.

The plaintiffs sought an injunction against construction of the proposed 52,000-square-foot mosque that is to include a pool, gymnasium and housing quarters.

“Tomorrow is another day, and we will go forward from there,” Fisher said after Corlew’s ruling. “Twenty years from now, I’d love to say I was wrong on this issue, but here’s the real question: what if we were right all along?”

The U.S. Justice Department in October filed a legal brief stating its support of the construction being done by the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.

In the friend-of-the-court brief — filed in response to a lawsuit brought by the local landowners — the department argued that practicing Islam is a freedom protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

In July, Fisher said he was mainly concerned about water quality, soil contamination and traffic flow on the nearby Bradyville Pike, which he said is a dangerous highway.

“This has nothing to do with racism or religious intolerance at all. It’s about a difference of opinion, and in America that’s OK,” said Fisher. “If Home Depot was burying bodies in the water supply … I would be equally concerned.”

The water and soil concerns stem from the Islamic center’s burying a body on the new property “without a casket or proper embalming,” Fisher said in July.

Doug Demosi, the Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission Director, said the center had permission before interring the body and it doesn’t appear any state regulations were violated.

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey publicly criticized the project during a speech in August.

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In the year of 30 Hijriyah or 651 Christian, just around 20 years after Rasulullah SAW passed away, the khalifah Uthman ibn Affan RA sent the delegation to China introducing Islam’s Daulah.

On the way of 4 years, the messangers of Uthman apparently stopped in Indonesian archipelago. This was the first time Indonesian people introduced Islam. Since, the moslem seaman and merchants kept coming for centuries. They bought agricultural produce from this green country while religious proselytizing.

Gradually, the indigene started to embrace Islam even though not an a large scale. Aceh, the most west region in Indonesia archipelago was the first region receiving Islam. Moreover, in Aceh, the first Islam kingdom was standing, Pasai. Marcopolo said that on the time his stop in Pasai in 692 H/1292 C, many Arabic people had disseminated Islam. So Ibnu Battutha, moslem wanderer from Marocco which when he was stopping in Aceh in 746 H/1345 C, wrote that in Aceh had disseminated Syafi’i mazhab. Now the oldest inheritance from the moslem was found in Gresik, East Java, that was the Islam funeral complex. One of them was a muslimah grave, called Fathima binti Maimun. In her grave was written numeral of year 475 H/1082 C, meant long ago before Majapahit, greatest Hindu’s Empire in Indonesia.

Read glimpses of World history by Jawaharlal Nehru—for a listing of Brahman imperialism in Southeast Asia.

Sri Vijaya, based at Palembang in southern Sumatra, reached through Java to the east and to the area of Bangkok (before it existed) in Thailand to the north. It was a Buddhist empire born in 670 A.D. and lasting until 1365. During this period, Buddhist culture and thought spread throughout the archipelagic region, influencing social order, commerce, and art.

Irregardless of what they teach some temples–Indonesia was Buddhist–and marauding hordes of Brahmans invaded, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia and tried to exterminate Buddhism in the lands. the brutal Madjapahit Hindu empire with a capital in eastern Java originated about 1100 with help from the colonialists from South Bharat. It continued its brutalities ’till 1500. Hinduism was reversed in all the countries, and it kept its hold in Bali–the last island which is a reminder of Hindu imperialism in Southeast Asia.

Malacca was the first major Islamic state in the region–located in what is Malaysia today–originating in 1400 and remaining powerful until defeated by a major Portuguese naval force in 1511. In the period of Pasisir culture authors were very active in writing books on all subjects belonging to the sphere of Muslim Javanese civilization.

The three centres of Pasisir literature in Java were Surabaya (with Gresik), Demak (with Japara) and Cérbon (with Banten). East Javanese Pasisir texts came first, for in East Java Muslim religious influence first became an important element in civilization. Starting from Java, Islamic Pasisir culture spread to some other islands of which the coasts are washed by the Java sea. The most important outlying cultural provinces were Lombok and Palémbang. In the island of Lombok a remarkable Islamic Javano-Balinese literature came into existence. The texts contain reminiscences of indigenous Sasak culture. The native Sasak language developed into a medium of literary activity side by side with the Javano-Balinese idiom.

The important oversea expansions of Javanese Pasisir literature, both eastwards and westwards, started from East Java. Minor expansions, of Javanese Pasisir culture took their course from Banten and from Central Javanese maritime towns. The districts affected by them, Lampung in South Sumatra by Banten, and Bañjar Masin in Borneo by Central Java, did not produce Javanese literary texts of any importance, however.

In, Javanese Pasisir literature, the influence of Islamic culture was strong. Islam first reached Java by the intermediary of Malay literature, Malay being the medium of the interinsular commerce which brought Muslim traders from India to the Archipelago. Asa result, Pasisir literature contains borrowings, from Malay and from Arabic, the sacred language of Islam, but also, from other continental languages, in the first place Persian, which was the universal Islamic medium in India in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

A number of significant early mosques survive, particularly along the north coast of Java. These include the Mesjid Agung in Demak, built in 1474, and the Menara Kudus Mosque in Kudus (1549) whose minaret is thought to be the watch tower of an earlier Hindu temple. Javanese mosque styles in turn influenced the architectural styles of mosques among its neighbors, among other the mosques in Kalimantan, Sumatra, Maluku, and also neighboring Malaysia, Brunei and the southern Philippines. Sultan Suriansyah Mosque in Banjarmasin and Kampung Hulu Mosque in Malacca for example displaying Javanese influence.

In 19th century, the sultanates of Indonesian archipelago began to merge Islamic architecture with Javanese style already popular in the archipelago. The Indo-Islamic and Moorish style are particularly favoured by Aceh Sultanate and Deli Sultanate, as displayed in Banda Aceh Baiturrahman Grand Mosque built in 1881, and Medan Grand Mosque built in 1906. Particularly during the decades since Indonesian independence, mosques have tended to be built in styles more consistent with global Islamic styles, which mirrors the practice of Islam.

The man behind a lawsuit seeking to overturn a controversial ballot measure has a passion for the law and his Islamic faith.

Muneer Awad, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter on the Council for American-Islamic Relations, filed suit last week in federal court to overturn State Question 755. The measure bans state courts from the use of Sharia and international law in deciding cases. It passed Nov. 2 with slightly more than 70 percent of the vote.
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Sharia law is not used in state courts, but supporters said SQ 755 was needed as a preventive measure.

U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange granted a temporary restraining order putting implementation on hold. A hearing for an injunction is set for Nov. 22.

Awad, who has been on the job with the council’s Oklahoma chapter since Oct. 14, said Sharia law could never replace federal or state laws.

Adoption of a constitutional amendment referencing Sharia law voices the state’s official disapproval and condemnation of Islam, he said.

“And that raises constitutional issues on its own with respect to the government being able to approve or disapprove of religion,” Awad said. “It involves my standing as a Muslim in the political community.”

When news of the lawsuit spread, his organization got a lot of hate mail, but it has also received encouragement, Awad said.

“Our organization has gotten more donations from non-Muslims in the past week than we have from Muslims,” he said. “This has really been a sign of Oklahomans, I think, realizing that no matter what disagreement we have here, there is still a need to remain rational and let the courts consider what is being presented.”

Daily guidance
Sharia law is guidance for Muslims on how to practice and interpret their faith in daily interactions and in society, Awad said.

“It touches on things that are even beyond law,” he said. “Simply me refraining from eating pork is part of following Sharia. Me not drinking alcohol is part of following Sharia. Me marrying is part of Sharia. So, Sharia encompasses so many things beyond the law.”

He said Sharia changes and is not applied the same in all countries.

“One of the main aspects of Sharia is abiding by the law of the land,” Awad said. “As a Muslim, I am mandated to abide by the law of the land I live in.”

He said it is disingenuous for critics to point to how Sharia is followed in other countries. While polygamy is permissible in his faith, it is not legal in the United States, he said.

Awad said politicians are profiting from the fear of Islam.

“I know this element of hate is definitely a fringe element,” he said. “So, I don’t actually live my life in fear of someone attacking me or misunderstanding me.” Muslim explains faith’s Sharia law BY BARBARA HOBEROCK – Tulsa World
Published: November 14, 2010

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Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was once drawn by a correspondent of the daily Zamindar [16 June, 1936] of Lahore into the controversy as to the nature of the claims of the Founder of the Ahmadiyyah Movement and the rights of the Ahmadiyya communities to claim a position within Islam. Both these matters were set at rest by the Maulana in the very first passage of his first letter to the said correspondent thus:

“You enquire which one of the two Ahmadi groups follows the true path, the Qadian group or the Lahore one. In my opinion neither is on the true and right path, but the Qadian section has gone too far in its ghuluww, so far that the very fundamentals of Islam have been shaken; for instance, its belief that for faith and salvation the known and admitted doctrines of Islam are not now sufficient and that it is essential to believe in the Mirza Sahib of Qadian. But the Lahore group denies this ghuluww; it neither confesses a faith in the prophethood of the Mirza Sahib nor does it add any new condition to the conditions of faith; where it has stumbled is in the misplaced belief which it has created for the Mirza Sahib.”

In this passage Maulana Abul Kalam has made clear the three points: 1. The position which the Mirza Sahib claimed for himself, 2. Whether the Qadian group is outside or within the pale of Islam, and 3. The position of the Lahore group.

Let us consider first the position of the Mirza Sahib in the light of what the Maulana has said. In ascribing ghuluww to the Qadianis, the Maulana has in fact made it clear that the Mirza Sahib never claimed prophethood for himself, for a ghali is one who ascribes a position to its leader higher than that which he claims for himself. For example, the Christians are guilty of ghuluww when they ascribe to Jesus Christ a claim to Godhead because he never claimed Godhead for himself. Hence the Qadianis can be said to be guilty of ghuluww only if they ascribe to Mirza Sahib a claim which he never made for himself.

The above conclusion drawn from Maulana Abul Kalam’s letter is further corroborated by two of his earlier writings on the subject. The first of these is a passage which occurs in the Maulana’s well-known book the Tadhkirah published in 1919. Writing about Sayyid Muhammad of Jaunpur who claimed to be the Mahdi, the Maulana says:
”The affair of the Sayyid of whom we are speaking is full of wonder, and various sorts of claims and absurd sayings have been attributed to him. What the followers of a person say need not be paid attention to, for whomever a people take for their religious leader they would raise him to no less a dignity than that of God-bead, and if they are very careful they would not keep him below the position of a prophet. But some recent writers have written things which at first sight cause perturbance. Shah Abdul Haq, the Muhaddath of Delhi, writes:
‘According to Sayyid Muhammad of Jaunpur, every perfection possessed by the Holy Prophet Muhammad was also possessed by Sayyid Muhammad, the only difference being that there it was in asalat (possessed originally) and here it was by tab’iyyat (attained by following), and by following the Holy Prophet he attained to such a place that he became like a prophet.’

“Reading these words of Shah Sahib, it occurred to me that in our own days a big section of the followers of the Mirza Sahib of Qadian entertains an exactly similar belief about the Mirza Sahib and lays the foundation of all its ghuluww (exceeding the bounds) and ighraq (exaggeration) on this difference of asalat (possessing originally) and tabe’ijyat (attaining by following)” (pp. 30, 31).

Here the Maulana states that the followers of Sayyid Muhammad and a great section of the followers of the Mirza Sahib have fallen into the same error and have been guilty of exaggerating the claims of their respective leaders. Evidently he is referring here to the Qadianis and considers them to be guilty of ghuluww, i.e., exaggerating the claims of the Mirza Sahib and attributing to him what he never claimed. Thus attributing the claim of prophethood to Mirza Sahib is ghuluww on the part of the Qadianis; in other words, the Mirza Sahib did not claim to
prophethood.

As regards the second writing of the Maulana which exonerates the Mirza Sahib of laying claim to prophethood, it is really a fatwa given by him when extracts dealing with the alleged claim to prophethood taken from his different writings were placed before the Maulana. These extracts were sent to him by me personally, and he returned those papers with the following words: “He is a mu’awwil (one who explains a word as conveying a significance quite different from its ordinary significance) and a mu’awwil is by unanimous decision not a kafir.” [I am writing this from memory and the originals in my papers at Lahore. But there is not the least doubt in my mind as to the words quoted being in their essence those of the Maulana.]

This shows that after reading all the writings of the Mirza Sahib on the question of his alleged claim to prophethood, Maulana Abul Kalam came to the conclusion that he never laid claim to prophethood and explained his use of the word prophet as conveying a different significance from the usually received one.

Thus Maulana’s letters to the correspondent of the Zamindar settle at least one question, viz. that the Mirza Sahib was not a claimant to prophethood and that he was a Muslim and not a kafir.

We will now take the second question whether the Maulana looks upon the Qadianis as Muslims or kafirs. The Maulana considers them to be guilty of ghuluww (exaggeration and exceeding the proper limits), but at the same time he considers them to be Muslims — Muslims who have strayed away from the right path. That is all that one Muslim can say about another. Their error is very great, and it shakes the very foundations of Islam, says the Maulana, but he has not been carried away by the senseless agitation to expel this or that group from the pale of Islam. It is the Holy Prophet’s verdict that they are Muslims — yes erring Muslims — but Muslims all the same. For, does not the Holy Prophet say: “Whoever says prayers as we do, and faces our Qibla and eats our dhabiha, that one is surely a Muslim and for him is the covenant of Allah and the covenant of the Apostle of Allah, so do not violate the covenant of Allah” (Bukhari, 8: 28).

And on a certain occasion when a man abused the Holy Prophet in his face, and the Holy Prophet would not suffer any harm be done to him because, he said, “perhaps he said prayers,” Khalid remarked: “How many people there are who say prayers, yet there is on their lips what is not in their hearts.” But the Holy Prophet rebuked him, saying: “I am not commanded to pierce the hearts of the people or to break open their secret thoughts” (Bukhari, 65: 63).

The Maulana is thus a noble exception to the ‘ulama of the present day who care neither for the Holy Qur’an which says: “And say not to any one who offers you the (Islamic) salutation: Thou art not a believer” (4: 94); nor yet for the Holy Prophet who clearly commanded that the covenant of God shall not be broken by calling a man kafir who said prayers as the Muslims do. The Qadianis are undoubtedly shaking the very foundations of Islam by attributing prophethood to the Mujaddid of this century and by denouncing four hundred million Muslims as kafirs because they do not believe in the prophethood of the Mirza Sahib, but with all those grievous errors they are Muslims, just as the Shias are Muslims though they abuse the companions of the Holy Prophet and denounce them as usurpers and just as so many other extremist sects are Muslims though they raise their leaders to the dignity of Godhead or the dignity of prophethood.

I now come to the third question: the Lahore section of the followers of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, or the Ahmadis as they are now generally called as distinguished from the Qadianis. Maulana Abul Kalam has, here too, set at rest one question, viz., that the Ahmadis do not believe in the prophethood of the Mirza Sahib, nor do they add any condition to the accepted conditions of the faith of Islam. This clearing of the position of the Ahmadis in Islam is also an important contribution to sane criticism in the Muslim camp, for sanity is a gift which is so rare among the ulama, even among the general Muslim public, when they have to deal with Ahmadis, Once, Mufti Kifayatullah, the head of the Jami’at-ul-Ulama of Delhi, committed the mad act of denouncing the Lahore Ahmadis as kafirs because, he said, “they believed in the prophethood of Mirza Sahib,” and this in spite of the fact that we have been carrying on an incessant war against the Qadianis regarding their belief in the prophethood of the Mirza Sahib and their denunciation of the forty crores [400,000,000]of Muslims as kafirs.

While I am sincerely thankful to Maulana Abul Kalam for definitely and clearly upholding the truth in these three matters, that the Mirza Sahib never claimed to be a prophet, that the Qadianis in spite of their grievous errors are Muslims, and that the Ahmadis deny the prophethood of the Mirza Sahib and accept him only as a Mujaddid, adding nothing to the accepted doctrines of the faith of Islam, I must say that the Maulana has not done justice to us. He has every right to say that we are not on the true path, for to differ with others is the Muslim’s birthright; the Maulana has a right to differ with us and we have a right to differ with the Maulana. But when he says that we have ”stumbled” in a “misplaced belief which we have created for the Mirza Sahib,” he is unjust to us. We have created no belief for the Mirza Sahib except only what the Qur’an and the Hadith say. For what is our belief regarding Mirza Sahib? We accept him as a Mujaddid and we accept him as fulfilling the prophecies relating to the advent of the Messiah among the Muslims. And the coming of Mujaddids and the advent of a Messiah are both based on Hadith.

As regards the first point, the Maulana was undoubtedly misunderstood as denying the coming of Mujaddids when his two letters to the correspondent of the Zamindar appeared in the press. But the writer of Tadhkirah who describes the Mujaddid is the centre of all hope in the triumph of Islam could not deny the coming of Mujaddids. His words were surely strong, but he has tried to explain them away in a later statement, and whether we accept or reject his explanation, we have no tight to ascribe to him denial of the coming of Mujaddids now that be has reaffirmed his faith in their advent in very clear words. His real views on this point are met with in his famous writing, the Tadhkirah:
“These perfect ones are given the name of muhaddath in the hadith of Bukhari, and in them, too, is fulfilled the hadith relating to the appearance of Mujaddid, which has been narrated through various channels, and about its genuineness, therefore no doubt can be entertained” (p. 94).

“And these are the clear and manifest characteristics of the place of tajdid (the position of the Mujaddid), the vicegerency of prophethood, about which I have again and again said that the highest of heads must bow there” (p. 140).

Now when it is accepted that Mujaddids must come, and the Hadith says that the commencement of every century of Hijrah shall see the appearance of a Mujaddid, I fail to see how our belief about the Mirza Sahib being a Mujaddid of the fourteenth century is “misplaced” when there is no one to claim that office, nor has any one else been unanimously accepted as the Mujaddid. In accepting Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as the Mujaddid of the fourteenth century we have bowed only before the Hadith of the Holy Prophet. One of the two positions must be accepted; cither the hadith relating to the appearance of the Mujaddid is not genuine, which view is however strongly rejected by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, or Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the Mujaddid of the 14th century, for there is neither another claimant nor has the Muslim world unanimously declared another man to be the Mujaddid of this century.

Now there remains only one point. Have we created any new belief in accepting the Founder of the Ahmadiyyah Movement as the Messiah that was to come among the Muslims? Happily Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose letters in the Zamindar raised apprehensions in some minds that he was denying the hadith referring to the advent of Messiah, has cleared his position in a later statement, and we are glad that he accepts the hadith, I am further certain that, like us, the Maulana also believes in the death of Jesus Christ. Now the position is this: The Messiah must come as the Hadith says, but Jesus Christ cannot be that Messiah because he died long ago. There is then no escaping the conclusion that the Messiah that is to come among the Muslims must be a Mujaddid of this ummah. We accept Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be that Mujaddid. We have created no new belief. Here again we bow our head before the Hadith of the Holy Prophet. What are our arguments for accepting him as such is a different question which cannot be discussed here. The Maulana has a right to say that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is not the Mujaddid and the Messiah, and that we have made a mistake in fixing our choice, just as we have the right to say that the Maulana is making a mistake in rejecting him, but two conclusions are inevitable: There must be a Mujaddid of this century, and only a Mujaddid can be the Promised Messiah

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We recently read a poll about Okies. Since we lived in the state, it didn’t surprised us–not withstanding the fact that some our best friends are Okies.

Oklahoma is probably the most racist state in the country which leaves Alabama in the dust. Oklahoma is that strange blend of Sooners and Boomers that has created a Cowboy culture that never got sophisticated like the culture Texas, nor did it mature to a cosmopolitan levels of South Carolina. Its economy is based on Oil, so the state had an early interaction with the Arabs. Logic would dictate that Oklahomans would by now become used to the Muslims–since a lot of Oklahoma companies do business in the Middle East.

A large presence of Iranians at OU and OSU did not create the cultural understanding that would be expected from a greater interaction of peoples. The wild wild west Oklahomas in OKC, Norman and Tulsa are inundated with the “good ole farm boys” who keep Oklahoma behind and who are the worst bigots in the nation.

A majority of Oklahomans believe that Islam is a violent religion that is far removed from Christianity, the most recent Oklahoma Poll found.

The survey, taken before voters overwhelmingly approved a state question banning Islamic Shariah law from state courts, revealed that fewer than one-quarter of Oklahomans have a favorable opinion of Muslims.

Fifty-eight percent said Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, and 61 percent said Muslims don’t worship the same God as Christians.

More than half agreed that Muslims should have the same rights as others to build houses of worship in local communities. However, 36 percent said local communities should have the right to prevent construction of houses of worship if they do not want them.

Okies have been unable to break themselves from a time warp f the fifties, and think that America should return to those days.

The state’s bigotry keep OK businesses out of the Middle East, and the latest spat will hurt Okies more.

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Islam gaining ground in Azerbaijan

The number of Azeris who pray regularly has risen to some 10 percent, according to polls

THE view from Nardaran’s vast sandstone mosque sweeps down through roses to the Absheron peninsula and the Caspian Sea from which Azerbaijan derives its wealth. Devotion to Islam defines life in this dusty coastal village, where walls carry the verses of the holy Quran and social grievances against this strictly controlled former Soviet republic find voice in religion. But it’s a way of life that sits uneasily with the secular regime of President Ilham Aliyev, an authoritarian who draws his power from rich reserves of oil and gas in the Caspian.

“They are wealthy, but they are afraid,” Haji Aga Nuriyev, Naradaran elder and former head of the banned Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, said of the political elite around Aliyev. Like much of the former Soviet Union – Christian and Muslim – this country of 9 million mainly Shia Muslims has witnessed a limited religious revival since the collapse of Communism two decades ago. Nardaran has long tried to forge a political role for Islam in Azerbaijan.

The number of Azeris who pray regularly has risen to some 10 percent, according to polls. For the majority, their faith is a matter of fact, less a defining element of identity, and women in mini-skirts stroll the capital’s affluent downtown. But the trend is one the government is determined to control, not least given the nature of its neighbourhood:

To the west lies Turkey, where a secular state must accommodate growing conservative religious influences, to the south the Islamic Republic of Iran, and to the north Russia’s Dagestan, gripped by an Islamist insurgency against Moscow. Baku has foiled several bomb plots in recent years, targeting Western embassies, which it has linked to Iran.

Western diplomats appear sympathetic to Aliyev’s efforts to stem any drift towards radicalism in Azerbaijan, an energy supplier and transit route for the US military in Afghanistan. But rights groups say the government’s methods are heavy-handed, part of an authoritarian reflex to stifle independent expression as a potential challenge to the regime. Aliyev, son of long-serving leader Heydar, further consolidated power when loyalists swept the board on Sunday in in a parliamentary election faulted by monitors.

To many Azeri officials, rooted in secularism, a strong Islam runs contrary to their vision of a modernising Azerbaijan, where an oil-fuelled boom is transforming the capital Baku and spawning an opulent jet set. “One can feel today a certain Islamophobia among officials,” said rights activist and outspoken imam Ilgar Ibrahimoglu. “But it all comes back to the problem of the lack of freedom, lack of rights and general problems of democracy.” Iranian-educated Ibrahimoglu used to preach at the influential Shia Jammia mosque, nestled within the warren of cobbled streets that form Baku’s picturesque Old City. But it was closed in June 2004 after he was convicted of organising opposition protests against the 2003 election of Ilham Aliyev and given a five-month suspended sentence.

Two mosques that authorities said were built illegally were demolished last year and at least two others in Baku have been closed, including Abu Bakr where a Salafi community prayed until the mosque was bombed in 2008 and two worshippers were killed. The attack was blamed on radicals linked to the North Caucasus. The mosque was closed for repairs, which have finished, but the gates remain padlocked. Analysts say the Salafi community, with its purist approach, has borne the brunt of state sanction. Such communities reject the spiritual authority of the Caucasus Board of Muslims (CBM), the official state-backed clergy which has enjoyed government support for the building and restoration of mosques that it controls.

Under measures criticised by groups promoting religious freedom, the state requires all religious communities to register with the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations, and to align their teachings with the CBM. The Committee’s head declined to be interviewed.

But the CBM chairman, Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade, told Reuters: “The Aliyev family is creating all necessary conditions for the development of Islam in Azerbaijan.” He defended measures against communities “which violate the law”. “Our Board does not put pressure on them. We say, ‘work within the boundaries of the law’. Probably they want to agitate, to work in the interests of other states.” The allusion to outside influences is a common one.

Svante Cornell, research director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, said: “Azerbaijan is one of only four Shia majority states in the world, and it has a secular, moderate government, not a particularly democratic one but … a secular government that is interested in maintaining its relations with the West.” Whether born of genuine concern, or a cynical bid to muzzle another avenue of dissent, analysts warn that strict government measures to control Islam could prove counter-productive, something Ibrahimoglu calls ‘the boomerang effect’. reuters

• Sadi had cried over the destruction of Baghdad
• Ibn-Badrun on the despoliation of Granada, and Dagh on the sack of Delhi.
• Iqbal would now lament the desolation of Sicily. And he would do it as movingly, and as magnificently, as these three great bards.
• With the years, Iqbal’s poems increasingly reflected the troubles of the Muslim world; they also mirrored the agitated mood of the Indo-Pakistani Muslims over these troubles. Perhaps, nothing reflected his new spiritual orientation as his famous Tarana-i-Milli (Islamic Anthem), and his soul-stirring poem on Trablas (Algeria).

Men like Iqbal are born, but in centuries. Indeed, Iqbal was the foremost Muslim philosopher of the 20th century. To quote Amir Shakib Arsalan, the world of Islam has not thrown up a thinker of his calibre during the last few centuries.

Born in 1977 in an intensely religious family of Kashmiri stock at Sialkot, Iqbal had ample opportunities to assimilate both eastern and western thought. His formal education included a study of Arabic, English literature and philosophy, besides social sciences. His quest for knowledge took him to Europe where he also became familiar with the groundwork of Western civilisation and with the current Western philosophic thought. He also taught philosophy for some years, and later earned his living through practice.
Iqbal made his debut as a rising poet in 1899, when he recited the Nala-i-Yatim (The Cry of the Orphan) at the annual session of Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam, Lahore.

In the first phase of his poetic career, Iqbal was potently influenced by sufistic, romanticist and nationalist ideas. First, he sang of the mina (goblet) and saqi (wine-bearer) in the traditional style and in traditional forms. Second, he tried to introduce into Urdu the romanticist traditions of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Cowper and wrote on subjects concerning nature. Third, writing under a patriotic urge, he became the advocate of the emergent Indian nationalism. To this period belongs the Tarana-i-Hindi (The Indian Anthem), which according to Iqbal Singh “remains to this day the best patriotic poem in modern times.”

Iqbal considered the role of the poet in a nation the same as that of the eyes in the human body. “The eye cries if any limb is hurt; what a friend of the whole body it is!” he said once. And Iqbal wept at the calamities besieging India, mirrored his people’s troubles and translated their moods in his poems. He, thus, became not merely a champion of Indian nationalism. More important, he became a critique of life and existing conditions. He, thus, came to be hailed as the “National Poet of India”.

His studies and sojourn in Europe opened new vistas for him, enabling him to turn his back upon his previous orientation. First, his study of the development of metaphysics in Persia, the topic of his doctoral dissertation at Munich, showed him that tasuwwuf (mysticism) had no place in Islam. Sufism preached a life of negation: a passive, in place of an active life, resignation in place of endeavour. And Iqbal, now influenced by European thought, was all for endeavour, initiative and action.

Second, certain aspects of European life had a tremendous impact upon his sensitive and brilliant mind. He joyously admired the tremendous vitality and creativity of European life, the initiative, inquisitiveness, and confident restlessness of the people everywhere, to make the world better all the while. He also readily realised the tremendous possibilities before man, possibilities opened up by science, possibilities which were nevertheless undreamt of by people in his own country.

But he also found that undiluted capitalism, aggressive nationalism and blind racialism, prevalent in Europe, had undermined the very foundations of Western civilisation. He therefore, sounded a not of warning six years before the outbreak of the First World War:

O, dwellers of the cities of the West,
And that which you regard as true coin,
Will prove to be only a counterfeit.

Thus, while, on the one hand, he admired the West for its initiative and spectacular progress, he became, on the other, extremely disgusted with the European concepts of capitalism, nationalism and racialism, which divided mankind and encouraged endless competition and jealousy between nation and nation, race and race, and individual and individual. What, then, was the answer?

To Iqbal, Islam was the only answer. More than anything else, Islam envisaged a world brotherhood that cuts across racial, national and class affiliations. A brotherhood, which was not merely preached from the pulpit, but was also practised in daily life.

During early Islam, Umar, a proud Quraysh, Bilal, a freed Negro slave, and Salman, an Iranian, had stood on an equal footing, no matter what their race, colour, language, or country of origin. Islam also preached a sort of socialism – the greatest good of the greatest number. Its various injunctions worked towards levelling down, rather than exacerbating, economic inequalities. No wonder Iqbal came to embrace the Islamic ideal.

Thus, Iqbal, who had left India in 1905 as a nationalism and pantheist, returned to it in 1908 completely transformed: as a pan-Islamist and almost a puritan. Not that he loved India any the less, but that he now loved Islam and its ideals more. Albert Schiller had once proclaimed: “I write as a citizen of the world who serves no prince. I lost my fatherland to exchange it for the great world. What is the greatest of nations, but a fragment?” Such was Iqbal’s mood in his post European year.

The Prophet (PBUH) had once said: “The whole of this earth is a mosque (unto me).” Iqbal would now say: “Every country is our country because it is the country of our God.” The fatherland to which he now owned supreme allegiance was the Muslim world – the vast belt that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia and far beyond.

Iqbal took upon himself, to quote Dr Nafisy, the learned Iranian intellectual, the immense task of a poet-prophet. His poems now shifted ground to keep in line with his thinking; he now sang the glories of Islam and Muslims.
The first poem reflecting this stage of Iqbal’s intellectual and spiritual development was on Sicily. When the ship carrying Iqbal back to India passed near Sicily, the sight of the island reminded Iqbal of its glorious past under the Arab, and he broke out into a touching elegy. Sadi had cried over the destruction of Baghdad, Ibn-Badrun on the despoliation of Granada, and Dagh on the sack of Delhi. Iqbal would now lament the desolation of Sicily. And he would do it as movingly, and as magnificently, as these three great bards.

With the years, Iqbal’s poems increasingly reflected the troubles of the Muslim world; they also mirrored the agitated mood of the Indo-Pakistani Muslims over these troubles. Perhaps, nothing reflected his new spiritual orientation as his famous Tarana-i-Milli (Islamic Anthem), and his soul-stirring poem on Trablas (Algeria).

Iqbal wanted the Muslims and the people of the East to come into their own. He felt that warmth had disappeared from the soul of the East: “It knows not what is the task of living.” Addressing the East, he adds: “I found the lands lacking in the spirit of life. I breathed my own spirit into thee.”
Simultaneously, Iqbal stirred the Indian Muslims to their depths and to new consciousness of their inherent potentialities. Not only did he fill them with his own dynamism and faith, but he also envisioned for them a new horizon – a new destiny. And that was the concept of a Muslim homeland in the subcontinent.

Iqbal’s claim to be the foremost Muslim philosopher of the present age rests chiefly on his Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts in Islam (1930) wherein he tried “to rethink the whole system of Islam without completely breaking away with the past.” Actually, in these lectures, he tried to do what St Augustine had done for Catholicism several centuries ago.
His significance as a poet and thinker apart, Iqbal was also the ideologue of Pakistan. Even to this day, his presidential address to the Allahabad (1930) League stands out, as the foremost intellectual justification for the Pakistan demand.

To sum up, then, Iqbal is the foremost thinker in the modern world of Islam, who attempted a reorientation of Islam in the light of modern philosophical concepts. As a poet, he attained perfection in the two aspects of a poet – the prophetic and the artistic. And, lastly, as a seer, he gave a new destiny to his people. The great Muslim philosopher
By Prof Sharif Al-mujahid | Published: November 9, 2010

The writer is an academic.
A form of madness
M. ABUL FAZL

The ancient Greeks thought carnal love a form of madness. Maybe they were right. The Austrian poet, Rilke, says: “Every woman who passes by me leaves me with the feeling that she can give me infinite happiness.” The great German lyricist, Heinrich Heine, writes:
Avant que s’eteigne ma vie,
Avant que mon coeur ne defaille,
Je voudrais, une fois encore,
Briguer les faveurs d’une femme.
And ends many lines later:
Ah; connaitre encore une fois,
L’amour, le bonheur sans vacarme.
(I give the French translation because I did not find the English one. So this was the nearest I could get to the original, although poetry is, of course, untranslatable.)
Roughly, the above quoted lines would be:
“Before my life gives out,
Before my heart ceases to beat,
I would want one more time,
To solicit the favours of a woman.”
And:
“Ah to know once more,
The love, the happiness without fuss.”
Ghalib is more sedate:
Nahin nigar ko ulfat na ho, nigar to hai,
Ravani-e-ravish-o-masty-e-ada kahye.
Sufi Tabassum has explained these lines as: “Even though she does not respond to your love, you should still admire the qualities which make her so seductive, like her gait, her coquetterie.”

What a difference. Both the poets of bourgeois Europe, quoted above, live in a society conditioned by property and its exigencies. But, within those bounds, they express freely their desire for warmth, for that happiness, which only a woman can give. But the South Asian poet is reconciled to the fact that the woman he is attracted to is out of his reach or will presumably respond to his ardour only, if there is prospect of marriage.

It was this unattainability, which not only made the woman more attractive, but also added to the man’s desire. However, it had also attached guilt to the normal sexual feelings, though one imagines our Semitic heritage of original sin made any sex inseparable from sin anyway. They came intertwined.
For example, Mir, when a teenager, was living in Delhi with his stepmother’s brother. There he had a love affair with the niece of his host. When it was discovered, the step-uncle threw him out of the house. What they did to the girl is not known, though, apparently, it was nothing drastic. Now, it did not occur to anyone, or if it did, it was forgotten, that the haramsara (women’s quarters) of those days were heavily populated with near and far relatives and maid servants of various grades. Mir could not possibly have entered it without being spotted. The girl must herself have made her way into his room, in fact, taken the initiative, the first time, to do so. The French philosopher, Michel Henry, put it well: “To exclude from the universe the sensitive qualities is to exclude sensitivity itself and, with it, all that is subjective and, thus, the life itself.” The great Muslim philosopher
By Prof Sharif Al-mujahid | Published: November 9, 2010. The writer is a retired ambassador.

Related Articles

• You: Iqbal Day being observed today (nation.com.pk)
• Was German Philospher Goethe a Muslim? (musalmantimes.com)
• Nighingale of Sufism Sanam Marvi (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Sanam Marvi: Nighingale of Sufism (pakistanindependent.com)
• Debunking and Destroying Islamophobia (pakistanledger.com)
• Fear of an ‘Islamic Fatherland’ reflects Mein Kemph strategies (musalmantimes.com)

• Sadi had cried over the destruction of Baghdad
• Ibn-Badrun on the despoliation of Granada, and Dagh on the sack of Delhi.
• Iqbal would now lament the desolation of Sicily. And he would do it as movingly, and as magnificently, as these three great bards.
• With the years, Iqbal’s poems increasingly reflected the troubles of the Muslim world; they also mirrored the agitated mood of the Indo-Pakistani Muslims over these troubles. Perhaps, nothing reflected his new spiritual orientation as his famous Tarana-i-Milli (Islamic Anthem), and his soul-stirring poem on Trablas (Algeria).

Men like Iqbal are born, but in centuries. Indeed, Iqbal was the foremost Muslim philosopher of the 20th century. To quote Amir Shakib Arsalan, the world of Islam has not thrown up a thinker of his calibre during the last few centuries.

Born in 1977 in an intensely religious family of Kashmiri stock at Sialkot, Iqbal had ample opportunities to assimilate both eastern and western thought. His formal education included a study of Arabic, English literature and philosophy, besides social sciences. His quest for knowledge took him to Europe where he also became familiar with the groundwork of Western civilisation and with the current Western philosophic thought. He also taught philosophy for some years, and later earned his living through practice.
Iqbal made his debut as a rising poet in 1899, when he recited the Nala-i-Yatim (The Cry of the Orphan) at the annual session of Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam, Lahore.

In the first phase of his poetic career, Iqbal was potently influenced by sufistic, romanticist and nationalist ideas. First, he sang of the mina (goblet) and saqi (wine-bearer) in the traditional style and in traditional forms. Second, he tried to introduce into Urdu the romanticist traditions of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Cowper and wrote on subjects concerning nature. Third, writing under a patriotic urge, he became the advocate of the emergent Indian nationalism. To this period belongs the Tarana-i-Hindi (The Indian Anthem), which according to Iqbal Singh “remains to this day the best patriotic poem in modern times.”

Iqbal considered the role of the poet in a nation the same as that of the eyes in the human body. “The eye cries if any limb is hurt; what a friend of the whole body it is!” he said once. And Iqbal wept at the calamities besieging India, mirrored his people’s troubles and translated their moods in his poems. He, thus, became not merely a champion of Indian nationalism. More important, he became a critique of life and existing conditions. He, thus, came to be hailed as the “National Poet of India”.

His studies and sojourn in Europe opened new vistas for him, enabling him to turn his back upon his previous orientation. First, his study of the development of metaphysics in Persia, the topic of his doctoral dissertation at Munich, showed him that tasuwwuf (mysticism) had no place in Islam. Sufism preached a life of negation: a passive, in place of an active life, resignation in place of endeavour. And Iqbal, now influenced by European thought, was all for endeavour, initiative and action.

Second, certain aspects of European life had a tremendous impact upon his sensitive and brilliant mind. He joyously admired the tremendous vitality and creativity of European life, the initiative, inquisitiveness, and confident restlessness of the people everywhere, to make the world better all the while. He also readily realised the tremendous possibilities before man, possibilities opened up by science, possibilities which were nevertheless undreamt of by people in his own country.

But he also found that undiluted capitalism, aggressive nationalism and blind racialism, prevalent in Europe, had undermined the very foundations of Western civilisation. He therefore, sounded a not of warning six years before the outbreak of the First World War:

O, dwellers of the cities of the West,
And that which you regard as true coin,
Will prove to be only a counterfeit.

Thus, while, on the one hand, he admired the West for its initiative and spectacular progress, he became, on the other, extremely disgusted with the European concepts of capitalism, nationalism and racialism, which divided mankind and encouraged endless competition and jealousy between nation and nation, race and race, and individual and individual. What, then, was the answer?

To Iqbal, Islam was the only answer. More than anything else, Islam envisaged a world brotherhood that cuts across racial, national and class affiliations. A brotherhood, which was not merely preached from the pulpit, but was also practised in daily life.

During early Islam, Umar, a proud Quraysh, Bilal, a freed Negro slave, and Salman, an Iranian, had stood on an equal footing, no matter what their race, colour, language, or country of origin. Islam also preached a sort of socialism – the greatest good of the greatest number. Its various injunctions worked towards levelling down, rather than exacerbating, economic inequalities. No wonder Iqbal came to embrace the Islamic ideal.

Thus, Iqbal, who had left India in 1905 as a nationalism and pantheist, returned to it in 1908 completely transformed: as a pan-Islamist and almost a puritan. Not that he loved India any the less, but that he now loved Islam and its ideals more. Albert Schiller had once proclaimed: “I write as a citizen of the world who serves no prince. I lost my fatherland to exchange it for the great world. What is the greatest of nations, but a fragment?” Such was Iqbal’s mood in his post European year.

The Prophet (PBUH) had once said: “The whole of this earth is a mosque (unto me).” Iqbal would now say: “Every country is our country because it is the country of our God.” The fatherland to which he now owned supreme allegiance was the Muslim world – the vast belt that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia and far beyond.

Iqbal took upon himself, to quote Dr Nafisy, the learned Iranian intellectual, the immense task of a poet-prophet. His poems now shifted ground to keep in line with his thinking; he now sang the glories of Islam and Muslims.
The first poem reflecting this stage of Iqbal’s intellectual and spiritual development was on Sicily. When the ship carrying Iqbal back to India passed near Sicily, the sight of the island reminded Iqbal of its glorious past under the Arab, and he broke out into a touching elegy. Sadi had cried over the destruction of Baghdad, Ibn-Badrun on the despoliation of Granada, and Dagh on the sack of Delhi. Iqbal would now lament the desolation of Sicily. And he would do it as movingly, and as magnificently, as these three great bards.

With the years, Iqbal’s poems increasingly reflected the troubles of the Muslim world; they also mirrored the agitated mood of the Indo-Pakistani Muslims over these troubles. Perhaps, nothing reflected his new spiritual orientation as his famous Tarana-i-Milli (Islamic Anthem), and his soul-stirring poem on Trablas (Algeria).

Iqbal wanted the Muslims and the people of the East to come into their own. He felt that warmth had disappeared from the soul of the East: “It knows not what is the task of living.” Addressing the East, he adds: “I found the lands lacking in the spirit of life. I breathed my own spirit into thee.”
Simultaneously, Iqbal stirred the Indian Muslims to their depths and to new consciousness of their inherent potentialities. Not only did he fill them with his own dynamism and faith, but he also envisioned for them a new horizon – a new destiny. And that was the concept of a Muslim homeland in the subcontinent.

Iqbal’s claim to be the foremost Muslim philosopher of the present age rests chiefly on his Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts in Islam (1930) wherein he tried “to rethink the whole system of Islam without completely breaking away with the past.” Actually, in these lectures, he tried to do what St Augustine had done for Catholicism several centuries ago.
His significance as a poet and thinker apart, Iqbal was also the ideologue of Pakistan. Even to this day, his presidential address to the Allahabad (1930) League stands out, as the foremost intellectual justification for the Pakistan demand.

To sum up, then, Iqbal is the foremost thinker in the modern world of Islam, who attempted a reorientation of Islam in the light of modern philosophical concepts. As a poet, he attained perfection in the two aspects of a poet – the prophetic and the artistic. And, lastly, as a seer, he gave a new destiny to his people. The great Muslim philosopher
By Prof Sharif Al-mujahid | Published: November 9, 2010

The writer is an academic.
A form of madness
M. ABUL FAZL

The ancient Greeks thought carnal love a form of madness. Maybe they were right. The Austrian poet, Rilke, says: “Every woman who passes by me leaves me with the feeling that she can give me infinite happiness.” The great German lyricist, Heinrich Heine, writes:
Avant que s’eteigne ma vie,
Avant que mon coeur ne defaille,
Je voudrais, une fois encore,
Briguer les faveurs d’une femme.
And ends many lines later:
Ah; connaitre encore une fois,
L’amour, le bonheur sans vacarme.
(I give the French translation because I did not find the English one. So this was the nearest I could get to the original, although poetry is, of course, untranslatable.)
Roughly, the above quoted lines would be:
“Before my life gives out,
Before my heart ceases to beat,
I would want one more time,
To solicit the favours of a woman.”
And:
“Ah to know once more,
The love, the happiness without fuss.”
Ghalib is more sedate:
Nahin nigar ko ulfat na ho, nigar to hai,
Ravani-e-ravish-o-masty-e-ada kahye.
Sufi Tabassum has explained these lines as: “Even though she does not respond to your love, you should still admire the qualities which make her so seductive, like her gait, her coquetterie.”

What a difference. Both the poets of bourgeois Europe, quoted above, live in a society conditioned by property and its exigencies. But, within those bounds, they express freely their desire for warmth, for that happiness, which only a woman can give. But the South Asian poet is reconciled to the fact that the woman he is attracted to is out of his reach or will presumably respond to his ardour only, if there is prospect of marriage.

It was this unattainability, which not only made the woman more attractive, but also added to the man’s desire. However, it had also attached guilt to the normal sexual feelings, though one imagines our Semitic heritage of original sin made any sex inseparable from sin anyway. They came intertwined.
For example, Mir, when a teenager, was living in Delhi with his stepmother’s brother. There he had a love affair with the niece of his host. When it was discovered, the step-uncle threw him out of the house. What they did to the girl is not known, though, apparently, it was nothing drastic. Now, it did not occur to anyone, or if it did, it was forgotten, that the haramsara (women’s quarters) of those days were heavily populated with near and far relatives and maid servants of various grades. Mir could not possibly have entered it without being spotted. The girl must herself have made her way into his room, in fact, taken the initiative, the first time, to do so. The French philosopher, Michel Henry, put it well: “To exclude from the universe the sensitive qualities is to exclude sensitivity itself and, with it, all that is subjective and, thus, the life itself.” The great Muslim philosopher
By Prof Sharif Al-mujahid | Published: November 9, 2010. The writer is a retired ambassador.

Related Articles

• You: Iqbal Day being observed today (nation.com.pk)
• Was German Philospher Goethe a Muslim? (musalmantimes.com)
• Nighingale of Sufism Sanam Marvi (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Sanam Marvi: Nighingale of Sufism (pakistanindependent.com)
• Debunking and Destroying Islamophobia (pakistanledger.com)
• Fear of an ‘Islamic Fatherland’ reflects Mein Kemph strategies (musalmantimes.com)

On January 25, 1948, Jinnah spoke to the Bar Association of Karachi, and said:

“Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws? Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago.”

“Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a codeforeveryMuslim, which regulates his life and conduct in even politics and economics and the like.”

We have already rebutted all your questions here:

http://pakhistorian.com/2009/08/26/clearing-the-cobwebs-of-history-jinnah-and-the-pakistan-movement/

Your version of history is not correct on the following counts.

1) Quaid e Azam did not crown himself Governor General (GG). He prevented a Mountbatten conspiracy to be GG of both dominions and then merge them at will.

2) Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not declared “the sole spokesman” by Ayesha Jalal to define Jinnah as the only flag- bearer for Pakistan. The “Sole Spokesman” was Jinnah’s struggle to be accepted as the Sole spokesman for all the Musalmans of South Asia. The Congress had claimed that it represented all of India–Jinnah contested that and said that only the Muslim League  represented the Muslims of South Asia.

3) Pakistan was called Melhula 5000 years ago and existed a a geographic entity when Bharat was jungle. If there was no “Pakistan” before 1947 there was no “India” either. French India was in Vietnam, Dutch “India” was in Indo-Nesia…and so on and so forth.

http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/the-geographic-two-nation-theory-pakistan-existed-5000-years-ago/

4) “India” has never been a unitary state, it was always made up of hundreds of states.

5) When the British came it was made of up 570 states, when they left it was made up of 570 states, plus two dominions, Pakistan and India (later renamed Bharat and India in the Bharati constitution)

6) If the word Pakistan is new, then the word India is also now. The word Britain, the word Egypt and the word USA are also new. If the word Chinese is new, then that does not detract from the fact that the Chinese Civilization is 5000 years old

7) If we call the area of Lower Sindh as Pakistan, there is nothing wrong with that–the rest of the country was not called “India” either.It was called Hindh and Sindh by Arab invaders.

8) Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not secular. He wanted an Islamic Republic.

http://rupeenews.com/2009/05/24/mohammad-ali-jinnah-was-not-secular/

To the question, “Will Pakistan be a secular or theocratic state?” he replied: “You are asking me a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means.” When the correspondent said it was a state in which only people of a particular religion, for example, Muslims, could be full citizens, Jinnah said: “I am afraid you have not studied Islam. We learned democracy 13 centuries ago.”

Whatever motives Jaswant Singh had for writing the book on Quad e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah are the subject of intense scrutiny and analysis.  The so called liberals in Pakistan have taken Singh’s monographs to again attack the basis of Pakistan and misrepresent the life and prestige of the father of the nation. It is not surprising that dawn.com has published a litany of article by Bharati authors on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. As if Pakistanis needed history lessons from the Hindu Mahasabah and discredited leaders of the Bharatay Janata Party and the RSS. The BJPhas repeatedly threatened Pakistan with total annihilation. Akhand Bharat remains its agenda. The RSS since its inception in the 1940s has been clamoring for “Shuddi” and “Sangtram” (conversion or expulsion) of Muslims from South Asia.

Many secularists take up  the flag of the RSS and write articles which selectively picks up Iqbal’s message, ignore his speech at Allahbad in 1930 and sidelines the a lifetime of his work which called for a Muslim state “khanjar hilal ka ho qaumi nishan hamara”. It is disgusting to see the likes of Mr. Najam Sethi, Dawn.com set forth a steady drumbeat of anti-Pakistan articles which gnaws at the sensitivities of the Pakistan nation. We discuss all misquotes of Iqbal here: http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/shair-e-mashriq-hakeem-e-ummat-sir-dr-alama-mohammed-iqbal-three-phases-of-a-visionary/

“…Personally I would go further than the demands embodied in it [resolution of All-Parties Muslim Conference at Delhi in 1928concerning Muslim India within India]. I would like to see thePunjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan*amalgamated* into a *single state*. Self-Government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, and the formation ofa consolidated North-West Indian *Muslim state* appears to me to bethe final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.The proposal was put forward before the Nehru Committee. They rejected it on the ground that, if, carried into effect, it wouldgive a very *unwieldy state*…Thus, possessing full opportunity ofdevelopment *within* the body-politic of India, the North-WestIndian Muslims will prove the best defenders of *India*…Nor shouldthe Hindus fear that the creation of *autonomous Muslim states*… I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state inthe best interests of India and Islam…For India it meanssecurity and peace resulting from an *internal balance* of power… Alama Iqbal 1930

Iqbal, speaking as the President of the All Indian Muslim League was saying “Islam is in jeopardy“, and we must save it by creating a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. Perhaps he was saying that Islam is in jeopardy in India, and we must provide it a nurturing ground, in certain parts of India, where it can grow and prosper, and influence. Iqbal went on to announce his thoughts at the Allahabad session and I quote Iqbal.

30th october; 1937, Iqbal clearly says that he wants a separate governments for the North-western states, which means he clearly wants separation

” India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages and professing different religions …. To base a constitution on the conception of a homogeneous India …. is to prepare for a civil war.

The formation of a consolidated North West Indian State appears to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India”.

In his letters to the Quaid-i Azam written in 1936 and in 1937 he referred to an independent Muslim State comprising North-Western and Eastern Muslim majority zones. Now it was not only the North-Western zones alluded to in the Allahabad Address.

There are some within Pakistan and without, who insist that Allama Iqbal never meant a sovereign Muslim country outside India. Rather he desired a Muslim State within the Indian Union. A State within a State. This is absolutely wrong. What he meant was understood very vividly by his Muslim compatriots as well as the non-Muslims. Why Nehru and others had then tried to show that the idea of Muslim nationalism had no basis at all. Nehru stated:

This idea of a Muslim nation is the figment of a few imaginations only, and, but for the publicity given to it by the Press few people would have heard of it. And even if many people believed in it, it would still vanish at the touch of reality.

Iqbal’s support for Jinnah.

Quote:”There is only one way out. Muslims should strengthen Jinnah’s hands. They should join the Muslim League. Indian question, as is now being solved, can be countered by our united front against both the Hindus and the English. Without it, our demands are not going to be accepted. People say our demands smack of communalism. This is sheer propaganda. These demands relate to the defense of our national existence…. The united front can be formed under the leadership of the Muslim League. And the Muslim League can succeed only on account of Jinnah. Now none but Jinnah is capable of leading the Muslims.”

Matlub ul-Hasan Sayyid stated that after the Lahore Resolution was passed on March 23, 1940, the Quaid-i Azam said to him:

Quote: “Iqbal is no more amongst us, but had he been alive he would have been happy to know that we did exactly what he wanted us to do.” M.A. Jinnah

Jaswant Singh was foreign minister in India’s last BJP government that held power for nearly five years until 2004, and was regarded as a stalwart of the party.

He has just published a laudatory biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnah that has created quite a sensation in India and beyond. Over the years, not only Hindu extremists but probably also a cross-section of Indian society have demonised Jinnah in the context of the partition in 1947.

Jinnah has been described as a communal-minded, fanatical and obstinate Muslim leader who had a personal agenda of his own in breaking up India. Moreover, Hindu fundamentalists have always considered the 1,000-year Muslim rule over India as a period of national humiliation. Many continue even now to view Muslims with suspicion.

The BJP is a fundamentalist party and the political face of the Sangh Parivar, a loose collection of parties and organisations in which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been a kind of spiritual leader. The Parivar has had a philosophy of glorifying Hinduism and denigrating Muslims.

It is against this background that Jaswant Singh’s book has come like a bombshell. He is full of praise for Jinnah and describes him as a fascinating but complex character of great integrity and honesty. Jaswant Singh argues that Jinnah was a secular-minded leader who did his best to promote Hindu-Muslim unity. Though never anti-Hindu, Jinnah sought to protect the rights of Indian Muslims within a united country.

The acolytes of Mr. Sethi’s wild assed assertions that “Pakistan” was a “bargaining tactic” is nonsensical garbage. The entire Muslim elite, students and the Muslims from all corners of South Asia voted for the Muslims League which had a platform for the creation of Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not secular

Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah said that:

” the differences in India, between the two major nations, the Hindus and the Muslims are a thousand times greater when compared with the continent of Europe.

India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of nationalities, the two nations being Hindus and Muslims whose culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, name and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, laws and jurisprudence, social and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, outlook on life and of life are fundamentally different nay in many respects antagonistic”.

Chaudry Rehmat Ali’s “Pakistan proposal asked for SEVERAL MUSLIM STATES  in the subcontinent.” The map was published by Rahmat Ali in 1934 and came to be widely circulated in his pamphlet called “Now or Never” among the Muslims of the Subcontinent.

In this document a map of India has also been published showing India split into different states, named as Pakistan, Guruistan, Usmanistan, Bangsamispan, Hindoostan comprising Rajistan, Kathiwar, Maharashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia. This pamphlet was reproduced in 1934  (Ref: The Great Divide by H. V. Hodson page 81). Karakal Pakistan’ existed as autonomous region of USSR.

The demand for Pakistan and the partition of India were basically bargaining tactics that Jinnah was willing to abandon, even as late as 1946 when he had persuaded the Muslim League to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan that conceded Muslim rights within a united India. It was Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress leader, who rejected the plan. In fact, Nehru had all along refused to accept the minimum demands of Muslims for the protection of their political, cultural and economic rights.

Expressing his  views on Hindu-Muslim  relations in the twentiethth century Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad  Ali  Jinnah  observed:

“The  Hindus  and Muslims belong to two  different  religious  philosophies,  social  customs  and literature. They neither intermarry,  nor interdine together, and indeed they  belong  to  two  different  civilizations   which   are  based  on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life  and of life are different.”

Mr. Amin cannot explain away the words of Mohmmad Ali Jinnah or negate the words spoken by Jinnah at the establishment of the State Bank of Pakistan. Neither can Jaswant Singh.

On January 25, 1948, Jinnah spoke to the Bar Association of Karachi, and said:

“Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws? Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago.”

“Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a codeforeveryMuslim, which regulates his life and conduct in even politics and economics and the like.”

Thus, Jaswant Singh argues, the onus for the division of India must be laid mainly on Nehru, though he also puts some blame on Sardar Patel and Mahatma Gandhi. Jaswant Singh is, therefore, critical of the persistent demonisation of Jinnah by many Indians, which he thinks is based on a lack of information and objective analysis.

Jaswant Singh’s book has been strongly denounced by the BJP and led to his immediate expulsion from the party. In effect, he has questioned the validity of the long-held beliefs of the party. If Jaswant Singh’s thesis is accepted, then it would seem that extremists in the Hindu community have been barking up the wrong tree. They also stand to lose at least some of the ammunition that has long fuelled their anti-Muslim feelings.

But the real question is: why has Jaswant Singhchosen to write this book? He says he was drawn to Jinnah’s fascinating personality and found, on research, that Jinnah had been largely misunderstood. This might well be the truth. But then, there are the political realities. Jaswant Singhmust have known that telling this kind of truth would be akin to stirring up a hornet’s nest and could cause him serious harm. Still, he thought it worthwhile to take the risk.

In writing this book, I suspect, he had two motives. Firstly, he wanted to discredit Jawaharlal Nehru whose personality cult remains strong in India and has all along benefited the Congress party, the main rival of the BJP. The love affair of the Indian people with Nehru as yet shows no sign of ending. He is seen not only as the hero of Indian independence but also as a leader who gave the country a solid start.

The Congress has all along cashed in on Nehru’s popularity. It has also kept the Nehru dynasty in power: his daughter Indira Gandhi, followed thereafter by Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and the-soon-to-come Rahul Gandhi. If Jaswant Singh’s book does damage Nehru’s political standing, that would be to the BJP’s advantage.

The second motive of Jaswant Singh in writing this book might have been to create an uproar and divisions inside Pakistan. Following his expulsion from the BJP, he did remonstrate, ‘I thought this book would set Pakistan on fire.’ Jaswant Singh evidently thought that his book would lead to a deep controversy in Pakistan about the rationale for the creation of Pakistan as also about the thinking of its founder, and that such a controversy might shake the very foundations of the country.

The fact of the matter is that many in Pakistan have lost track of the rationale for the creation of Pakistan. There has been a systematic distortion of facts and a rewriting of history with a view to impose religion in matters of the state. The historical record shows that ever since the Muslims started their political struggle in the latter half of the 19th century during the British colonial period, their demand was for the protection of their political, cultural, religious and economic rights in a united India.

The assertions that “no Muslim leader of note ever demanded the establishment of a Muslim state” is not only a distortion of facts, it is a blatant and unadulterated lie. Almost all Muslim leaders wanted self rule for the Muslims. The only difference between the religious and moderate parties was the mechanism. The Jamat e Islami and the Jamiat e Ulema Hind wanted to rule all of South Asia, while Quaid e Azam and the Muslim League wanted a separate state for the Muslims of South Asia. It is amazing that Mr. Amin could write this without being challenged by the “Quality Assurance” department of dawn.com. Oh yes! None exists at dawn.com. They only publish anti-Pakistan garbage. Why we created Pakistan? One Nation Theory vs Two Nation Theory:

The All India Muslim League session of 1936

1938 RESOLUTION ASKED FOR SEPARATION: Even earlier in 1938 Sir Abdullah Haroon moved a resolution for establishing independent Muslim states in the north-west and eastern zones. The word states continued to be used in subsequent sessions of the All India Muslim League till about 1943. Originally the two zones were meant to be autonomous and sovereign and it was only when the British and the Hindus insisted that Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned that Pakistan began to be talked about as one state.

THE PAKISTAN RESOLUTION OF 1940: The Lahore Resolution (later known as the Pakistan Resolution) The Lahore resolution moved by Fazlul Haq at the 27th Session of the All India Muslim League, at Lahore on March 23, 1940 stated:

“that geographically contagious units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial adjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are in a majority, as in the north-west and eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”

By the year 1941 He was indeed a firm believer in Pakistan and the Two Nation Theory

” Cant you see that a Muslim, when he was converted more than a thousand years ago, bulk of them, then according to your hindureligion and philosophy, he becomes an outcast and he becomes aMalecha (an untouchable) and the Hindus ceased to have anythingto do with him socially , religiously , culturaly or in any otherway? He, therefore belongs to a different order not merely religiousbut social and he has lived in that distinctly separate and antagonostic social order, religiously, socially and culturally…can you posiballycompare this with that nonsensical talk thatmere change of faith is no ground for a demand for Pakistan? Cantyou see the fundamantle difference ? “ 2 march 1941. Pres. address toPunjab Muslim Students Fed.

Mr. Amin’s assertion fly in the face of facts.

However, it is notable that no Muslim leader of note, since the days of Sir Syed, ever demanded either the division of India or the establishment of a Muslim state based on the rule of Sharia. Some people think that in the Allahabad address of 1930, Allama Iqbal had demanded the creation of a Muslim state in the northwest, but Iqbal himself had clarified that ‘Pakistan is not my scheme. The one that I suggested in my address is the creation of a Muslim province i.e. a province having an overwhelming population of Muslims in the northwest of India. This new province will be, according to my scheme, a part of the proposed Indian federation.’

The question arises as to why then was the demand for the division of India made by the Muslims in 1940? This happened because all of their efforts for reaching a national consensus failed due to the persistent refusal of the Congress to accept the minimum Muslim demands, notably one-third representation in the central legislature and in jobs.

The final blow was the shocking treatment of Muslims under Congress rule (1937-39). That forced Muslims to demand, in the Lahore Resolution of March 1940, the breakup of India and creation of independent Muslim states in the northwest and eastern zones of India where Muslims were in numerical majority. The truth is that the division of India (and creation of Pakistan) was not the first preference of the Indian Muslims. It was rather the last preferred option.

It is also notable that the Lahore Resolution made no mention of the proposed Muslim states being based on the rule of the Sharia. Jinnah was undoubtedly a secular leader.

Jaswant Singh is right to bring out some of these facts in his book. However, his motives are questionable since he seems to think that an internal debate in Pakistani society on the rationale behind the creation of the country and the secular ideas of Jinnah would set Pakistan on fire and presumably destabilise it.  Jaswant Singh’s bombshell By Shahid M. Amin Wednesday, 26 Aug, 2009 | 10:08 AM PST |

India had 400 million people. The Muslims were a minority, and because of colonialism had lost the political power in the Subcontinent. The British had taken actions to snatch the control from the Muslims at all echelons of power. The Muslims were demoralized, penury-stricken and were unable to compete with the the more affluent and more educated Hindus. Separate electorates allowed them to elect their own representatives, but the fear of “majoratarianism” scared the minority. Indian “democracy” still does not have any safeguards to prevent “majoratarianism” from dictating to the minority. Requests for one third seats in parliament were not acceptable to the Indian National Congress, and though on many occasions agreements were reached, pressures within the Congress did not allow the agreements to materialize.

The Cabinet Mission Plan was the closest the INC came to an agreement with the Muslim League. It was under these circumstances that they marched for freedom. The following narrative helps us remember the historical chronology and the ideological battles that were waged then and are being waged now over the internet.

The supporters of  the TNT won the elections and won the arguments, and the believers of the ONT lost the elections. The INC and the Jamat e Islami were rejected by the Muslims. The TNT became fact and the ONT remains a fascination by many. These pages will distinguish the origins of the ONT and the TNT.

Listen to Mr Jinnah before the formation of Pakistan, raising the spectre of Hindu majoritaranism: “We Muslims have got everything – brains, intelligence, capacity and courage- virtues that nations must possess. But two things are lacking, and I want you to concentrate your attention on these. One thing is that foreign domination from without and Hindu domination here, particularly on our economic life that has caused a certain degeneration of these virtues in us.”

Or listen to him after a meeting with Egyptian and Palestinian Arab leaders in 1946: “I told them of the danger that a Hindu empire would represent for the Middle-East … If a Hindu empire is achieved, it will mean the end of Islam in India, and even in other Muslim countries.”

At the same time, it is true that Mr Jinnah felt short changed by the Congress. On 26 July 1946, Jinnah and his working committee spoke about Muslim India having “exhausted, without success, all efforts to find a peaceful solution of the Indian problem by compromise and constitutional means; and whereas the Congress is bent upon setting up Caste-Hindu Raj in India with the connivance of the British…” (BBC. Why the Hindu right wing loves Mr Jinnah. Soutik Biswas | 08:35 UK time, Tuesday, 18 August 2009)

In February that year, in an address to Americans: “I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principles of Islam.”

Pressed for an answer about the structure of government at a press conference in Delhi on July 14, 1947, he said the matter was for the Constituent Assembly to decide. Asked: “What is your personal opinion?” He said: “No responsible man expresses his personal opinion in anticipation of a supreme body like the Constituent Assembly, the function of which is to frame the constitution.”

To the question, “Will Pakistan be a secular or theocratic state?” he replied: “You are asking me a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means.” When the correspondent said it was a state in which only people of a particular religion, for example, Muslims, could be full citizens, Jinnah said: “I am afraid you have not studied Islam. We learned democracy 13 centuries ago.”

Why would a secularist be this ambiguous? Not becauseJinnahwas a hypocrite, but because he understood his constituency. Jinnah would not have been surprised by the creeping Islamisation that came with Zia’s amendments.

23rd May, 1936Dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which I received a moment ago. I am glad to see that your work is progressing. I do hope that the Punjab parties-specially the Ahrar and the Ittihad Millat-will eventually, after some bickering, join you. A very enthusiastic and active member of the Ittihad told me so a few days ago. About M. Zafar Ali Khan the Ittihad people do not themselves feel sure. However there is plenty of time yet, and we shall soon see how the electorate generally feels about the Ittihad sending their men to the Assembly.

Hoping you are well and looking forward to meeting you.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Lahore

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9th June, 1936

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

I am sending you my draft. Also a cutting from the Eastern Times of yesterday. This is a letter from an Intelligent Pleader of Guradspur.

I hope the statement issued by the Board will fully argue the whole scheme and will meet all the objection is so far advanced against it. It must frankly state as present position of the Indian Muliins as regards both the Government and the Hindus. It must warn the Muslims of India that unless the present scheme is adopted the Muslims will lose all that they have gained during the last 15 years and will seriously harm, and in fact, shatter their own solidarity with their own hands.

Yours etc.,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

p.s. Will feel much obliged if you send the statement to me before it is sent to the press.

Another point which should be brought out in the statement is as follows:

1. Indirect election to the Central Assembly has made it absolutely essential that Muslim representatives returned to the Provincial Assemblies should be bound by an All-India Muslim policy and programme so that they should return to the Central Assembly only those Muslims who would be pledged to support the specific Muslim questions connected with the Central subjects and arising out of their position as the Second great nation of India. Those who are now for Provincial policies and programme were themselves instrumental in getting in direct elections for the Central Assembly introduced into the constitution obviously because this suited a foreign Government. Now when the community wants to make the best use of this misfortune (i.e indirect elections) by proposing an all-India scheme of elections (e.g. League scheme) to be adhered to by the Provincial candidates the same men, again, at the instance of a foreign Government have come out to defeat the community in their effort to retain its solidarity as a nation.

2. Question of Wakf Law arising out of Shahidganj, culture, language, mosque and personal law.

Private and Confidential,

Lahore

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25th June 1936

My dear Mr. Jinnah

Sir Sikandar Hayat left Lahore a day or two ago. I think he will meet you at Bombay and have a talk with you about certain matters of importance. Daultana saw me yesterday evening. He tells me that the Muslim members of the Unionist Party are prepared to make the following declaration

“That in all matters specific to the Muslim community as an all-India minority they will be bound by the decision of the League and will never make any pact with any nom-Muslims group in the Provincial Assembly.”

“Provided the League (Provincial) makes the following declaration:

That those returned to the Provincial Assembly on the League ticket will co-operate with that party or group which has the largest number of Muslims’.”

Please let me know at your earliest convenience what you think of this proposal. Also let me know the result of your talk with Sir Sikandar Hayat. If you succeed in convincing him he may come to our side.

Hoping you are well,

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Mayo Road, Lahore

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23rd August, 1936

M dear Mr. Jinnah,

I hope my letter reached you all right. There is some talk of an understanding between the Punjab Parliamentary Bard and the Unionist Party. I should like you to let me know what you think of such a compromise and to suggest conditions for the same. I read in the papers that you have brought about a compromise between the Bengal Proja Party and the Parliamentary Board. I should like to know the terms and the conditions. Since the Proja Party is non-communal like the Unionist, your compromise in Bengal may be helpful to you.

Hoping you are well,

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Strictly Confidential.

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20th March 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah

I suppose you have read Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s address to the All-India National Convention and that you fully realise the policy under-lying it in so far as Indian Muslims are concerned. I believe you are also aware that the new constitution has at least bought a unique opportunity Indian Muslims for self-organisation in view of the future political developments both in India and Muslim Asia. While we re ready to co-operate with other Progressive Parties in the country, we must not ignore the fact that the whole future of Islam as a moral and political force in Asia rests very largely on a complete organisation of Indian Muslims. I therefore suggest that an effective reply should be given to the All-India National Convention. You should immediately hold an All-India Muslim Convention in Delhi to which you should invite members of the new Provincial Assemblies as well as other prominent Muslim leaders. To this convention you must restate as clearly and as strongly as possible the political objective of the Indian Muslims as a distinct political unit in the country. It is absolutely necessary to tell the world both inside and outside India that the economic problem is not the only problem in the country. From the Muslim point of view the cultural problem is of much greater consequence to most Indian Muslims. At any rate it is not less important than the economic problem. If you could hold this Convention, it would test the credentials of those Muslim Legislators who have formed parties contrary to the aims and aspirations of Indian Muslims. It would farther make it clear to the Hindus that no political device, however subtle can make the Indian Muslim lose sight of his cultural enilty. I am coming to Delhi in a few days time and hope to have a talk with you on this important matter. I shall be staying in the Afghan Consulate. If you could spare a few moments we should meet there. Please drop a line in reply to this letter a early as possible.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

p. s. Please excuse me. I have got this letter written by a friend as my eyesight is getting bad.

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22nd April 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah

I do not know whether my letter which I posted to you about two weeks ago ever reached you. I posted it to your address at New Delhi and when I went to Delhi later I discovered that you had already left Delhi. In that letter I proposed that we should hold immediately an All-India Muslim Convention, say at Delhi, and once more to restate the policy of Indian Muslims both to the Government and to the Hindus.

As the situation is becoming grave and the Muslim feeling in the Punjab is rapidly becoming pro-Congress for reasons which it is unnecessary to detail I would request you to consider and decide the matter as early as possible. The session of the All India Muslim League is postponed till August, and the situation demands an early restatement of the Musllm policy. If the Convention is preceded by a tour of prominent Muslim leaders, the meeting of the Convention is sure to be a great success. Please drop a line in reply to this letter as early as possible.

Yours sincerely

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Confidential,

28th May, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which reached me in due course. I am glad to hear that you will bear in mind what I wrote to you about the changes in the constitution and programme of the League. I have no doubt that you fully realise the gravity of the situation as far as Muslim India is concerned. The League will have to finally decide whether it will remain a body representing the upper classes of Indian Muslims or Muslim masses who have so far with good reason, taken no interest in it. Personally I believe that a political organisation which gives no promise of improving the lot of the average Muslim can not attract our masses.

Under the new constitution the higher posts go to the sons of upper classes; the smaller ones go to the friends or relatives of the ministers. In other matters too our political institution have never thought of improving the lot of Muslims generally. The problem of bread is becoming more and more acute. The Muslim has begun to feel that he has been going down and down during the last 200 years. Ordinarily he believes that his poverty is due to Hindu money-lending or capitalism. The perception that it is equally due to foreign rule has not yet fully come to him. But it is bound to come. The atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal is not likely to receive much response from the Muslims. The question therefore is: how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question. If the League can give no such promises I am sure that Muslim masses will remain indifferent to it as before. Happily there is a solution in the enforcement of the Law of Islam and its further development in the light of modern ideas. After a long and careful study of Islamic Law I have come to the conclusion that if this system of Law is properly understood and applied, at last the right to subsistence is secured to everybody. But the enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam is impossible in this country without a free Muslim state or states. This has been my honest conviction for many years and I still believe this to be the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India. If such a thing is impossible in India the only other alternative is a civil war which as a matter of fact has been going on for some time in the shape of Hindu-Muslim riots. I fear that in certain parts of the country, e.g. N.-W. India, Palestine may be repeated. Also the insertion of Jawaharlal’s socialism into the body politic of Hinduism is likely to cause much bloodshed among the Hindus themselves. The issue between social democracy and Brahmanism is not dissimilar to the one between Brahmanism and Buddhism. Whether the fate of socialism will be the same as the fate of Buddhism in India I can not say. But it is clear to my mind that if Hinduism accepts social demopracy it must necessarily cease to be Hindaism. For Islam the acpeptance of social democracy in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam. The modern problems therefore are more easy to solve for the Muslims than for the Hindus. But as I have said above in order to make it possible for Muslim India to solve the problems it is necessary to redistribute the country and to provide one or more Muslim states with absolute majorities. Don’t you think that the Lime for such a demand has already arrived? Perhaps this is the best reply you can give to the atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal Nehru. Anyhow I have given you my own thoughts in the hope that you will give them serious consideration either in your address or in the discussions of the coming session of the League. Muslim India hopes that at this serious juncture your genius will discover some way out of our present difficulties.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Muhammad Iqbal

P.S. On the subject-matter of the letter I intended to Write to you a long and open letter in the press. But on further consideration I felt that the present moment was not suitable for such step.

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Private and Confidential,

June 21st, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which I received yesterday. I know yan are a busy man; but I do hope you won’t mind my writing to you so often, as you are the only Muslim in India today to Whom the community has a right to look up for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North-West India, and perhaps to the Whole of India. I tell you that we are actually living in a state of civil war which, but for the police and military, would, become universal in no time. During the last few months there has been a series of Hindu-Muslim riots In India. In North-West India alone there have been at least three riots during the last three months and at least four cases of vilification of the Prophet by Hindus and Sikhs. In each of the four cases the vilifier has been murdered. There have also been cases of burning of the Quran in Sind. I have carefully studied the whole situation and believe that the real cause of these event is neither religious nor economic. It is purely political, i.e., the desire of the Sikhs and Hindus to intermediate Muslims even in the Muslim majority provinces. And the new constitution is such that even in the Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on non-Muslims. The result is that the Muslim Ministry can take no proper action and are even driven to do injustice to Muslims partly to please those on whom they depend and partly to show that they are absolutely impartial. Thus it is clear that we have our specific reasons to reject this constitution. It seems to me that the new constitution is devised only to placate the Hindus. In the Hindu majority provinces, the Hindus have of course absolute majorities, and can ignore Muslims, altogether. In Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on Hindus. I have no doubt in my mind that this constitution is calculated to do infinite harm to the Indian Muslims. Apart from this it is no solution of the economic problem which is so acute among Muslims. The only thing that the communal award grants to Muslims is the recognition of their political existence in India. But such a recognition granted to a people whom this constitution does not and cannot help in solving their problem of poverty can be of no value to them. The Congress President has denied the political existence of Muslims in no unmistakable terms. The other Hindu political body, i.e., the Mahasabha, whom I regard as the real representative of the masses of the Hindus, has declared more than once that a united Hindu-Muslim nation is impossible in India. In these circumstances it is obvious that the only way to a peaceful India is redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, religious and linguistic affinities. Many British statesmen also realise this, and the Hindu-Muslim riots which are rapidly coming in the wake of this constitution are sure further to open their eyes to the real situation in the country. I remember Lord Lothain told me before I left England that my scheme as the only possible solution of the troubles of India, but that it would take 25 years to come. Some Muslims in the Punjab are already suggesting the holding of a North-West Indian Muslim Conference, and the idea is rapidly spreading. I agree with you, however, that our community is not yet sufficiently organised and disciplined and perhaps the time for holding such a conference is not yet ripe. But I feel that it would be highly advisable for you to indicate in your address at least the line of action that the Muslims of North-West India would be finally driven to take.

To my mind the new constitution with its ides o a single Indian federation is completely hopeless. A separate federation of Muslim provinces reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nation entitled to Self-determination just as other nation as in India and outside India are?

Personally I think that the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal ought are present to ignore Muslim minority provinces. This is th best course to adopt in the interest of both Muslim majority and minority provinces It will therefore be better to hold the coming session of the League in the Punjab, and not in a Muslim minority province. The monhth of August is bad in, Lahore. I think you should seriously consider the advisability of holding the coming session at Lahore in the middle of October when the weather is quite good in Lahore. The interest in the All-India Muslim League is rapidly growing in the Punjab, and the holding of the coming session in Lahore is likely to give a fresh political awakening to the Punjab Muslims.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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11th August, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Events have made it abundantly clear that the League ought to concentrate all its activities on the North-West Indian Musalmans. The League office bf Delhi informed Mr. Ghulam Rasool that the dates of the sessions of the Muslim League have not been fixed as yet.

This being so I fear it will not be possible to hold the sessions in August and September. I, therefore, repeat my request that the League sessions may be held in Lahore in the middle or end of October. The enthusiasm for the League is rapidly increasing in the Punjab, and I have no doubt that the holding of the session in Lahore will be a turning point in the history of the League and an important step towards mass contact. Please drop a line in reply.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Private and Confidential

7th October, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

A strong contingent from the Punjab is expected to attend The Lucknow Session of the League. The Unionist Muslims are also making preparations to attend under the leadership of Sir Sikandar Hayat. We are living in difficult times and the Indian Muslims expect that your address will give the clearest possible lead in all matters relating to the future of the community. I suggest that the League may state or restate its policy relating to the communal award in the shape of a suitable resolution. In the Punjab and I hear also in Sind attempts are being made by misguided Muslims themselves to alter it in the interests of the Hindus. Such men fondly believe that by pleasing the Hindus they will be able to retain their power. I personally believe that since the British Government wants to honour the Hindus who would welcome the upsetter of the communal award they (the British Government) are trying to get it upset through their Muslim agents.

I shall prepare a list of 28 persons for the vacancies in the League Council. Mr. Ghulain Rasool will show you this list. I do hope that this choice will be carefully made. Our men will leave Lahore on the 13th.

The Palestine question is very much agitating the minds of the Muslims. We have a very fine opportunity for mass contact for the purposes of the League. I have no doubt that the League will pass a strong resolution on this question and also by holding a private conference of the leaders decide on some sort of a positive action in which masses may share in large numbers. This will at once popularise the League and may help the Palestine Arabs. Personally I would not mind going to jail on an issue which affects both Islam and India. The formation bf a Western base on the very gates of the East is a menace to both.

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

P.S. The League should resolve that no province should come to any understanding with other communities regarding the communal award. This is an All-India question and must be settled by the League alohe. Perhaps you may go further and say that the present atmosphere is not at all suitable for any communal understanding.

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Private and Confidential,

30th october; 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

I suppose you have already read the resolution passed by the A.-I.C C. Your move in time has saved the situation, and we are all waiting for your observations on the Congress, resolution. The Tribune of Lahore has already criticised it and I believe Hindu opinion will generally be opposed to it. However it should not act as an opiate as far as Muslims are concerned. We must carry the work of organisation more vigorously than ever and should not rest till Muslim Governments are established in the five provinces and reforms are granted to Baluchistan.

The rumour is that part of the Unionist Party does not mean to sign the League creed. So far Sir Sikandar and his party have not signed it and I heard this morning that they would wait till the next sessions of the League. The idea as one of themselves told me, is to slacken the activities of the Provincial League. However I shall place you in possession of all the facts in a few days’ time and then ask your opinion as to how we should proceed. I do hope that before the Lahore Session you would be able to tour in the Punjab for at least two weeks.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

———————————————————-

Urgent

1st November 1937

My dear Mr Jinnah,

Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan with some of the members of his party saw me yesterday and we had a long talk about the differences between the League and the Unionist Party. Statements have been issued to the press by both sides. Each side putting its own interpretation on the terms of Jinnah-Sikandar agreement. This has caused much misunderstanding. As I wrote to you before, I will put you in possession of all those statements in a few days’ time. For the present I request you to kindly send me as early as possible a copy of the agreement which was signed by Sir Sikandar and which I am told is in your possession. I further want to ask you whether you agreed to the Provincial Parliamentary Board being controlled by the Unionist Party. Sir Sikandar tells me that you agreed to this and therefore he claims that the Unionist Party must have their majority in the Board. This as far as I know does not appear in the Jinnah-Sikandar agreement.

Please reply to this letter as early as possible. Our men are touring in the country and forming Leagues in various places. Last night we had a very successful meeting in Lahore. Others will follow.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

———————————————————-

Strictly Private & Confidential

10th Nov., 1937

My Dear Mr. Jinnah,

After having several talks with Sir Sikandar and his friends I am now definitely of the opinion that Sir Sikandar wants nothing less than the complete control of the League and the Provincial Parliamentary Board. In your pact with him it is mentioned that the Parliamentary Board will be reconstituted and that the Unionists will have majority in the Board. Sir Sikandar tells me that you agreed to their majority in the Board. I wrote to you some time ago to enquire whether you did agree to the unionist Majority in the Board. So far I have not heard from you. I personally see no harm in giving him the majority that he wants but he goes beyond the pact when he wants a complete change in the office holders of the League, especially the Secretary who has done so much for the League. He also wishes that the finances of the League should be controlled by his men. All this to my mind amounts to capturing of the League and then killing it. Knowing the opinion of the province as I do I cannot take the responsibility of handing over the League to Sir Sikandar and his friends. The pact has already damaged the prestige of the League in this province; and the tactics of the Unionists may damage it still further. They have not so far signed the creed of the League and I understand do not mean to. The session of the League in Lahore they want in April instead of February. My impression is, that they want to gain time for their own Zamindara League to function in the province. Perhaps you know that on his return from Lucknow Sir Sikandar constituted a Zamindara League whose branches are now being made in the province. In these circumstances please let me know what we should do. Kindly wire your view if possible. If this is not possible write a detailed letter as early as possible.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad, Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Mr. Sethi, Mr. Paracha and Mr. Amin: AA

We have spent a lifetime refuting your Satanic ideology. You are entitled to your opinions–Pakistani patriots will continue to repudiate your blasphemy.

On January 25, 1948, Jinnah spoke to the Bar Association of Karachi, and said:

“Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws? Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago.”

“Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a codeforeveryMuslim, which regulates his life and conduct in even politics and economics and the like.”

We have already rebutted all your questions here:

http://pakhistorian.com/2009/08/26/clearing-the-cobwebs-of-history-jinnah-and-the-pakistan-movement/

Your version of history is not correct on the following counts.

1) Quaid e Azam did not crown himself Governor General (GG). He prevented a Mountbatten conspiracy to be GG of both dominions and then merge them at will.

2) Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not declared “the sole spokesman” by Ayesha Jalal to define Jinnah as the only flag- bearer for Pakistan. The “Sole Spokesman” was Jinnah’s struggle to be accepted as the Sole spokesman for all the Musalmans of South Asia. The Congress had claimed that it represented all of India–Jinnah contested that and said that only the Muslim League  represented the Muslims of South Asia.

3) Pakistan was called Melhula 5000 years ago and existed a a geographic entity when Bharat was jungle. If there was no “Pakistan” before 1947 there was no “India” either. French India was in Vietnam, Dutch “India” was in Indo-Nesia…and so on and so forth.

http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/the-geographic-two-nation-theory-pakistan-existed-5000-years-ago/

4) “India” has never been a unitary state, it was always made up of hundreds of states.

5) When the British came it was made of up 570 states, when they left it was made up of 570 states, plus two dominions, Pakistan and India (later renamed Bharat and India in the Bharati constitution)

6) If the word Pakistan is new, then the word India is also now. The word Britain, the word Egypt and the word USA are also new. If the word Chinese is new, then that does not detract from the fact that the Chinese Civilization is 5000 years old

7) If we call the area of Lower Sindh as Pakistan, there is nothing wrong with that–the rest of the country was not called “India” either.It was called Hindh and Sindh by Arab invaders.

8) Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not secular. He wanted an Islamic Republic.

http://rupeenews.com/2009/05/24/mohammad-ali-jinnah-was-not-secular/

To the question, “Will Pakistan be a secular or theocratic state?” he replied: “You are asking me a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means.” When the correspondent said it was a state in which only people of a particular religion, for example, Muslims, could be full citizens, Jinnah said: “I am afraid you have not studied Islam. We learned democracy 13 centuries ago.”

Whatever motives Jaswant Singh had for writing the book on Quad e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah are the subject of intense scrutiny and analysis.  The so called liberals in Pakistan have taken Singh’s monographs to again attack the basis of Pakistan and misrepresent the life and prestige of the father of the nation. It is not surprising that dawn.com has published a litany of article by Bharati authors on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. As if Pakistanis needed history lessons from the Hindu Mahasabah and discredited leaders of the Bharatay Janata Party and the RSS. The BJPhas repeatedly threatened Pakistan with total annihilation. Akhand Bharat remains its agenda. The RSS since its inception in the 1940s has been clamoring for “Shuddi” and “Sangtram” (conversion or expulsion) of Muslims from South Asia.

Many secularists take up  the flag of the RSS and write articles which selectively picks up Iqbal’s message, ignore his speech at Allahbad in 1930 and sidelines the a lifetime of his work which called for a Muslim state “khanjar hilal ka ho qaumi nishan hamara”. It is disgusting to see the likes of Mr. Najam Sethi, Dawn.com set forth a steady drumbeat of anti-Pakistan articles which gnaws at the sensitivities of the Pakistan nation. We discuss all misquotes of Iqbal here: http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/shair-e-mashriq-hakeem-e-ummat-sir-dr-alama-mohammed-iqbal-three-phases-of-a-visionary/

“…Personally I would go further than the demands embodied in it [resolution of All-Parties Muslim Conference at Delhi in 1928concerning Muslim India within India]. I would like to see thePunjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan*amalgamated* into a *single state*. Self-Government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, and the formation ofa consolidated North-West Indian *Muslim state* appears to me to bethe final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.The proposal was put forward before the Nehru Committee. They rejected it on the ground that, if, carried into effect, it wouldgive a very *unwieldy state*…Thus, possessing full opportunity ofdevelopment *within* the body-politic of India, the North-WestIndian Muslims will prove the best defenders of *India*…Nor shouldthe Hindus fear that the creation of *autonomous Muslim states*… I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state inthe best interests of India and Islam…For India it meanssecurity and peace resulting from an *internal balance* of power… Alama Iqbal 1930

Iqbal, speaking as the President of the All Indian Muslim League was saying “Islam is in jeopardy“, and we must save it by creating a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. Perhaps he was saying that Islam is in jeopardy in India, and we must provide it a nurturing ground, in certain parts of India, where it can grow and prosper, and influence. Iqbal went on to announce his thoughts at the Allahabad session and I quote Iqbal.

30th october; 1937, Iqbal clearly says that he wants a separate governments for the North-western states, which means he clearly wants separation

” India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages and professing different religions …. To base a constitution on the conception of a homogeneous India …. is to prepare for a civil war.

The formation of a consolidated North West Indian State appears to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India”.

In his letters to the Quaid-i Azam written in 1936 and in 1937 he referred to an independent Muslim State comprising North-Western and Eastern Muslim majority zones. Now it was not only the North-Western zones alluded to in the Allahabad Address.

There are some within Pakistan and without, who insist that Allama Iqbal never meant a sovereign Muslim country outside India. Rather he desired a Muslim State within the Indian Union. A State within a State. This is absolutely wrong. What he meant was understood very vividly by his Muslim compatriots as well as the non-Muslims. Why Nehru and others had then tried to show that the idea of Muslim nationalism had no basis at all. Nehru stated:

This idea of a Muslim nation is the figment of a few imaginations only, and, but for the publicity given to it by the Press few people would have heard of it. And even if many people believed in it, it would still vanish at the touch of reality.

Iqbal’s support for Jinnah.

Quote:”There is only one way out. Muslims should strengthen Jinnah’s hands. They should join the Muslim League. Indian question, as is now being solved, can be countered by our united front against both the Hindus and the English. Without it, our demands are not going to be accepted. People say our demands smack of communalism. This is sheer propaganda. These demands relate to the defense of our national existence…. The united front can be formed under the leadership of the Muslim League. And the Muslim League can succeed only on account of Jinnah. Now none but Jinnah is capable of leading the Muslims.”

Matlub ul-Hasan Sayyid stated that after the Lahore Resolution was passed on March 23, 1940, the Quaid-i Azam said to him:

Quote: “Iqbal is no more amongst us, but had he been alive he would have been happy to know that we did exactly what he wanted us to do.” M.A. Jinnah

Jaswant Singh was foreign minister in India’s last BJP government that held power for nearly five years until 2004, and was regarded as a stalwart of the party.

He has just published a laudatory biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnah that has created quite a sensation in India and beyond. Over the years, not only Hindu extremists but probably also a cross-section of Indian society have demonised Jinnah in the context of the partition in 1947.

Jinnah has been described as a communal-minded, fanatical and obstinate Muslim leader who had a personal agenda of his own in breaking up India. Moreover, Hindu fundamentalists have always considered the 1,000-year Muslim rule over India as a period of national humiliation. Many continue even now to view Muslims with suspicion.

The BJP is a fundamentalist party and the political face of the Sangh Parivar, a loose collection of parties and organisations in which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been a kind of spiritual leader. The Parivar has had a philosophy of glorifying Hinduism and denigrating Muslims.

It is against this background that Jaswant Singh’s book has come like a bombshell. He is full of praise for Jinnah and describes him as a fascinating but complex character of great integrity and honesty. Jaswant Singh argues that Jinnah was a secular-minded leader who did his best to promote Hindu-Muslim unity. Though never anti-Hindu, Jinnah sought to protect the rights of Indian Muslims within a united country.

The acolytes of Mr. Sethi’s wild assed assertions that “Pakistan” was a “bargaining tactic” is nonsensical garbage. The entire Muslim elite, students and the Muslims from all corners of South Asia voted for the Muslims League which had a platform for the creation of Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not secular

Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah said that:

” the differences in India, between the two major nations, the Hindus and the Muslims are a thousand times greater when compared with the continent of Europe.

India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a sub-continent composed of nationalities, the two nations being Hindus and Muslims whose culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, name and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, laws and jurisprudence, social and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, outlook on life and of life are fundamentally different nay in many respects antagonistic”.

Chaudry Rehmat Ali’s “Pakistan proposal asked for SEVERAL MUSLIM STATES  in the subcontinent.” The map was published by Rahmat Ali in 1934 and came to be widely circulated in his pamphlet called “Now or Never” among the Muslims of the Subcontinent.

In this document a map of India has also been published showing India split into different states, named as Pakistan, Guruistan, Usmanistan, Bangsamispan, Hindoostan comprising Rajistan, Kathiwar, Maharashtra, Rajistan and Dravidia. This pamphlet was reproduced in 1934  (Ref: The Great Divide by H. V. Hodson page 81). Karakal Pakistan’ existed as autonomous region of USSR.

The demand for Pakistan and the partition of India were basically bargaining tactics that Jinnah was willing to abandon, even as late as 1946 when he had persuaded the Muslim League to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan that conceded Muslim rights within a united India. It was Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress leader, who rejected the plan. In fact, Nehru had all along refused to accept the minimum demands of Muslims for the protection of their political, cultural and economic rights.

Expressing his  views on Hindu-Muslim  relations in the twentiethth century Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad  Ali  Jinnah  observed:

“The  Hindus  and Muslims belong to two  different  religious  philosophies,  social  customs  and literature. They neither intermarry,  nor interdine together, and indeed they  belong  to  two  different  civilizations   which   are  based  on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life  and of life are different.”

Mr. Amin cannot explain away the words of Mohmmad Ali Jinnah or negate the words spoken by Jinnah at the establishment of the State Bank of Pakistan. Neither can Jaswant Singh.

On January 25, 1948, Jinnah spoke to the Bar Association of Karachi, and said:

“Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws? Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago.”

“Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a codeforeveryMuslim, which regulates his life and conduct in even politics and economics and the like.”

Thus, Jaswant Singh argues, the onus for the division of India must be laid mainly on Nehru, though he also puts some blame on Sardar Patel and Mahatma Gandhi. Jaswant Singh is, therefore, critical of the persistent demonisation of Jinnah by many Indians, which he thinks is based on a lack of information and objective analysis.

Jaswant Singh’s book has been strongly denounced by the BJP and led to his immediate expulsion from the party. In effect, he has questioned the validity of the long-held beliefs of the party. If Jaswant Singh’s thesis is accepted, then it would seem that extremists in the Hindu community have been barking up the wrong tree. They also stand to lose at least some of the ammunition that has long fuelled their anti-Muslim feelings.

But the real question is: why has Jaswant Singhchosen to write this book? He says he was drawn to Jinnah’s fascinating personality and found, on research, that Jinnah had been largely misunderstood. This might well be the truth. But then, there are the political realities. Jaswant Singhmust have known that telling this kind of truth would be akin to stirring up a hornet’s nest and could cause him serious harm. Still, he thought it worthwhile to take the risk.

In writing this book, I suspect, he had two motives. Firstly, he wanted to discredit Jawaharlal Nehru whose personality cult remains strong in India and has all along benefited the Congress party, the main rival of the BJP. The love affair of the Indian people with Nehru as yet shows no sign of ending. He is seen not only as the hero of Indian independence but also as a leader who gave the country a solid start.

The Congress has all along cashed in on Nehru’s popularity. It has also kept the Nehru dynasty in power: his daughter Indira Gandhi, followed thereafter by Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and the-soon-to-come Rahul Gandhi. If Jaswant Singh’s book does damage Nehru’s political standing, that would be to the BJP’s advantage.

The second motive of Jaswant Singh in writing this book might have been to create an uproar and divisions inside Pakistan. Following his expulsion from the BJP, he did remonstrate, ‘I thought this book would set Pakistan on fire.’ Jaswant Singh evidently thought that his book would lead to a deep controversy in Pakistan about the rationale for the creation of Pakistan as also about the thinking of its founder, and that such a controversy might shake the very foundations of the country.

The fact of the matter is that many in Pakistan have lost track of the rationale for the creation of Pakistan. There has been a systematic distortion of facts and a rewriting of history with a view to impose religion in matters of the state. The historical record shows that ever since the Muslims started their political struggle in the latter half of the 19th century during the British colonial period, their demand was for the protection of their political, cultural, religious and economic rights in a united India.

The assertions that “no Muslim leader of note ever demanded the establishment of a Muslim state” is not only a distortion of facts, it is a blatant and unadulterated lie. Almost all Muslim leaders wanted self rule for the Muslims. The only difference between the religious and moderate parties was the mechanism. The Jamat e Islami and the Jamiat e Ulema Hind wanted to rule all of South Asia, while Quaid e Azam and the Muslim League wanted a separate state for the Muslims of South Asia. It is amazing that Mr. Amin could write this without being challenged by the “Quality Assurance” department of dawn.com. Oh yes! None exists at dawn.com. They only publish anti-Pakistan garbage. Why we created Pakistan? One Nation Theory vs Two Nation Theory:

The All India Muslim League session of 1936

1938 RESOLUTION ASKED FOR SEPARATION: Even earlier in 1938 Sir Abdullah Haroon moved a resolution for establishing independent Muslim states in the north-west and eastern zones. The word states continued to be used in subsequent sessions of the All India Muslim League till about 1943. Originally the two zones were meant to be autonomous and sovereign and it was only when the British and the Hindus insisted that Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned that Pakistan began to be talked about as one state.

THE PAKISTAN RESOLUTION OF 1940: The Lahore Resolution (later known as the Pakistan Resolution) The Lahore resolution moved by Fazlul Haq at the 27th Session of the All India Muslim League, at Lahore on March 23, 1940 stated:

“that geographically contagious units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial adjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are in a majority, as in the north-west and eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”

By the year 1941 He was indeed a firm believer in Pakistan and the Two Nation Theory

” Cant you see that a Muslim, when he was converted more than a thousand years ago, bulk of them, then according to your hindureligion and philosophy, he becomes an outcast and he becomes aMalecha (an untouchable) and the Hindus ceased to have anythingto do with him socially , religiously , culturaly or in any otherway? He, therefore belongs to a different order not merely religiousbut social and he has lived in that distinctly separate and antagonostic social order, religiously, socially and culturally…can you posiballycompare this with that nonsensical talk thatmere change of faith is no ground for a demand for Pakistan? Cantyou see the fundamantle difference ? “ 2 march 1941. Pres. address toPunjab Muslim Students Fed.

Mr. Amin’s assertion fly in the face of facts.

However, it is notable that no Muslim leader of note, since the days of Sir Syed, ever demanded either the division of India or the establishment of a Muslim state based on the rule of Sharia. Some people think that in the Allahabad address of 1930, Allama Iqbal had demanded the creation of a Muslim state in the northwest, but Iqbal himself had clarified that ‘Pakistan is not my scheme. The one that I suggested in my address is the creation of a Muslim province i.e. a province having an overwhelming population of Muslims in the northwest of India. This new province will be, according to my scheme, a part of the proposed Indian federation.’

The question arises as to why then was the demand for the division of India made by the Muslims in 1940? This happened because all of their efforts for reaching a national consensus failed due to the persistent refusal of the Congress to accept the minimum Muslim demands, notably one-third representation in the central legislature and in jobs.

The final blow was the shocking treatment of Muslims under Congress rule (1937-39). That forced Muslims to demand, in the Lahore Resolution of March 1940, the breakup of India and creation of independent Muslim states in the northwest and eastern zones of India where Muslims were in numerical majority. The truth is that the division of India (and creation of Pakistan) was not the first preference of the Indian Muslims. It was rather the last preferred option.

It is also notable that the Lahore Resolution made no mention of the proposed Muslim states being based on the rule of the Sharia. Jinnah was undoubtedly a secular leader.

Jaswant Singh is right to bring out some of these facts in his book. However, his motives are questionable since he seems to think that an internal debate in Pakistani society on the rationale behind the creation of the country and the secular ideas of Jinnah would set Pakistan on fire and presumably destabilise it.  Jaswant Singh’s bombshell By Shahid M. Amin Wednesday, 26 Aug, 2009 | 10:08 AM PST |

India had 400 million people. The Muslims were a minority, and because of colonialism had lost the political power in the Subcontinent. The British had taken actions to snatch the control from the Muslims at all echelons of power. The Muslims were demoralized, penury-stricken and were unable to compete with the the more affluent and more educated Hindus. Separate electorates allowed them to elect their own representatives, but the fear of “majoratarianism” scared the minority. Indian “democracy” still does not have any safeguards to prevent “majoratarianism” from dictating to the minority. Requests for one third seats in parliament were not acceptable to the Indian National Congress, and though on many occasions agreements were reached, pressures within the Congress did not allow the agreements to materialize.

The Cabinet Mission Plan was the closest the INC came to an agreement with the Muslim League. It was under these circumstances that they marched for freedom. The following narrative helps us remember the historical chronology and the ideological battles that were waged then and are being waged now over the internet.

The supporters of  the TNT won the elections and won the arguments, and the believers of the ONT lost the elections. The INC and the Jamat e Islami were rejected by the Muslims. The TNT became fact and the ONT remains a fascination by many. These pages will distinguish the origins of the ONT and the TNT.

Listen to Mr Jinnah before the formation of Pakistan, raising the spectre of Hindu majoritaranism: “We Muslims have got everything – brains, intelligence, capacity and courage- virtues that nations must possess. But two things are lacking, and I want you to concentrate your attention on these. One thing is that foreign domination from without and Hindu domination here, particularly on our economic life that has caused a certain degeneration of these virtues in us.”

Or listen to him after a meeting with Egyptian and Palestinian Arab leaders in 1946: “I told them of the danger that a Hindu empire would represent for the Middle-East … If a Hindu empire is achieved, it will mean the end of Islam in India, and even in other Muslim countries.”

At the same time, it is true that Mr Jinnah felt short changed by the Congress. On 26 July 1946, Jinnah and his working committee spoke about Muslim India having “exhausted, without success, all efforts to find a peaceful solution of the Indian problem by compromise and constitutional means; and whereas the Congress is bent upon setting up Caste-Hindu Raj in India with the connivance of the British…” (BBC. Why the Hindu right wing loves Mr Jinnah. Soutik Biswas | 08:35 UK time, Tuesday, 18 August 2009)

In February that year, in an address to Americans: “I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principles of Islam.”

Pressed for an answer about the structure of government at a press conference in Delhi on July 14, 1947, he said the matter was for the Constituent Assembly to decide. Asked: “What is your personal opinion?” He said: “No responsible man expresses his personal opinion in anticipation of a supreme body like the Constituent Assembly, the function of which is to frame the constitution.”

To the question, “Will Pakistan be a secular or theocratic state?” he replied: “You are asking me a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means.” When the correspondent said it was a state in which only people of a particular religion, for example, Muslims, could be full citizens, Jinnah said: “I am afraid you have not studied Islam. We learned democracy 13 centuries ago.”

Why would a secularist be this ambiguous? Not becauseJinnahwas a hypocrite, but because he understood his constituency. Jinnah would not have been surprised by the creeping Islamisation that came with Zia’s amendments.

23rd May, 1936Dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which I received a moment ago. I am glad to see that your work is progressing. I do hope that the Punjab parties-specially the Ahrar and the Ittihad Millat-will eventually, after some bickering, join you. A very enthusiastic and active member of the Ittihad told me so a few days ago. About M. Zafar Ali Khan the Ittihad people do not themselves feel sure. However there is plenty of time yet, and we shall soon see how the electorate generally feels about the Ittihad sending their men to the Assembly.

Hoping you are well and looking forward to meeting you.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Lahore

———————————————————-

9th June, 1936

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

I am sending you my draft. Also a cutting from the Eastern Times of yesterday. This is a letter from an Intelligent Pleader of Guradspur.

I hope the statement issued by the Board will fully argue the whole scheme and will meet all the objection is so far advanced against it. It must frankly state as present position of the Indian Muliins as regards both the Government and the Hindus. It must warn the Muslims of India that unless the present scheme is adopted the Muslims will lose all that they have gained during the last 15 years and will seriously harm, and in fact, shatter their own solidarity with their own hands.

Yours etc.,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

p.s. Will feel much obliged if you send the statement to me before it is sent to the press.

Another point which should be brought out in the statement is as follows:

1. Indirect election to the Central Assembly has made it absolutely essential that Muslim representatives returned to the Provincial Assemblies should be bound by an All-India Muslim policy and programme so that they should return to the Central Assembly only those Muslims who would be pledged to support the specific Muslim questions connected with the Central subjects and arising out of their position as the Second great nation of India. Those who are now for Provincial policies and programme were themselves instrumental in getting in direct elections for the Central Assembly introduced into the constitution obviously because this suited a foreign Government. Now when the community wants to make the best use of this misfortune (i.e indirect elections) by proposing an all-India scheme of elections (e.g. League scheme) to be adhered to by the Provincial candidates the same men, again, at the instance of a foreign Government have come out to defeat the community in their effort to retain its solidarity as a nation.

2. Question of Wakf Law arising out of Shahidganj, culture, language, mosque and personal law.

Private and Confidential,

Lahore

———————————————————-

25th June 1936

My dear Mr. Jinnah

Sir Sikandar Hayat left Lahore a day or two ago. I think he will meet you at Bombay and have a talk with you about certain matters of importance. Daultana saw me yesterday evening. He tells me that the Muslim members of the Unionist Party are prepared to make the following declaration

“That in all matters specific to the Muslim community as an all-India minority they will be bound by the decision of the League and will never make any pact with any nom-Muslims group in the Provincial Assembly.”

“Provided the League (Provincial) makes the following declaration:

That those returned to the Provincial Assembly on the League ticket will co-operate with that party or group which has the largest number of Muslims’.”

Please let me know at your earliest convenience what you think of this proposal. Also let me know the result of your talk with Sir Sikandar Hayat. If you succeed in convincing him he may come to our side.

Hoping you are well,

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Mayo Road, Lahore

———————————————————-

23rd August, 1936

M dear Mr. Jinnah,

I hope my letter reached you all right. There is some talk of an understanding between the Punjab Parliamentary Bard and the Unionist Party. I should like you to let me know what you think of such a compromise and to suggest conditions for the same. I read in the papers that you have brought about a compromise between the Bengal Proja Party and the Parliamentary Board. I should like to know the terms and the conditions. Since the Proja Party is non-communal like the Unionist, your compromise in Bengal may be helpful to you.

Hoping you are well,

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Strictly Confidential.

———————————————————-

20th March 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah

I suppose you have read Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s address to the All-India National Convention and that you fully realise the policy under-lying it in so far as Indian Muslims are concerned. I believe you are also aware that the new constitution has at least bought a unique opportunity Indian Muslims for self-organisation in view of the future political developments both in India and Muslim Asia. While we re ready to co-operate with other Progressive Parties in the country, we must not ignore the fact that the whole future of Islam as a moral and political force in Asia rests very largely on a complete organisation of Indian Muslims. I therefore suggest that an effective reply should be given to the All-India National Convention. You should immediately hold an All-India Muslim Convention in Delhi to which you should invite members of the new Provincial Assemblies as well as other prominent Muslim leaders. To this convention you must restate as clearly and as strongly as possible the political objective of the Indian Muslims as a distinct political unit in the country. It is absolutely necessary to tell the world both inside and outside India that the economic problem is not the only problem in the country. From the Muslim point of view the cultural problem is of much greater consequence to most Indian Muslims. At any rate it is not less important than the economic problem. If you could hold this Convention, it would test the credentials of those Muslim Legislators who have formed parties contrary to the aims and aspirations of Indian Muslims. It would farther make it clear to the Hindus that no political device, however subtle can make the Indian Muslim lose sight of his cultural enilty. I am coming to Delhi in a few days time and hope to have a talk with you on this important matter. I shall be staying in the Afghan Consulate. If you could spare a few moments we should meet there. Please drop a line in reply to this letter a early as possible.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

p. s. Please excuse me. I have got this letter written by a friend as my eyesight is getting bad.

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22nd April 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah

I do not know whether my letter which I posted to you about two weeks ago ever reached you. I posted it to your address at New Delhi and when I went to Delhi later I discovered that you had already left Delhi. In that letter I proposed that we should hold immediately an All-India Muslim Convention, say at Delhi, and once more to restate the policy of Indian Muslims both to the Government and to the Hindus.

As the situation is becoming grave and the Muslim feeling in the Punjab is rapidly becoming pro-Congress for reasons which it is unnecessary to detail I would request you to consider and decide the matter as early as possible. The session of the All India Muslim League is postponed till August, and the situation demands an early restatement of the Musllm policy. If the Convention is preceded by a tour of prominent Muslim leaders, the meeting of the Convention is sure to be a great success. Please drop a line in reply to this letter as early as possible.

Yours sincerely

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Confidential,

28th May, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which reached me in due course. I am glad to hear that you will bear in mind what I wrote to you about the changes in the constitution and programme of the League. I have no doubt that you fully realise the gravity of the situation as far as Muslim India is concerned. The League will have to finally decide whether it will remain a body representing the upper classes of Indian Muslims or Muslim masses who have so far with good reason, taken no interest in it. Personally I believe that a political organisation which gives no promise of improving the lot of the average Muslim can not attract our masses.

Under the new constitution the higher posts go to the sons of upper classes; the smaller ones go to the friends or relatives of the ministers. In other matters too our political institution have never thought of improving the lot of Muslims generally. The problem of bread is becoming more and more acute. The Muslim has begun to feel that he has been going down and down during the last 200 years. Ordinarily he believes that his poverty is due to Hindu money-lending or capitalism. The perception that it is equally due to foreign rule has not yet fully come to him. But it is bound to come. The atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal is not likely to receive much response from the Muslims. The question therefore is: how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question. If the League can give no such promises I am sure that Muslim masses will remain indifferent to it as before. Happily there is a solution in the enforcement of the Law of Islam and its further development in the light of modern ideas. After a long and careful study of Islamic Law I have come to the conclusion that if this system of Law is properly understood and applied, at last the right to subsistence is secured to everybody. But the enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam is impossible in this country without a free Muslim state or states. This has been my honest conviction for many years and I still believe this to be the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India. If such a thing is impossible in India the only other alternative is a civil war which as a matter of fact has been going on for some time in the shape of Hindu-Muslim riots. I fear that in certain parts of the country, e.g. N.-W. India, Palestine may be repeated. Also the insertion of Jawaharlal’s socialism into the body politic of Hinduism is likely to cause much bloodshed among the Hindus themselves. The issue between social democracy and Brahmanism is not dissimilar to the one between Brahmanism and Buddhism. Whether the fate of socialism will be the same as the fate of Buddhism in India I can not say. But it is clear to my mind that if Hinduism accepts social demopracy it must necessarily cease to be Hindaism. For Islam the acpeptance of social democracy in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam. The modern problems therefore are more easy to solve for the Muslims than for the Hindus. But as I have said above in order to make it possible for Muslim India to solve the problems it is necessary to redistribute the country and to provide one or more Muslim states with absolute majorities. Don’t you think that the Lime for such a demand has already arrived? Perhaps this is the best reply you can give to the atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal Nehru. Anyhow I have given you my own thoughts in the hope that you will give them serious consideration either in your address or in the discussions of the coming session of the League. Muslim India hopes that at this serious juncture your genius will discover some way out of our present difficulties.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Muhammad Iqbal

P.S. On the subject-matter of the letter I intended to Write to you a long and open letter in the press. But on further consideration I felt that the present moment was not suitable for such step.

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Private and Confidential,

June 21st, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which I received yesterday. I know yan are a busy man; but I do hope you won’t mind my writing to you so often, as you are the only Muslim in India today to Whom the community has a right to look up for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North-West India, and perhaps to the Whole of India. I tell you that we are actually living in a state of civil war which, but for the police and military, would, become universal in no time. During the last few months there has been a series of Hindu-Muslim riots In India. In North-West India alone there have been at least three riots during the last three months and at least four cases of vilification of the Prophet by Hindus and Sikhs. In each of the four cases the vilifier has been murdered. There have also been cases of burning of the Quran in Sind. I have carefully studied the whole situation and believe that the real cause of these event is neither religious nor economic. It is purely political, i.e., the desire of the Sikhs and Hindus to intermediate Muslims even in the Muslim majority provinces. And the new constitution is such that even in the Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on non-Muslims. The result is that the Muslim Ministry can take no proper action and are even driven to do injustice to Muslims partly to please those on whom they depend and partly to show that they are absolutely impartial. Thus it is clear that we have our specific reasons to reject this constitution. It seems to me that the new constitution is devised only to placate the Hindus. In the Hindu majority provinces, the Hindus have of course absolute majorities, and can ignore Muslims, altogether. In Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on Hindus. I have no doubt in my mind that this constitution is calculated to do infinite harm to the Indian Muslims. Apart from this it is no solution of the economic problem which is so acute among Muslims. The only thing that the communal award grants to Muslims is the recognition of their political existence in India. But such a recognition granted to a people whom this constitution does not and cannot help in solving their problem of poverty can be of no value to them. The Congress President has denied the political existence of Muslims in no unmistakable terms. The other Hindu political body, i.e., the Mahasabha, whom I regard as the real representative of the masses of the Hindus, has declared more than once that a united Hindu-Muslim nation is impossible in India. In these circumstances it is obvious that the only way to a peaceful India is redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, religious and linguistic affinities. Many British statesmen also realise this, and the Hindu-Muslim riots which are rapidly coming in the wake of this constitution are sure further to open their eyes to the real situation in the country. I remember Lord Lothain told me before I left England that my scheme as the only possible solution of the troubles of India, but that it would take 25 years to come. Some Muslims in the Punjab are already suggesting the holding of a North-West Indian Muslim Conference, and the idea is rapidly spreading. I agree with you, however, that our community is not yet sufficiently organised and disciplined and perhaps the time for holding such a conference is not yet ripe. But I feel that it would be highly advisable for you to indicate in your address at least the line of action that the Muslims of North-West India would be finally driven to take.

To my mind the new constitution with its ides o a single Indian federation is completely hopeless. A separate federation of Muslim provinces reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nation entitled to Self-determination just as other nation as in India and outside India are?

Personally I think that the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal ought are present to ignore Muslim minority provinces. This is th best course to adopt in the interest of both Muslim majority and minority provinces It will therefore be better to hold the coming session of the League in the Punjab, and not in a Muslim minority province. The monhth of August is bad in, Lahore. I think you should seriously consider the advisability of holding the coming session at Lahore in the middle of October when the weather is quite good in Lahore. The interest in the All-India Muslim League is rapidly growing in the Punjab, and the holding of the coming session in Lahore is likely to give a fresh political awakening to the Punjab Muslims.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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11th August, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Events have made it abundantly clear that the League ought to concentrate all its activities on the North-West Indian Musalmans. The League office bf Delhi informed Mr. Ghulam Rasool that the dates of the sessions of the Muslim League have not been fixed as yet.

This being so I fear it will not be possible to hold the sessions in August and September. I, therefore, repeat my request that the League sessions may be held in Lahore in the middle or end of October. The enthusiasm for the League is rapidly increasing in the Punjab, and I have no doubt that the holding of the session in Lahore will be a turning point in the history of the League and an important step towards mass contact. Please drop a line in reply.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Private and Confidential

7th October, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

A strong contingent from the Punjab is expected to attend The Lucknow Session of the League. The Unionist Muslims are also making preparations to attend under the leadership of Sir Sikandar Hayat. We are living in difficult times and the Indian Muslims expect that your address will give the clearest possible lead in all matters relating to the future of the community. I suggest that the League may state or restate its policy relating to the communal award in the shape of a suitable resolution. In the Punjab and I hear also in Sind attempts are being made by misguided Muslims themselves to alter it in the interests of the Hindus. Such men fondly believe that by pleasing the Hindus they will be able to retain their power. I personally believe that since the British Government wants to honour the Hindus who would welcome the upsetter of the communal award they (the British Government) are trying to get it upset through their Muslim agents.

I shall prepare a list of 28 persons for the vacancies in the League Council. Mr. Ghulain Rasool will show you this list. I do hope that this choice will be carefully made. Our men will leave Lahore on the 13th.

The Palestine question is very much agitating the minds of the Muslims. We have a very fine opportunity for mass contact for the purposes of the League. I have no doubt that the League will pass a strong resolution on this question and also by holding a private conference of the leaders decide on some sort of a positive action in which masses may share in large numbers. This will at once popularise the League and may help the Palestine Arabs. Personally I would not mind going to jail on an issue which affects both Islam and India. The formation bf a Western base on the very gates of the East is a menace to both.

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

P.S. The League should resolve that no province should come to any understanding with other communities regarding the communal award. This is an All-India question and must be settled by the League alohe. Perhaps you may go further and say that the present atmosphere is not at all suitable for any communal understanding.

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Private and Confidential,

30th october; 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

I suppose you have already read the resolution passed by the A.-I.C C. Your move in time has saved the situation, and we are all waiting for your observations on the Congress, resolution. The Tribune of Lahore has already criticised it and I believe Hindu opinion will generally be opposed to it. However it should not act as an opiate as far as Muslims are concerned. We must carry the work of organisation more vigorously than ever and should not rest till Muslim Governments are established in the five provinces and reforms are granted to Baluchistan.

The rumour is that part of the Unionist Party does not mean to sign the League creed. So far Sir Sikandar and his party have not signed it and I heard this morning that they would wait till the next sessions of the League. The idea as one of themselves told me, is to slacken the activities of the Provincial League. However I shall place you in possession of all the facts in a few days’ time and then ask your opinion as to how we should proceed. I do hope that before the Lahore Session you would be able to tour in the Punjab for at least two weeks.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Urgent

1st November 1937

My dear Mr Jinnah,

Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan with some of the members of his party saw me yesterday and we had a long talk about the differences between the League and the Unionist Party. Statements have been issued to the press by both sides. Each side putting its own interpretation on the terms of Jinnah-Sikandar agreement. This has caused much misunderstanding. As I wrote to you before, I will put you in possession of all those statements in a few days’ time. For the present I request you to kindly send me as early as possible a copy of the agreement which was signed by Sir Sikandar and which I am told is in your possession. I further want to ask you whether you agreed to the Provincial Parliamentary Board being controlled by the Unionist Party. Sir Sikandar tells me that you agreed to this and therefore he claims that the Unionist Party must have their majority in the Board. This as far as I know does not appear in the Jinnah-Sikandar agreement.

Please reply to this letter as early as possible. Our men are touring in the country and forming Leagues in various places. Last night we had a very successful meeting in Lahore. Others will follow.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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Strictly Private & Confidential

10th Nov., 1937

My Dear Mr. Jinnah,

After having several talks with Sir Sikandar and his friends I am now definitely of the opinion that Sir Sikandar wants nothing less than the complete control of the League and the Provincial Parliamentary Board. In your pact with him it is mentioned that the Parliamentary Board will be reconstituted and that the Unionists will have majority in the Board. Sir Sikandar tells me that you agreed to their majority in the Board. I wrote to you some time ago to enquire whether you did agree to the unionist Majority in the Board. So far I have not heard from you. I personally see no harm in giving him the majority that he wants but he goes beyond the pact when he wants a complete change in the office holders of the League, especially the Secretary who has done so much for the League. He also wishes that the finances of the League should be controlled by his men. All this to my mind amounts to capturing of the League and then killing it. Knowing the opinion of the province as I do I cannot take the responsibility of handing over the League to Sir Sikandar and his friends. The pact has already damaged the prestige of the League in this province; and the tactics of the Unionists may damage it still further. They have not so far signed the creed of the League and I understand do not mean to. The session of the League in Lahore they want in April instead of February. My impression is, that they want to gain time for their own Zamindara League to function in the province. Perhaps you know that on his return from Lucknow Sir Sikandar constituted a Zamindara League whose branches are now being made in the province. In these circumstances please let me know what we should do. Kindly wire your view if possible. If this is not possible write a detailed letter as early as possible.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd.) Mohammad, Iqbal

Bar-at-Law

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