The Mullah and the Munir Report
In 1953, when Pakistan was very young and when Judges still could not be bought, a commission comprising two eminent Justices of the Federal Court submitted a report, fated to be called the Munir Report, that in my opinion should be mandatory reading for every Pakistani and if possible every Muslim all around the world. The Justices who wrote this report were Justice Muhammad Munir and Justice Kiyani. Never again did any judicial officer in Pakistan speak his or her mind so clearly and so eloquently.
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They write:
“The result of this part of inquiry, however has been anything but satisfactory and if considerable confusion exists in the minds of our ulama on such a simple matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more complicated matters will be…. Keeping view the several different definitions [of a Mulsim] given by the ulama, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the Ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim, but kafirs according to the definitions of everyone else.” (Page 215, 218)
They go on to say that if Deobandis are in charge, all non-deobandis would become Kafirs, and if Barelvis are in charge all non-Barelvis would be declared Kafir. Depending on the sect, the definition of a Muslim changes, and so everyone else becomes a Kafir. They warned that if Pakistan as a state was to get involved in such pettiness, it would lead to a most fantastic disaster. Their prescription was to follow the routine of any normal democratic secular state and stay away from this mess. They refuted the assertion of the Mullah that Pakistan was made in the name of Islam, rejecting it outright as a basis. They point to the Fatwa from DarulUloom Deoband in India presented in front of the inquiry commission as Ex.DE 13 , which declares all Shiites as Kafirs and Murtids, and says that every fatwa is exclusionary in nature. They continued:
“If the constituents of each of the definitions given by the Ulama are given effect to and subjected to the rule of combination and permutation and the form of charge in the inquisition’s sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as a model, the grounds on which a person maybe indicted for apostasy will be too numerous to count.” (Page 219)