Identity Pakistan, Ideology Islam
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Mercenary_ali
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great Videos
muse
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Easy there Omar - safe your bile for the Islamists who are the enemies of Pakistan and who do refer to it as Napak-istan.
Pakistan may be 60 something asa sovereign nation state but the Islamists have ensured the many histories of what is now Pakistan, more than 5000 years of such histories, remain ignored and unexamined by Pakistanis. InshaAllah this will change, histories are not confession and should not be confused as such.
Pakistan may be 60 something asa sovereign nation state but the Islamists have ensured the many histories of what is now Pakistan, more than 5000 years of such histories, remain ignored and unexamined by Pakistanis. InshaAllah this will change, histories are not confession and should not be confused as such.
RabzonKhan
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I couldn't agree more.
muse
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And then there's this to consider:
Date:12/06/2009 URL: The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Making sense of Pakistans identity crisis
Making sense of Pakistans identity crisis
Hasan Suroor
Arguably 60 years are not a long time in the history of a nation but by 60, even a country with a troubled past such as Pakistan, is expected to at least start making sense of what it stands for and where it is heading, however fuzzy the direction. And when it continues to flounder like Pakistan lurching from one crisis to another, it becomes a liability not only to its own people but also has implications for the wider international community, especially its neighbours in this case India.
Pakistanis are a proud people. They feel humiliated when their country is mocked at as a failed state and routinely mentioned in the same breath as the pirate-infested Somalia which does not even have a properly functioning capital. For all its afflictions, Pakistan (a functioning democracy, however flawed, with a free press, an independent judiciary and a vibrant civil society) is by no means a failed state.
Not yet. But signs of a meltdown are all too evident and there are genuine fears about its future. One view, of course, is that the West will not allow it to fail for its own strategic reasons. But that is hardly very reassuring.
So what went wrong? How did a country which has no dearth of talent and whose founders had such high hopes for it that they named it Pakistan (a pure country) go so horribly wrong? Was there something rotten at the very core of the idea of Pakistan that has been its undoing? Is Pakistans failure to make sense of itself the result of a deep confusion over its Islamic/Muslim identity? If yes, what is the way forward, if any?
A new book, Making Sense of Pakistan (Hurst & Company, London) by Farzana Shaikh a highly regarded U.K.-based Pakistani scholar and Fellow of Chatham House argues that there is no hope for Pakistan unless it sorts out its identity crisis which, it says, is the root cause of the country being such a disaster. Indeed, in order to make sense of Pakistan, it is important to make sense of its identity crisis first.
Everything that is wrong with Pakistan today its distorted economic and social development, its obsession with India, the sectarian divisions that have blighted relations among its various communities, its proneness to military dictatorships and the rise of extremism first directed at its enemies and now devouring its own creators is a direct or indirect result of its confused sense of itself, Dr. Shaikh says.
So deep is this confusion that more than six decades after its creation, even the definition of who is a Pakistani is not clear with the Indian Muslim migrants still being regarded as outsiders by ethnic communities which claim that they are the real Pakistanis by virtue of their historical roots in the region. Over the years, this conflict between indigenous Muslim groups and migrants has been a source of deep (and frequently violent) divisions in Pakistani society. And it is still festering.
But nowhere is Pakistans self-inflicted identity crisis more evident than in relation to India, according to Dr. Shaikh. Because of the nature of its creation a secessionist state born in opposition to the Indian nationalist movement Pakistan was lumped with an identity, defined in terms of what it was not (it was not India) rather than what it was.
Indeed, much of the uncertainty over Pakistans identity stems from the nagging question of whether its identity is fundamentally dependent on India and what its construction might entail outside of opposition to the latter. This has prompted the suggestion that Pakistan is a state burdened with a negative identity shaped by the circumstances of Partition, Dr. Shaikh says.
Ever since its formation, Pakistan has struggled to overcome this negative identity. Its search for what it regards as legitimacy has, in fact, been the defining feature of its policy towards India, especially the Kashmir issue, and is at the heart of its quest for military parity with a neighbour almost seven times its size in population and more than four times its land mass.
The dispute with India over Kashmir has come to symbolise Pakistans obsessive bid to delink its identity from its historical antecedents. To quote the author: It is here [over Kashmir], amid the rhetoric of rival claims over territory and state sovereignty, that Pakistan has fought to assert itself and to liberate its identity from the uncertainties that have attached to its status as merely not India. She argues that Pakistans efforts to achieve this identity underline its historical claim to parity with India: a claim grounded in Mohammad Ali Jinnahs insistence that equality of the nations of Hindus and Muslims be the basis for any territorial division of British India.
As much as the national interest, it is Pakistans compulsive desire for parity with India (an extension of its efforts to assert its independent identity) that has shaped much of its foreign policy leading it to seek help from foreign powers. Take its alliance with America which, the author points out, has been motivated as much by security considerations a protection against an attack from India as by its need for validation and its desire to win recognition of its special status. Being a strategic partner of the worlds only superpower is seen in Pakistan as a boost to its global image to match Indias global status.
Again, it is Pakistans self-perception of national identity that, according to Dr. Shaikh, has led it to compete with India in the race for regional domination by, for example, flexing its muscles in Afghanistan. Although the consequences of these foreign policy ambitions have often been devastating to Pakistan and the strategic costs immense, no price is yet seen to be too high to validate Pakistans claim to nationhood ... Thus Pakistans struggle against India is deeply embedded in a painful awareness of its own lack of a national history, she observes.
Ultimately, though, India is only part of a bigger story of Pakistans struggle with its identity which, Dr. Shaikh contends, has had a profound effect on every aspect of the countrys life and, indeed, its world view. The uncertainty resulting from a lack of consensus on what constitutes Pakistans national identity has deepened the countrys divisions ... discouraged plural definitions of the Pakistani ... blighted good governance and tempted political elites to use the language of Islam as a substitute for democratic legitimacy.
Today, Pakistan remains an enigma with no clear understanding of the nature of the Pakistani state. Analysing the causes of this debilitating confusion, she traces it back to the origins of Pakistan, the politics of its creation and the flawed assumption of its founders that religion could be the basis of a modern, forward-looking state.
A project forged around the idea that a Muslim religious identity, overriding cultural and social factors, was enough to unify a nation was doomed from the start. And, sure enough, the project started to unravel within years of its inauguration with Bengali-speaking Muslims breaking away from Pakistan to form their own Muslim state of Bangladesh. It is Pakistans artificiality as a nation-state its eastern and western wings separated by more than a thousand miles of Indian territory and its citizens divided by a variety of linguistic and cultural traditions despite a common religion that has prevented the evolution of a coherent national identity. This, in brief, is the thrust of Dr. Shaikhs argument.
So whats new, one might ask. Doesnt it sound all too familiar? Dr. Shaikh may not be breaking new ground here but it is refreshing to come across a Pakistani viewpoint that doesnt regard the discussion of Pakistans legitimacy as a no-go zone. It is a sensitive issue with Pakistanis who, as Dr. Shaikh points out, believe that India still rejects the rationale of Pakistans statehood even if it has been forced to accept its reality.
At the outset, Dr. Shaikh makes clear that her book is a work of interpretation rather than of historical research. Even so, one is often struck by what seems like an over-interpretation of Pakistans identity problem. There is a tendency to conflate issues which are not directly related to identity in order to fit an argument. For example, to see Pakistans arms race with India purely in terms of its attempt to overcome an identity crisis is to ignore the fact that any small country can have genuine security fears vis-À-vis a big and powerful neighbour, especially if there is a history of conflict between them.
That does not, however, take away from the importance of this book. It is a work of serious scholarship dealing with some of the most important issues that have shaped Pakistan and which, if not resolved, can have consequences for its future.
Date:12/06/2009 URL: The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Making sense of Pakistans identity crisis
Making sense of Pakistans identity crisis
Hasan Suroor
Arguably 60 years are not a long time in the history of a nation but by 60, even a country with a troubled past such as Pakistan, is expected to at least start making sense of what it stands for and where it is heading, however fuzzy the direction. And when it continues to flounder like Pakistan lurching from one crisis to another, it becomes a liability not only to its own people but also has implications for the wider international community, especially its neighbours in this case India.
Pakistanis are a proud people. They feel humiliated when their country is mocked at as a failed state and routinely mentioned in the same breath as the pirate-infested Somalia which does not even have a properly functioning capital. For all its afflictions, Pakistan (a functioning democracy, however flawed, with a free press, an independent judiciary and a vibrant civil society) is by no means a failed state.
Not yet. But signs of a meltdown are all too evident and there are genuine fears about its future. One view, of course, is that the West will not allow it to fail for its own strategic reasons. But that is hardly very reassuring.
So what went wrong? How did a country which has no dearth of talent and whose founders had such high hopes for it that they named it Pakistan (a pure country) go so horribly wrong? Was there something rotten at the very core of the idea of Pakistan that has been its undoing? Is Pakistans failure to make sense of itself the result of a deep confusion over its Islamic/Muslim identity? If yes, what is the way forward, if any?
A new book, Making Sense of Pakistan (Hurst & Company, London) by Farzana Shaikh a highly regarded U.K.-based Pakistani scholar and Fellow of Chatham House argues that there is no hope for Pakistan unless it sorts out its identity crisis which, it says, is the root cause of the country being such a disaster. Indeed, in order to make sense of Pakistan, it is important to make sense of its identity crisis first.
Everything that is wrong with Pakistan today its distorted economic and social development, its obsession with India, the sectarian divisions that have blighted relations among its various communities, its proneness to military dictatorships and the rise of extremism first directed at its enemies and now devouring its own creators is a direct or indirect result of its confused sense of itself, Dr. Shaikh says.
So deep is this confusion that more than six decades after its creation, even the definition of who is a Pakistani is not clear with the Indian Muslim migrants still being regarded as outsiders by ethnic communities which claim that they are the real Pakistanis by virtue of their historical roots in the region. Over the years, this conflict between indigenous Muslim groups and migrants has been a source of deep (and frequently violent) divisions in Pakistani society. And it is still festering.
But nowhere is Pakistans self-inflicted identity crisis more evident than in relation to India, according to Dr. Shaikh. Because of the nature of its creation a secessionist state born in opposition to the Indian nationalist movement Pakistan was lumped with an identity, defined in terms of what it was not (it was not India) rather than what it was.
Indeed, much of the uncertainty over Pakistans identity stems from the nagging question of whether its identity is fundamentally dependent on India and what its construction might entail outside of opposition to the latter. This has prompted the suggestion that Pakistan is a state burdened with a negative identity shaped by the circumstances of Partition, Dr. Shaikh says.
Ever since its formation, Pakistan has struggled to overcome this negative identity. Its search for what it regards as legitimacy has, in fact, been the defining feature of its policy towards India, especially the Kashmir issue, and is at the heart of its quest for military parity with a neighbour almost seven times its size in population and more than four times its land mass.
The dispute with India over Kashmir has come to symbolise Pakistans obsessive bid to delink its identity from its historical antecedents. To quote the author: It is here [over Kashmir], amid the rhetoric of rival claims over territory and state sovereignty, that Pakistan has fought to assert itself and to liberate its identity from the uncertainties that have attached to its status as merely not India. She argues that Pakistans efforts to achieve this identity underline its historical claim to parity with India: a claim grounded in Mohammad Ali Jinnahs insistence that equality of the nations of Hindus and Muslims be the basis for any territorial division of British India.
As much as the national interest, it is Pakistans compulsive desire for parity with India (an extension of its efforts to assert its independent identity) that has shaped much of its foreign policy leading it to seek help from foreign powers. Take its alliance with America which, the author points out, has been motivated as much by security considerations a protection against an attack from India as by its need for validation and its desire to win recognition of its special status. Being a strategic partner of the worlds only superpower is seen in Pakistan as a boost to its global image to match Indias global status.
Again, it is Pakistans self-perception of national identity that, according to Dr. Shaikh, has led it to compete with India in the race for regional domination by, for example, flexing its muscles in Afghanistan. Although the consequences of these foreign policy ambitions have often been devastating to Pakistan and the strategic costs immense, no price is yet seen to be too high to validate Pakistans claim to nationhood ... Thus Pakistans struggle against India is deeply embedded in a painful awareness of its own lack of a national history, she observes.
Ultimately, though, India is only part of a bigger story of Pakistans struggle with its identity which, Dr. Shaikh contends, has had a profound effect on every aspect of the countrys life and, indeed, its world view. The uncertainty resulting from a lack of consensus on what constitutes Pakistans national identity has deepened the countrys divisions ... discouraged plural definitions of the Pakistani ... blighted good governance and tempted political elites to use the language of Islam as a substitute for democratic legitimacy.
Today, Pakistan remains an enigma with no clear understanding of the nature of the Pakistani state. Analysing the causes of this debilitating confusion, she traces it back to the origins of Pakistan, the politics of its creation and the flawed assumption of its founders that religion could be the basis of a modern, forward-looking state.
A project forged around the idea that a Muslim religious identity, overriding cultural and social factors, was enough to unify a nation was doomed from the start. And, sure enough, the project started to unravel within years of its inauguration with Bengali-speaking Muslims breaking away from Pakistan to form their own Muslim state of Bangladesh. It is Pakistans artificiality as a nation-state its eastern and western wings separated by more than a thousand miles of Indian territory and its citizens divided by a variety of linguistic and cultural traditions despite a common religion that has prevented the evolution of a coherent national identity. This, in brief, is the thrust of Dr. Shaikhs argument.
So whats new, one might ask. Doesnt it sound all too familiar? Dr. Shaikh may not be breaking new ground here but it is refreshing to come across a Pakistani viewpoint that doesnt regard the discussion of Pakistans legitimacy as a no-go zone. It is a sensitive issue with Pakistanis who, as Dr. Shaikh points out, believe that India still rejects the rationale of Pakistans statehood even if it has been forced to accept its reality.
At the outset, Dr. Shaikh makes clear that her book is a work of interpretation rather than of historical research. Even so, one is often struck by what seems like an over-interpretation of Pakistans identity problem. There is a tendency to conflate issues which are not directly related to identity in order to fit an argument. For example, to see Pakistans arms race with India purely in terms of its attempt to overcome an identity crisis is to ignore the fact that any small country can have genuine security fears vis-À-vis a big and powerful neighbour, especially if there is a history of conflict between them.
That does not, however, take away from the importance of this book. It is a work of serious scholarship dealing with some of the most important issues that have shaped Pakistan and which, if not resolved, can have consequences for its future.
Omar1984
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Your article is from THE HINDU.
I dont think you are either Pakistani or Muslim. Your posts always favor Indians.
I trust PAKISTANI Zaid Hamid more than "The Hindu".
Tell me, is there one incorrect statement Zaid Hamid made in the video? Everything he said is 100% true, no one can deny these facts. Pakistan's independence happened just 62 years ago, all these facts are authentic.
Please no more articles from "The Hindu" if you want to post more articles from Indian news websites just change your flag to India.
muse
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Poor little Omar, don't be put off, it's not the cover of the book, it's the substance you want to engage (you know, don't judge a book by it's cover...)
The article appears in the Hindu but the author is a Muslim, that mean anything to you?
And I'm not suggesting Mr. Hamid is not credible or you should not listent to him - I like him, I listen to him -- But there is also more to sucha deep and important subject than Mr. Hamid -- What is for sure is that this whole lie about Islam being the identity of Pakistan, should be "presented as what it is, a lie.
Can it one day become the over arching identity of Pakistan? No, it cannot, Pakistan is more than just muslims persuaded by a particular kind of IDEOLOGY, it just is. So don't get your knickers in a twist, if you really buy into this whole Islam this and that bit, realize that the article is written by a muslim about a book written by another Muslim.
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Omar1984
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The author might be a Muslim but he's working for "The Hindu" an Indian newspaper, he's most likely an Indian Muslim so he's going to write that would please his Indian audience, and we all know how much Indians hate the existance of Pakistan.
And you didnt answer my question, is there one incorrect statement Zaid Hamid made in the video?
muse
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Omar
I have no problem with Mr. Hamid - I like listening to him and I think what he has to say has merit. When it comes to "identity" I think this is like a prism. Mr. Hamid is a consistent champion of particular values, which I think any person regardless of confession will find merit in.
You may try to internalize those values, especially when you chose ego over sense and denigrate a fellow Muslim by dismissing him as a "Indian", would you say that Mr. Hamid would agree with you when you do such a silly thing?
And what about Dr. Shaikh, shall we dismiss her because she is a English Muslim of Pakistani descent???
Please think, and what's the point of the bile, sense is sense and nonsense is non-sense, regardless of Muslim or martian, don't you agree?
.
I have no problem with Mr. Hamid - I like listening to him and I think what he has to say has merit. When it comes to "identity" I think this is like a prism. Mr. Hamid is a consistent champion of particular values, which I think any person regardless of confession will find merit in.
You may try to internalize those values, especially when you chose ego over sense and denigrate a fellow Muslim by dismissing him as a "Indian", would you say that Mr. Hamid would agree with you when you do such a silly thing?
And what about Dr. Shaikh, shall we dismiss her because she is a English Muslim of Pakistani descent???
Please think, and what's the point of the bile, sense is sense and nonsense is non-sense, regardless of Muslim or martian, don't you agree?
.
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Coolyo
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Incorrect! Quad was against secularism! He wanted an Islamic system as evident in the later part of his history! So you secularists should stop quoting only what you deemed fit!
Our Ideology is that of Allama Iqbal, a true Islamic nation! Quad supported that!
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