The land of Pakistan never had a Dharmic history as the Indian Hindus would like to propagate. Since the earliest of times, majority of the people of this land were monotheists, Buddhists and later followed Islam.
This is all red herring. Because some of you are not satisfied with the two nation theory as it was propagated and resulted in the creation of your country (formerly West Pakistan, the smaller of the two wings).
The TNT was very cleat that your history starts with the invader MBQ who pludered, raped and perpetrated genocides in your region. Just like the following barbaric uncivilized invaders.
And yes, the parts of India that were more influenced by Buddhism (part of the Dharmic family) were more impacted by the barbaric invaders as they could not fight back due to their pacifist ideology.
Here is how I look at this thread and your arguments. It is not an argument between you and us, it is primarily you trying to come to grips with who you are. We have no need to play any role here, it is evolution of your own identity from a purely Islamic one to something beyond that. This is what you are struggling with and the outbursts here reflect that confusion and denial.
I somehow see the current thread as stage two in a three stage evolution of Pakistani thinking. This is a bit over simplified obviously.
Stage 1: Totally dissociate from the past. call it Jahiliyah. Don't even accept that you are native to the land. Call yourself Arab origin etc. Basically totally dissociate from your pre-conversion identity. Hate others who shared that identity with you.
Stage 2: Start to discover your pre-Islamic identity but violently deny that you share that with any non-Muslims. Try to claim that exclusively. This is still limited to a very small section of the population. Most folks are in stage 1.
Stage 3: Be totally comfortable with your Muslim identity as well as with your pre-Islamic history. No problem in accepting that the ancient history is a shared heritage and being able to take pride in it without necessarily having to first appropriate that exclusively. this stage has even lesser people than stage 2. But there are some who are here and many of the stage 2 people can gradually progress to this with a little more broadening of their horizons.
It is clear which stage you are at...
Also check my reply below.
You said we have identity crisis because we identify ourselves with Islam and Muslims. We had Pre-Islamic history just like any other Muslim country , culture, tribe and race etc. Arabs were also polytheists,pagans, Jews and Christians before converting into Islam and that's where Islam was started. Same could be said about Persians/turks/Iranians/Africans/Indonesian/Malaysians Muslims etc You would say they also have identity crisis because they don't show any pride in pagan or non Islamic beliefs/practices of their ancestors .
It is not about showing pride in your pre-Islamic past. It is about the compulsive need to deny it actively, denigrate it and trying to change your history by claiming to be descended from invaders like many Pakistanis do.
Let me share some quotes here.
The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed. Indeed, the presence of Muslim historians on their various campaigns has ensured that the memory of their deeds will live long after they were buried.
One irony, of course, is that contrary to their wishful thinking, the vast majority of Muslims in the subcontinent have more Hindu blood in their veins than there is Arab, Afghan, Turkish or Persian blood. Many of the invaders took Hindu wives and concubines. And many Hindus converted to Islam to further their military or civil service careers. As a result of this intermingling, despite proud boasts of pure bloodlines, most Pakistanis have many Hindu ancestors.
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
I have reproduced some extracts, try and read the full article.
You are suggesting that if someone gave up religious beliefs of their ancestors then they all would have this identity crisis which i don't agree with. We had Pre Islamic history irrespective of whether our ancestors were Hindus/Buddhist/monotheist/pagans/ Zoroastrian etc but whether we have pride in beliefs of those ancestors is different debate.
Another one about the identity issue that many Muslim converts need to deal with and that we see driving this thread.
“
Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of the converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil.”
You are free to deny it all. I couldn't care less as I don't think we have anything to do with Pakistan after partition.
Whatever we did or didn't share before partition, we share nothing with you now. It is not because we have anything against you, it is just that we don't share your worldview and want to have nothing to do with it.
If there is an address, an exact location for the rift tearing Pakistan apart, and possibly the world, it is a spot 17 miles (28 kilometers) west of Islamabad called the Margalla Pass. Here, at a limestone cliff in the middle of Pakistan, the mountainous west meets the Indus River Valley, and two ancient, and very different, civilizations collide. To the southeast, unfurled to the horizon, lie the fertile lowlands of the Indian subcontinent, realm of peasant farmers on steamy plots of land, bright with colors and the splash of serendipitous gods. To the west and north stretch the harsh, windswept mountains of Central Asia, land of herders and raiders on horseback, where man fears one God and takes no prisoners.
Pakistan - Photo Gallery - National Geographic Magazine
It is in trying to match the two incompatible civilizations across the Margalla pass that you see a lot of the confusion and identity crisis coming in.
You were saying all chamars look round faced pitch black . Now using the excuse that they are punjabis
.Thats what i have been saying . All punjabis would look the same no matter what caste they belong to . Similarly all biharis or tamils or gujaratis would look more or less the same regardless of the caste . That proves caste system is not racial.also these singer chamars are better looking than many bollywood actors and all lollywood actors .
I do not see any references to 9000 years of Pak here or the "Pak civilization" you were talking about. And please don't quote Pak scholar Ahsan, we need neutral sources here. BTW even the first line of your post is ridiculous. There are more than two principal geographic regions in the subcontinent. Indus valley, Ganga Valley and Himalayas in the north and the Deccan plateau in the south among others. And if you have li'l knowledge of history you will know that there are numerous states other than three you mentioned that ruled large parts of both Indus and Ganges valleys like Gupta empire, Pala empire, Delhi sultanates etc. Furthermore Robert D. Kaplan is not a historian. Looks like you are not being able to find historical sources. Historical sources please...
