In an authentic Islamic State, Non-Muslims, subscribing to any religious ideology, enjoy absolute and dignified liberty, parity and fraternity in all matters pertaining to their personal and communal lives, subject to acceptance of the constitutional and political framework of Islam.

Lahore (pr): ‘Islam does not envision Non-Muslims as unreserved equivalents to Muslims in matters pertaining to statecraft in Muslim-majority states.’ This was stated by Ameer of Tanzeem-e-Islami, Hafiz Akif Saeed, at Qur’an Academy Lahore during the Friday Sermon. He said this while commenting on a recently reported statement attributed to Mr. Nawaz Sharif, addressed by the PML-N Chief while addressing a gathering of religious minorities. While condoning the absolute and dignified liberty, parity and fraternity enjoyed by Non-Muslims in all matters pertaining to their personal and communal lives, including the right to security of life and property, the Ameer called on Mr. Sharif to examine those injunctions of the Qu’ran and Sunnah that unequivocally provide Non-Muslim the fortified status of ‘protected citizens’ in an authentic Islamic State.

The Ameer lambasted Mr. Sharif’s alleged statement reported in some sections of the press whereby he had allegedly pronounced that the cultural values and traditions of Hindus and Muslims were indistinguishable. The Ameer expressed his shock at the malignant ignorance displayed by the two-time Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan at discounting the multitude of statements given by Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, who had asserted unambiguously that Hindus and Muslims were different in every connotation of the word ‘dissimilar’. Jinnah’s speeches focused explicitly on the distinct and incongruent lifestyles exhibited by the people of the two nations, Hindus and Muslims, based on divergent religious affiliations, the brunt of which was predominantly borne day-in and day-out by the Muslims living in pre-partition India. The Ameer remarked that nothing but a lapse of memory or, worse still, a sinister agenda explained why Mr. Sharif choose to overlook the well-documented facts, explicitly racist in nature and historically embodied by the actualities, such as the despicable division of ‘Muslim Drinking Water’ and ‘Hindu Drinking Water’, prevalent at every nook and corner of the pre-partition India.

He also noted that by offering such venomous statements, Mr. Sharif, the principal leader of one of the largest and most influential political parties in Pakistan, virtually annulled the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ and the ‘Two-Nation Theory’. Centering his argument on Mr. Sharif’s proposition, the Ameer questioned the wisdom of breaking up a territory into two separate homelands, witnessing one of the broadest and bloodiest incidents of mass immigration in modern history, had ideological and cultural divergence between the Hindu and Muslim populaces been but a figment of imagination. The Ameer further implied that only Allah (SWT) knows best the identities and motives of those, local, national and international, power-brokers whom Mr. Sharif was vigorously seeking to gratify, by offering these noxious statements, effectively handing the nation and its future to known foes, on a silver platter.

Finally, as the Election Day approaches, the Ameer invoked Allah (SWT) to bestow on the leaders of our rapidly failing nation divine guidance, faith and devotion to the cause of Islam and prayed for divine intervention to help them tread on the path of eternal salvation.