THE SHEET ANCHOR
MISS FATIMA JINNAH’S public utterances are always refreshing and invigorating. They bring something of her illustrious brother’s uncompromising intellectual honesty and courage of conviction to bear upon our public life, which, it must be frankly confessed, is in no way worthy of the great ideology in whose name this country was created. Indeed the way we have fumbled and bungled things has made that ideology the world`s laughing stock.
We brag of reviving the good old day of the resplendent stars like Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali – stars still shining on the firmament of history – but we tread along the path of Yezidism. There can be no apter name for the dirty scramble for power and pelf that has been the order of the day since Independence.
Commenting upon this state of things, Miss Fatima Jinnah had some bitter home truths to tell the Karachi Science College Students. Reminding them that “too long has your destiny been made the plaything of behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings,” she exhorted them to be on their guard against being misled, by subtle methods or “weaned away from the sheet-anchor of your ideology.”
This is a note of sound wisdom that can not be over-emphasised. We wish; however, the great lady had dwelt at some greater length on what exactly she had in her mind when she talked about the sheet-anchor of the Islamic ideology.To our mind that sheet-anchor is none other than the Brotherhood of Islam, which knows no geographical, linguistic, cast or colour barriers, and is above all petty sectional or section prejudices.
This is a truism on which there can be no two opinions, provided we honestly and objectively try to enter into the spirit of the message and mission of Islam. The Quran describes Brotherhood as Islam’s great gift to Muslims. Brotherhood is, indeed, the very word the Book uses. “You were enemies,” it reminds the Muslims of the day, “then God brought about fusion between your hearts and by His grace you became brothers.”
وَٱذْكُرُوا۟ نِعْمَتَ ٱللَّهِ عَلَيْكُمْ إِذْ كُنتُمْ أَعْدَآءً فَأَلَّفَ بَيْنَ قُلُوبِكُمْ فَأَصْبَحْتُم بِنِعْمَتِهِۦٓ إِخْوَٰنً
Al-Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:103
Throughout the centuries, however, except for the brief initial spell of the Khilafat-i-Rashida, Muslims have turned a blind eye towards this sheet-anchor of Islamic teachings, rending the House of Islam into warring and jarring camps on religious issues.
The new era of freedom which has dawned, it was to be expected, would begin with a clean slate, undoing the follies of the past, and re-writing this new page of Islamic history with the pure ink drawn from the pages of the Quran and the example of the Khilafat-i-Rashida. That hope has turned out to be an illusion. The sense of Islamic Brotherhood is yet nowhere to be seen on the mental horizon of Muslims, who are Sunnis and Shias or Punjabis, Bengalis and Pathans first, and Muslims afterwards.
Once more, let it be clearly realized by the intelligentsia whom history will hold responsible for throwing away another big opportunity to rehabilitate true Islamic values, we are treading the same dangerous path. The forces of provincialism and sectarianism are going much stronger than in pre-Independence days. Infact, with the dawn of independence, there has been a sudden flare-up in these forces. The reason is not far to seek. Political adventurers saw in fanning these un-Islamic passions the shortest cut to mount the “gaddi” of power which Independence brought within the people’s reach.
The Constitution rightly makes provision to curb these tendencies and promote the true Brotherly spirit which is the sheet-anchor of an Islamic Social structure. But that provision is a dead letter, and nothing is being done to implement it. Indeed sectarian and provincial passions are still being fanned in a section of Press and from certain platforms, under the very eyes of the administration which just sleeps over it.
The Qaid-e-Azam’s leadership which Miss Fatima Jinnah rightly held up as a model before the youth of country, was the only brief bright spot in the reconstruction of our society in the true light of Islam. Thereafter it has been all dark, all confusion, all chaos. The reason is the lose of grip on this sheet-anchor – the overall Brotherhood of Islam, over-reaching all smaller, sectional loyalties, however, legitimate.
The present writer had the opportunity of personal talk with the Qaid-e-Azam on this point. This was when the independence struggle was in full swing and Hindu machination were trying to thwart the Qaid’s drive to weld Muslims into a compact body by stirring up clannish loyalties like Jats and Non-Jats in the then Punjab. Exposing this strategy at a Students’ Federation meeting in Lahore, the Qaid described this revival of clannism as an evil of the period of “Jahiliya”, which Islam came to eradicate. Commenting upon this in these very columns, we pointedly called his attention to an equally great evil which was the negation of Islam, the undoing of all that Islam stood for. That, we urged, was the evil of sectarianism. And the Quaid (Mohammad Ali Jinnah), in a private interview we had with him, expressed thorough agreement with the view.
Sectionalism, whether in the name of race or religion, must go, if the true Islamic ideology is to have a chance to thrive and flourish in this country, supposed to be the laboratory of Islam. Where sectionalism comes in, Islam is not. Islam is a force to unite. If we take care of that sheet-anchor all the rest will take care of itself.
M.Y.K.
(THE LIGHT – October 16, 1957)
