PAKISTAN EMBASSIES

Mohammad Yaqub Khan
Editor: The Light

Ambassaders of Pakistan to be Missionaries of Islam

Islamic interests are, as a rule, none of their concern. To the personnel of these embassies, it is a mere accident that they happen to be born Muslims and represent countries which profess the religion of Islam. They take good care to keep this association with Islam well in the background, as if it is something to be ashamed of. With one noble exception, Saudi Arabia, life in these embassies has very little of Islam about it. In many cases, it is a standing reproach to the great and glorious faith and culture that Islam is Drinking, pork eating, mixed dancing, gambling is a common sight here as in any Western society. And would you believe it, they take pride in this modernist pose of theirs and would coax and cajole you, if at a common dinner table, you refuse a peg.

Pakistan embassies which will shortly be set up in the various countries of the East and the West must cry a halt to this state of things. These embassies must be the outposts of Islam in these lands. Besides looking after the interests of the state of Pakistan, it must form the explicit part and parcel of their function to act as interpreters of the Islamic way of life to these foreign lands.

Of all the Islamic states in the world, Pakistan is the only State which is founded on the basis of the religion and culture of Islam. The Turkish State is the State of the Turkish nation; the Arab States are states of various Arab nationalities; the Afghan State is based on the idea of Afghan nationhood. Not so Pakistan. It is the only State which owes its very conception and birth to the faith and culture of Islam, comprising peoples of diverse races, colours and languages. Bengalis, Panjabis, Sindhis, Balochis and Pathans, the various ethnic groups that form the component parts of the State of Pakistan, have nothing in common except this bond of the faith and culture of Islam. And it is this very vital bond, in fact the only bond, which the Quran recognises as valid and legitimate. Pakistan State will therefore, be not true to its very existence, should it go the way of the other Islamic countries in this respect. The embassies of Pakistan must not only reflect the Islamic way of life; they must be charged with the express function to act as mission-centres of the faith and culture of Islam.

It is an irony of fate that a Muslim should stand in need of a reminder like this. The Quran which is the sheet-anchor of the life of a Muslim in its totality, including his body-politic, makes it the first and foremost duty of every Muslim to carry the message of Islam to the whole of the world. With this, in fact, is bound up the very existence of Musalmans as a people. It is the ideology which a people stand for, the ideal, the mission, the vision of life that makes a people what it is and what it becomes. Islam is the highest of ideologies, the ideal par excellence with which is bound up the highest good of mankind at large. A Muslim therefore owes it to his own honourable existence as well as to man to preach this obvious truth to the Musalmans. The League High Command need no longer fight shy of the proposed transformation of Pakistan embassies into mission-centres of Islam. Times have changed. The logic of history is forcing this course on us. This is an age of ideological conflict. The communist who shuns religion as gaff and wormwood preaches and propagates his creed with right religious zeal, even fanaticism, wherever he goes. An example nearer at home should serve as a further object lesson in this respect. According to reports, emanating from Congress High Command, the Moscow embassy of the Indian union, which has been put in charge of Pandit Nehru’s gifted sister is to act not only as an embassy in the restricted sense of that term; it is also to function as a centre for the propagation of the Hindu culture.

Malik Firoz Khan Noon, Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din, Nawab Mohd. Ismail Khan and all other prospective ambassadors of Pakistan to foreign lands and members of the diplomatic corps must be definitely told that in addition to their diplomatic position they must look upon themselves as ambassadors of Islam in those countries, charged with the function to propagate the cardinal principles and teachings of Islam and to the best of their ability make their embassies a standing symbol of the message of Islam. We are not prepared to believe that these men of high education and wide culture are not qualified for the discharge of these duties. Every one of them can pick up the rudiments of Islam in a couple of months. And if they need a little more intensive insight into the spirit of Islam, a refresher’s course can be easily arranged for them with up to-date modern scholars of Islam as lecturers. Much of the ground can be covered by going through such books as English Translation of the Quran, A Manual of Hadith, The Teachings of Islam, The Religion of Humanity, Muhammad the Prophet, The Religion of Islam, The Golden Deeds of Islam – all publications of the Lahore Ahmadiya Anjuman Ishaat Islam. These and other books on Islam by standard writers like the late Alhaj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din and the late Syed Arnie Ali should form part of the equipment of every Pakistan embassy.

Dr. Sir Allama Iqbal

Mohammad Ali Jinnah

In a word Pakistan State must at the very outset introduce this much needed and long overdue reform in the working of embassies from Islamic countries. They must serve as the nerve-centre of the faith and culture of Islam in their respective countries, dispelling all false notions about Islam and disseminating the message in all its pristine charm and beauty. The late Allama Iqbal has rightly said: “It is one’s faith and culture that is worth living for and dying for.” We would go a step further and say: We live if our faith and culture lives; we die if our faith and culture dies.

The Qaid-i-Azam is no Governor General in the petty official sense of that term. He is a nation-builder, Ataturk Kamal founded a nation on the Turkish blood. Jinnah has founded a State on the foundations of Islam. That raises him to a much higher level and in the same proportion enhances the weight of his responsibilities. He must also shoulder the responsibility to advance the cause of. He can carve for himself a yet higher position by making himself the instrument of this Divine plan as to the supremacy of the faith of Islam over the whole of the earth. If Ashoka’s name lives today after a thousand years for his solicitude for the values of the spirit and people in India have done big memory the honour of adopting his emblem for the national flag of  India. Mr. Jinnah can make himself immortal by harnessing Pakistan to the greater glory of Islam as a faith and culture.

M.Y.K.

(The Light – 15 August 1947)