Regressive approach to Islamic teachings
Had Jinnah gone to Deoband for a fatwa before initiating the Pakistan Movement, this country would never have come into existence. All the leading lights among the Deobandi ulema supported united India under Congress. Later they opposed the Pakistan Movement tooth and nail. Some of them belonging to Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam, and even cast doubts about the Islamic credentials of the founding father. Jinnah who was not a cleric but a western educated parliamentarian stuck to his vision of Pakistan as a modern, progressive and democratic state where all citizens irrespective of their religion, creed, class or gender were to constitute one nation enjoying equal rights. The women leaders of Jinnah’s Muslim League addressed public meetings alongside their male counterparts, some discarding pardah in the process. After the creation of Pakistan, they continued to work for the empowerment of women through APWA. In 1965, all politicians including leading clerics agreed to accept Fatima Jinnah who wore no hijab as their presidential candidate.
More than six decades after the creation of Pakistan, the JUI-F chief has still to outgrow the primitive Deoband worldview which is as irrelevant today as it was before 1947. Pakistan’s constitution authorises none other than the parliament and provincial assemblies to make laws. The vast majority of the legislators are moderate Muslims who are better able to determine if a law is in line with the spirit of Islam than the narrow-minded madrassah-trained clerics. Pakistan’s constitution does not recognise any Guardian Council of ulema to certify if a law is in compatibility with Islam. The CII is no more than an advisory body whose opinion has no mandatory status.
When ulema like CII chief Shirani support child marriage, oppose Domestic Violence Bill, reject the legality of DNA test as primary evidence in rape cases and facilitate second marriage, they tarnish the image of Islam which provides women a high status. It is time that the PML-N under Nawaz Sharif stand firmly against the erroneous ideas of the antediluvian clerics as Jinnah did against the ideas of their Deobandi forebears.