A man who spoke in English and lived a westernized life, did seek a modern Muslim Pakistan.  Why deny Pakistan's religious [not extremist] identity?
By TALHA MUJADDIDI
PKKH EXCLUSIVE
Friday, 18 September 2009.
Interview with Saleena Karim, author of a most important book on Quaid-e-Azam, “Secular Jinnah: Munir’s Big Hoax Exposed”.  Saleena Karim is also the founder and director of Jinnah Archive, world’s first comprehensive digital library on Quaid-e-Azam. This is a must read interview. 
Product Description
One  of the most famous books in Pakistan, the late Chief Justice Muhammad  Munir's From Jinnah to Zia (1979) has finally received the ultimate  rebuttal from a British-born Asian - using only one piece of evidence.  Saleena Karim tells the story of how a point of curiosity - based on  little more than an issue of grammar - led her to the startling  discovery that a quote used by Munir and attributed to Jinnah is in fact  a fake. Furthermore this quote has also been used by a number of  Pakistani professional writers and scholars, none of whom have thought  to check the original transcript of the interview Munir supposedly  quoted from.
Over  twenty-five years after the release of From Jinnah to Zia, the author  shows us how much damage the 'Munir quote' has done - not only in terms  of twisting the facts of history, but now in exposing the intellectual  dishonesty of Pakistani scholarship. Saleena Karim names those who have  quoted Munir, as well as discussing the other myths about the founder of  Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and sets the record straight.
“The  new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting  in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of  citizenship regardless of religion, caste or creed.” Mr. Munir claims  that these are the words of the Quaid from an interview to Reuters’ Doon  Campbell. In reality these words appear nowhere in that particular  interview, and in fact they appear nowhere at all (I spent years  checking)”
Q) Please tell us briefly about yourself, your education and background.
A)  I am a writer born and brought up in the UK. Almost as soon I learned  to read, I wanted to write. When I went to Loughborough University I  wanted to take a degree in publishing, but for reasons that are not  worth mentioning here, I ended up studying Human Biology and obtained a  BSc. I had no interest in pursuing a career in my subject area, so I  followed my instinct and began writing part-time. At first I was mostly  translating short articles mostly on Islam (Urdu-English), and also  started a work of fiction, but I became a full-time writer after I wrote  Secular Jinnah: Munir’s Big Hoax Exposed in 2005. As a child I was  brought up with religious values and always considered myself a  spiritual individual. As I grew older I began to question some of our  traditional religious teachings and began to study Quranic principles in  depth. I became very interested in Islamic philosophy and in  particular, ethics, and this study helped me in ways I cannot even begin  to describe.
Q) How did you get interested in the life of Quaid-e-Azam, and what inspired you?
A)  Until a few years ago I knew relatively little about the Quaid-i-Azam  but accepted he was a hero of Islamic history by default. My father got  me interested in his life originally, but I only learned about him in  detail after I began work on Secular Jinnah. I was inspired in the first  instance by Mr. Jinnah’s speeches, which I later referred to as a  first-hand resource on his thinking.
Q)  The readers want to know what is it that Justice Munir has said in his  book that is either wrong or controversial about Quaid-e-Azam?
A) In short, there is a statement that the late Chief Justice Munir quoted in his book From Jinnah to Zia. It reads:
“The  new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting  in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of  citizenship regardless of religion, caste or creed.” Mr. Munir claims  that these are the words of the Quaid from an interview to Reuters’ Doon  Campbell. In reality these words appear nowhere in that particular  interview, and in fact they appear nowhere at all (I spent years  checking). In the first edition of my book I explained that since 1979  (when Mr. Munir’s book was released) right up until the present no one  had spotted that the quote was a fake. Since then I have learned that  the quote has its origins not in 1979, but in the famous Munir Report of  1953. That’s the short story, but in my book I went into much more  detail about how this quote has became the favourite amongst even the  best-known commentators on Mr. Jinnah to try and undermine his stated  cause.
Q) What inspired you to write a rebuttal to Munir’s book?
A)  It may sound trivial to go after just one fake quote, but I was  inspired to write my rebuttal because of it. When I first encountered  the Munir quote in From Jinnah to Zia, I did for a short time wonder  whether the Quaid was a true secularist after all. I pursued the  original source of the Munir quote purely to find out the truth. But  this was before I obtained the original transcript of the interview. If  the Munir quote had turned out to be real, I would definitely have  accepted and argued that Mr. Jinnah was a secularist – but that would  still have had no bearing on my personal thoughts regarding the Pakistan  idea. In the beginning I intended to write just a short article  detailing the finding, but my research soon showed that Mr. Munir’s  quote (which I now call the ‘Munir quote’) has had an astonishing impact  on scholarship. Admittedly, I myself found it difficult to believe at  first, but I knew I had to write a book.
Q) Tell us about your book. How come it got such high praise from various sections of the readers’ community?
A)  Other than exposing the damage done by the Munir quote, my book argued  in favour of a ‘Muslim’ rather than a ‘secular’ Jinnah. I have put  quotes around these words because I’m aware that they tend to mean  different things to different people. The biggest problem in fact, is  the meaning and use of words like ‘secularism’, ‘Islam’, ‘sovereignty’,  ‘ideology’, etc. But insofar as there are two broad camps arguing over  Mr. Jinnah, my research convinced me to side with the much-misunderstood  ‘Muslim Jinnah’ camp. To my mind Quaid-i-Azam does not fit into the  ‘secular’ category, and I explained why in the first book. I also  discussed some of the myths surrounding Mr. Jinnah. The number of people  actively backing the ‘Muslim Jinnah’ argument is currently dwindling.  This I suspect is part of the reason that my book was well-received by  the readership, who probably felt that a new entry from this side was  long overdue.
Q) Did Quaid-e-Azam want to create a secular Pakistan or a Pakistan based on Islamic principles?
A)  This is the big question. Mr. Jinnah certainly did not tire of talking  about Islamic democracy and Islamic socialism. In my book I showed that  there are literally hundreds of references to Islamic terminology and  principles in Mr. Jinnah’s speeches. Additionally, whilst he stressed  the absolute equality of non-Muslim citizens in Pakistan, he never once  used the word ‘secular’ to describe the country. There is also some  evidence lying around which shows that there were non-Muslims who  properly understood Mr. Jinnah’s view of Islam, if you know where to  look. These facts should really speak for themselves. People arguing for  ‘secular Jinnah’ tend to get upset by this argument because they assume  that I, or whoever else, is trying to imply that the Quaid was  pro-theocracy. They think for instance that we support a class  distinction between religious minorities and majorities, or that we  advocate the idea of legislation either being written or authorised by  ulema. Yet, as every sensible Muslim and especially Pakistani Muslim  knows, a state truly guided by Islamic principles is as far removed from  theocracy as is an ideal secular state (I might add that there is not  one example of either of these states in existence today). The Quaid  himself made this point about theocracy versus Islam, which again I  showed in my book. The few people who do support such ideas – taken,  unfortunately, from fundamentalist literature, rather than the Quran –  usually belong to parties that historically were opposed to Partition  and Pakistan. So why give their views special attention, and why assume  that every ‘non-secularist’ agrees with them?
Q) How would you describe Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan? How far are we today as a nation from Quaid’s Pakistan?
A)  ‘Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan’ as such never had a chance to establish  itself. At any rate, it is not right to speak of ‘Quaid’s Pakistan’ when  Mr. Jinnah said that it was up to the people and the Constituent  Assembly to decide the form of their constitution. But we can safely say  that the main difference between Mr. Jinnah’s time and now is that back  then, a majority of people truly believed that they would rise out of  poverty, be given the chance to educate themselves and then make a  positive contribution to the international community, in the name of  Islam. Pakistan appeared on the map at a time when the Muslim world was  facing a political identity crisis, following the abolition of the  Caliphate in Turkey. The end of the Caliphate was necessary, but this  left the Muslim world in a void. Many people saw the creation of this  new Muslim country as a laboratory where Islam would be established  afresh, so to speak, taking account of contemporary political and  sociological conditions. For this reason Islam in Pakistan was described  as the ‘third way’, representing neither capitalism nor communism, but a  form of socialist democracy conforming to Islamic (and thus universal)  principles of liberty and justice. There was no question therefore, of  recreating an early form of Islamic state which may have had merits in  its time but could not be made to work in the twentieth century. Again,  exactly how this would work was left up to the people and the  Constituent Assembly. The Quaid’s sheer integrity and strength of  personality was enough to keep the early leaders of Pakistan together –  just. Within a few years of his death however, personal rivalries and a  lack of intellectual unity between these same politicians came out into  the open, marking the end of ‘Quaid’s Pakistan’ practically before it  had begun. Today we see nepotism, despotism, jobbery, and discrimination  running rampant in Pakistan – all qualities of the worst type of  secular state (not to mention the worst of a theocracy). To even begin  to undo all of this, will require first and foremost that the people  look within themselves and make a concerted demand that they want things  to change. Unity must come first.
Q) What do you think about the new book on Jinnah that Jaswant Singh has just written? Have you read that?
A)  I have not read the book, but I have seen the interview in which Mr.  Singh described its contents. From what he said there seems to be  nothing remarkable or new that hasn’t been said by someone else already.  There was an interesting article on this subject by Dr. Waheed Ahmad in  Pakistan’s News International recently. He suggests on the one hand  that Mr. Singh had courage for challenging the wisdom of certain  Congress leaders before Partition. On the other, he mentions that some  cynics might question the motives of the author, who is after all a  veteran member of a far-right political party. Whom does it suit to be  told that Mr. Jinnah never really wanted Partition? Is it not suggestive  of a wish to see the two countries reunited as one India? I admit to  being one of the cynics.
Q) What is the Jinnah Archive? Is it just a website or some project?
A)  The idea behind the Jinnah Archive is to make the speeches of the  Quaid-i-Azam easily available online. Most collections of speeches have  short print runs and they end up in a few university libraries in random  places across the globe. My own difficulty in obtaining collections of  speeches when researching Secular Jinnah gave me the idea to try and  create a searchable database on the Net. Thereafter I began tracking  down and purchasing all the printed collections that I could find, and  then I built the website. Some distinguished academics kindly helped by  giving permission to make full use of their collections. The whole  project is privately funded, is non-profit, and is entirely free to the  public. Unfortunately it has been neglected of late because I was  working almost completely on my own from the beginning, and other  unrelated projects have taken up my time in between. This is however,  something I will rectify in the very near future.
Q) How do you want to contribute to Jinnah’s Pakistan?
A)  That’s an interesting question. We all should utilise our individual  talents to the best of our ability. Mine is writing. I hope that my use  of the pen will at least get people to think about the Pakistan idea,  and not to give up on it.
Q) How would you describe Jinnah?
A)  How does anyone describe an awesome personality such as Mr. Jinnah? He  was evidently a man of unswerving integrity, high intelligence, pride,  conviction, strength, and with more than a smidgen of dry humour. A true  example of a Muslim leader, certainly one of the finest of the  twentieth century, if not the finest.
Q) When is the second edition of your book coming out?
A)  Soon, though I can’t promise a particular date. It’s close to  completion and has already been picked up by a publisher. Unlike the  first edition, this one should be made available in Pakistan as well as  internationally, in both Urdu and in English languages. It contains much  more on the story of Mr. Munir’s literary legacy, and in it I reveal  one or two other surprises as well. But I can say no more for now.
This interview is originally posted at PakistanKaKhudaHafiz.com