Asia

A Challenge for the Intelligentsia of Pakistan

It is undisputedly in the mindset. That a creature so large remains enslaved despite its immense power is due to psychology alone and nothing else. If the elephant so wished, with a gentle nudge it could break free from the weak rope binding its leg to the pole. But the elephant dare not – for it has been raised with this rope tied to its leg from the day it was born, and the only thought that has preserved in its memory is one of enslavement and thinking the rope cannot be broken since this was the case when the elephant was weak and vulnerable.

And such is the state throughout the Muslim Ummah today, especially Pakistan. With enormous wealth and having the seventh largest and nuclear armed army on earth, Pakistan still remains subjugated and humiliated at the hands of Western colonial powers via their purposely installed puppet agents – the cyclic crop of rulers Pakistan has witnessed over the last sixty years or so.

For several generations, Muslims in Pakistan have been born into poverty, despair and subjugation and have been indoctrinated with either accepting this status quo as their lot in life or being deliberately fed various revival methods that will not elevate them in the slightest no matter how hard they tried. The latest catastrophic floods to hit Pakistan, affecting 14 million people in the process, was a disaster in the waiting and is yet another episode in the long line of tragedies to afflict the people of Pakistan whilst the rulers carry on in their five-star, jet setting lifestyles and effectively oblivious of the pain and suffering the nation is constantly under.

It is considering this reality that one must take a large step back and look at the situation from a complete panoramic view, with the aim of addressing the problems at hand and identifying what is the correct way out of this. In doing so, this dilemma can be broken down into its component parts, namely – accurately describing where Pakistan has gone wrong, detailing the correct solution for the country and thirdly the manner in which this solution needs to be delivered.

Having been liberated from the physical clutches of colonialism over sixty years ago, nevertheless intellectually as a collective we still remain very much colonised. Almost everything concerning our daily subsistence as a society is drawn from the ideals espoused by the West. This includes everything from our finances to our ruling and from our culture to our ethics. Individually, many of us may be very much different to the Westerner, but as a society we have been boxed into accepting the West as our yardstick, which is the root cause of our grievances.

But such an approach is day by day being exposed as baseless and unjustified. The West today falls short miserably on all fronts as being the role model for the rest of the World to follow.

Indeed several hundred years ago the West was in no state to lead itself, let alone the Muslim Ummah which on almost all fronts was more advanced and sophisticated. But due to political realignment and the industrial revolution, the West was able to emerge out of these ‘dark ages’. Given the decline and stagnation across the Islamic world which occurred across the same period, the West suddenly found itself in the driving seat.

European nations, such as the UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium etc, then entered a new phase of rampant and widespread looting on a global scale, under the guise of spreading their new found secular values, with Christian overtones, to new people. Entire countries and continents were enslaved to these new modern day crusaders, something which continues to this day.

Britain in particular was a pioneer in perfecting the art of subduing a nation and extracting its wealth, resources and manpower leaving it in poverty and tatters. Perhaps the best example of this rampant, destructive and parasitic behaviour is the case with the Indian Subcontinent, which the British referred to as the ‘jewel in the crown’.

Before the British gained a foothold in the Subcontinent, the land under Mughal / Muslim rule was relatively quite prosperous and developed. In the words of a prominent British politician of the time, Lord Macaulay, whilst addressing the British Parliament in 1835, “I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar or is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation”.

During the following decades, as Britain extended its writ and control over the region, wealth was channelled out of the country on an unprecedented scale. In a landmark article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper in June 2009, detailing Britain’s economic decline over the last century or so, the journalist George Monibot articulated in detail how Imperial Britain looted vast amounts of material resources, such as wheat, cotton etc, and further left its colonised countries in ruins and the populations starving, particular with India.

The industrial revolution which gathered pace in countries such as Britain was in effect directly funded and resourced by the wealth and manpower from the colonies. As populations starved in nations such as India, the colonialists like Britain grew fatter and richer. Any infrastructure which the British did grace the subcontinent with, was purely there to enhance resource extraction efficiently and not inherently designed to benefit the nation. India’s own industrial capacity was shattered so that the country would become dependent on manufactured goods from the UK, even though commercially these goods were already uncompetitive in the UK itself.

Initially this wealth which poured into Britain remained tightly in the hands of the elite in the society whilst the masses remained in great poverty. London, the capital and considered the leading city of the world, was littered with tens of thousands of stray children, many of whom had to beg or steal to get by. Disease, lack of infrastructure for the common man and no government support to fall back on, meant life was extremely difficult and life expectancy was reduced to just 40 years.

But as Britain initiated an industrial drive throughout the country, on the back of its massive influx of pillaged wealth, thus allowing it to export newly created products globally, eventually wealth started to trickle down to the different classes of society. Further, confronted with an ideological threat from the then newly formed Soviet Union, Britain responded to the unease in its populations with gradually introducing social welfare reform, providing free health care in the form of the NHS (National Health Service), free education etc.

Even when the direct colonialism of countries was coming to an end around the mid-twentieth century after the end of the Second World War when the countries forming the Allied bloc were greatly weakened, Britain still managed to extract wealth from around the globe via its participation in the clever global banking system which has ensured the continuity of wealth extraction from the third world to the first world.

But today, this Western banking system too is falling apart having reached the limits of the wealth polarisation it has achieved globally and even within the societies of the West. After generating continuous wealth at the expense of the rest of the world by printing currency freely via a fiat currency system and a closed loop fractional reserve banking system, that siphons wealth into one direction, the elite in the West have now reached the limits of these exploitations they have been getting away with.

So in Britain today, as its illicit sources of revenue are gradually shrivelling away, living standards are terminally falling amongst the middle and working classes. In the emergency budget just announced by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on June 22nd this year, public services face huge cut backs cross all fronts, e.g. a massive £20 billion reduction for the NHS over the next five years and a 25% spending curtailment on education. But despite this deteriorating predicament, perks and privileges and their associated scandals continue amongst the ruling elite, probably best summed up in recent times with the recent ministers’ expenses scandals which shook the whole of British society.

But in modern times, where the European nations have left off, the United States of America has amply covered for as the contemporary colonial power. Over the last few decades, the US has sown a track record of mass dissent, destruction and death from Latin America all the way to the Far East. It’s military bases and naval battle groups span the globe and are concentrated in key regions of the World today such as the Persian Gulf; the shipping route for most of the world’s oil.

Behind a thin veil of self proclaimed, so called civilised norms and values, such as freedom and democracy, the US hides a very ugly and dark truth about its true nature and functioning. Perhaps one of the most numbing examples of America’s real murderous and brutal nature is the infamous School of Americas, today known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

In this facility, tucked away in Fort Benning, Georgia, the US has taught officers and agents from compliment regimes and insurgencies the dark arts of torture, ethnic cleansing and uprooting entire governments which have fallen out of favour with the US. From the time it was formed in 1946, the SOA / WHINSEC has indoctrinated over 60,000 Latin American and Caribbean basin military and police officers in these dark arts and has produced a long line of brutal dictators and ethnic cleansers such as Leopoldo Galtieri, Efraín Ríos Montt, Manuel Noriega, Hugo Banzer and Augusto Pinochet’s key officers. They have been ‘outstanding’ graduates who between them have killed tens of thousands in extra-judicial killings and political assassinations to crush any dissenting voices.

The UK Prime Minister David Cameroon in Bangalore recently alleged that Pakistan was composite in the export of Terror. But the US’s WHINSEC facility testifies to the fact that it is the West itself, and America in particular, who are the living examples of the very definition of terrorism, defined aptly in the Oxford English dictionary as ‘the unofficial use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims’.

And today the USA is busy in its largest ever troop and equipment movement since the Second World War. As stated by a top US general, Lieutenant General William Webster, earlier this year, tens of thousands of troops and approximately three million pieces of military equipment are being shifted from Iraq to the AfPak region by Autumn this year to fuel the US’s next theatre of war, destruction and mass murder. In Iraq, where the country’s oil supply is stated to overtake Saudi Arabia’s as the world’s largest source, the US and UK have firmly established the control of this modern day black gold for their multi-national oil companies. Now in the AfPak region, they seek to secure the oil trade routes in the Persian Gulf, and further seek to lay their hands on the vast resources in the central Asian states as well as the giant mineral resources in the region. For example, the New York Times reported recently that there is an estimated $1trillion worth of a vast array of minerals across Afghanistan, which is expected to make this downtrodden, third world country the mineral mining centre of the world.

Thus it is abundantly clear that the West, whether in the form of the European nations or the USA, do not at all present a political role model to follow, since their path to development has come exclusively on the back of global pillaging at the expense of other nations.

Economically they themselves are currently in turmoil, where several European countries such as Greece and Spain are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The US itself is in a state of a massive $1.4 trillion deficit as estimated by the US Congress last year, and the only response the US has is to introduce major cut-backs or ‘quantitive easing’ – a fancy term to simply print money. Economic privileges and living standards in these countries are fast dropping, where in the US for example 13.2% are now living below the poverty line as reported by the US Census Bureau.

On an international scale, the West’s economic model for the world driven by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, has brought nothing but misery to countless nations for the last seven decades since they were created. Indeed after engulfing nations in compound interest based debt, the IMF and World Bank then constantly dictate the internal economic policies of countries, forcing price hikes, rolling back of subsidies to the populations and the sale of valuable state assets to multinational companies at throw away prices, thus ensuring in the process that the nation spirals further into debt and poverty in the desperation to payback massive annual instalments.

Even on a social front, the West today is in an abysmal state. One just has to examine their lifestyles a little closely to see the darkness and despair that has taken root in the very core of Western societies. Whilst the rest of the world is made to see glamorous images of their culture in all its pomp and show, highlighting supposedly the very best that can be obtained in their liberal climate, behind all the glitter and glamour, there exists a very murky and rotten core.

Since the sixties, when this Cultural Revolution really took off in the West, transforming it from a conservative Christian valued society into an essentially liberal and atheistic one, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) have sky rocketed. Today, diseases such as AIDS, gonorrhoea, chlamydia etc are widespread amongst the youth, with for example one in every four US teens being afflicted by a STD.

Family structure in the West is in tatters, where illicit extra marital affairs are championed and encouraged. The result of such a promiscuous and individualistic society has been devastating amongst all generations of the society. Children are often brought up in single parent households, and are exposed to a drugs, sex and gang culture from a very early age. Indeed for a youth to simply make it to his or her late teens without being derailed by this hedonistic lifestyle is seen somewhat of a major achievement.

Perhaps the best yardstick for the dismal state of the society in the West are the very personalities which are championed abroad and presented like idols to much of the world, including too we in Pakistan who are given a regular staple news diet on channels such as ARY, GEO TV etc almost every evening of the regular movement of the likes of Madonna, Lady Gaga, etc.

But these figures, away from the media lense, are some of the furthest from being in a state of happiness and tranquillity with their position in life today – the very goals which the Western liberalistic lifestyle supposedly is designed to ensure. Almost every week a new damning report emerges about their degenerated lives; from the drunken, drug fuelled episodes of Amy Winehouse to the shocking, self-inflicted death of Heath Ledger – indeed these figures are the furthest from being role models for our youth today.

Ethically, the West’s championed human rights and moral standards have been laid bare in recent times and their double standards on some of the most important issues in the world today are glaringly visible for all to see.

Perhaps the most hypocritical is the Israel issue. Despite a long list of atrocities, state terrorism and international resolution violations against the Muslim populations in the area, Israel effectively remains completely free to commit almost any act it so chooses and at any time. Instead of reigning in this beast, the US and UK quietly endorse its actions via continuous political, economic and military support and allow Israel to continue in its actions unabated. According to the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Israel today receives about $3billion in military aid from the US every year, making it the leading, unmatched recipient of this in world.

Such behaviour stands in complete contrast to the view taken against any Muslim group or nation in the world today, where a mere suspicion is now enough to justify a full-fledged invasion or assault without constraints on the people using a full plethora of weaponry, as we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen etc. In complete contrast to loss of life or suffering in the West or in Israel, any fatalities or torture afflicted on Muslims today is essentially seen as mere statistics or collateral damage, which needs to be quickly covered up and ignored. The horrendous torture committed at Abu Ghraib by Americans and the ethnic cleansing of the Muslims in Gaza by Israel are now classic examples of recent times.

Thus this grand and ambitious Western experiment with secularist bred capitalism across the last three hundred years has engulfed every continent across the globe with its resultant exploitation, tyranny and misery. Clearly, for mankind to be given the right to lay down legislation and chose for himself the criterion for right and wrong, will ultimately work in favour of only those who write the law and at the expense of everyone else.

Whether this law making takes the shape of a democratic government or a usurping dictator, history has shown that the results are effectively the same, where only the capitalistic forces emerge as winners. Thus these ideas which have been tried and tested in the West, and exported to the developing world including Pakistan, have been exposed as flawed and will never result in bringing about a just and balanced society. The capitalistic ideology manifested in democracy, essentially being a failed mechanism for the Western world, thus stands no chance in rescuing countries such as Pakistan from the deep pit hole they are in, and in fact remains the root cause of Pakistan’s woes today.

Hence as long as this system exists in Pakistan and allows those ‘elected’ to legislate, we will always have the case where laws like the NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance) are passed that allows criminals and murderers to get away scot free with their massive crimes and further gives them the green light to continue to rule over the masses, plundering and abusing in the process. The vilified and despised Zardari, who had the undignified insult of having a shoe thrown at him at a recent political rally, is probably the best example of this situation.

Our alternative and indeed the only solution that we need to pursue, both at an individual and societal level, is to truly enact the meaning of what we have called ourselves – Muslims – i.e. those that have surrendered to the will of the Almighty. Such a desired framework, i.e. an Islamic system, does not exist anywhere in the world today including Pakistan, where sovereignty clearly belongs to man, despite the lip service paid to Islam in the Pakistani constitution.

Islam was never designed to be restricted to just individual ibadats or rituals as with other religions, but rather it was designed to be configured across society, for all the different aspects that arise, whether judicial, economical, social etc. And further each Islamic law was designed not to be implemented just on its own, but rather all the laws of Islam are there to interlock with one another and work in conjunction to manifest their true wisdom and benefit. Implementing an isolated Islamic law here and there will not produce any desired results, but rather will only leave Islam open to mockery and ridicule, since the law on its own will not solve the problem at hand.

Such an Islamic ruling system lasted all the way from when the Prophet Muhammad (saw) first established the Islamic state in the year 623 right up until relatively recent times when it was finally abolished in the year 1924. Despite various political ups and downs throughout the state’s history, nevertheless the only criterion which was the agreed basis of legislation in society was the shariah or Islamic law.

During this vast period, uniting disparate lands and races across several continents into one political block, the Islamic state raised living standards to unparalleled levels. The state was at the forefront of a lengthy period which witnessed countless numbers of major discoveries and inventions, on the back of which the industrial revolution in Europe lad its roots. The distribution and the continuous circulation of wealth, based upon the economic principles of Islam, was another major achievement of this society, through which poverty was effectively eradicated and the weak in the community looked after by a comprehensive social welfare system. For example, the Islamic state was the first to enact the concept of central medical treatment centres, i.e. hospitals. Such hospitals in the state were so effective in treating the ill and nursing them back to full health whilst meeting their other needs, that people use to used to fake their illnesses just to be looked after in the hospital and be given a sum of money upon leaving it for any missed earnings.

Thus during most of the period of the Islamic state, the Muslims witnessed a period of relative economic and political stability and prosperity. Circumstances only started to change for the worse when the Muslims began drifting away from the correct understanding of Islam and its application, and it was this weakness alone that led to the Western colonialist powers to be able to finally inflict fatal blows to the Muslim world leading to its political fragmentation and subsequent occupation which continues to this day.

However, despite being almost a century since the destruction of the Islamic state – the most catastrophic event to hit the Muslim Ummah since the death of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) – the intellectual and emotional pull to Islam remains as strong as ever, and is in fact only getting stronger day by day across the Islamic world.

This holds particularly true for Pakistan, a country where almost all are Muslim and where the resonate frequency of the masses is the rhythmic recitation of the Quran and the noble sayings of the final Prophet Muhammad (saw). Thus the only practical solution today for a country such as Pakistan is to submit the nation to the will of Allah (swt) by establishing the Islamic framework in totality and without postponement.

However, although almost all whom are surveyed in Pakistan would agree with this ideal, many nevertheless see various practical obstacles that stand in the way of such a change today. Such concerns range from issues relating to the individual to that of society. However, upon examination, each issue that is put forward is found to be flawed and should not be viewed as an obstacle to the immediate application of an Islamic system in Pakistan.

Perhaps one of the most common views that exists is the perception that our people are simply too corrupt or too wayward to be in the position to form the backbone of an Islamic society. This view is put forward considering the level of corruption in Pakistani society today, which currently stands as one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. But breaking down this assertion one finds that it is a very small group of about five hundred people or fifty odd families, who have held the reins of power in Pakistan since the country’s inception, that are primarily responsible for the vast corruption in the country from the outset. The rest of the nation has been unfairly written off in the same category.

One classic manifestation of this reality is the October earthquake that hit and devastated much of the northern areas of Pakistan in 2005. Following this large scale natural disaster, hundreds of thousands of people were left without sufficient food, clothing and shelter and faced some of the worse weather conditions in these icy cold mountainous areas. But the charitable response and eagerness to help of the nation was unprecedented. From every major city, truck loads of aid were being put together from contributions from all segments of society and were being sent on the long haul to the northern areas. Many people themselves from various strata of society made the arduous journey to the North to personally live amongst and assist the people in need there. A similar undertaking is now being witnessed in response to the devastating floods to hit the country.

This was in stark contrast to the government apparatus, who cruelly took the opportunity to only further line their pockets with more illicitly gained wealth during this traumatic moment for the nation. Government figures were shamefully involved in hijacking aid convoys to their own warehouses from where they were selling the stolen aid to the disaster stricken people. Further contracts to provide aid facilities were being misused to the benefit of kith and kin that took the opportunity to demand exuberant prices and thus make substantial profits. It was then no surprise that when the government announced a national emergency fund for people to donate too, that hardly anybody responded. Thus the bulk of the nation were desperate to help their fellow brethren in their hour of need, but rightly so had absolutely no faith in the government structure who instead of being there to serve the people, were only there to further exploit them.

What this clearly demonstrates is that our people have the capacity for great good, but do not have any official medium available to channel this through. Moreover, what ruling structure that does exist is only there to oppress them and constantly extract more and more wealth out of them with complete disregard to the physical needs of the people.

However, when isolated services have been well managed and funded in Pakistan, they have proven to work quite successfully and efficiently. Take the motorway system as a classic illustration. Anybody travelling from Lahore to Islamabad for example would know that the motorway traffic police would be highly skilful and professional in maintaining safety standards before one enters the motorway and whilst on it, by assuring strict adherence to health and safety rules pertaining to seatbelts, speed limits etc. This is in complete contrast to the regular police force, many of whom are sadly more focused on earning a bribe then maintaining law and order. The stark difference between the two outfits is simply because the former are well paid and looked after, whilst the latter are given meagre salaries on which they can barely survive on and are therefore pushed to such corrupt practices.

Another interesting example is the behaviour of Pakistanis in an overseas Pakistani Embassy, for example the one in London, whilst queuing up for visas, passports etc. Whilst in the queue, one will witness the same shenanigans of people trying to jump the queue, approaching the staff to extort a favour etc. The result – a chaotic, abusive and sometimes physically confrontational atmosphere. Even the non-Pakistanis queuing up, it is interesting to note, would quickly sink to the same behaviour to get their job done. But if the same Pakistanis were to be taken to the nearby bank or post office to queue up, then suddenly they would be behaving in perfect order and without the need of any irregularities.

What this demonstrates is that when an orderly environment exists to cater for the needs of people, including Pakistanis, they will remain obedient and law-abiding. However as soon as the system breaks down, then people resort to their own devices to get their needs met, including non-Pakistanis. An excellent example of this basic human behaviour is Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in the US in 2005. Following this catastrophe, the law and order in the city completely broke down, resulting in people’s behaviour descending to animalistic levels with looting, rape and murder completely getting out of control. Similarly, even when Western troops are positioned overseas in countries where their conduct is rarely monitored they will equally descend to despicable levels of human rights abuses like those witnessed in Iraq. However the Muslims in Pakistan, despite living in an environment which only essentially exploits them, have never still descended to such pathetic levels, which shows actually the great God-fearing character they posses instead of the lowly one they are accused of.

It is thus clearly evident that it is not our people who are naturally inclined to corruption nor do they possess some form of genetic malfunction, but rather what drives people in Pakistan to corruption is almost exclusively down to the fact that the system in place around them is only there to use and abuse them, but when it does cater for them appropriately the people do respond in kind as this disposition for a just law and order is well embedded in them.

The many Islamic groups in Pakistan today, with their varying opinions and schools of thought, gives rise to another concern due to the implication this has in unifying the Muslims of Pakistan together under one Islamic leadership. Although historically Pakistan has had issues due to the divergence of these many and in some cases sizeable groups, nevertheless in an Islamic set up of tomorrow this problem of potential sectarianism will be quickly cleared up and negated.

When an Islamic system is applied in the country which is in line with the people’s beliefs and genuinely goes about serving the needs of the people, i.e. by dramatically lowering the cost of living by freeing up the vast resources of Pakistan for the people, building infrastructure to meet the needs of the people and at the same time providing mass employment in all fields – the nation will without doubt rally around this and be a unified and cohesive force behind a strong central government. This is the true potential of a genuine Islamic state in Pakistan.

In such an environment, any ranting Mullah determined to fragment society along sectarian lines will only be ridiculed and marginalised as a heretic by the society around him. Moreover, Muslims in Pakistan demonstrate five times every day in Mosques up and down the country that they are very well capable of falling in line behind one authority, the Imam leading the Jamaat, and willing to leave aside their personal differences of opinion they have in prayer. This exact behaviour will be extrapolated to a state level, and people will be happy to abide by a central Islamic authority and adopt any Islamic opinion the leadership follows relating to societal issues, as long as the leadership implements the core of Islam and manages the people’s affairs correctly and effectively according to this.

Equally the relative lack of education amongst the masses of Pakistan cannot be considered to be a barrier in the sudden and radical reform of the society. Rather what is important is that we have an adequate number of people with sufficient capability to run the different apparatus of the state once it is placed in the hands of the right people and under the correct system. Pakistan today possesses such talented people in abundance in all the relevant fields and who are in the position to take on such an undertaking. The root cause for lack of education in Pakistan has always been the systematic and prolonged failure of government institutions in providing adequate educational facilities throughout the country and the solution will therefore be to mobilise the state’s resources correctly under the right leadership to build this infrastructure and deliver this service to the nation.

Moreover, by simply generating more engineers, scientists, doctors, PhDs etc in our current framework will lead the nation nowhere by itself. Indeed some of the most corrupt leaders in Pakistan have been some of the most highly educated, such as Benazir Bhutto who was educated at the world renowned Harvard and Oxford universities. Further, take the example of Egypt which has one of the highest number of PhDs in the world, but yet the country is in disarray with large parts of its population in poverty and the country still having the need to import foreign manufactured products as elementary as a matchbox. This proves clearly that educated people by themselves do not lead to reformation in society. What is required is for the appropriate political solution to be understood and applied, and then the resulting framework will be in the position to absorb, manage and benefit from the fruits of such human resources.

Another stumbling block which holds people back is the view that such a transformation cannot be brought about in a foreseeable timeframe, i.e. that it will take far too long to overhaul our current system to pave way for this new Islamic alternative.

But this view goes against the reality of how Pakistan, albeit any other country, actually functions. The reality is that change in governance can be brought about very drastically if two key things are in ones favour; public opinion and the support from the people who really wield the power behind the scenes.

Probably the best illustration of this reality is the example of General Musharraf seizing control in a bloodless coup in October 1999. The general was thousands of feet in the air when he was brought into power. In the run up to this, he had not spent millions on publicity campaigns to plaster his face everywhere nor had he fought in heated election campaigns. In fact when he assumed the post as head of the nation, where he lasted for almost a decade, he was relatively unknown amongst the masses in Pakistan.

What General Musharraf did have to his assistance was the strong feeling in the country against civilian rule which had built up across the 1990s as a result of the cyclic governance of the PML and PPP political parties. During this era, Pakistan was rated alongside Nigeria as the most corrupt country on earth, and the people in Pakistan were simply fed up of this predicament and were desperate for a change and could only see this in military rule; the only institution they felt had the professionalism to rescue the country from its abysmal predicament. The senior officer class of the army clearly sensed this political climate and when the opportunity arose they expelled Nawaz Sharif from power and in his place installed their COAS as the new leader for the country.

This clearly demonstrates that the shortest route in establishing a new government in Pakistan is to create the necessary public opinion for change and then urge the military powers that be to act upon this public demand and bring in a new leadership.

The country today again stands desperate for such a transformation having witnessed yet another totally corrupt and inept civilian government brought in by a democratic process. But this time they do not simply want another General to take over and rule by his own decree, effectively serving the same vested interests that civilian governments serve and continuing the corrupt and dismal state of the country. Instead the call now, and the only solution people are seeing and willing to support, is for the necessary military top brass to take the reins of power away from this current set up and hand it over to those who have sincerely demonstrated their ability to implement the Islamic system. This is exactly how an Islamic system can be brought into play in Pakistan with the minimum of fuss.

Thus the focus now is to amplify this desire for Islamic change which exists in many people into a fully fledged public sentiment across the country and to do so in the shortest time possible. In order to achieve this, it is not necessary to educate comprehensively every man, woman and child in Pakistan for this Islamic alternative. The masses have proven they are willing to stand for Islam, so instead the focus falls onto the key areas of the main cities of Pakistan.

It is this very class of society – the doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists, academics, lawyers, media, businessmen etc, or rather the intelligentsia of Pakistan – that need to gain an accurate insight into how an Islamic system will replace the defunct secular system and then go about resolving the problems in Pakistan today. Once done, it will just be a matter of time before the powers that be then feel obliged to act upon their responsibility and deliver this Islamic model to the people insha’Allah.