Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan organised a 3-day national convention at Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, from 21 to 23 November. Representatives from as many as 30 countries participated in this convention, attended by fifty thousand women and a large number of youth.
Representatives of the minorities including Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, including ex-MNA Gopal Singh Chawla, attending the JIP Ijtema on 22 November, called on Amir Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, Sirajul Haq, and expressed their deep gratitude for the love and affection given to them at the Ijtema.
The JIP chief told the delegation that he was the first man who had moved a resolution in the Khyber P. assembly that the non-Muslims living in the country should be termed as the Pakistani community and not minorities. He said he was the first political leader to visit the house of the Christian couple burnt to death at Kot Radha Kishan, recently.
Sirajul Haq said that the small elite class ruling the country had no religion, because no religion – Islam, Hinduism, Christianity permitted corruption. These rulers were not human beings as they were sucking the blood of human beings. He said that such people should be in the Odyala jail and not in the corridors of power. He also lashed at the NAB for writing off the bank loans of Rs. one billion on the recovery of Rs. fifty million only, and said that the NAB did not have any authority for this.
The JIP chief said the non- Muslim Pakistanis were a big force and the JIP would gather this force soon. He said the JIP would hold meetings with the Pakistani community in Sindh, the Punjab, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan and announce a line of action for the solution of their problems.
Speaking for the Pakistani community, Younus Khan Advocate lauded the efforts of the JIP to eliminate distances between the believers of different religions.
Addressing the Youth Convention organised by different students bodies associated with the JIP, Sirajul Haq said the west was making every effort to deprive the Muslim youth from Islamic character. He said that one of the motives of the 9/11 was to change the educational syllabi in the Islamic counties. He added that the US had allocated huge funds in the Kerry-Lugar Bill for the media and changes in the educational syllabi but the Muslim youth foiled all US conspiracies.
RIGHTS OF WOMEN
Sirajul Haq said that the JIP wanted to build an Islamic Pakistan wherein the women enjoyed so enormous rights that the women in Britain and the USA envied them. He was addressing the participants of an international women conference held at the Minar-e-Pakistan, on the second day of the JIP Ijtema on 22 November. More than fifty thousand women along with their small children from all over the country attended the Ijtema. The topic of the women conference was the role of women in the changing world.
Sirajul Haq said the presence of such a large number of women at the Ijtema was a manifestation that the Pakistani women were not impartial in the war between right and wrong. These women stood with Islam in its war against hypocrisy. These women believed that Allah alone was Supreme and none other was supreme.
The JIP chief debunked the west propaganda that Islam denied the women rights and said the fact was otherwise. He said it was Islam that gave the women the right to inheritance and ownership of her property.
He said that fourteen centuries ago, Islam had established a paradise on the earth in the form of a household with the sacred relationships of husband and wife, mother and son, sister and brother, aunt and niece and so on. He said that the west had demolished all these sacred relationships, denied the women their genuine rights and even thrust upon her shoulder the responsibility of earning livelihood. In spite of all this, the west claimed to be the champion of women rights.
The JIP chief said that the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) was the greatest benefactor of humanity as also of women. The Prophet said that whoever had two daughters, and he brought them up with love and affection, would be with him in the paradise as two fingers of his hand. It was the Prophet who preached sanctity of the mother for her children and declared that the paradise for a son lay beneath his mother’s feet.
He said some people were of the view that the country could progress only if its womenfolk worked shoulder to shoulder with men as in the west. He said in fact, these people wanted that the fortress of the home which Islam had given us, be demolished as in the west. He said this was a Satanic idea. Satan who had got Adam and Eve expelled from paradise, now wanted to demolish this fortress of the home. However, he said that the Pakistani women would frustrate this conspiracy.
When Sirajul Haq asked the women present at the conference if they would take Hazrat Fatima as a model or a Hollywood woman, they shouted that their model was Fatima.
POWER OF YOUTH
Talking to a gathering of youths, JIP chief Sirajul Haq said some political actors and pundits had held Pakistan hostage, leaving no space for those who actually represented the poor and labour classes. The only way to get rid of such elements and their corruption was to mobilise the youth, he said.
“Everyone knows well that despite having such a huge number of youths we are still facing loadshedding, the core problem that has disturbed us all. Who is responsible for this? Everyone knows that the people responsible are the rulers, who are doing everything good for their families and not for the poor masses,” Mr Haq remarked.
If the youths voted for the JIP in the next elections, the party would not only end corruption but also the energy crisis forever, Mr Haq claimed.
He said every citizen was under a debt of about Rs90,000 because of corruption and bad governance by the rulers.
Addressing the convention on 22 November, Amir Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Syed Munawar Hasan clarified the concept of jihad, saying it had nothing to do with terrorism and militancy.
“Due to propaganda against Jihad, people are now even ashamed of using this word as Jihad has been declared as terrorism. We need to wage Jihad in the way of Almighty Allah along with democratic struggle to eliminate oppression and injustice,” he observed.
He also expressed desire for joining hands with Tablighi Jamaat for change in the society, saying both the religious parties were struggling for common good and formation of a just, Islamic society in Pakistan.
“JIP and Tablighi Jamaat have very commonalities and similarities in their beliefs and teachings and both are struggling for freeing people from the slavery of other human beings and bringing Islamic rule of law in the country,” he said.
PEOPLE’S AGENDA
Unfolding his “People’s Agenda” on the first day of the convention, Sirajul Haq said that the JIP, if came to power, would give unemployment allowance to the jobless youth, introduce a uniform system of free education up to Matriculation level, abolish the interest based banking system and grant full protection to the ‘minorities’.
Haq said that JIP alone could demolish the “idol of corruption, abolish VIP culture and introduce a strong system of accountability”.
The JIP chief, who had been finance minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa twice, presented himself for accountability. He said the JIP government would ensure workers share in the profits of industries and the share of farmers in the produce of land, grant old age social allowance to senior citizens.
All those earning below Rs 30,000 a month would be provided flour, sugar, tea, pulses and rice on subsidised rates.
He said the national language would be made the medium of education. The Islamic government would provide free treatment for patients of heart diseases, hepatitis, cancer and kidney.
Haq said that prayer leaders and callers of the mosques all over the country would be provided salaries from the public exchequer, and urged them to utilise their services for unity of the nation.
He demanded that the electoral system be completely overhauled before the next polls, adding that a system of proportionate representation be introduced in the country.
Condemning the murder of a Christian couple at Kot Radha Kishan in Punjab, he said such incidents could not take place in ‘true Islamic system’.
Amir Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Omari along with Secretary Tasneefi Academy Dr. Raziul Islam Nadvi also participated in the convention.