Dear Farzana

I would be very interested to know which Mullahs, Quaid capitulated to, as you mentioned in your comment to Mr. Jafri.

As far as the history tells us, the closest associates of Quaid were Allama Iqbal, Liaqat Ali Khan, Agha Khan, Sir Zafarulla , Abdul Rab Nishtar, Chaudhry Fazlul Haque, Nizamuddin, Soharwardy and many more politicians and intellectuals. Yes, during the Pakistan's movement, some religious leaders like Abul kalam Azad and Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani supported the Congress Party and went against the idea of Pakistan while very few sided with Muslim League, kike Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Othmani and Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi.

Muslim religious organisations of the sub-continent -- Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, Majlis-i- Ahrar- i-Islam and Jamat-i-Islami were politically very active during the struggle for Pakistan but all of them opposed tooth and nail the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims. The creation of Pakistan was the greatest defeat of the Indian Ulema.

The Muslim political leadership believed that the Ulema were not capable of giving a correct lead in politics to the Muslims because of their exclusively traditional education and complete ignorance of the complexities of modern life. It, therefore, pleaded that the Ulema should confine their sphere of activity to religion since they did not understand the nature of politics of the twentieth century.

A claim that Pakistan was created to fulfill the millenarian religious aspirations of Indian Muslims is therefore contradicted by the fact that the principal bearers of the Islamic religion in India were alienated from the Pakistan movement. Conversely, the English-educated leaders of the Pakistan movement, not least Jinnah himself, were committed to secular politics.

 Farzana, you also say that ; “Identifying oneself as a Muslim does automatically mean fidelity to the core beliefs of Islam”. However, you do not eloborate what are the core values of Islam and what is so wrong with these. Identification with a religion can be intellectual, territorial, emotional and of course religious. To me the core belief in Islam is humanity and not being a practicing Muslim or a non-practicing one, like me.  The dictates of Islam are not what Mullahs or American neo-cons tell us. Islam to me is a religion which allows an individual relationship with the higher powers but also focuses a lot on service to your fellow human being. Is it so wrong?

Farzana, I think, you need to study various faiths just for your own knowledge so that you can see what each religion says and what its followers do.

Kind regards