Secular Muslim | MD Umair Khan

Secular Muslim: Jinnah, His Politics and Pakistan covers Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s political journey from start to finish. It also explores the origin of classical liberalism and moderate secularism whose salient features inspired his approach to politics. The writer pinpoints several distortions in ‘history books’ and debunks several myths surrounding Jinnah and the Pakistan Movement. One such myth is the so-called Two Nations Theory’. Contrary to the popular belief, right-wing Caste Hindus were the first to classify themselves as a separate nation in British Raj, and they wanted to create one state in the subcontinent free of non-Hindus. The book explains how Jinnah used their ideology against them later on and tried to achieve an inclusive state for all religious communities and atheists of the subcontinent, where oppressed classes, in general, could progress economically and emancipate their women. The author concludes that the present-day Islamic Republic of Pakistan is everything its founder stood against throughout his life. Therefore there is a need to establish a secular albeit Muslim-majority state that serves all its citizens equally, regardless of their religion, caste, creed, sect or gender.