From: cczaziz@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (Zahid Aziz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Munir Report/Maudoodi and Who is a Muslim
Date: 10 Apr 92 13:51:20 GMT
Organization: Cripps Computing Centre, University of Nottingham
Originator: cczaziz@unicorn

Arshad Hussian is quite correct about what Maudoodi said at the Munir
Court of Enquiry, and Syed Irfan Hyder is completely wrong. This is
clear from both the Munir Report itself and Munir's 1979 book `From
Jinnah to Zia' (both of which I possess).

To paraphrase, Maudoodi was asked by the court: since your concept of
an Islamic state, if implemented in Pakistan, would deprive Hindus
etc. of many fundamental rights, how would you react if in India the
Hindus established a state in accordance with their religious laws and
started treated Muslims as untouchables?

Maudoodi replied that he had NO objection if such a Hindu state was set up in
India (because they had a right to do that if the Muslims had the right to
establish an Islamic state in Pakistan).

After the weekend, I will give the exact quotations and references on this
particular point.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

For your interest I give you the following extracts from the Munir Report:

Referring to the ulama's call for Pakistan to be run as an official
`Islamic' state, and to their demands against Ahmadis, the Report says:

     ``The question, therefore, whether a person is or is not a Muslim
     will be of fundamental importance, and it was for this reason
     that we asked most of the leading ulama to give their definition
     of a Muslim, the point being that if the ulama of the various
     sects believed the Ahmadis to be kafirs, they must have been
     quite clear in their minds not only about the grounds of such
     belief but also about the definition of a Muslim because the
     claim that a certain person or community is not within the pale
     of Islam implies on the part of the claimant an exact conception
     of what a Muslim is. The result of this part of the inquiry,
     however, has been anything but satisfactory, and if considerable
     confusion exists in the minds of our ulama on such a simple
     matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more
     complicated matters will be. Below we reproduce the definition of
     a Muslim given by each alim in his own words.'' (p. 215)

There then follow in the Report the answers given by various ulama
(including Maudoodi) to the question, What is the definition of a
Muslim. At the end of the answers, the Report draws the following
conclusion:

     ``Keeping in view the several definitions given by the ulama,
     need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are
     agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as
     each learned divine has done and that definition differs from
     that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of
     Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the
     ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but
     kafirs according to the definition of every one else.'' (p. 218)

Then, referring to the fatwas of the ulama of various sects calling
other sects as kafir, and to the belief held by the ulama that, in an
Islamic state, a Muslim who becomes a kafir is subject to the death
penalty. The Report says:

     ``The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor
     Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any
     change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an
     Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the
     State is in the hands of the party which considers the other
     party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to
     judge of the consequences of this doctrine when it is remembered
     that no two ulama have agreed before us as to the definition of a
     Muslim. If the constituents of each of the definitions given by
     the ulama are given effect to, and subjected to the rule of
     `combination and permutation' and the form of charge in the
     Inquisition's sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as
     a model, the grounds on which a person may be indicted for
     apostasy will be too numerous to count.'' (p.\ 219)

You can now perhaps understand why this Report, produced in 1954 by a
court of enquiry appointed by the Government of the Punjab, is out of
circulation. This court of enquiry sat in public for months, and was
headed by two eminent judges (Munir and Kayani) who questioned all
parties involved in detail. The Pakistan assembly in 1974 sat in
secret, its proceedings cannot be published for 25 years (from 1974),
and its members were politicians (most of whom had themselves been
declared kafir by the ulama for belonging to the People's Party!)

In his later book `From Jinnah to Zia', (Vanguard Books Ltd., Lahore,
1980) Justice Munir comments as follows on the Pakistan constitutional
amendment of 1974:

     ``By an amendment of the Constitution he [Bhutto] declared
     Ahmadis to be a non-Muslim minority. All this was done with a
     political motive --- to gain support from or to be popular with
     the people.'' (p. xix)

     ``And we know that some twenty years later no less a person than
     Mr. Bhutto took up the baby in his lap and by a constitutional
     amendment declared the Ahmadis non-Muslims. But even he could not
     define a Muslim and discarded the simple definition which before
     the partition eminent Muslim Judges of different High Courts and
     the Privy Council had given.'' (p. 45)

     ``Near the end of his regime Mr. Bhutto to please the Muslims
     made some insignificant changes in the Constitution and the legal
     system for political ends. By a constitutional amendment he
     declared the Ahmadis to be non-Muslims without saying who was a
     Muslim  '' (p. 96)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan