THE WORD OF GOD

freedom. It imagined that the source of all goodness for Muslims was a separate ‘Muslim land’. They also thought that the source of all evil was for Muslims to live in a ‘non-Muslim land’, where they would be in a minority. Based on this ideology, they launched a fiery movement— the Pakistan movement—demanding the Partition of India. After much furore and agitation, which entailed enormous sacrifices, finally this separate ‘Muslim land’ came into being, in August 1947, being carved out of a portion of the Indian subcontinent. This ‘Muslim homeland’ should have lived up to the hopes of the Muslims and turned their dreams into reality. The ‘Muslim homeland’ should have provided Muslims an environment that, from the religious point of view, should have been fully favourable for them. Their life and property should have been fully safe there. In Pakistan, they should have been able to enjoy all sorts of opportunities to progress. In that country, Muslims could have, according to their thinking, revived their past glory. That country could have truly become a ‘pure land’, a cradle of peace, prosperity and happiness. But the reality proved to be just the opposite. This ‘Muslim homeland’ became an undesirable country for Muslims themselves, so much that many Muslims began fleeing from it and settling in ‘non-Muslim lands’ instead. I have asked several Pakistanis who have settled in America why they left their country and came to the West. Almost all of them had just two answers to give: some said that in Pakistan they did not have many opportunities to progress, while others said that in Pakistan they did not feel secure. The Muslims of the Indian subcontinent had demanded, through their leaders, a separate country, in accordance, so they said, with their religion. They insisted that they could not live in a non-Muslim country in accordance with their religion. But when their Muslim homeland that they demanded came into being, the very same thing happened that took place in the ‘free land’ of Gandhi and Nehru! That is to say, hundreds of thousands of people left this ‘Muslim land’ and headed to the ‘non-Muslim lands’ of the USA and Europe! And now they have become citizens of those countries, where they lead a happy life, so much that their representatives very proudly declare in public, ‘I am proud to be an American Muslim!’ This experience shows that this division that was made prior to 1947, between ‘Muslim land’ and ‘non-Muslim land’ was not appropriate or