ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Monday said retrogressive thinking was a “danger for Pakistan” in reference to the recent measures taken by the Taliban government in Afghanistan regarding women.
“You see that two extremist regimes have cropped up on right and left of Pakistan. On one side there is Afghanistan where the Taliban have arrived. We want to fully help the Afghan people. “But saying that women can’t travel alone or go to schools and colleges — this kind of retrogressive thinking is a danger for Pakistan,” the information minister said, while addressing a ceremony in Islamabad.
He added that a similar Hindu extremist mindset was rising in India so the Pakistani state’s “biggest” and “most important” fight was against these “two extremist thoughts”.
“We have had failures and successes but till now Pakistan is that bright hope in this region which while remaining amid these extremes can emerge out from them.”
Fawad Chaudhry said that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the leaders of the Pakistan movement had foreseen that the leadership of India’s Hindu majority would be coopted by people who would “make life difficult for minorities”.
Pointing to violence committed against minorities in India, he contrasted the response to what happened in the aftermath of the Sialkot lynching on December 3.
“You saw the whole of Pakistan was united and condemned that incident. This is happening every day in India with Muslims and no one is bothered.”
He said the reason for making the nation-state of Pakistan was for a place where Muslims could have a majority where their rights would be preserved and they would not be hostage to a majority. Fawad Chaudhry stressed that Pakistan’s purpose was “preserving minority rights and safeguarding them”.
“Our real challenge is how to reclaim Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan.” The information minister said that confusion about what the founder wanted for Pakistan was present in the state itself. Fawad Chaudhry said Jinnah had defined his vision in his three addresses to the Constituent Assembly, armed forces and the bureaucracy.
“This confusion should be completely dispelled that the Quaid-i-Azam wanted a religious state. He never saw Pakistan as a religious country and all these people who today on his name are fooling the people that the meaning of an Islamic country was a religious country — this was entirely not the case.”
He said his lifestyle was at odds with people who used his name today and wanted to make “Pakistan a backward country”.
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