Chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani said on Wednesday that Pakistan as a nation has to figure out whether terrorism and sectarian killings are part of religion or politics. Sherani while addressing the National Conference on Ideological Status of the Country said that the answer is clear that these killings are part of politics and not religion, let alone speak of Islam.
The conference was organized by the CII and it spoke at length over the ideologies of religion against the material based societies. The chairman, who is set to retire on December 16, said that today's Pakistan is not the country envisaged by Quaid-e-Azam, but this is the country set by Yahya Khan.
"This is not the 1947's Pakistan, but a country that emerged in 1971", the chairman added, "And not the country of 2-Nation theory but the outcome of One Unit." He added that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) came into being in 1949 to counter the East block led by Soviet Union, but now it maintains this superiority after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"The current war against terror is not our war but is the American-led conflict and conspiracies are being hatched against Pakistan to divide provinces and nationalities among each other", Sherani said. "Besides, we have to decide ourselves either we are the decision-makers or servants of the West", he added. Barrister Zafarullah Khan, Special Assistant to the PM, addressing the conference said that there is a need to maintain a balance between tradition and modernisation, adding that growth is not possible if this balance is not maintained.
He called upon the clerics present on the occasion that modern times demand certain provisions that were not present in the early days of Islam. "Therefore, provisions for adoption should be availed", he added. Scholars, clerics and academia spoke at the conference and highlighted the efforts made by various institutions to present Sharia complaint solutions in almost all the sectors without indulging in sectarian or religious-based conflicts.