“O mankind! Reverence your Guardian-Lord, who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, His mate, and from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women.” (Qur’an, 4:1)
“Mankind was one single nation.” (Holy Qur’an, 2:213)
“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).”(Holy Qur’an, 49:13)
“We are now all Pakistanis — not Baluchis, Pathans, Sindhis, Bengalis, Punjabis and so on — and as Pakistanis we must feet behave and act, and we should be proud to be known as Pakistanis and nothing else.” --Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, June 15th, 1948
Quaid-e- Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah awakened Muslims, united them and created a strong public and Islamic democratic leadership. As a result, after partition of India, most of the Muslims migrated to Pakistan at that time. Naturally, they were welcomed with great hospitality and brotherhood in the spirit of Islam and they became legal residents.
As example, I would like to describe my migration to Pakistan from Delhi in September, 1947, and becoming a Pakistani Resident; I was seven years old. We reached Mianwali, a city of Punjab, by airplane in the afternoon. At once we saw that the residents came to welcome us. They accommodated all of us in a big guest house with excellent hospitality and real love and brotherhood.
We saw that ladies started to cook food and prepare bread with their hands on hot iron sheets. Just after Maghrib prayer, a good dinner was served.
In addition to food, the people of Mianwali offered us abandoned houses and businesses of Hindus who had migrated to India. Some asked my father to take over an ice factory left by a Hindu. My parents had already made up their minds to reside in Karachi. So, we informed them of our intentions to go to Karachi, the capital of Pakistan at that time. In the morning, they served a very lavish breakfast for us with big glasses of milk. They saw us off courteously from the Mianwali train station and had armed guards accompany us for our safety to the next station.
When the train stopped at any stations of Punjab and Sindh, people welcomed us and offered free food and water. When we reached Karachi, my father’s cousin came to receive us at the station and we stayed at his residence for a few days till we made arrangements for our own home.
Pir Ilahi Bucksh, a Sindhi leader and big landlord who was in the first ministry too, donated a part of his agricultural land next to his residence for immigrant housing. A contractor built resident quarters, a mosque and a school. It was given the name Pir Illahi Bucksh Colony. My father booked a quarter in that colony and purchased it at the very low cost of Rs.2500 and Rs.1500 of Development charges. Other immigrants also lived there: Sindhis, Balochis, Aga Khanis, Punjabis, Pukhtoons, Bangalis, Hindus, Christians, and Parsis, among others. Everyone resided in the neighborhood with brotherhood; they were loving, co-operative, sincere, social, caring, and helpful to each other. Similar emotions of brotherhood and unity was sensed across Pakistan. If I could compare it, I would say that it created the same feelings as the Muslim citizens of Madina embraced the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his companions. They established mutual brotherly relations on the basis of sincere love and sacrifice, equality of race and birth, exchange of love and respect, propagation of truth, holiness and virtue, liking and adopting of the righteous ideal and its propagation. Allah has praised them in the Qur’an:
“And [also for] those who were settled in al-Madinah and [adopted] the faith before them. They love those who emigrated to them and find not any want in their breasts of what the emigrants were given but give [them] preference over themselves, even though they are in privation. And whoever is protected from the stinginess of his soul - it is those who will be the successful.” (Qur’an, 59:9)
Allah’s Prophet has said:
It is not permissible for a Muslim that he should frighten any Muslim. (Abu Daud)
No comments:
Post a Comment