Between the Rimsha Masih case and the recent rise in sectarian killings, Pakistan has been forced to confront its dark side in a more concerted fashion than ever before. What we see is scary. We are a nation increasingly at war with ourselves. And we’re losing.

Till date, the standard response of the liberal has been to respond with an invocation of Jinnah’s famous speech to the Constituent Assembly. You know, the one which includes the famous line about being free to go to your temples and your churches.

I have a question here. Is that all we have? One speech by one guy, 65 years ago? Is that the entirety of the foundation on which our commitment to freedom of religion rests? Because if that is the case, we are in bigger trouble than we know.

Let me go further. We need to believe in freedom of religion not because Jinnah said so but because it is the right thing to do. What Jinnah said six plus decades ago has nothing to do with anything.

Before everybody reacts in shock and horror, let me try to explain my heresy.

I yield to no person in my admiration for the Quaid. But Jinnah, above all others, would have been horrified by his deification. Jinnah was a lawyer, one of the greatest in a continent full of litigators. As many commentators have noted, Jinnah was famed for his principles and his integrity. But what made him great was his dedication to those principles. To respect those principles because he believed in them is to put the cart before the horse.

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US Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961) once famously noted that, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it”. This country can only survive as a free republic if our people accept in their hearts and minds that freedom of religion is a right they need to preserve. Treating them like children doesn’t help that cause.

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