The Express Tribune:
1954 was the year of the Munir Report; and there haven’t been many like it since. The report raised some of the most profound moral questions splitting Pakistan at the seams, questions that haunt us today. Justice Munir found that, while the ulema were adamant as to who fell outside the pale of religion, they were far less clear as to who made it in.
“Who is a Musalman?” the judge asked; a question so simple, each had a different answer. When one aalim expressed his opinion, the judge asked whether he would change his mind if the subject “steals other people’s things, embezzles property entrusted to him, has an evil eye on his neighbour’s wife, and is guilty of the grossest ingratitude to his Benefactor?”
“Such a person,” came the answer, “if he has the belief already indicated, will be a Muslim despite all this.”
Pakistan, at its purest, was built over a sacred trust: the protection of minorities. That ideal has come crashing down — in Gujranwala and Gojra and Joseph Colony, again and again and again.