Islam – Big Ideas

Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto

This is the story of an idea that first emerged 1400 years ago. It arose in, what was then, an unimportant part of the world. So captivating was this idea that it swept across countries, empires and continents. It inspired poets, scientists, inventors and explorers who took it’s message of tolerance and intellectual curiosity to the ends of the earth. This idea is also one of the world’s greatest religions; it is Islam.

Benazir Bhutto became the first female leader of an Islamic country when she was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988. Here she talks about her religion, her country and her beliefs.

I decided to go into politics after my father was executed on trumped up charges by a despot. My father, Zulfiker Ali Bhutto, was the first, democratically elected, President of Pakistan. He was a reformer not just as a politician but within our own family too.

My father was a progressive, tolerant Muslim leader who was inspired by his faith. The paradox is that he was hunted down and murdered by men who also claimed to be inspired by Islam. This divide between two very different approaches to my religion has torn Pakistan apart, and it hasn’t stopped there. This same conflict has spilled across the world with catastrophic consequences for us all.

The story of Islam starts in the 7th century in a trading centre in a relatively unimportant part of what is now Saudi Arabia; Mecca. At that time, every man and woman owed their allegiance to the tribe they were born into and women were held to be of so little value that they had no role to play in society. Mecca was also an important pagan centre where people would come from al over to worship a whole range of gods. It was a world of superstition where seers were claimed to mediate between gods and humans, but all that was about to change.

Almost 1400 years ago, a trader became disenchanted with this divided society and went into the hills to meditate. While he was meditating he had a revelation. The Archangel Gabriel appeared before him and told him to recite the words of God. This trader’s name was Mohammed Ibn Abdullah, peace be upon him, and for Muslims he was the last pf the prophets. The prophet began to spread his message, and the words revealed to him were written down in what would become The Koran. It is this that would be at the heart of the new religion; Islam.

Over the next 22 years, the holy prophet would transform Arabia. He taught that none of the pagan deities were real gods, instead there was just one god; Allah, and every man and woman was accountable to him. The prophet also preached equality.

In 140 years, the Islamic Empire had spread from Spain to Western China. One reason for it’s success was that it was the only religion to offer a practical guide to how to live your life. A moral code which encompassed everything from the personal, the political and the religious.

Muslim thinkers focused on the spiritual and the physical quest for knowledge. As a result, while Christian Europe languished in the dark ages, Arabs were making spectacular advances in maths, astronomy, the arts, physics and philosophy. For the next four centuries, the Islamic empire was held up as the model to which the rest of the world should aspire. But then something appalling would happen.

In 1099, Christian crusaders from Europe attacked Jerusalem. It would be the first of many clashes between the East and the West, between Islam and Christianity. It also brought to the fore divisions within the Muslim world. On the one hand were men like Saladin who believed, as the Koran says, that the ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr, but as with every other major religion there were also extremists who distorted Islam to justify violence and indiscriminate slaughter. Foremost among them was a group who terrorised the Islamic world in the 12th century. They believed in murder as a political weapon, often dispensing with their victims at Friday prayers in the Mosque. They were called The Assassins and tales of the atrocities they committed were legendary throughout the world.

Friday Prayers

To be killed on a mission, they believed, was not just an honour but would lead them to becoming martyrs. The Assassins are the spiritual ancestors of today’s Islamic terrorists, men who would respond to any perceived threat with violence. The breeding ground for many men like these would, unfortunately, be my own country; Pakistan.

On the 15th of August 1947 the Indian subcontinent gained it’s independence from Britain and would become two separate and distinct states. India with it’s Hindu majority and it’s predominantly Muslim neighbour Pakistan. My family’s story has been entwined with the story of my country from the very beginning.

President Bhutto

My father was a young student when Pakistan was partitioned. He was fired with the zeal of patriotism, he was a great nationalist and he wanted to help Pakistan. He became a politician, like my grandfather before him, and hoped to play a role in turning the newly independent Pakistan into a modern industrialised state. He knew it would be a struggle because the traditionalists were resistant to change.

In 1967, my father founded The Pakistan People’s Party, PPP, and became the first democratically elected president of our country three years later. He drew up Pakistan’s first constitution and promised to hold free elections every five years. He built schools, guaranteed a minimum wage and forbade discrimination against women and minorities.

The army which had never been a force for enlightened, progressive thinking was then under the command of General Zia ul-Haq who viewed my father’s policies with alarm and decided to do something about it. The army mounted a coup and overthrew President Bhutto. My father’s supporters were hunted down and tortured but the repression was not merely political. Zia was a religious extremist and had close links to Islamic organisations which shared his narrow, bigoted views. My father was sentenced to be hanged on the 4th of April 1979.

Little did anyone suspect how events, in time, would come to affect much more than my father, my family, or even my country. Islamic fundamentalists, allegedly supported by Pakistan, fanned out across the world and people everywhere would witness, for themselves, the depravity of these reactionaries in a cataclysm which has become a defining images of our age.

The Twin Towers

Throughout most of the 1980s, Pakistan had to endure the tyrannical regime of General Zia, a brutal military leader and religious extremist. At first the triumph of these extremists was merely a tragedy for Pakistan, it would soon become an international one. Zia and his regime were hoping to extend their influence beyond the borders and their chance came when the Soviet Union invaded neighbouring Afghanistan in 1979. Young men from all over the Muslim world took up arms against the Soviet enemy and Pakistan became a safe haven for those who provided financial and military support to the Mujahadeem. One man, in particular, was emerging as one of the leaders of the rebellion. His name, of course, was Osama Bin Laden and a new virulent strain of Islamic extremism was conceived.

Ironically, money from the West now flooded into my country to help counter the Soviet threat and soon the Mujahadeem were weighed down by the best weapons dollars could buy. Many of these young men were given military and religious training in extremist Madrassahs which had sprung up throughout Pakistan; schools which had become breeding grounds for terrorists and where, contrary to Islam, students were brainwashed against equal rights, against tolerance and against other religions.

I was in prison, in solitary confinement, and not in any position to speak out against Zia and his policies. After my release from prison I was forced into exile. I was determined to continue the fight against Zia and when he lifted martial law I was able to return to Pakistan in 1986.

There are moments in life which are not possible to describe. My return to Lahore was one of them. Hundreds of coloured balloons soared into the air as the airport gates opened. The sea of humanity lining the roads, jammed on balconies and roofs was more like an ocean. The black, green an red colours of the PPP seemed to be the only colours in Lahore that day.

Elections were called for the summer of 1988 and I was told that the army and religious party would never allow a woman to be elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. But, on Dec 2nd 1988 I became the first woman to have the government of a Muslim majority state; I was just 35. It was a bad time to become Prime Minister and it didn’t last, the extremists had conspired against me.

By the mid 1990s they’d achieved a notable success in Afghanistan. They’d driven the Soviets out and set up their own regime; The Taliban, who actively supported terrorism. The terrorists are driven by hatred and intolerance and they do this in the name of Islam. It grieves me that there is another victim of these terrorist outrages and that is the image of Islam itself.

Across the world, many non Muslims have come to assume that violent paramilitary and terrorist groups are the authentic voice of my religion and many in the West have come to fear Muslims amongst them. But our religion is not what these people preach. These men who use violence and hatred in the name of Islam are heretics and their actions contradict the teachings of the holy prophet.

Postscript: On December 27th 2007 Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in the city of Rawalpindi during the run-up to elections that many hoped would restore her as prime minister of Pakistan.

CREDITS: All of the above information was taken from the UK’s Channel Five series "Big Ideas"