Hope and Ideals
Jinnah's Ideals
“I thank Your Excellency for your friendly assurances of sympathy in dealing with our many problems. I also deeply appreciate your confidence that our traditions and our past will help us fulfill the hope and ideals of our people.”
- Mr. Jinnah / Quaid-e-Azam
- Speech: Pakistan and USA / Equal Partners in Defence of Democracy
- Context: Speech with the Ambassador of the United States of America on 26th February 1948
Deeper reflections
America envisaged by Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues differed, in their minds, from the European empires, which they considered based on the subjugation and oppression of foreign peoples. The empire imagined by Mr. Jefferson was in essence North American and conceived as the extension of liberty.
Liberty, to the Muslim mind, is the the most powerful positive condition of attaining the highest kind of human excellence. People of Pakistan are free to choose their faith as Mr. Jinnah expressed “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”
In Islam there is absence of any kind of priesthood or any ecclesiastical organization, because there is no intermediary between Muslim and Allah, the responsibility of personal salvation rests upon the individual alone. Personal conscience and rational thinking are effective moral guides and in this, lies the essence of personal freedom and individual liberty in Islam. Freedom is the enabler of the richest expansion of human faculty, and within the Muslim world there are untried possibilities of human excellence that need ampler freedom to demonstrate tremendous progress.
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The narrower expediencies of ordinary politics ought to be outweighed by one of those supreme and indefeasible expediencies which are classified as moral. In the pursuit of moral progress, we seek inspiration from all nations of the world, especially America, and are also guided by our own valiant tradition, splendid history, great civilization and the unwavering hope and lofty ideals of our people.
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