The shared Muslim consciousness to achieve the ideals of equality, justice, freedom, and human fraternity are greatly importance for Pakistan’s relations with all Muslim countries. The citizens of Pakistan believe that opinion, and nothing but opinion, can effect great permanent changes, that we ought to be careful to keep this most potent force honest, wholesome, fearless, and independent. 

 

Pakistan aims to take on the great task of ushering in an era of renaissance in the Islamic world and invites all Muslim countries to partake in this lofty endeavor. The time has arrived to defeat maulvis, maulanas, ulemas and other obscurantist forces within the Muslim world that have produced an impotent fatalistic spirit, suppressed our women, restricted public discourse to a mere chanting of religious abracadabras and as a result, damaged the habits of intellectual self-respect in our societies.

​

Pakistan will shake off its dogmatic slumber, fully exercise her intellectual freedom, transition from mechanically repeating old values to creating new values and demonstrate to the world that Islamic regions are capable of engineering a remarkable evolution in thought, culture and values. This progressive evolution is of utmost importance because to tell us that we have reached the final stage of human progress, and turned over the last leaf in the volume of human improvements, fourteen-hundred years ago, is to mark the end of a nation's life. Therefore, we must resist and overcome the hold of conservative elements in our society. 

 

This will require a great deal of intellectual and practical effort from the citizens of Pakistan to conduct a remarkable social and cultural transformation from within. The strength to do so will be found in our history. Let us remember that it was Pakistan’s philosopher and national poet, Muhammad Iqbal, who articulated: “If the renaissance of Islam is a fact, and I believe it is a fact, we too one day, like the Turks, will have to re-evaluate our intellectual inheritance,” and “The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to reinterpret the foundational principles, in the light of their own experience and the altered conditions of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified. The teachings of the Qur’an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.”  

 

Let’s also remember Mr. Jinnah’s aspirations for an Islamic renaissance on the first Eid in a newly-born Pakistan “I wish on this auspicious day a very happy Eid to all Muslims wherever they may be throughout the world, an Eid that will usher in, I hope, a new era of prosperity and will mark the onward march of renaissance of Islamic culture and ideals.” 

 

It is now up to the citizens of Pakistan to intellectually destroy all the social and cultural errors present in our body-politic so that we can create conditions for a renaissance to occur. However, it is impossible to destroy them all in an instant, we should imitate a prudent architect who, when obliged to destroy a building, and knowing how its parts are united together, sets about its demolition in such a way as to prevent its fall from being dangerous. The regeneration, reconstruction and rejuvenation of our social culture will strengthen the vigor of our national conscience and democratize the access of intellectual light that will shine brightly in every corner of Pakistan.