By: Shahzada Ahsan Ashraf
The greatest tragedy of Pakistan is not poverty or disaster, but injustice. Our rulers preach religion yet practice corruption. Our courts bend under pressure, and our citizens live without dignity or protection. Rituals are loud, but justice is silent.
Look at the West — the very societies we condemn as “immoral.” Their streets are safe, their courts work, their leaders are accountable, and their citizens trust the system.
They may indulge in what Islam forbids, yet they uphold what Islam commands at its core: justice, equality, and fairness. That is why their nations prosper while ours sinks deeper into chaos.
Despite our disdain for Western culture, our generations risk their lives to migrate there. We sell land, forge documents, endure humiliation — just to enter societies we loudly label as “immoral.” Why? Because deep inside, we know the truth: those societies, for all their sins, guarantee what our homeland has failed to provide — justice, opportunity, and security.
Ibn Taymiyyah’s words remain eternal: “Allah upholds a just state even if it is unbelieving, but He will not uphold an unjust state even if it is Muslim.”
The Qur’an too reminds us that change will not come until we change ourselves — not by multiplying rituals, but by reviving honesty, confronting hypocrisy, and building a system rooted in fairness.
Pakistan’s crisis is not that Islam has failed us, but that we have failed Islam. We reduced a faith of justice into a faith of empty rituals. Until we reclaim its true spirit — honesty in leadership, protection of rights, and resistance to oppression — we will remain trapped in decline.
The West has shown us a bitter truth: nations rise on justice, not on rituals. If we do not learn this lesson, history will not forgive us.
(The writer is a Former Chairman and Managing Director PIA, Former Federal Minister of industries and production)
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