WHEN DREAMS LEAD TO DISILLUSIONMENT
From the failed revolution of Field Marshal Ayub Khan
To the promise today of the emergence of New Pakistan
From the dashed expectations of over five decades.
To the surge of new hopes taking birth today.
This is my story.
My journey through the era of Ayub Khan to the times of Imran Khan.
Prologue
Youth is a folly; manhood a struggle; and old age a regret.
This is the famous line with which Tolstoy had begun his autobiography.
This may please not be regarded as any comparison with the great Russian writer whose War And Peace, and Cossacks are regarded as immortal classics. But I do have a chauvinistic pretense to being a shade superior to the great man.
He was not a Muslim. I am.
He did not belong to that special community of mankind whom God had chosen to raise the flag of His Last Message and to spread it all over the world to ensure that the Words ‘God is Great’ echoed from the North to the South and from the East to the West.
It is fallacious to argue that there are many religions which all should be regarded as religions of God— and hence respected. If that argument has to be granted sanctity, we should also be prepared to ‘believe’ and state that there are many Gods as well— each having sent His own message to the mankind. How can one God be so fickle and mentally unstable that he would send a different message to different people at different times? (May God forgive me for this unavoidable argument).
If there is no God but God, and He cannot be self-contradictive, He simply has to be the Sender of only One Message.
The Message that came to Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus and to Mohammad (PBUH) was the same. God had ordained it so that His Last Prophet to mankind would remove all ‘alterations’ ‘amendments’ and ‘additions’ that had been inducted in His Message.
We the Muslims therefore are, in my opinion the flag-bearers of Allah’s Message in its original and final form.
If I am a Muslim, I can’t think otherwise. Thinking otherwise will be defiance of Allah and rejection of the truthfulness of His Book.
If I defy Allah’s Word and still make pretenses to being a Muslim, I will be a proven hypocrite. Which I am not. I am a Muslim.
And these memoirs of mine are memoirs of a Muslim who might have sinned, might have committed follies, might have acted in a way not in accordance with the principles laid down in Allah’s Book—but who takes immense pride in his identity as a follower of Mohammad (PBUH) the last Prophet of Allah.
I thought of remembering Tolstoy’s line while taking up this task of recalling the events that have shaped my life ever since my age of comprehension began. I substantially agree with the first two parts of Tolstoy’s statement. But with the last I don’t.
I have no regrets. I have lived my life according to my own desires, my own choices, my own beliefs and my own commitments. Allah off course invisibly and unconsciously Guided me into the Direction I went. It was Allah who put this crazy thought into my mind that I wouldn’t need a Degree in my life to build a career for myself, to make my living and to fulfill the longings that had gone into the making of my heart and my soul.
(Read tomorrow)
