Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) on Tuesday vowed to thwart progressive forces' plan to turn Pakistan into a secular state and claimed that global imperialism was behind the Karachi unrest. Addressing a large gathering of JI's activists titled 'Umeed-e-Pakistan Conference' in Punjab Colony, the party's General Secretary Liaquat Baloch accused progressive intellectuals of mounting efforts to turn Pakistan into a secular state. "We will not allow this to happen."
He claimed that the country's financial hub had been deliberately plunged into chaos to fit the agenda of global imperialist forces. "We will not allow anyone to take Karachi hostage," he said. He said political leaders who were not interested in retaining Pakistani citizenship to stop claiming to worry about the nation's future. "Those who do not want to retain Pakistani citizenship appeared to be showing more concern about Pakistan and its future," he said. Expressing concern over the growing instability and worsening law and order in the country, he said that no one's life and property was safe from violence. He hoped that the conference will yield positive results, helping the party bring Pakistan out of chaos and despair. "After 65 years of independence, the nation has not yet been able to materialise Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah's dream. Pakistan is yet to emerge as an Islamic state on the world political map," said the General Secretary of JI.
Rejecting assertions regarding the Quaid-i-Azam's speech in which he is attributed to have promised to make a secular state, he said that the Quaid never made Pakistan to be a secular state. "It is a lie that the Quaid-e-Azam struggled for a separate secular country." Urging participants to forge unity and thwart the policies of the ruling elite, he said: During their five-year tenure, the rulers claimed running the country in the name of reconciliation, but the people were fed up of their politics and policies, he added. He said over the past five years, Pakistan's stability and its nuclear assets remained at stake and vulnerable to US aggression, adding that Washington was engaged in destabilising the country, creating widespread ethnic and sectarian polarisation.