There must be a hush in the extraterrestrial firmament as an unusual meteor is blazing with tremendous velocity towards his heavenly abode from his temporal one: Air Marshal Nur Khan, my mentor, a leader whose body and soul were forged in tempered steel.

A Pakistani soldier at Khemkaran, 1965

	Nur Khan receives Indian air chief marshal Arjan Singh during his visit to Peshawar in February 1966

	Nur Khan in an F-104

One day when I had to abort for air craft malfunction, my flight commander escorted him to the range. When he returned he had already been informed by the range officer how many hits he had scored on the target. As he stood on the wing of the Saber Jet he smiled at me and said, "Now you beat that BLOODY score, Haider." He had scored 100 % hits on the target and beaten my score, a record never broken by the very best anywhere to the best of my knowledge. That was my mentor, our Commander-in-Chief, a man who considered nothing impossible and proved it with his professional excellence, integrity and intrepidness, a legacy few air forces in the world can boast to have inherited.

Farewell, my chief. I know you hated it when I wrote in my book that you were a maverick, but you know that I meant you were incomparable and lightening-fast at the draw. You liked that. Pakistan's history would place you at the highest pedestal of military leadership where few have preceded you. May your heroic and noble soul rest in heavenly peace.

Air Commodore (Retired) Syed Sajad Haider is the author of the bestselling 'Flight of the Falcon' and its Urdu translation 'Shaheen ki Parwaz'

Dear Friends,

We need to mobilize if we want to see a tomorrow. The critical mass has reached for Pakistan's integrity and the matrix of time and action have passed. Now it is a dire emergency requiring emergency action. The govt. is planning an exit strategy, not for you and I but just their cabal. It is beyond a wakeup call. ‘The hyenas are coming around and down the mountain when they come’. Here is a piece I have just written as an angry response to Qazi Hussein Ahmed's hyperbole and contravention.

A Rejoinder to Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s ‘Islamisation and Islamic Ideology’

The article by Qazi Hussain Ahmed “Islamisation: Cure of all evils” has drawn much attention despite the existential peril the country faces. The content of his sermon is misleading diatribe, rather than any solutions to the present quagmire which lies at the door of MMA epoch in NWFP, no less than all other factors involved. I would say” No” Mr. Mr. Qazi”, Islamisation is not as old as independence; it came centuries ago. It had little to do with Quaid-e-Azam’s vision of Pakistan’s raison d’etre. The struggle for Pakistan by that man of steel will and sterling character Jinnah was for the oppressed Muslims of India so that they could live by the values ordained by Allah and practiced by his Prophet (PBUH), but emphatically not a to be a theocracy. Mullah and bigots had been stoutly excluded from any space or role except to lead prayers. It is indelible part of history that Mr. Maudoodi and his zealots in addition to the Ahrars and Khaksars had inextricably and virulently opposed the creation of Pakistan, calling it Na Pakistan and its great founder and father, the saintly Quaid-e-Azam, Kafir-e-Azam. So, none of the religious political cabal or the rabid congressite of Frontier and Baluchistan have any legitimate claim to the philosophy behind the creation of Pakistan. My father was a pioneer and a leading light of Quaid’s Muslim League in Baluchistan (The original one which was buried with the Quaid).  I had participated in the Pakistan movement as a 12 year old member of the Muslim Student Federation in Baluchistan, and remember well the role of India’s villainous religious bigots and Ghandi disciples in Peshawar and Quetta, who were under the Mahatma’s oxymoronic Khilafat movement.

The Quaid had incontrovertibly and comprehensively stipulated on 11^th August, 1947 as the President of the constituent assembly that Pakistan will not be a theocratic state but a secular one. He had unambiguously reiterated that to the Reuter’s Correspondent in Delhi in 1946, and in his address to the American and Australian people. So, touché sir, any other perception about Islamisation and ideology of Pakistan is a manufactured ruse.  Mr. Qazi should also know that Ideology is “Rigidly held dogma”, not rooted in Faith. Islam is a monotheist powerful Faith as enunciated and spread by the Prophet of Allah (PBUH) is at much higher levels than an ideology- Communism is an ideology, which runs in a rigid groove denying human mind, intellect and activity any flexibility. Islam provides its believers infinite capacity of thought and action; of acquiring knowledge to capture the elements of nature as is ordained by God. Islam is spirituality so powerful that neither the west with all its might nor the Hindu with all their demons can harm. But it is unsafe in the hands of Mullah and their Jahil (illiterate) disciples. They even beat the devil in malevolence.  The nation of 170 Million watches in terrified animation how the sanctity of Islam has been contorted by primordial cavemen. The process gathered impetus in Zia-ul-Haq’s pique epoch and imposed during MMA’s unpopular rule in the frontier, courtesy Gen. Musharraf. Their holistic defeat in the fairest elections should be a bitter reminder how the nation holistically rejected the MMA. Their defeat was owed to corruption, lack of development and intrinsically its ritual centric interpretation of religion, transcending the edict that “there is no compulsion in Islam” in rather than [Salihât] oriented code of conduct in the ephemeral existence.

 To put the record straight, the word ‘Islamic ideology’ or ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ was never uttered for 15 years after its creation. It was in 1962, during Ayub Khan’s era, that one sole Maulvi Abdul Bari, an Ayub Khan fan from Jamaat Islami, uttered the word Ideology of Pakistan and Islam being the Ideology. No one in the meeting had the guts to question when the word Islam was mentioned. Half a century later, similar lily livered and frail men and women have passed the controversial Adl bill for Swat from the dread of the vulgar threat of apostasy given by a half-literate Moulvi. In Pakistani the fault lines and fissures to the true spirit of Islamic faith run through the type certification of Wahabi and other dispensations which spawned seething hatred for each other. Ironically, the actual enduring, and now up close, danger to Islam always emanated from religious fundos and extremists that fit Allama Iqbal’s aphorism “Do Rakat ka Moulvi”. I, as millions of others, grew up in the thirties and saw Islam living and vibrant, at its best, in our homes as much as in the mosques and at work. Our parents and siblings lived by the ideals and values of Islam and were the proud followers of the greatest man of the last century - Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the sole creator of Pakistan.  He was a special man of God, who alone changed the history and geography of the world. The greatest hurdle challenging the idea and concept of Pakistan as conceived by Allama Iqbal and during Jinnah’s struggle for its fruition was not as much from Ghandhi and Nehru as from the fierce Maulana Maudoodi (J I), Attaullah Shah Bokhari (Ahrars) and the schoolmaster politician of negativity, Allama Mashraqi (The head of Khaksars movement) who aped the Nazi SS men with steel helmets and sharpened spades. He even made an ugly attempt on the life of founder of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam. All of them had obdurately opposed the creation of Pakistan tooth and nail. So whose ideology and which hue of Islamisation are we reading about?

No, there was no such thing as “Islamic Ideology as old a s independence”, Mr. Qazi is marketing today as the raison d’etre of Pakistan. His claim holds no water about “Islamisation” of strong believers, pious and practicing Muslim majority in what became Pakistan. It sounds so oxymoronic because Islamisation of Muslims was never uttered by any leader struggling with the great leader, the Quaid-Azam. What Maudoodi and his disciples wanted (and continue unabated) was to peddle Wahabi dispensation through threat and intimidation as he had declared that those not converting to his type certified version were Kafirs (Infidels). Up until then Islam was safe and living in our mind, heart and soul and expressed resolutely in our code of conduct. The Quaid had vociferously and unambiguously propounded about the values and traditions of Islam, not dogmatic theocratic interpretation by multitude sects (with 72 Sects in Islam at the time) calling each other Kafirs and culpable of apostasy and hence could be murdered. In 1947, after they discovered that Ghandi and Nehru had no space for them, these religious fundamentalists crawled in to what they had contemptuously referred to as Palidistan (land of the impure) and Na Pakistan. That was the cardinal reason why the Quaid wanted religion and the state as emphatically separate issues. We were true and united Muslims till the Quaid’s early demise. Soon thereafter Islam was exploited as a political weapon by the fundamentalists and this nation lost its stature and became a mob; to be led by mobsters.

That was when peaceful Muslim society came under threat from these imports and Pakistan was pushed in to the abyss of religious bigotry and the Unity of the nation delivered a blow which is today looking like Pakistan’s nemesis. Here I come to Mr. Qazi’s claim that the nation was screaming for Objectives Resolution. Nothing could be farther from truth! That deceptive resolution was to become Pakistan’s Achilles heel.

 Allegedly, Choudary Mohammad Ali, a rabid disciple of Maudoodi convinced Liaqat Ali Khan to introduce the divisive and controversial “Objectives Resolution”. It was not the demand of the masses at all as has been blatantly claimed. It was introduced as a deceptive alternative to giving the nation a constitution based on Jinnah’s profound vision of a parliamentary democracy.  It was done to capitalise on the religious emotions of the new nation to create a constituency for Liaqat Ali Khan, who had none at the time. Bigots caught the Islamic content of the resolution in the air, as Liaquat Ali was murdered. Elections were avoided by Liaquat Ali Khan just for the specific reason that he was uncertain to win in elections. Objectives Resolution was a dagger pushed deep in to Quaid-e-Azam’s dream of a liberal, egalitarian Pakistan where equality and justice for all Pakistanis transcending religion, faith, creed and colour was to be supreme and the bigoted Mullah had no place except the pulpit. The platitudes about the Quaid in Mr. Qazi’s article convince no one.

This is a long debate how Pakistan was steered away from becoming a progressive state on the basis of values of Islam and not the rituals which have little substance. We are paying a traumatic price for those blunders of history because our leaders did not learn from its lessons, nor did the nation learn to differentiate between a fakes, impostors, plunderers, bigots from real good men of God. How big a price we will finally pay is no more a guessing game even for scores of millions of super-ostriches inhabiting what was Jinnah’s Pakistan? The forebodings are like sirens screaming, “Wake-up Pakistanis”, and if you do not, then one day, God forbid, you will have no where on earth to go or even hide.  I hope intellectuals of upscale stature like Mr. Mehdi Hassan; Ayaz Amir (AA), Shireen Mazari and Anjum Niaz would enlighten the people on issues that are threatening Quaid’s Pakistan and shout out that it is better to die standing for a cause than to live a hundred years on your knees in supplication to hoards which render Halaku Khan a sissy.  AA, a plea to you; please spare us the (N) alternative, notwithstanding your party loyalty. Rise above this mediocre mumbo-jumbo cabal. Your profound articulation becomes soggy when you market and innocuously promote mediocrity between your lines, which is not at all convincing, let alone the solution.

Only Quaid’s vision of Pakistan can cure all evils, nothing else will. It is not an option any more and only unity, grit and courage by the nation and its defenders can save us. Inexorably, the pretenders of Pakistan’s destiny hunkered in and hiding in the white houses are not consumed by the threat to your and my security. Have no doubt they are right now busy finalising plan “Exit” followed by the track and destination, when the deluge descends down the Margalla hills. As for Mr. Qazi, the country’s integrity is in dire peril and not Islam. So please change tack and propound unity across all schisms. We have even crossed the critical mass and the deluge will be descending down the Margallas sooner than you can say Jack Robinson.

S Sajad Haider