Call for day of tolerance

When Pakistan was formed, its founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah laid the basis of a tolerant and pluralistic welfare State. In his first speech to the constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, Jinnah said:
“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the State”
Today, nearly 65 years later, we have drifted far from those founding principles. We live as a fractured society, with fault-lines of tribe, creed, ethnicity, class and religion threatening our very existence as a unified nation. Long buried under a collective state of denial, these ruptures violently came to the fore on January 4 last year, when the Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by his own bodyguard for daring to suggest that the blasphemy law was subject to abuse and should be reviewed.
Any society that abdicates its right to question, its freedom to discuss and debate, or to tolerate a divergent view, is a society determinedly on the path to self-destruction. Today, more than ever, there is a dire need for all Pakistanis to revisit our founding principles, and for the State to foster a spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness. In remembrance of the sacrifices laid down by Salmaan Taseer, Shehbaz Bhatti and others before them.