Poet Iqbal’s Son Regrets 71 Atrocities by Pak Army

Former Chief Justice of Pakistan Dr Javid Iqbal, now visiting Bangladesh has blamed the political failure and lack of farsightedness of leadership of the then government for the atrocities in 1971 in East Pakistan, now independent Bangladesh.

“I am deeply sorry for the incident,” he said while talking to a group of journalists on Sept. 23rd, 2005.

Dr Javid arrived at Dhaka to attend a three-day regional seminar on Islam and peace, observed that the situation might be solved through tripartite discussions among Yahiya Khan, Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mojibur Rahman.

He said emergence of independent Bangladesh was a historic reality as the political situation of 1971 leading to he said the “civil war”. He termed Bangladesh’s nine-month armed struggle for liberation as a “struggle for freedom”.

“We still consider Bangladeshi people as our brother,” Javid Iqbal said.
The 82-year old Islamic thinker said Bangladesh could be a model state in the world since this is a moderate Muslim country and democracy is being practised here that was not in many other Muslim countries.
He said Bangladesh is a lone Muslim country in the world practicing democracy and even it is far ahead of Pakistan in this regard.
It may be mentioned that Poet Allama Iqbal, a Great Muslim philosopher of the subcontinent is being regarded as the dreamer of Pakistan as a moderate Muslim country.

Dr Javid emphasised the need for building strong media like BBC and Reuters to face propaganda of the western media against Muslims.
“Though Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine and Kashmir are struggling for their freedom the western media deceiving the world terming those as terrorism,” he alleged.

Referring to the disunity among the Arab countries he said though the Arabs have mammoth natural resources but they are divided and they have been kept divided.

The Arab countries should maintain unity of language to shun division of opinion that exist in certain number of issues, he said.
On Palestine issue, Javid Iqbal said there would be no reason to disturb the Israelis after establishment of the state of Palestine.

He emphasised on the need of the Muslims’ striving hard for changing their own fate for strengthening the OIC. Muslims can be united within the structure of the OIC.

“For survival, there is no second choice than grasping Islam,” he said adding, “We have to uphold Islamic values to survive in the world.”
The Islamic scholar said USA is getting preparation to resist emergence of Islam and China.

Replying to a question, he said, we support modernism but not westernization since the two are not identical.