Jamaat Islami's Welcome Statement

The Leader of the PakistaniJamaat Islami, Syed [Munawar Hasan has recently commented](http://www.munawarhasan.com/news/news_detail/MTUw) that the receipt of taxes from the rich should be a priority. We welcome this step.

A few days ago, [discussing the evil of Takfeer](http://www.qern.org/en/blog/akber/takfeer-saturated-business-model), Akber Choudhry expressed the desire that we should at least see a religious scholar try to take on a rich but corrupt person. That desire has not been fulfilled yet, but at least the hope is there that this would happen in our lifetime.

Whether a government is run by Muslims or Hindus or Christians, if it provides the following three things, it is acquitting itself of the dominion that it has been entrusted with:

- Justice - Basic welfare for the weak and oppressed - Protection from foreign powers

In today’s world, the protection from foreign powers is both military and economic.

For the last 30 years, Pakistani religious political parties have confused power with the seat of power. In other words, if the person on the seat of power were changed, everything would be alright. The reality of human civilisation is that it is with the morals of a nation and the underlying philosophy that underpins the building of a nation.

If lawlessness and corruption eat away at the walls of the nation like termites, it is unlikely that closing a few cinema-houses is going to have any effect on the moral health of the nation. When human values do not exist, we will not even get the chance to enforce religious values as some other power would be be our overlords and finer religious points would be moot.

Islamic values are necessary, but first we have to strengthen basic human values — justice, basic welfare and protection from foreign influence — and we are lucky that Islam is the standard-bearer of all three.