Session 14: Taking freedom away!

Heywood argues that freedom and liberty of an individual is given more importance than equality or justice or authority. It is the essence of a successful society that each person has the freedom to practice their free will. We have seen many wars in history which have been fought in the name of freedom, sometimes freedom from racial differences and sometimes for religious freedom.
One of the major reasons behind formation of Pakistan was to give Muslim community and all the minorities within society, freedom to practice their religion without any fear. Many pages in history have talked about the grandeur of the freedom movement of 1947, many soldiers have sacrificed their lives and for what? Did they gave away all their possessions and their lives to make a Pakistan, where a Christian cannot go to Church to perform his/her prayers or where a Hindu cannot perform his puja without fear of being attacked or an Ahmedi who cannot claim to his religion with fear of being killed on spot? They did not create the Pakistan which we live in today, we have forgotten about the right of an individual to practice his/her religion, the freedom of an individual to express his/her beliefs and most of all we have become so intolerant towards other’s ideas that we have closed our minds and we do not welcome any other perspectives. This is not the Pakistan we wanted, this is not the Pakistan we dreamed and this will not be the Pakistan our next generations would grow up in. We need to condemn the terrorist attacks on our nation and we need to change what have repeatedly happened over the last decades in order to relive the real dream of Pakistan.