Religion, Politics and Patriotism

“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” This was said by Samuel Johnson in 1775 and holds true even today.
I thought of this quotation and Samuel Johnson when I read a comment by one of friends posted a question on his page,” Can anyone who does not believe in Khatam e Nabuwat (belief in finality of prophet hood) or is against military or judiciary be patriotic?”
This type of emotionalism displayed on social media even by our mature educated class is disappointing and reflects an intellectual confusion or superficial religiosity, unshaken belief in one’s piety and a divine sanction to judge others. This has become a source of so many social conflicts ultimately ending in use of abusive, filthy language and bitterness of relations among friends and even relatives.
One thing must be clear that no one has the authority to judge other’s faith. This would be done only by the God on the day of judgment and not by us, the mortals here on Facebook/Google pages. No Muslim is against prophet and non-Muslims are obviously not expected to believe in this concept.
Moreover, religious and sectarian affiliations should not be equated with patriotism. There are millions of non-Muslims in our country and they are as loyal to Pakistan as we the Muslims claims to be. Stoking religious differences to spread hatreds and suspicions is a dangerous game to play. An attitude of ‘Holier than thou’ is the root cause religious and sectarian bigotry.
Similarly, no one is against, military or judiciary. They are our brothers/sisters. Every family has members working in military, judiciary and in fact in so many other civilian departments. Being critical of someone in a department should not be taken as a comment against the whole department or as a final proof of being anti-state and thus worthy of being lynched on social media. This type of argument is either too naïve or thrown with some ulterior motive.
Every section of society has good or bad people. Like politicians, some military or judiciary officers showed conduct less than ideal and at times behaved in a way unbecoming of their statuses. In fact, our history is replete with tragic blunders where political class, military or judiciary adopted policies which, though touted as a piece of ultimate wisdom at the time; finally proved to be wrong and went against the national interests playing havoc with very foundations of the country.
We should be aware of such language as this strategy to spread suspicions and hatred against others by throwing subtle hints and innuendoes about faith, patriotism or loyalty about a section of society is always done with some sinister motive and promote fissiparous trends with potential of breaking threads of our social fabric.
Many of our friends on social media are young and probably don’t know that the first blame of being an Indian agent and so an anti-state, was labelled on Fatima Jinnah (Sister of founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah) when she decided to contest election against the military dictator, General ® Ayub Khan (then president of Pakistan).
His son Captain ® Gauhar Ayub led a procession in Karachi where a bitch was dragged publicly in the procession and that bitch was labelled as traitor Fatima Jinnah.