Who's side are the Muhajirs on?

As explained in this article the so-called "Muhajirs" of Pakistan are not a single ethnic group as commonly perceived.
They come from all over the subcontinent. But as the linked article also mentions, they have a lot in common with one another when it comes to main language of communication, political and religious values.

This is not to say they all share the same views or values, but a significant amount of them or even perhaps majority of them seem to be stuck and obsessed in various ideologies.
Out of all the various peoples living in Pakistan, I find the Muhajirs from whatever ethnic background they may be to generally be the most religious extremists. Religion seems to be a strong obsession amongst them. I find them to be amongst the most intolerant Muslims in general.

They are amongst the strongest promoters of Pan-Islamism. Always calling for the Islamic Ummah and brotherhood with Muslims in the Middle East many of whom are too arrogant to ever get close to Pakistanis or Muslims outside of their region.
The Muhajirs make the problems of the Middle East look greater than the problems of Pakistan. They frequently promote Arab culture and tradition in the name of Islam.

Many Muhajirs feel a close Islamic brotherhood towards Turks, Arabs, Persians etc. But when it comes to Muslims like Bangladeshis or African Muslims, they suddenly change their attitude as they look down upon these peoples. Muhajirs I also find to be amongst the most racist people in Pakistan.

At the same time there's another set of them who promote Pan-'South Asianism' or the belief that the people of the subcontinent are "the same" and should live together as one large state. Many have a love for India and Indian people. They frequently promote anti-Pakistani propaganda manufactured by the Indian media.

They frequently promote the positive things of India while highlighting every negative thing on Pakistan they can find.
There's also a small minority of them who promote Western-style liberalism sending their off-springs to Western schools and countries for education, always promoting Westernization such as the overuse of Western languages. They love to learn English, French, Spanish, Latin and take huge pride in it but few are willing to master themselves in the languages of Pakistan, including Urdu/Undri.

It seems that the Muhajirs have a love for everything outside of Pakistan. This is not to say they are all like that. In fact many have been significant contributors to Pakistan. I believe Dr Quadeer Khan is a Muhajir, though I read somewhere is a Muhajir of Pakhtun descent.

Pervez Musharraf is also a Muhajir and he did more for Pakistan than Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both whom were native to Pakistan but amongst the most corrupt leaders. Musharraf stood up to religious extremism, gave more seats in parliament to women and minorities.
Under Musharraf the Pakistani rupee and economy gained significant forward steps.

Other Muhajirs I've met are relatives I have who run large factories which provides many jobs for people in the middle class and contributes to Pakistan's economy.
Another relative I know of who is Muhajir but has learned Sindhi language and culture. His love for Pakistan cannot be questioned.

Indeed there are many, many Muhajirs who take upon the native cultures of their provinces and do their best to assimilate. But amongst the powerful elite and middle classes their confusion towards Pakistan is still unresolved.

There are those amongst them who consider themselves pro-Pakistan. But pro-Pakistan in a very different sense of their own. They favor Urdu being the only language to be used and taught in Pakistan in the name of "unity."
They favor Arabic cultural invasion of Pakistan in the name of Islam (Shia Muhajirs seem to be more favorable to Persians and Iran). They promote Islam as the absolute state religion.

This has only caused rebellion and resentment amongst the indigenous peoples as it did in East Pakistan before it became Bangladesh.

The Muhajirs also frequently talk of religious persecution and claim they were forced to move to Pakistan. They promote this story amongst their newer generation. At the same time they claim they came for opportunities, but never got any. Many of them despite claiming persecution denounce the so-called "partition."
Another popular claim is they came for the sake of Pakistan and Islam. These claims seem to contradict each other and regardless of which claim they stick to, many regret coming to Pakistan at all.

Even their political parties such as the MQM which was known as the Muhajir Quami Movement until recently when they changed it to Muhteda Quami Movement promote various agendas.
At one point they are against Sindhis. Then they join the Sindhis, adopt Sindhi clothing claiming to be the new Sindhis and fight for a better Sindh.

Now over sixty years on is it not time for these people ask themselves what they stand for and which country's side they are on? What exactly do some of them hope to achieve by terrorizing and battling Pakistan's local peoples? If Pakistan means nothing to them, shouldn't they at least make an effort to try and get back to the country they consider home?

For those Muhajirs who regret coming to Pakistan and constantly see all their problems in Pakistan, they certainly must immigrate back to India or wherever they came from for Pakistan would be a much better country without their racism, religious fundamentalism and love for the enemies of the country.

Do they really believe they will feel welcomed by Pakistan's local populations if they keep this up? If they feel sad that they had to leave their country for Pakistan it does not mean Pakistan is suddenly going to join India to satisfy their sorrow. Pakistan historically was never a part of India and it's time Indians and Muhajirs accept this fact.

Those Muhajirs who see themselves as Muslims only and came to Pakistan for the sole sake of Islam are clearly in the wrong country. With their love for Arabs and Persians and hatred for Sindhis, Balochis, Punjabis and Pakhtuns, they would be better off living in Iran, Saudi Arabia or another Arab majority country in hopes they'll be welcomed there.

As I mentioned in another post of mine, I too am partially of Muhajir descent, but I clearly know where my loyalties lie. My country means a lot to me. My ambitions are for a unified and strong Pakistan with a sustainable population number and later the same goal for the rest of the world, not one with injustice towards the various ethnicities under the guise of "unity."

Certainly it is time for the Muhajir community to now ask themselves what are their future goals and who's side are they on. Unless they do not ask and answer these important questions, their future seems unclear and so is Pakistan's if it is not determined weather the country is to keep some of these people or not.

Exaggerating ethnic diversity in Pakistan and hiding it in other countries of it's region

When I first moved to North America, I was brought some cultural profiles of different countries, including Pakistan's. Other countries included Kenya, Lebanon and Canada.

These cultural profiles were short booklets intended to educate hosts on immigrants and brief insights to their national backgrounds.
The profiles contained some fact sheets, different categories of the country from sports to health care to spirituality and history.

The profiles have been put online and can be viewed on this site.

Also included were some interesting "facts" that are shown the same way one can find in school textbooks displayed as "did you know."
The "did you know" can be found on the profiles of every country listed.

But as usual many did you know "facts" on Pakistan are twisted and exaggerated. Amongst the did you knows on Pakistan it mentions Pakistanis being an ethnically diverse people.
When looking through India, Iran and Afghanistan's cultural profiles it did mention the major ethnic groups of the countries, but none of them highlighted the fact that all these countries are ethnically diverse.

Even when the fact is that these countries are more ethnically diverse than Pakistan. When I write more ethnically diverse, I don't just mean the sheer number of various ethnic groups being higher, but also the relationships between these being much more distinct.

In Pakistan we have about two dozen ethnic groups. Usually in modern times, an ethnic group is defined as a set of people speaking a single language. Now it does not matter weather the current languages of these people is not the same as that of their ancestors or even the same family as their ancestors' language.

In the case of Iran, Iraq, India and Afghanistan you have various ethnic groups speaking languages of completely different origins and also being genetically distinct.
Up to about one third of Afghans are Mongoloid by race. These Mongoloid Afghans except for the Hazaras speak Altaic languages such as Uzbek and Turkmen which are unrelated to Afghanistan's Indo-European languages the main ones being Dari and Pashto.

In Iraq there are Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans, all speaking unrelated languages. Arabic is Afro-Asiatic, Kurdish is Indo-European and Turkoman is Altaic.
In Iran we have various languages belonging to the Afro-Asiatic family, the Indo-European family and the Altaic family.

In India the number of ethnic groups is several times larger than that of Pakistan as well as various language families from Indo-European to Dravidian to Sino-Tibetian, Austroasiatic and others.
Even racially speaking we have many different skull types in India from Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Australoid, Negroid and a few others.

But despite all this, these cultural profiles don't highlight these facts in their did you knows.
They do mention ethnic diversity in the countries discussed, but don't highlight it in their cultural profiles the way they did in the case of Pakistan.

In Pakistan the racial and ethnic demographics are in a very different position than that of the other countries mentioned and discussed in this post. Pakistan is home to about two dozen distinct, but closely related ethnicities.

Except for three ethnic groups which are the Brahuis, the Baltistanis and perhaps even the Hunza, the rest of Pakistan's ethnic groups are of the same origin.
The Afroids known as "Makranis" are also somewhat distinct due to their African ancestry but I believe they have mixed with the local population. I also believe they speak Balochi dialects.

But the rest of the population up to 99% are of the same origin speaking Indo-European languages which can be further broken down into Indo-Iranic languages. Sindhi, Balochi, Urdu, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Pashto are the major languages of Pakistan. All of these languages descend from a common Proto-Indo-Iranic language spoken at some time era in the second or third millennium BC.

Click on images to enlarge:


Even genetically, most of Pakistan's population belong to common Haplogroup R1A:


Other ignorant things that these cultural profiles promoted were that Pakistan is a young state yet it doesn't mention the fact that as modern states so are India, nor Afghanistan nor Iran or Iraq.
Pakistan's national cuisine is also supposedly a "mix" of Indian and Middle Eastern. As always everything about Pakistani culture and history always has outside influence mentioned and exaggerated.

Then it was always labeling anything of Pakistan's pre-1947 history as "shared history" with India.
Whoever wrote the cultural profile on Pakistan is obviously an ignorant person and just spread his/her ignorance further by publishing all this into a cultural profile.

But the issue is not really about history or a single cultural profile. This false projection of Pakistan being a multi-ethnic country while making Iran and Afghanistan look like some homogeneous Persian countries or Iraq a homogeneous Arab country or India a homogeneous country is very widespread. Sometimes it is out of ignorance and sometimes to promote some sort of political agenda.

In one example I remember one of my parents explaining to my cousin's fiance who was of Irish descent on the Kashmir issue. It was explained to him by my parent that the subcontinent was "one India" divided by a British conspiracy. Yet this same parent of mine has a history of claiming that Pakistan has no identity due to it's ethnic diversity.

Many can probably already see the huge contradiction here. A united ethnically, linguistically, racially diverse subcontinent is one "Indian nation" yet one Pakistan compromising of an almost entirely Caucasoid population of Indo-Iranic speaking people is somehow not a nation.

Though my parent now has different views after I educated this parent of mine. However this claim is widespread amongst many people; especially Indians. Many Indians claim Pakistanis to be part of the "brown" "desi" or sometimes "South Asian race" alongside themselves.
I've come into contact with Indians including a Muslim who claimed this. Yet these very same Indians tout that Pakistanis are not a race and that all the ethnic groups in Pakistan are completely different.

One of them said this with some emotion. This is obviously a way of trying to diminish Pakistan's separate identity and culture. On one hand by calling them all "Indians" on the other hand by saying they are distinct from one another. Sadly many naive Pakistanis and foreigners buy into this.

Even the Islamists in Pakistan who oppose secularism try to portray Pakistan as a multi-national state often claim Pakistan's ethnicities have nothing in common outside of religion and so that religion alone is the unifying factor of Pakistan.

India is home to several dozen unrelated ethnic groups. Iran doesn't have as high of a number as ethnicities as India, but still it's populations also speak languages that are unrelated. The same is true for Afghanistan.

Ethnic diversity is very little in Pakistan when compared to India, Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan. Many Indians also proudly parade the diversity of their country yet ironically claim a sense of national identity.
Many anti-Pakistan elements around the world like to propagate the ethnic diversity of Pakistan's predominantly Indo-Iranic populations.

This claim is also recently being promoted by the upper class Muhajir fifth columnists such as Pervez Hoodbhoy. I even saw an article written by an Indian on Pakistan's 2008 independence anniversary again claiming that Punjabis, Sindhis, Muhajirs and others were all put together "artificially."

But let's face it. The name Pakistan is new and has no ancient roots. Though the country today known as "India" is also new and it's name has roots derived from the Pakistan/Indus Valley region, the name itself still has ancient roots.
The name Afghanistan is from Afghan, a tribal name that's been around centuries. Iran is also a new name but derived from an ancient name referring to the Aryans or nobles.

Many Pakistanis have argued that Pakistan should have been called India while India Bharat since Pakistan is the land of the Indus Valley. Even in her book, Empires of the Indus, British author Alice Albina suggests that Pakistan would have been better off keeping the name India or called itself Industan meaning land of the Indus.

But why should it be that the name of a country be used to judge it's past? Names change, the land and history remained unchanged.
Hopefully with the age of the Internet and technological advancement, the flow and access of information will be much faster and easier. People ignorant to the reality and history of Pakistan- including many Pakistanis themselves- will see the flawed reasoning behind calling Pakistan "diverse" and pretending that other countries in it's region are "homogeneous."

Post update: A more factual but brief cultural profile on Pakistan can be viewed here.