by KHALED AHMED
(Few years back, the reason Aziz Dossa gave in an article in the Dawn newspaper for Jinnah’s conversion from being an Ismaili Shia to Twelver Shia was Aga Khan III’s, 48th Imam of the Ismailis, refusal to sanctify the marriage because of his friendship with the bride’s family who was against Rattan Bai Petit’s marriage to Jinnah. Ed.)
After 1947, Pakistan adopted the position of denying that the population of the country was divided between Shias and Sunnis, among others. The census that followed took account of Muslims and non-Muslims but ignored the sects: it was also an indirect pledge of the state that it would not discriminate on the basis of sect. The founder of the state, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, although himself a Twelver Shia after conversion from the Ismaili sect, was wont to describe himself in public as neither a Shia nor a Sunni. His stock answer to a query about his sect was: was Muhammad the Prophet [pbuh] a Shia or a Sunni? Yet when he died in 1948, it was necessary for his sister Miss Fatima Jinnah to declare him a Shia in order to inherit his property as per Jinnah’s will. (Sunni law partially rejects the will while Shia law does not.) She filed an affidavit, jointly signed with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, at the Sindh High Court, describing Jinnah as ‘Shia Khoja Mohamedan’ and praying that his will may be disposed of under Shia inheritance law. The court accepted the petition. But on 6 February 1968, after Miss Jinnah’s demise the previous year, her sister Shirin Bai, moved an application at the High Court claiming Miss Jinnah’s property under the Shia inheritance law on the ground that the deceased was a Shia.
Given the prestige of Miss Jinnah, she was allowed to dispose of all the property of her brother (as a Sunni she would have title to only one-half) and continued to do so till her death. After her death her sister Shirin Bai arrived in Karachi from Bombay, converted from Ismailism to Twelver Shiism, and laid claim to Jinnah’s property. It is at this point that the rest of Jinnah’s clan, still following the Ismaili faith, decided to challenge the authenticity of Jinnah’s Shia faith. The High Court, which had earlier accepted Miss Jinnah’s petition, now balked at the prospect of declaring the Father of the Nation a Shia. Needless to say, the case is still pending in Karachi. But Miss Jinnah’s conduct showed that she was an observing Shia and took her brother’s conversion to Twelver Shiism seriously. Why had Jinnah converted? It develops that he did it on his secular principle of freedom of religion. According to court’s witness, Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Jinnah broke from the Ismaili faith in 1901 after his two sisters, Rehmat Bai and Maryam Bai, were married into Sunni Muslim families. It appears that this happened because the Ismaili community objected to these marriages. It also appears that the conversion to Isna-Ashari (Twelver) Shiism happened in Jinnah’s immediate family, and not in the families of his two paternal uncles, Walji and Nathoo.
The court proceedings bear evidence of the last rites observed by Miss Jinnah immediately after her brother’s death. Witness Syed Anisul Hasnain, a Shia scholar, deposed that he had arranged the ghusl (last bath) of Jinnah on the instructions of Miss Jinnah. He led his namaz-e janaza (funeral prayer) in a room of the GovernorGeneral’s House at which such Shia luminaries as Yusuf Haroon, Hashim Raza and Aftab Hatim Alavi were present, while Liaquat Ali Khan, a Sunni, waited outside the room. After the Shia ritual, the body was handed over to the state, and Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, a breakaway alim of the Deobandi school of thought who supported Jinnah’s Pakistan Movement but had recently apostatised the Shias, led his janaza (funeral) according to the Sunni ritual at the ground where a grand mausoleum was later constructed. Other witnesses confirmed that after the demise of Miss Fatima Jinnah, clam and panja (two Shia symbols) were discovered at Mohatta Palace, her residence.
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