The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty … Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
A country without a constitution or rule of law, where there is no independent judiciary and no fundamental freedoms and rights, has no place in the contemporary comity of civilised nations. Government and politics, as the world today knows them, are alien to Pakistan. The scene in the country today bears resemblance to Thomas Hobbes's notion of primitive anarchy, marked by a "war of one against all", as well as to Rousseau's idealisation of the "noble savage". Unfortunately, for more than half a century now, Pakistan has been mired in political and economic uncertainty, and has had neither domestic stability nor constitutional integrity.
Pakistan came into being primarily as an Islamic state, with a moderate, democratic and progressive outlook. The country had a clear roadmap, bequeathed by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to build Pakistan as a "modern and democratic" state based on pluralistic democracy, the rule of law, religious freedom and communal harmony. Pakistanis today, however, wonder how a country created in the name of Islam, which stands for peace, equality, tolerance and fraternity, became the focus of the world's negative attention, for reasons that have never been part of Pakistani culture or faith. Extremism has never been a creed of the people of Pakistan, nor have its people ever condoned violence of any sort.