IF SOMEONE really wants to excel in the business of spinning tales, he or she must diligently study the propaganda techniques of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).

The top leaders of this party have all the pretensions of middle class professionals who are too prudent in their social behavior. Contrary to the rabble rousing Maulanas, trained in the traditional seminaries, most of the JI cadres always sound like the soft preachers of a modernist and workable version of Islam.

In the heart of their hearts, however, they remain self-righteously arrogant and contemptuous of the “gullible and misled” masses of the Muslim societies in contemporary world. The affected piety seldom stops them from manipulating facts. They rather invent the peculiar version of history with absolute fibs.

Maulana Maudoodi, the founder of this party, for example, articulated very strong arguments for refuting the demand that Muslims of South Asia must have a separate country of their own to elude the possible domination of the Hindu majority, after the vacation of India by the British in 1947. Doing that, he was hardly different than the majority of the Deoband trained Maulanas of the “(Indian) nationalist” variety in pre-independence days.

Yet, by the time we reached 1970, spin-doctors of the Jamaat-e-Islami had successfully drummed and almost established the fiction that Maulana Maudoodi was one of the pioneers of the two-nation theory. Before his death, none other than Allama Iqbal, the philosopher-poet, had rather desperately urged the then youthful founder of the JI to settle in Punjab for articulating and promoting “his dynamic interpretation of Islam that fits the modern world.”

A retired General from the decadent background of a princely state of India, Nawabzada Sher Ali, was heading the ministry of thought control in 1970. He was a JI supporter in the closet. We also had a military ruler that year, Yahya Khan. He was fond of all the good things of life and never bothered hiding his preference for the strong drinks and gaudy looking women. Yet Sher Ali decided to market him as a “soldier of Islam” who was defending the never-defined “ideology of Pakistan.”

That dictator had also imagined a constitution for this country. Apparently, he only showed the draft copy of this to one political leader of Pakistan only. Mian Tufail Mohammad was his name and he was the JI leader in that period. After shown the draft, Mian Sahib took no time in declaring to the press that the constitution, envisioned by the alcohol-friendly Yahya Khan, fulfilled the basic tenets of governance, as prescribed by Islam.

The JI cadres also acted like the mercenary collaborators, when Yahya opted to “cleanse” the then East Pakistan from India-sponsored traitors through the military operation. Jamaat-e-Islami has never showed the moral courage of confessing its negative role that eventually hastened the breakup of Pakistan.

One is compelled to remember some past doings of the Jamaat-e-Islami, after hearing the bombastic speeches of two professors, sitting on the MMA benches in the Senate. Taking the mike on a point of order, Ghafoor took the lead in wondering and thundering as to why some people closely associated and working with “the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program”, Dr. Qadeer, “are being hounded” by the government these days.

He also promoted the alleged persecution of some nuclear scientists, as if reflecting “General Musharraf’s perpetual betrayal” of the nationalist aspirations and strategic priorities for the pleasure of Americans.

Professor Khurshid Ahmad stood later to “forewarn” that people of Pakistan would never permit any compromise or abandonment of its nuclear program. In the heat of scaring the government with pompous threats, this professor could just not remember that his party had been trying to keep the Americans out of the Taliban-run Afghanistan with protest marches in the streets of Pakistan in late 2001. That could obviously not protect the Mullah Omars of this world from the fury of daisy cutters.

Professor Khurshid and his party could also not protect Saddam Hussain and his country from the US-led invasion. We can say that the god-fearing hearts of them were not motivated for the defense of the “secular Saddam.”

What about Kashmir, though? For almost a decade, Jamaat-e-Islami would want us to believe as if it was the one and the only, when it comes to liberate the occupied valley with perpetual Jihad. By agreeing to receive Vajpayee in Lahore in Feb 1999, the then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, was blamed for “betraying Kashmiris” by the zealot propaganda machine of the Jamaat-e-Islami. Its activists also tried their best to spoil the show by engaging the police in street battles, during Vajpayee’s presence in Lahore.

Kashmiris are yet not liberated and Vajpayee does not appear to have converted to their cause. Yet the same Qazi Hussain Ahmad was sitting in the legislators’ gallery, throughout the SAARC summit. He also took copious notes of the “historic speech,” the Indian prime minister had declared in all the visible deference. Doesn’t that define the possible JI reaction, if Musharraf would really “compromise” on our nuclear program?

It rather is time that the Jamaat-e-Islami stops pretending as the most radical opponent of the ugly Americans on this side of the Suez. If it really means it, there was no need for Qazi Hussain Ahmad to travel all the way to Qatar early this month, for attending a seminar, organized by a think-thank, SAABAN, the recurring finances of which come from a Jewish philanthropist. The purpose of the said seminar was to find effective means of bridging the communication gap between the US and the Muslim world.

Incidentally, the Jamaat-e-Islami was the only political party of Pakistan that was invited there. The rest of Pakistanis had gone there as media professionals. Qazi Sahib was not alone representing his party. His son and another Arabic-speaking aide also attended the proceedings of the said seminar, inaugurated by an ex-US president, Bill Clinton.

Qazi Sahib and his delegation is also believed to have had “fruitful meetings” with him separately. Isn’t it funny that after inciting and transporting so many youth of this country “to paradise”, while fighting against “the devilish agents of the anti-Muslim USA” in Afghanistan and held Kashmir, Qazi Sahib sits with the same Americans to suggest a strategy that should help their effective communication with the Muslim world? Have a heart please.

Professor Ghafoor Ahmad must not distort history as well. It was not Dr. Qadeer but Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who really decided to equip Pakistan with nuclear defense. Diligently but discreetly, he began working for it as a youthful minister of science and technology during the days of Ayub Khan in 1960s. Thanks to his obsession, hundreds of Pakistanis went abroad to study nuclear related subjects. And it was he who convinced the French to export a nuclear plant to Pakistan as well.

It is no more a secret that Washington was extremely annoyed with his quest for the nuclear program. Through Dr. Kissinger, they tried to bully him with threats of “making a horrible example of you.” Thanks to the US pressure, the French started having cold feet and ZAB instantly thought and pursued Plan-B. No doubt, Dr. Qadeer was a super deliverer of the said plan.

The Jamaat-e-Islami senators loudly vowed to defend Qadeer and his program, while thundering in the Senate. The question they have not answered, or no one has asked them is: "What they did for Bhutto, the original seeker of a nuclear program for Pakistan?"

Ghafoor may or may not remember. But most of the people of Pakistan have yet not forgotten, however, that the Jamaat-e-Islami incited and fueled the street agitation against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 and that pleased the Americans. Thanks to their creating the appearances of an “imminent civil war in Pakistan,” General Zia eventually took over in July of that year. That “defender of Islam” took the JI leaders onboard.

Professor Khurshid Ahmad was definitely a powerful minister in Zia’s cabinet on the tragic day of April 4, 1979, when Bhutto was hanged, just like an ordinary murderer.

If the Jamaat-e-Islami really cared for Pakistan’s nuclear program and its founders, it could very well convince Zia that Bhutto may have been a devil yet, he should better be kept in jail, even until his death just because he developed the nuclear program of Pakistan. He should have been spared the humiliating hanging. The Jamaat never did that. But their present rhetorical double-talk must end. There should be some limits of hypocrisy.