Projecting Ideologies on Maps

Projecting Ideologies on Maps: "

I received a map of this kind for the first time some two years ago and continue to receive variations of this kind every now and then. The text might have been MS-Painte-ed by somebody else initially but the idea was the same.

Pakistan : The Way it was meant to be

The forwarded email that this map was attached with was the usual Khilafa enthusiast (of the hyper-nationalist rather than Hizb-ut-Tehrir strand). The ideological insecurity and bankruptcy of ideas of the creators of such maps need not be commented on since I assume that it’s very much easy to understand why names of Prophets aligning with shape of the country’s political boundaries, that too rather poorly, is meaningless. Religious symbolism carving shape of political boundaries is definitely a new thing for me however.

My observations at that time were the same as they are today:-

1. Pakistan ka Matlab kia, La ilaha Illa Allah


2. Pakistan is the Fort of Islam


3. Kashmir ban ke rahay ga Pakistan


4. Bengal, later East Pakistan was therefore never meant to be part of this divinely gifted land. Or maybe, it would read Ya Allah the way two “Ya Allah” and ”Ya Muhammad” plates adorn the Masjid walls (Blaspehmous!). Nevermind, to hell with those bhooka traitor Bengalis of Hindu descent.


5. Where are poor Jungadh and Manavadar that the Government of Pakistan still includes on maps printed by the Survey of Pakistan? (they are included mostly with the “Political Map” on front page and excluded from later maps if you’re unaware of this stupidity).

Yesterday, this new, rather brilliant map landed in my mail. It carried the caption “In Response to the Jamati. You can write anything inside a map”.

Hey, where are my provinces?

So the guy who made this map took Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan from us and declared that the land of the Prophet and the poor ones living in Sindh and Punjab (and Islamabad, since that’s 10 miles from Pakistan) to be citizens of the land of Ranjeet Singh. Why Ranjeet Singh, I ask the creator of this map? Why not Porus? Anyways, Greater Afghanistan, Greater Pakistan, Greater India, so many greater nations.

Whilst I certainly do not agree with the Pashtun nationalists of the Pashtunistan type, the map is funny and rubs the religious card in the face of the hyper-nationalist religious types. I think I shall start my own Rawalpindi nationalist movement with religious symbolism too by fitting the Prophet’s name in the map of the boundaries of the Holy Rawalpindi district. I cannot think of anything religious that can mimic the shape of Sargodha district (you know who you are).

Credit and copyrights to the original creators of these maps.