ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, spoke of his vision for a state in which “we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.” Sadly, his dream was never realized. Pakistan remains a place where freedom and social justice are as unattainable for the masses as basic needs like food, clean water and education.

My country continues to sink in various global ratings — of poverty, women’s rights and education. We have the second highest number of children — more than five million — not in school, and the World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan as one of the most dangerous countries on the planet, behind only Yemen and Libya: At least 40,000 people have died in terrorist attacks over the last 15 years, yet Pakistan has a dismal record of prosecuting and convicting terrorism suspects.

The situation is simply unsustainable. Things must change.

On June 17, soon after I announced that I was returning from Canada to Pakistan to campaign for a peaceful popular revolution, the Punjab authorities sent the provincial police to remove security barriers outside my house. (These had been placed there four years earlier on the orders of the Lahore High Court, following threats to my life after I wrote “The Fatwa on Suicide Bombings and Terrorism,” a treatise that disputes the ideology of Al Qaeda and demonstrates that terrorism is un-Islamic.)

When my supporters resisted this action, the police opened fire, killing 14 campaign workers and wounding 80. The brutal and indiscriminate way that the police shot at my workers, which I also regard as tantamount to an assassination attempt on my family, was reported by independent television channels.